The Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast

174 ⎸ Sustainable Money Practices with Kara Perez

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In this interview episode, I chat with money guru Kara Perez about merging sustainable living with smart financial practices. If you've ever been curious how to save some green while going green, you'll love this one!

In this episode you’ll hear:

  • practical, sustainable money practices that fit right into your life without breaking the bank
  • advice on tackling emotional money barriers
  • real-life stories on how folks save money while going green
  • how Kara landed a book deal
  • advice on managing busy seasons


Resources mentioned in this episode:


Meet Kara

Kara Perez is the founder of Bravely Go, a sustainability focused financial education company. Bravely focuses on bringing actionable, intersectional and accessible financial education to people who never learned the language of money. She is the author of the book, Green Money. Kara has been featured in the New York Times, Good Morning America Forbes, NPR, Glamour, ABC Nightline News, and US News and World Report as a financial expert. Additionally, for 2 years Kara co hosted the award winning podcast The Fairer Cents, which has been named the top money podcast for women by Forbes and The Balance.


Connect with Kara

🌐 Website: bravelygo.co

📱 IG: @webravelygo



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Serena:

Welcome back to the Ambitious Bookkeeper podcast today. I have a guest, Kara Perez, on with me. She's an author and she is just releasing or has released a book on money. So I thought, yeah, I thought it would be really cool to have, her come on the podcast and chat with this community. We're all like money people, but there's always a different, Perspective that all of us can learn and take with us and bring to our clients. So I'm super excited to have you on here. Welcome. Welcome.

Kara:

so much for having me. Always good to talk to a fellow money nerd.

Serena:

Awesome. So I think we've met on threads or maybe I found you on threads. Now I've, booked so many podcasts interviews recently with people who I've either sourced from a threads post or whatever that I'm like, it's pretty safe to say that I found you on threads. Threads. And the algorithm has been very nice to me over there. so yeah, give us a little background of who you are, what you do, you're an author, but give us the, nitty gritty of who you are.

Kara:

I always like to say the kind of like TLDR, internet brain rot is, um, is, okay, so I was, born and raised in Massachusetts, I'm a New Englander through and through, and my parents got divorced when I was two, and, That's when money really entered into my life because my mom raised me and my siblings and, we didn't have any money. We were very, very low income. We were on food stamps for about six years and very much so grew up in a household of no, put that back, we can't afford that. Why are you getting the brand name? I know, put that down. and then in high school, my mom had, when I was in high school, my mom got her master's, which she paid for herself, became a teacher and things really stabilized for us. But, Money remained hard for me through college. I worked, I was work study in college. I had scholarships, but I had to take out student loans. And then I graduated in 2011 and my fellow millennials will remember the job market was absolute trash at that time. It was like, unless you have a STEM degree and a hundred years of experience, nobody wants to hire you for anything. And so I remained low income in my early adulthood. So. Really money was a struggle for me up until I had my quarter life crisis at 25, right on the dot. And I just kind of realized if I don't get my financial life together, if I don't start to speak the language of money, clearly no one in my life is going to rescue me. Like my mom doesn't understand this. My dad doesn't understand this. Like, I have to be the one to kind of white knight myself. So I always thought of it. And so I started a blog about. paying off my student loans, while being very low income. And I was working as a waitress making 15, 000 a year, 16, 000 a year, like really low income, living in Austin, Texas, had to pay my own rent, my own car insurance, all of that stuff. I didn't get any family help. And so I was just sort of like, here's what I'm doing. And I would just kind of word vomit onto the internet every week. I picked up a catering shift this week. I made an extra 120. I'm going to apply 80 to my student loans., I'm going to put another 20 towards my credit card, blah, blah, blah. Like just really nitty gritty. And it was in that kind of period of intense money management that I realized I actually really like talking about money and I really enjoy. Being financially affluent and this is something that not knowing made my life harder and knowing made my life so much easier So much easier like I remember the first time I opened an HYSA, a high yield savings account I was like, I feel like I just cracked the code Like I'll be rich forever But that's got sort of like where I came from and how I got into the money world. And now today I am a financial educator. And so I help people kind of go on that same journey that I went on paying off debt, creating budgets, but with a focus on sustainability. So sustainable living practices, as well as sustainable money practices.

