Vox: All Posts by Stephie Grob Plantehttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2020-05-06T08:00:00-04:00https://www.vox.com/authors/stephie-grob-plante/rss2020-05-06T08:00:00-04:002020-05-06T08:00:00-04:00At home with YouTube’s favorite yoga teacher
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<figcaption>Adriene Mishler in her home studio. | Photo illustration by Sarah Lawrence; Yoga With Adriene</figcaption>
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<p>The rise of at-home fitness made Yoga With Adriene a YouTube sensation. Then the pandemic hit.</p> <p id="Ev0mCX">You are reading this from your couch. Or at your kitchen table. Maybe in your bed.</p>
<p id="smfYcP">If you’re fortunate enough to own a treadmill, an elliptical machine, or stationary bike, you could be reading this while working out — but you’re definitely not at the gym. You’re not reading this while eating in a restaurant. Or sitting in the carpool line waiting for your kids after school. Or in a coffee shop, or at a bar.</p>
<p id="C4lVSR">You’re reading this during the <a href="https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19">coronavirus pandemic</a>. </p>
<p id="d1UFRb">You are, almost certainly, at home. </p>
<p id="dc0T83">Adriene Mishler is also home. The 35-year-old yoga teacher has been on self-imposed lockdown since March 13; her home city of Austin, Texas, where I also live, didn’t issue its <a href="http://www.austintexas.gov/department/covid-19-information/stay-home-order">stay-at-home order</a> until <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2020/04/03/texas-under-stay-home-order-its-rules-match-those-other-states/">April 2</a>, well after San Francisco and New York City but before many other places in the US. Coronavirus notwithstanding, she’d still be home, and, quite possibly, in your home. Adriene hosts Yoga With Adriene, an astoundingly popular <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/yogawithadriene/featured">YouTube channel</a> predicated on a simple premise: You attend yoga classes led by Adriene in your home, which she streams from her home, for free. </p>
<p id="vCOTTN">Since the Yoga With Adriene YouTube account started in 2012, it has amassed 7.27 million subscribers. The classes are startlingly specific, customized to professions and hobbies (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za6dH2-afqQ">Yoga for Gardeners</a>! <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3wnhOpht_0">Yoga for Skaters</a>! <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pv06KbAH5Q">Yoga for Chefs</a>!) and health conditions (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqVSwY8y3UY">Yoga for PTSD</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFkAl5wHEbg">Yoga for Migraines</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmh58tykgpo">Yoga for Diabetes</a>), not to mention a vast collection of practices designed to ease suffering (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reASzZP63HQ&t=2s">Yoga for Suffering</a>, for starters). The 553 videos in her YouTube library have netted more than 597 million combined views.</p>
<p id="s1yyNu">What was once offered as an accessible, affordable alternative to a studio setting, at-home yoga is, for the foreseeable future, the only option for people who want to do yoga. Hell, with gyms, boutique fitness studios, and community centers across the US newly shuttered, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/03/23/business/ap-us-virus-outbreak-fitness-routines.html">at-home anything</a> is our only guided exercise option, period. Exercise instructors are improvising the best they can with impromptu livestreams on Instagram and scheduled classes via Zoom; fitness apps are seeing <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gyms-closing-coronavirus-home-workout-apps-2020-3">explosive growth</a>. </p>
<p id="TtACfG">“It’s a really interesting time,” Adriene tells me over Zoom, repeating herself for emphasis. “It’s a really interesting time.”</p>
<div id="HS8hbv"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/reASzZP63HQ?rel=0" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="encrypted-media; accelerometer; gyroscope; picture-in-picture"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="JaN479">We’d just met in person the week before, as the coronavirus crisis was starting to bubble up in earnest stateside. I could see then what was barreling down the pike but hadn’t fully grokked the reality hurtling toward us. No amount of stocking up on toilet paper and canned goods or reading about quarantine measures in China and Italy could prepare me for this surreal reality. A week after meeting Adriene, life is on pause here in the US. </p>
<p id="MPvyO7">“I will intend to say this with so much grace,” Adriene says from my laptop screen, as she watches my face. “In a lot of ways, we were ready for this.”</p>
