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Economic Legacies Matter

Session I

Incorporating Economic Literacy into IDA Financial Education

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We honor those that live among us and those that came before us who were the original stewards of this land

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The Importance of Narratives

The Big Lie

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Switching the Mental Model

Over-emphasizes individual responsibility

Adds context and aims to activate long term structural change

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Scope of this 3-part series

Practice shifting the narrative in the context of our work

Reflect on our own financial stories

Explore some ways to incorporate economic literacy, as outlined in the IDA FE Standards

Build connections and collaboration between other IDA staff from across Oregon

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Just World Hypothesis

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Individual reflection on the video

What are some examples of how the Just World Fallacy show up in a financial education setting? In the ways we teach it and/or the ways our participants talk about themselves or others?

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The Just World Hypothesis is used to justify and sustain inequality and oppression.

It perpetuates Meritocratic Attitudes: People achieve their social positions on the basis of merit alone. It assumes the playing field is level.

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The Just World Hypothesis is used to justify and sustain inequality and oppression.

High-status individuals are seen as more competent than low-status individuals. This often internalized.

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The Just World Hypothesis is used to justify and sustain inequality and oppression.

Belief in a just world hypothesis creates a significant empathy gap.

“The whole time I was thinking what a privilege it is to have this kind of maternity leave. And then, as I thought about it, the more angry I got that there were women in the rest of America that didn’t have the same kind of luxury I had working here at The View.”

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The Just World Hypothesis is used to justify and sustain inequality and oppression.

Belief in a just world hypothesis creates a significant empathy gap.

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POLL

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Ruts in a Well-Worn Path

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Breakout Prompt

What patterns of thinking did you learn that justified inequality and oppression? How have those changed over time? How do we un-learn these?

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BREAK- back at 2pm

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Integrating Economic Literacy Into Your Curriculum

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Economic Literacy: the identification and evaluation of economic legacies as they relate to personal finance, wealth, the economy, and political systems.

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Brainstorm ideas for an interactive learning activity that helps your participants develop a broad sense of our economic system (capitalism) using the diagram above.

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“If you want to do your patriotic duty as New York women, you will come shopping with me and throw some much needed money downtown”

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Buying Local: Reorienting Our Values

For every $100 spent at a local business, $68 remained in the local economy while only $43 of each $100 spent at a chain retailer.

Hungry Heart Bakery

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Buying Local: Reorienting Our Values

A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based, not on a national sales plan, but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guarantees a much broader range of product choices.

Flexible Fitness PDX

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Buying Local: Reorienting Our Values

Local ownership ensures that important decisions are made locally by people who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of those decisions.

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Buying Local: Reorienting Our Values

Local stores help to sustain vibrant, compact, walkable neighborhoods-which, in turn, are essential to reducing sprawl, automobile use, habitat loss, and air and water pollution.

The Pocket Pub

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Charting your Financial Story

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Julie’s Personal Events
My parents are both educated in Taiwan. Both have bachelor degrees- my father had a masters in engineering before immigrating to the US when I was 18 months old (1979).
We moved to Orange County, California. My father was fully employed, my mother took care of 3 small children. Parents bought a home in 1981. Father returned to school while working full time and earned an MBA.
My mother eventually enters the workforce when all three children are school-aged. Unstable work history due to a language barrier. She eventually earned her Realtor’s license and catered to Mandarin-speaking clients.
My father is laid off from his job during the recession of the early 90’s. He remained unemployed for a couple of years. Unable to find a comparable job, he accepted a job for which he is overqualified and underpaid. During this time, my mother is diagnosed with Lupus and is unable to continue working. My two older brothers graduated high school and each enrolled at UC schools, each responsible for paying their own way.
My mother is determined to be disabled by her doctors but her application for disability benefits is denied. She declines to appeal.
I graduated high school in 1995 and enrolled at a CSU school. I worked between 2-4 jobs throughout school and graduated in 4 years with a little more than $10,000 in loan debt.
Soon after graduation, I accepted a job at a social service agency in San Francisco during the Dot Com boom and I moved right outside of the city with my (white) partner who was still completing his BA. I was the sole wage earner for the first year and a half and made less than $28k a year but he had student loan funds that helped us get by.

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My partner and I each invested $1000 in Netflix stock right after the IPO without knowing anything about the stock market. We suffered from indigestion over the year watching it fluctuate and sold our holdings in a year’s time when it returned to the same price as we bought it for.
After 3 years at that first job, I returned to school to earn my graduate degree and also found a higher paying and better paying full time non-profit job. My partner is employed in the tech industry full time but in an entry-level position.
Five years after graduating college, we saved enough of a down payment to buy a condominium in Oakland and got married.
We owned the condo for 2 years and when I finished grad school, we sold the unit for a nice profit and moved to Portland.
Six months after we arrived in Portland (2006), we bought a new construction home in SE Portland. It took me a full year to find a non-profit job in Portland but my partner was fully employed.
In 2008, my partner returns to school while working full time to earn his MBA. Solarize Portland makes it possible for us to buy panels for our home to reduce our electricity costs by half.
In 2009, my partner’s MBA classmate asks his study group to help buy out a previous business partner and relaunch as founders of the new company. We contribute a modest four-figure sum for the buyout and become partial owners in the company.
In 2012, I left my job for a two-person startup that fails pretty quickly. Our son was born later that year.
In 2013, we bought a new plug-in hybrid car to replace the one car we have.
In 2015, I returned to the workforce, my partner transitioned to a new job, and the venture we are part owners of is bought out by a large firm resulting in a low six-figure payout. We buy a new home and rent out the other.

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Bring your narrative to the next session

April 13th, 2021 @ 1:00 p.m.