Serena:

So one thing I know about the sustainable living practices,, it's a more time consuming. And B, generally more expensive. So talk to us about how you marry that whole thing with the money stuff, because I know a lot of people probably want to live more sustainably that way, but it's like, but it's way more expensive. Like how am I going to, or they might think it is. So walk us through that. Yeah.

Kara:

point. Sustainable living can be more time consuming, but I think You're, it's actually, I don't want to say you're wrong. I want to say it's a misconception that sustainable living is way more expensive. Because when you think about sustainable living, there's a phrase that you may have heard, reduce, reuse, recycle. And a lot of us get hung up on recycle. We're thinking, oh, like I'll have my plastic water bottle and I'll recycle it. And like, that will be good. But actually, sustainable living should be really more heavily slanted towards reduce and reuse. And reducing and reusing will actually help. Always save you money, right? Like I am drinking right now out of a former pasta sauce jar So I bought this pasta sauce. I kept the jar my aunt sanded it down not sanded it Like she has a glass sander She didn't use like actual sandpaper and turned it into a drinking glass And so that is one thing that I bought one time that I am now getting Multiple uses out of and I don't need to go buy more You Glasses, right? And that's a small example. But when you do that multiple times in your life, in multiple areas of your life, the savings start to add up, right? Like thrifting clothes instead of buying new, being a one car household instead of a three car household, buying an older car instead of buying new. And these things really begin to add up. And that's what sustainable living is. I think a lot of people think sustainable living is like, everything has to be linen and bamboo and like, spotless white homes. And it's like, no, no, that's Instagram, but that's not sustainable living. But I will say it is kind of a push and pull and like, you're a mom and I'm not. And I think that's a, that's actually a good, Vantage point to take on the time conversation because I am sure there are days where you're like, we are getting pizza, right? Like I can't cook. I don't have the time. I don't have the energy. Like, please. whereas I don't have kids. I'm always going to have more time than you. Just, that's just a fact, right? So when it comes to sustainable living, I try and tell people like, Do what you can within your life's constrictions and your life's, like what works for you, basically. So if you eat out a lot, you know, then that creates like a lot of plastic waste or something like, okay, don't beat yourself up for that because you have less time. You can't do as much at home cooking. Is there another area of your life that you can practice sustainability in? Nobody. And I've been on this sustainable living thing for like eight years now. I'm not perfect. Perfection is a myth, right? What is that phrase? Like, perfect is the enemy of good, right? Like, I think about that all the time, because you can always do a little bit better, but you'll never be perfect. And striving for perfection, trying to be the perfect mom, trying to be the perfect sister, trying to be the perfect sustainable living girly, you know, No, no, no, no. That's not what we're here for. We're just here for a little bit better. So if you find that there's one area of your life that you really are struggling to be sustainable in, switch that energy someplace else, right? Like, oh, instead of buying paper towels every week, I'm going to buy these reusable cloths and then I'll just throw them in the wash and then I'm cutting down on the waste I produce from paper towels. Great. House is still getting cleaned, but we've saved a little bit of money and we've saved a little bit of, you know, raw paper goods by switching to this cloth. I'm still driving around in a gas powered car. It's okay.

Serena:

Awesome. Yeah, I love the permission of just doing the little things that work within your constraints. So, I got into the sustainable living thing when, well, I've been on it probably my whole life to some degree, because my dad's like a big, big, big fan of it. He'll reuse like the cottage cheese Tupperware from, you know what I mean? Um, and just like doesn't really get rid of stuff and reuses things, fixes things instead of buying new. So like I kind of grew up in that environment. but then my very first job, in college was at a food co op, which the listener or you're probably familiar, but the listener is not familiar. It's like a health food grocery store, but everyone, like, we didn't have plastic bags. Like we didn't, provide plastic or paper bags for anyone shopping there. You brought your own or you reused the boxes, that we got the goods in, So like little things like that. And then at just working there, we, I mean, we didn't even have notebook paper. Like we would just recycle other papers and staple them together. Like it was a chance,

Kara:

Mm hmm.

Serena:

was your work environment. I'm like, yeah, my job one day. It's just kind of a bunch of recycled paper like that had been misprinted or whatever, and make it into little notepads for the employee. But, uh, so I've been on this a while, but when I had, my second daughter, there's a pretty big age gap between my first and my second daughter, about 10 years. When I had my second one at that point, I was a stay at home mom. So I had more time to explore this stuff. And I realized when she was a newborn, like a few, maybe like a month or two in, it was like the diaper situation. I cannot

Kara:

Mm.