<p id="7jqxyg">The “we” she’s talking about is her team, a seven-person operation that produces content for the free YouTube channel and its ancillary paid membership platform, <a href="https://fwfg.com/">Find What Feels Good</a>. “We try to take away all of the obstacles, for all people, of all types, in any type of situation. I work 365 days a year to minimize that gap between showing up on your mat at home and your inkling to do something for yourself.” </p>
<p id="sD6xaP">Yoga With Adriene had long struck a chord with the legions of fans who, for whatever reason in pre-pandemic times, avoided or couldn’t access a gym or studio. It might have been the high price of classes; it might have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/09/yoga-with-adriene-mishler-exercise-public-cult">anxiety over working out in a public space</a>. It might have been work or other life constraints that posed scheduling issues. </p>
<p id="cyuOFm">But now, suddenly, Yoga With Adriene finds itself charged with new urgency. Many of us aren’t leaving our houses, even as states like Texas begin to reopen, and we fear the very real threat that the virus that’s infected <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/coronavirus-maps.html">more than 3.5 million people</a> worldwide will come for us and our loved ones. We’re pulling our hair out juggling our work-from-home and kids-now-home, or we’ve been laid off and are struggling to make rent, or we’re essential workers and are out on the front lines. We are scared and stressed and not sleeping.</p>
<p id="owFv2E">For more and more people — the channel’s daily views have more than tripled since mid-March — Yoga With Adriene has become Yoga for Lockdown. Yoga for Self-Isolation. Yoga for Social Distancing. Yoga for Quarantine. Yoga for State of Emergency. </p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="FbH6SX">
<p id="SpWwV9">“Thanks very, very much for letting me come into your home.” So begins the 1951 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4A3mdG5zbQ">premiere episode</a> of <em>The Jack LaLanne Show</em>, which would go on to become the first nationally syndicated workout show on TV. LaLanne, whom the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/sports/24lalanne.html">New York Times dubbed</a> the “founder of the modern physical fitness movement,” encouraged viewers to get off the couch, grab a few household props, and exercise with him. Women, long <a href="https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a14626590/history-boutique-fitness/">discouraged from sweating in public</a>, had already been working out at home <a href="https://www.womenshealthmag.com/fitness/g25905591/history-of-exercise/?slide=7">for a while</a> when LaLanne and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsoXBroVIBI">Debbie Drake</a>, another popular TV fitness host of the era, popped up on their screens. </p>
<p id="qPKCbO">But it wasn’t until the 1980s that at-home fitness tutorials flooded the market, thanks to Jane Fonda. It was her legendary 1982 VHS <em>Jane Fonda’s Workout</em> that revolutionized at-home fitness, “<a href="https://www.dinnerpartydownload.org/jane-fondas-workout-and-the-vhs/">arguably launching the home video boom</a>” by inspiring many consumers to buy their first VCR. Fonda targeted her workout to women, who, she believed, were largely excluded from the gym scene of that time. Her 22 home videos would sell <a href="https://www.janefonda.com/the-workout/">17 million copies</a> worldwide. </p>
<p id="yQ8hd5">Soon enough, there were other VHS fitness instructors, and after that, DVD fitness instructors. In the ’90s, you might have seen commercials for Richard Simmons’s <em>Sweatin’ to the Oldies</em> and <a href="https://www.racked.com/2016/9/15/12907572/tae-bo-billy-blanks">Billy Blanks’s <em>Tae Bo</em></a>. In the 2000s, the super-popular weight loss show <em>The Biggest Loser </em>gave Jillian Michaels and Bob Harper a platform to spin off their own DVD collections. Gwyneth Paltrow famously gave her trainer Tracy Anderson a <a href="https://www.oprah.com/health/healthy-living-with-gwyneth-paltrow/all">visibility boost</a> around the same time; the Tracy Anderson Method is now available for purchase not just on DVD but through “<a href="https://tracyanderson.com/virtual-training/">virtual training</a>” and <a href="https://tracyanderson.com/online-programs/">online streaming workouts</a>. </p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="y8ru16"><q>“I’ve tried to steer clear of the, ‘I’m the leader and the guru,’ and create more of a peer-to-peer relationship. I’ve definitely always tried to position myself as the friend.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="Gy4izE">At-home fitness continued to ascend as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/style/boutique-fitness-barrys-soul-cycle-slt-flywheel.html">boutique fitness studios boomed</a> in the 2010s, the former <a href="https://www.wellandgood.com/wellness-trends-2018-digital-fitness-boom/">no doubt</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/aug/19/the-rise-of-digital-fitness-can-the-new-wave-of-high-intensity-home-workouts-replace-the-gym">a response</a> to the latter. Boutique fitness studios themselves were a response to the proliferation of big-box gyms in the ’90s and 2000s that had lost their sheen to folks with disposable income to burn. </p>
