What's with the avocado?
Get the lowdown on what to expect from Healthy Rich, plus 58% off your first year's subscription.
This community is growing, folks! I’m so delighted to welcome new subscribers every month and see you all chiming in more and more on my weird thoughts about capitalism and personal finance 😄 Keep it up!
Since I launched Healthy Rich with a small writing contest in July 2021, I’ve been rapidly learning and honing the purpose of this project. I’ve experimented in public with some directions it could go as a business and spent a good chunk of my time with this newsletter finding my place in personal finance media.
Whether you’ve been along for that ride or you’re among the 200+ folks who just joined in the past month, this is probably a good time to pause and get acquainted with what you’ll see from Healthy Rich going forward.
What is this newsletter?
Healthy Rich is a newsletter about how capitalism impacts the ways we think, teach and talk about money. I started with a broader premise that’s taken us in a lot of directions, but I’m honing it recently and finding clarity on why I was called to make Healthy Rich and what’s working best for you. Going forward, expect to read:
Essays exploring questions about economics and labor through a personal finance lens.
Resources for financial educators, coaches and advisors.
Personal money management tips and tools from diverse voices.
Conversations with smart and interesting people willing to teach us something about money.
Through all of my work, my aim is to share resources and ideas that reframe our cultural approach to money. This newsletter is an opportunity to both do what I love most — write — and to invite you into a conversation about that thing we all experience and don’t quite know how to talk about — money.
That conversation can take many forms, and I’ll keep experimenting to see what you like best — articles, audio essays, podcast interviews, discussion threads, etc. — so feel free to let me know anytime something strikes a right (or wrong) chord.
Who writes this?
Like the byline says, my name is Dana Miranda. My official bio calls me a financial educator, author, speaker and journalist; I call myself a writer. I’ve always believed work should be fun and money should be easy — that led me to an obsession with reimagining personal finance.
I grew up in a working-class family in a small town in Wisconsin. When I joined the ranks of personal finance media in 2015, I found the niche led mostly by advice (and admonitions) from middle-class white men, ignoring our broad diversity and systemic impacts on our relationships with money. After leaving a leadership position with a popular financial media startup, and spending the next two years freelancing for finance sites chasing affiliate dollars and Google’s algorithm, I started Healthy Rich to change the way we talk about money.
Through the newsletter, I also make space for voices we don’t hear enough in personal finance media, including women, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, rural, working class and people with disabilities. Look for interviews, Q&As and guest posts to learn from folks who aren’t me, and follow our conversation threads to get even more perspectives from the community.
Who is this for?
This space is for anyone who wants to have a broader conversation about money.
It’s for all of us who are trying to make money work in our lives, who are fed up with one-size-fits-all advice from personal finance gurus like Dave Ramsey and (sorry, but…) YNAB.
Have I mentioned I’m writing a book?
This is the kind of thing that feels ever-present and obvious in my life, but I realize I haven’t officially announced it to you all yet: I’m writing a book!
Due out in 2024 with Little, Brown Spark, YOU DON’T NEED A BUDGET organizes the explorations you’ll find in this newsletter and lays out in-depth (with worksheets! and activities!) a budget-free approach to money.
The book — and my approach to personal finance — investigates and lends an antidote to budget culture, the damaging set of beliefs around money that relies on restriction, shame and greed.
I love you for being here!
Some of you have been around since I started sending emails as a teeny bebe writer in 2011. You are the real heroes. 💖
Back then, I wrote mostly about the craft and business of freelance writing. When I started this Substack in 2020, it had a different name and was entirely focused on nerdy craft tips for writers. I absolutely love talking about that stuff, but something had to give when I committed to Healthy Rich, so I let that go and moved all my personal finance writing to this platform.
This work is ever in flux. Paid subscribers can catch a behind-the-scenes look through Butter Money, sporadic missives from my work as a rural business owner and author in central Wisconsin.
With a paid subscription, you’ll also have access to all of my personal finance classes — including my flagship class, The Budget-Free Fundamentals, where you get tools and lessons to take a financial inventory and reflect on your relationship with money.
Sign up for an annual subscription and get 58% off your first year!
If a paid subscription isn’t right for you, don’t worry — there’s plenty here for you to sink your teeth into, and I’m so grateful you’re part of this new kind of conversation about money. The vast majority of Healthy Rich content, including comments, are free for anyone, so please share your thoughts and pass these posts onto anyone else who needs a broader perspective on money.
Oh, and… what’s with the avocado?
Between the phrase “healthy rich” and the avocado logo mark, I’m guessing at least 20% of you came here expecting recipes for superfood-brownies? We don’t have those, but I’m glad you’ve stuck around for the money talk!
The name came first. “Healthy Rich” found me as a shower thought, the opposite of “filthy rich,” which feels like the accepted goal of most personal finance advice. When I decided to make a personal finance site, I plucked the name from the archives of my brain, a good fit for the space I wanted to create for conversations that counter the filthy restriction, shame and greed wound up in budget culture.
My designer (slash partner), Stefan, came up with the avocado. In this case study, he explains how he was inspired by a typical budget culture trope and perfectly captured the vibe of this project:
“I immediately thought of avocado toast,” he says, mocking a common criticism from scolding elders throughout our 20s: “Had we not spent that $7 on toast back in 2011, we would’ve been able to afford a $400,000 house today. The math checks out.”
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Stefan’s avocado (and the colors I was drawn to include) created a beacon on my path to finding this newsletter’s voice. It embodies our cheeky slogan: No one goes broke from avocado toast. And the slightly whimsical, slightly nonsensical design reminds me to never take myself too seriously. This work is serious, but it can be fun, too.
Image by ROMAN ODINTSOV via Pexels
So excited for the book! And I love the avocado. It felt whimsical and there's (almost) nothing more nutritious than an avocado... your content feels nourishing in that way. ;-)
Congrats on the book! Can't wait to read it!