Serena:

good conscience continue to buy all these diapers and just throw them away. So I switched to cloth diapering. I was like, I've got time. I'm home. that was probably like the most intense thing I've done as far as sustainability.

Kara:

Yeah, I'm really impressed. I actually brought that up on another podcast where I, like, again, I'm not a mother, but I don't know if I could do cloth diapers. That seems like a lot. Like, it's a huge win for sustainability, but

Serena:

one thing that I did that like ties into that, like doing as much as you can in your constraints or whatever, I gave myself the permission to actually use disposable diapers when we were out and about because of the convenience factor. because it does get kind of gross.

Kara:

Yeah. Um,

Serena:

If I'm in public, if I'm going to like be at the zoo all day, I'm not going to be doing the cloth diapers. So like that is where I did give myself permission. But even just only using disposable during those times saved so much waste because I was home so much. I'm like, if I'm at home anyways, like, and I'm doing laundry multiple times a day anyway, I'm with little babies. Cause then I had two back to back. It was just like, may as well, I'm here anyways.

Kara:

Yeah, I love that. I think that's a great example of looking at the circumstances you're in and saying, what can I do here and now? As opposed to trying to like, emulate somebody that you saw on social media and what works for their life.

Serena:

And yeah, and the amount, I never really did the calculations, but we probably saved thousands of dollars in diapers.

Kara:

Yeah, I bet.

Serena:

The cloth Diapers are also very expensive. And that was Intimidating to begin with too, because I was like, okay, I'm going to invest a couple hundred dollars into things that are just getting pooped on. But like, but the end, in the end goal, because I also, like when I did buy diapers, I bought certain brands that were, like no dye, better for the environment all around. So they were more expensive as well. And so that's where the more expensive thing ties , in my brain, I'm like, okay.

Kara:

that's

Serena:

your investment is usually higher, or if you're opting for the products that are I less of a carbon footprint or whatever, those tend to be more expensive. And so it's a hard thing for people to swallow, I think.

Kara:

Yeah, I do think that when it comes to buying sustainable things or things that are fairly made or ethically made, like, yes, they do tend to be more expensive, but like sustainable lifestyle practices, you know, walking instead of driving, biking instead of driving, a lot of those are. Big money savers. So it's, I guess it's sort of like sustainable habits are money savers and more sustainable products tend to be more expensive, but ideally something you can reuse again and again and again, and you can get longer life out of.

Serena:

talk to us about how you ended up writing a book about all of this. I'd love to hear.

Kara:

Yeah.

Serena:

curious.

Kara:

It's so crazy like getting, so I had two different publishers approach me to write a book Which is very flattering and very wonderful At a time that I wanted to write a book. I think if I had gotten the offer Earlier in my career. I don't know if I could have done it so the timing worked out really well and Yeah, basically they came to me and said, you know, we want we think you should write a book. We like your voice you And I said, yeah, I also like my voice. Thank you for recognizing. And they said, what do you want to write about? And I said, I don't want to write another Money 101 book. That book has been written a lot. And I said, I really want to write about money and sustainability because I do think the sustainable living conversation is just growing and growing and growing. Like right now, as we are recording this, you know, Hurricane Helene has just absolutely devastated parts of Florida and Georgia and Western North Carolina. And now Hurricane Milton is on the come up, right? And it's supposed to be the most powerful storm. that will ever hit the United States or that has ever hit the United States. And we know for a fact, the science tells us that fossil fuels are making storms stronger and weather patterns more unreliable. And so that means that we are living through heavier rains, heavier snows, stronger droughts. And so I think more and more people are really awakening to Oh my gosh, our systems are really making our lives harder and more expensive, right? If we as a country are going to have to put more money into disaster recovery, that might mean taxes go up, right? Or that might mean parts of the country that people have lived in can no longer be lived in. If you have a house in Florida that gets wrecked by a hurricane every year, good bet you're probably going to move after you rebuild twice, right? And so I really wanted to tie the parallel between these kind of big picture climate questions and, and fears and the individual. Not because like, if one person gives up meat, it's going to solve the climate crisis. That's not the approach of the book. Rather, the book is more so a series of stories. I got to interview a lot of really wonderful people about how they are handling their money. in this world, right? And how they're making sustainable choices from where they bank, how they invest, to how they build community, how they eat, how they live. And so, like, for example, back on the parent thing, um, I got to interview this person who was a part of a babysitting co op. So instead of paying for childcare, she and a bunch of her neighbors got together and would trade, you know, hours, basically. You know, they would be like, okay, so I'll watch like Susie and Jose's kids for three hours, and then Susie and Jose will owe me three hours. So there was no exchange of money, but everyone got to have their child care needs met via people who lived close to them. So it was community building, money saving, um, and it was very like, Resilient thing to do, I thought. And so the book is just a series of stories, basically, of people who are sharing how they're making it work now and how you, as the reader, can make these kinds of changes in your own life. and so the publisher liked that and that's how I got to write the book. I

