Tools and Essays

Tools | Essays | Other Resources

Tools

Investment Impact Spectrum

This is a google-docs-based resource that offers a spectrum of investment impact categories, definitions, and examples that you can download and edit for yourself:

Investment Impact Spectrum and Categories

I offer this Investment Impact Spectrum with associated categories and definitions as a resource for you to use if it is helpful to you. The simple descriptions are above and the linked google spreadsheet provides additional clarifying details. By copying the spreadsheet, you can also customize the definitions to better

Both/And FinanceRebecca Blumenshine

Radical Financial Spreadsheets

I'm part of a collaborative project with Katrin Wehrheim to develop a collection of Radical Financial Spreadsheets that are free for anyone to use. A first example of these are the "Financial Foundations Templates" that are introduced in my Financial Foundations Course here.

We are also developing several more complex financial tracking and forecasting tools that go a few steps beyond what is introduced in the Financial Foundations Course. If you are interested in trying out one of our more complex models to help us with the design, please reach out to me directly at contact@bothandfinance.com.

Essays

In my Both/And Finance Newsletter, I write essays on topics at the intersection of personal and community finance. Most of these essays introduce a tool or framework related to navigating the complexity of applying a community-minded perspective to our personal financial lives.

Here are all of my newsletter essays to date, organized by focus area and in the order that I would recommend:

Intro and Overview

The Finance Matrix and TBD Finance

I’ve recently had several “ah ha” moments in my thinking about current trends in finance. This article is my attempt to share some of this thinking in an organized way. If you, like me, are interested in whether and to what extent we can “use finance for good,” my hope

Both/And FinanceRebecca Blumenshine

Series on Community-Minded Personal Finance

What is Community-Minded Personal Finance?

This post is the first in a series of articles I plan to share on the topic of community-minded personal finance. My goal with this piece is to clarify what I mean by “community-minded personal finance” and describe what I see as some of its key characteristics. After reading this

Both/And FinanceRebecca Blumenshine

Rethinking a Balanced and Diversified Portfolio

In this article, I share an example of how we might think about a “balanced and diversified” portfolio from a community-minded personal finance perspective. This model is inspired by concepts from the The Resilient Investor and from a white paper on Social Movement Investing from the Center for Econ…

Both/And FinanceRebecca Blumenshine

What’s Your Wealth Distribution Story?

I’ve mentioned before that a key part community-minded personal finance is awareness of context. In this article, I discuss one of the biggest context elements of all when it comes to personal finance: the structure of wealth distribution. I suggest that differences between the facts of wealth distr…

Both/And FinanceRebecca Blumenshine

Personal Finance Steps and Mind Control

My posts in this newsletter so far have mostly focused on introducing some bigger picture frameworks for thinking about finance in our lives. For the next few articles, I’m going to try to move a few layers deeper to explore more of the “so whats” and “how tos” of

Both/And FinanceRebecca Blumenshine

To Stock Market or Not to Stock Market

Dear readers, the time has come! In this article, I share some thoughts on…[*cue ominous music*].... THE STOCK MARKET QUESTION. This article is about the question: “If I don’t agree with the current economic system, should I or shouldn’t I invest my retirement savings in the stock

Both/And FinanceRebecca Blumenshine

ESG and Me

Do you disagree with our current economic system? Do you have some savings that you’ve still decided you will hold in stock market investments? Are you wondering how to think about all this ESG hubbub in relation to those investments? If you answered yes to these questions, this article

Both/And FinanceRebecca Blumenshine

Topics in Community Investing

Coming next! This will be a central focus of my newsletter going forward.

Other Resources

This series of videos gives an overview of my work and covers topics from 3 of my essays above:

Getting Our Bearings within the Wider World of Finance

Hello and welcome to my first series of videos for Both/And Finance! I originally put this video series together as a “prequel” to the Both/And Finance Course that I am in the process of launching. Along the way, I’ve realized that these videos might also be helpful as

Both/And FinanceRebecca Blumenshine

For a curated list of additional external resources, check out my resources page here.