Invest Where You Live: Back Your Neighbourhood Economy
Local investing (or often called ‘locavesting’) is when people with a bit of money, choose to instead to invest in their local area, instead of on the stock market. All investments have risk. But this way, even if you lose you kind of still win, and you end up with thriving community shops, bakeries and restaurants in your area.
Writer Amy Cortese helped bring the idea to life through her work on locavesting. She showed that when neighbours back small businesses or co-operatives in their own towns, everyone benefits.
Think of the café down the road funded by local supporters or a community solar project built by friends pooling resources. These real stories prove that ordinary people can help shape the places they care about.
If you want to see stronger shops, greener parks, and fuller town centres around you, community wealth building and local investing can make a real difference. That’s a local economy.
At the moment, the entire global economy seems to be built on the model of digging things up from one hole in the ground on one side of the earth, transporting them around the world, using them for a few days, and sticking them in a hole in the ground on the other side of the world. George Monbiot
Economist John Kenneth Galbraith says ‘trickledown economics’ (cutting taxes for rich people to give jobs to the ‘little people’) just means the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. He says ”If you feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass through to feed the sparrows’.
Charity Bank (funds community projects)
Charity Bank is like having a savings account and donating to local charities at the same time. Because your savings are used to invest in small community projects.
The account opening process is really simple, then your money can get to work, creating change for local communities. So far Charity Bank has donated over £629 million to over 1,460 causes nationwide.
You can open a personal, business, charity or credit union savings account. Some examples of what these savings have funded:
- Transforming an old hotel into supported living for 11 vulnerable adults
- Funding the headquarters of an Air Ambulance
- Funding a refuge for families escaping domestic abuse
- Helping to renovate social housing properties
Credit Unions are also a good way to invest in communities. These member-owned banks lend your money to local people are affordable rates, only if they have a history of saving, to avoid debt. They can be used for home improvements to small business, instead of money going to global banks.
A few inspiring case studies
- Community Wealth Builders is based in Baltimore, USA. It helps local businesses with crowdfunded, no-interest loans to succeed in an area that suffers from high unemployment.
- The Handmade Bakery (Yorkshire) is thriving, thanks to now-paid-off ‘bread bonds’. Instead of receiving money, investors received good bread in return! Today, it bakes thousands of loaves a week, supporting the local economy.
- Spacehive is a community fundraising site. These are ‘pots of money’ that can be raised for local shops and projects.
Michael H Shuman is the author of the wonderful book Put Your Money Where Your Life Is. He says the issue is that millions of people with savings are limited to putting them into big companies and global corporations. He believes that in the future, these funds will instead be invested in local funds to build affordable housing (not destroying the countryside to do it), food and clean energy funds.
Abundance Investment (investing in local councils)
Abundance Investment is a great idea. Rather than invest in the stock market, you fund your local council, to invest in your area. It’s also safer (to date, no council has ever failed to pay back the money, as a council rarely goes bust, and won’t run off with your money to buy yachts in the Caribbean).
Most are using your money (over 5 years) to tackle climate change and reduce carbon emissions. This is through initiatives like planting more trees and investing in green energy and better public transport.
As with any investment there are risks. But this company adheres to all the proper rules, and it’s kind of like ‘crowdfunding for your council’, where a survey found that 73% of savers and investors would be interested in lending money to councils, if it helped with environmental and social benefits. Especially as the average group of 100,000 people in the UK holds £4 billion in savings.
So instead of cash-strapped councils asking government for help (that often says no due to lack of funds), this is kind of do-it-yourself-improve-your-community instead. Locals lend the money (and get back something in return in the form of interest and also better communities).
You can invest from £5 (and can also choose to donate interest back to community projects). This is a fantastic idea, why is this not more widely-known? So far, just four councils are involved.
- Hounslow Council – community energy, grants to local community projects and places of worship, upgrading air, energy and transport for schools, cycle paths, reuse and repair events, transform unused land to grow local free food.
- Hammersmith & Fulham Council – Rain gardens to protect against floods, ‘greening the grey’ schemes), and secure bike storage.
- Greenwich Council – more LED wildlife-friendly public lighting, solar panels, improving public parks and greener public buildings.
- Southwark Council – creating more cycle spaces, transition lampposts and parks to LED lighting, run pools and gyms on green energy, replace boilers with heat pumps at a local school, expanding a local tool library, nature projects for local green spaces and cemeteries and again installing rain gardens, to prevent floods.
You can also choose to invest in community energy, like solar panels on schools. These cannot only reduce carbon emissions and power a school, but leftover energy can be sold to the national grid. This means investments to improve schools and communities (and possibly helping to pay bills for local people in fuel poverty). It’s all rather exciting stuff!
Local investing vs far-away capitalism
You Don’t Need a Calling is a book to ask you to stop ‘searching for purpose’ and instead start being present. Everyone you look, you are being asked to ‘become the best version of yourself’ or ‘make your life count’.
These messages inundate us, not just in daily life, but even in churches and even more in self-help books. But this is leading to a world of worn-out people who always feel we fall short.
In a capitalist society determined by profit, we are told to work and shop till we drop, to promote ‘economic growth’, rather than be inspired by places like Costa Rica and Bhutan, which have ‘happiness indexes’ that deem quality of life more important than the bottom line.
Governments try to manipulate us into believing our entire lives should be about making money and being productive and successful. Society has narrowed our perspective of success to be living in a mortgage-free house with a new car and lots of money in the bank.
But we don’t have to accept that limiting view. In this book, the author suggests you reclaim your true purpose in life, by resisting systems that are trying to exploit you for their own gain. And instead slow down and tune into what’s really important in your own life.
The author (a former minister) says that purpose is nothing you find, it’s something that finds us, when we learn to be present in the world. This is a new course to chart away. Sometimes God’s plan can be that your life has purpose, even if you are not doing that much at all!
If you are exhausted by the idea of ‘God’s plan’ for your life or exhausted by the achievement treadmill, this book can reframe your worth in the world, without having to adhere to the plans of others. It’s not about becoming a person you wish to be. It’s about freeing yourself to be who you already are.
Damon Garcia is a theologian and writer who discovered his passion for ministering to ‘spiritual misfits and radicals’ through youth adult ministry. He likes to combine this with anti-capitalist politics, to help people ‘unsettle’ from oppressive ideaologies. He lives in California, USA.
I almost died after accidentally overdosing on antianxiety medication after a depressive episode. A friend took me to the hospital, and the doctor told me if I had gone to sleep, I may not have woken up.
A couple of years later, I burned out. So I slowed down. But then a few months later I went back to trying to life life to the fullest again. Then a while after that, I burned out again. And again. And again. Something wasn’t working, and I couldn’t figure out what it was.
Burnout forces you to slow down because your body has no choice but to catch up on the rest you’ve been putting off. A lot of us don’t learn the lessons that burnout has to teach us. We just get back up and wear ourselves down again, over and over, until we die. Damon Garcia
