My goal is to increase my community’s wealth. I think of community as thee people, the people not given every advantage growing up, the people doing the labor for the billionaires, the people who wouldn’t exploit their neighbor to get more money.

So my community involves people from my hometown, people in my current city, people in Nigeria, people in France, people in the UK, people in Australia, people all around the world.

That being clarified, our community can increase its wealth by a variety of ways. You don’t have to jump into investing to increase your wealth if you’re not ready.

Every action you take could help increase our community wealth. Let’s say you wanted to buy a piece of art. You could go to Target and pick out one of their pieces.

Buying from Target could help your community some. You and your neighbors may own shares of Target stock or maybe you know someone that is employed by Target. So yes, buying that piece of art may help your community some.

But if you spent $30 on a piece of art at Target, only pennies of that would probably move back into your community. As another option, if you decided to buy a print of art by a local artist, almost 100% of that $30 would go towards your community’s wealth. That $30 would go towards buying diapers for their kids or putting food on their table.

That’s just one example on how you can increase your community’s wealth. Below are more options:

You can:

1. Reduce your debt
2. Sell some of your items you don’t want anymore and put those earnings in savings
3. Donate to a charity
4. Get involved with legislative changes that strengthen our community
5. Be conscious about your spending; don’t buy stuff you don’t need/want
6. Take care of the stuff you own. Vacuum your car, clean out your purse, clean your makeup brushes.
7. Rest and recharge
8. Increase the percentage you’re putting towards retirement by 1%
9. Buy one share of stock
10. Reduce your shopping at stores that don’t treat their employees (our community members) as well as they should
11. Show your friend or family member how to set up an investing account

Just remember that we’re in this together. In the words of Jay-Z, “over here we measure success by how many people successful next to you.” A healthy and wealthy community is the ultimate success. Our actions can make a difference in building our community wealth.