Serena:

That is awesome. And so they, they found you because of your blog. How did that work?

Kara:

think they found me because of Instagram. Yeah. And I, I will say. I'm not the biggest. I think I have like 39, 000 followers on Instagram. I think I had 37, 000 when they reached out. So, I want to say you don't have to be, you don't have to have a million followers, but I will say, Social media is such an interesting and, and powerful tool for getting noticed and getting your

Serena:

Yeah, absolutely. That is so cool. Okay. So since our audience are bookkeepers and accountants, like we're not new to the whole money conversation, but what is it? I know because I, I also coach other accountants and bookkeepers that like, we all have our own stuff around money. what is something that if someone is trying to work on their own money story and building more financial literacy around personal finance and this type of stuff. what would you suggest? Like, where would you suggest people start?

Kara:

Yeah, I think of this in two kind of sections, I guess. There's sort of the mental and emotional side of money, which I think we all know is so real. And then there's the practical, actionable side of money. You know, if you like, I had a bunch of student loan debt and it used to make me feel really bad. I felt embarrassed. I felt depressed. I felt annoyed. Like it really wreaked a lot of havoc on my emotional wellbeing and that's I had to take different actions to address that than I did to actually pay off the debt, right? Like, oh, make multiple payments in a month and utilize. I, my student loan lender allowed, they decreased my interest by like 0. 25 percent if you signed up for automatic payments, right? Like those kinds of tactics were different from, I have to do the work around, the mental work around feeling better about money. So I would ask people if like, okay, I'm beginning my journey. I would say like, how does money make you feel right now? Look at your overall financial picture. How do you feel? You feel good? You feel confused? You feel anxious? Try and identify it in specific language. And then think about what you want your money to enable you to do. Because money is a tool. Money doesn't wake up in the morning thinking about you. You might wake up thinking about money, but it doesn't think about you. About you ever. So what do you want your money to do? And then the question becomes, how do we close that gap between where you are and where you want to be? And sometimes it is just, Oh, I need a new bank. I need new investments. I need a new budget. And sometimes it's, I need to get comfortable asking for a raise. I need to, as a small business owner, get comfortable raising my rates. Or I need to let this part of my business go because it takes too much from me emotionally and doesn't bring me back enough financially. So you have to kind of do the emotional side and then use that as a platform to spring into

Serena:

Yeah, I really liked that. That was really good. I'm like, wow. Yeah, that's, that's so true. And even people who are comfortable with money, that's work any of us can do and should do on a regular basis because things change too. Like I consider like where I'm at now versus five years ago in my relationship to money and that exercise would still be valid and a good exercise to do in this season of my life things change, you get more comfortable and then things slip and all that kind of stuff.

Kara:

Yeah. And I would also say to the, this audience, because like, you know, if you're an accountant, you definitely have a level of financial literacy that the average person doesn't have, but you might be killer at, you know, taxes and not feel very comfortable with budgeting, right. Or how to invest or how to invest. According to your values. So I would also encourage people listening to this. Like if you feel confident in one area of your money, but you don't in another, that's okay. That's totally fine. and you can always continue to learn. I always tell my clients, like, think about something you're really good at. you know, whether that be something practical, like I'm an amazing baker or, a little more like I'm a great aunt. if you are good at one thing, that's proof positive you can be good at something else, right? And if you learned how to code, that's proof positive you can learn how to budget. You know, like I think a lot of people get in their head around money and if you're already knowledgeable in one area, you might think, yeah, I know how to do all this other stuff, but like, let's take a second and be like, do I actually know how to do that? And do I feel confident in that? Do I need to take a class, take a workshop, whatever it is, just know that you can always be expanding and that, you know, Your knowledge in one area, it can be that kind of launch pad into being good at another area.

