Money Activism in the Modern Age
Why Read?
Guest writer and entrepreneur explains money activism
Learn how to have an informed opinion and make it work you
In my very first post, I explained that the focus of my newsletter would be to help people in particular, those starting their financial journeys, navigate work, save, and spend their money. I specifically stated that other than explaining the benefits of diversification, I would refrain from dispensing specific investment advice. Making money isn’t that hard; putting it to work and achieving the desired return is hard and requires time and knowledge. This intimidates some people causing them to either remain in cash or, heaven forbid, listen to friends who convince them to jump into the next meme stock or crypto.
My guest writer and entrepreneur, Augusts Christensen, is the founder of Share Scoops. Share Scoops is a newly launched platform whose aim is to help investors gain the knowledge needed to make better-informed decisions about their home, career, debt, savings, and spending. Read on to find out how it works.
You are an investor, regardless of whether you think you fit into the typical CNBC definition. You’re making decisions every day that will affect your future - your success, wealth, and well-being, and the future of our society and planet.
It’s difficult for us all to grasp the magnitude of the impact of our individual financial decisions because we lack reliable resources to contextualize it for us.
With Share Scoops, I set out to help more people realize their potential as investors and understand their economic power to shape their futures.
We built a platform to help people think like investors. It’s a process anyone can follow:
Stay informed.
Much of being an investor is just reading the news because context is everything. The lack of context makes financial decisions so difficult for most of us. How do you know if it’s a good time to buy a home? You can either trust the person making money off the transaction regardless of the outcome or conduct a multi-hour research project to learn how mortgage rates work and where we are in the real estate cycle. Knowing whether it’s a good time to invest in the stock market or what companies you should invest in is a whole other project.
Share Scoops provides our users with the most digestible daily bites so they can start understanding the economy's narrative. We do the same thing for companies. A stock price is just the quantification of a company's story arc. So if you understand its story, you can understand why its stock price goes up and down. It's the same with the economy and the broader stock market. With more exposure, those numbers start to feel less random and intimidating.
Have an opinion.
An investment is an opinion about the future. As investors, we form a belief that a particular company, industry, or economy will be successful, so we put our money behind it. An investment without an opinion is just a blind gamble.
Share Scoops specializes in getting intelligent people over the psychological barriers that “this stuff isn’t for me” and on their way to financial independence by engaging their opinions. So many of us actively disengage from having an opinion about financial topics because we’ve been programmed to think we shouldn’t. It’s not due to complexity. Our political system is very complicated, but we all have an opinion on it - informed or not. It’s not due to importance or relevance. More than 130 million people work in the private sector. Companies determine our incomes, healthcare, and how we spend our waking hours. They use most of our resources and create most of our waste.
The problem is with the delivery. If reading 100-page legislative documents was the only way to inform ourselves before an election, you can bet fewer people would vote. We shouldn’t have to survive off earnings reports alone. Share Scoops curates more holistic news that people can relate to and feel passionately about: how companies affect their employees, communities, and planet. Then we ask our users how they feel about it. That little bit of engagement rapidly accelerates comprehension and builds our users’ financial confidence.
It’s not just us. Investopedia conducted a study of millennial investors and found those who engage with financial information daily were twice as likely to feel knowledgeable. Those who felt knowledgeable were 5x as likely to feel confident in their financial decisions. Those who felt confident were 3x more likely to engage regularly in their personal finances. It’s a reinforcing cycle that starts with engaging with financial information daily.
Use that opinion to take action.
Once you have built a view upon a foundation of understanding, you can more easily evaluate the best next steps. Your knowledge of the economy and financial world will help you make better-informed decisions about your home, career, debt, savings, and spending. With investing, choosing not to make any changes to your plan can often be the most appropriate, but engaging with the stories of individual companies will help you understand whether they deserve your time and money. Leverage a platform like Share Scoops to make informed decisions about where you work, shop, and invest.
The simple act of voicing your opinion has power too. At Share Scoops, we’re working to put your opinion to work for you. With over 250,000 votes cast across hundreds of companies, Share Scoops is bringing the collective voice of the people to the boardroom. A handful of financial institutions should not be the only voices influencing the future of our economy. We’re turning the average investor into an institution because it’s time for more people to have a voice and a share in this economy.
If you want to learn more about Share Scoops, the world’s first money activism platform, sign up for our newsletter and app waiting list on our website. We’ve opened fundraising to allow our community to invest in our round alongside our other backers until April 24th. Learn more about our business and get in on the ground floor.
Stay learning,
Augustus
Founder & CEO, Share Scoops