Money Musings 💭 6 days until Election day 🗳
Every year, J and I rewatch The West Wing on Netflix. Have you seen it?!
If not, I highly recommend it. It’s amazing - it reminds me of what the government and our leaders can and should be.
As huge fans of the show, you can imagine how excited we were when the original West Wing cast came together for a reunion special to raise awareness and support for the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization When We All Vote.
They reenacted an old episode and had major special guests (like Michelle Obama, Bill Clinton, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Samuel L Jackson) come on to talk about voting in our current election, and they also cleared up some voting misconceptions (see resources and facts from the special below).
There are six days until Election Day! Do you have a voting plan? 🗳
SOME RESOURCES:
Head to Vote.org and When We All Vote to find all the info you need to make your voting plan
KNOW THE FACTS:
Trust only official and verified news about the election.
About Voter Fraud:
In the last 20 years, over 250 million ballots have been cast and there have been only 143 instances of voter fraud (that’s 1 case per state every 6 years for a fraud rate 0.0006%).
About the Wait for Official Results:
It might be days before we know who wins the election but that doesn’t mean anything fishy is going on. In American elections, candidates don’t declare themselves the winner, state election officials and nonpartisan news outlets like the AP announce the winner. Don’t be swayed by misinformation.
About Voter Suppression:
The Voting Rights Act was gutted 7 years ago. Since then, 26 states have made it harder to vote through voter ID laws, cuts in voting hours and early voting, purges in voter roles and eliminating polling places and polling machines (so you’re standing in line for hours). And now, even crippling the postal service in the midst of the pandemic.
It’s critical to not only vote but to also make sure your vote gets counted.
Here’s a list of the best ways to vote by state. If you vote by mail or absentee ballot, make sure to check that your ballot was received and if possible, confirm it was counted.
MONEY MOVE OF THE WEEK
Get a money buddy (or a group of money buddies). If you’ve ever had a gym buddy, you know that having one makes it more fun to work out and more likely that you’ll show up at the gym. The same goes for our money. The catch is that we often don’t have the same type of accountability with money because it’s not something we talk about with our friends and family. This is a problem because accountability is a key to our financial success.
When we tell someone we are going to do something, we have a 65% chance of actually doing it. That goes up to 95% if we set a check-in date.
If you are looking for a feminist group of money buddies to hold you accountable, support you in your goals and answer your 💰 questions (who isn’t?!), join our free Fiscal Femme Slack Community. It’s been incredible to see what happens when a group of womxn and allies come together to help one another get wealthy!
YOU GOTTA SEE THIS
Latina Equal Pay Day. Tomorrow, October 29th, is Latina Equal Pay Day. Latinas earn $0.54 for every dollar a white, non-Hispanic man earns. They’d have to work through October 29, 2020 to earn what a white man earned in 2019. That’s almost ten additional months of work!
At the current pace, Latinas will have to wait 205 years to earn equal pay. 53% of Latina mothers are the breadwinner in their family, so this pay gap means they have less money to pay rent, take care of their families, and send their children to college. Times Up Now shares a list of five things we can do to fight the pay gap.