Serena:

absolutely. Yeah. It's so interesting that like, even financial professionals. A layer of, because I've seen it and I've been there as well, a layer of avoidance around finance stuff. It's just really interesting to think about.

Kara:

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay, and I don't want to be, I hope this isn't inappropriate, but there's a joke on Friends when Rachel is, I think when she's pregnant or she's just given birth and she meets a gynecologist and he's like, you know, sometimes you're at work all day and And you're just like, I can't do like, I guess it's like, maybe she's not pregnant. She's like, she's a waitress and he's like, you know, you're at work all day. You're like, I can't serve another cup of coffee. He's like, sometimes I feel that way. Like, you know, wink, wink. And I think if you're doing other people's taxes all day, you might not want to come home and do your own budgeting or something. So I can see how there is that like built in avoidance due to the nature of the

Serena:

Yeah. That's true. I can see that being a thing. I mean, most of us, like we're the last, our books are the last ones to get done. I found that the more I learn and like educate myself about investing in the personal finance side of things, it makes me a better, a better advisor for my clients because it all actually begins with the personal finance. Like I can't help my clients set their business goals if I don't know how much they actually need to be taking home, like versus how much they want to be taking home. And, All of that. So it's like, it has helped tremendously me doing me taking that walk, right? And doing the work so that I can ask my clients the questions that will pull out like the answers that we really need. but it's just, it's interesting. It's like, the more I work with this kind of stuff, it's like, the more, you know, the more you realize you don't know. And so then you just keep going deeper,

Kara:

Totally. Yeah. And I like try to appreciate that aspect of life because isn't that true of so many things? It's sort of like, Oh, I've achieved this one level. I feel confident. And then you kind of look up and you're like, there's so many more levels.

Serena:

much more to know about this. I thought I was learning a lot.

Kara:

I try to be like, wow, it's such a wacky experience to be a human. Like you're kind of constantly growing crazy to just sort of like keep myself moving forward. and also taking time to rest. Like, you know, I've, I've just written this book. It's very exciting. And I know that Next year, I'm going to do less. 2024 was a big year for me. I, I wrote the book. I made a major move. I've done a ton of other work and I'm just sort of like, yeah, that was my season of hustle. 2025 will be a season of rest. And it doesn't mean that I'll stop learning or stop growing entirely, but it's not going to be a growth spurt year. It's going to be a little growth year, and that's okay.

Serena:

what are you, what do you, besides the book, how do you work with people? How can someone, like find out what you've got going on and, and all that kind of stuff?

Kara:

Yeah. So, best place to like find out about me is my website, bravelygo. co, not dot com. I, that one was too expensive. Um, dot co. But I work with people in a bunch of ways. I work with people one on one to put together money plans. So budgeting, debt payoff, saving. How much should you be investing? I don't manage people's money. I don't do people's taxes. But financial strategy, that's what I help people with. And I also host a lot of workshops throughout the year. And I have some products, like I have a digital budget workbook and spreadsheets for people to use if they're ready to kind of DIY. And so I have a YouTube channel as well, where I like to talk more about, , sort of the socio economics of things and also sort of like pop culture and money. Like I just released a video on Gilmore Girls and money because, you know, that's a show that I love and that is totally insane when it comes to money. So I like to sort of on a lighter side of things talk about money in our media. I think it's very fun. And so those are the ways that I'm kind of talking about money on the internet and

Serena:

Cool. I love it. So we'll link all of that in the show notes. And the best place to connect with you is Instagram.

Kara:

Yes, feel free to slide into my Instagram DMs, so that's at WeBravelyGo. It's kind of a weird handle, but someone has the Bravely Go handle and they won't give

Serena:

And they probably don't even use it, right?

Kara:

yeah, they're not, they're, ugh, that's okay. I'm not holding resentment, it's fine, but yes, WeBravelyGo on Instagram and

Serena:

Awesome. Cool. Well, thank you so much for spending some time with us over here on the Ambitious Bookkeeper podcast. and make sure y'all connect with Kara online. Grab her book. It's called Green Money. We'll also link that in the show notes. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can see it behind her. Little subliminal.

Kara:

Yeah, take it all in. So, yes, thank you so much for having me. This is

Serena:

you so much. We'll talk to you soon.

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