<p id="6ryNak">These fresh, new versions of “the gym” weren’t depots for equipment with drop-in hours. They sold — and continue to sell — group classes specializing in chic niche disciplines (my favorite example: <a href="https://www.aquastudiony.com/">spin class in a pool</a>) and occupying posh digs in upmarket or rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods, with commensurately posh clientele often paying <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/fitness-classes-cost-expensive">more than $30</a> per class. Businesses like SoulCycle, Bar Method, and Orangetheory became cultural touchstones and, in some cities, inescapable. </p>
<p id="K5kmh3">At-home fitness is in the midst of “<a href="https://www.shape.com/fitness/trends/home-workout-trend">a moment</a>,” namely: A generation of “fitness-obsessed” millennials now having kids need the convenience of home workouts to meet the constraints of their new time-strapped lifestyles, and residents of places without strong boutique fitness footprints want in on the same workout trends that saturate urban centers. </p>
<p id="BlvhSW">Increasingly, at-home fitness has become about much more than instructional videos; it also means <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/06/11/how-5-g-wearables-and-ai-help-bring-smart-gyms-your-home/1331406001/">smart equipment and gadgets</a>. But while sophisticated personal machines and digital tools can edge out studios and gyms for their at-home convenience factor, they’re often not much more economically accessible. Today, there’s no shortage of expensive ways to work out at home, from $1,495 <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/8/20899151/mirror-live-personal-training-interactive-home-gym-fitness-session-price">Mirror interactive displays</a> (Anderson is a <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2019/04/mirror-fitness-tracy-anderson-workout-collaboration">content partner</a>) to $2,245 <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/14/18088390/peloton-hugh-jackman-spin-bikes-hydrow-tonal">Peloton stationary bikes</a>. The cost for hardware in both cases is in addition to their $39-per-month subscription fee.</p>
<p id="Lfa9OC">There are more budget-friendly ways to work out at home, including apps like <a href="https://www.sweat.com/">Sweat</a>, a $20 monthly membership that gives subscribers access to workouts from trainers like Instagram fitfluencer <a href="https://www.racked.com/2015/5/21/8622259/kayla-itsines-bikini-body-guide-bbg">Kayla Itsines, of Bikini Body Guide fame</a>. But go-anywhere apps, instructional VHS tapes of yore — they all cost <em>something</em>. Fonda’s workout videos <a href="https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/65314/how-jane-fondas-workout-conquered-world">originally cost</a> $59.95.</p>
<p id="rfkiob">Adriene wanted to offer an alternative.</p>
<p id="Ug4wOF">I confess that until last fall, I’d only heard of her channel once, in passing, and had yet to check it out. But in the process of reporting this story, I’ve discovered that there’s no shortage of Yoga With Adriene devotees within my own circle. My best friend and his wife do a Yoga With Adriene video daily, apparently; I had no clue he did yoga at all. If you Google “home yoga,” Adriene’s videos and YouTube channel are the first results that pop up. She tops lists of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/mar/15/from-yoga-to-crossfit-the-10-best-online-home-workouts">best workouts to do at home</a> and has been gushed about everywhere from <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/deliacai/yoga-with-adriene-youtube-videos">BuzzFeed</a> to <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/coronavirus-quarantine-diary-yoga-with-adriene">the New Yorker</a>.</p>
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<cite>Photo illustration by Sarah Lawrence; Yoga With Adriene</cite>
<figcaption>Many of Adriene’s videos are filmed in her house in Austin; sometimes her dog Benji makes an appearance.</figcaption>
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<p id="4jBB3K">Her videos may be free, but they are also “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/yogawithadriene/about">high-quality</a>,” though hardly stuffy. There’s an ease and offering of comfort to Adriene’s teaching style. Suggestions for modifications abound. Most classes begin with the same carefree script — “Hop into something comfy” (sometimes “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FIvJdwePiM">cozy</a>”) — and often close with a soft reminder to breathe: “Inhale lots of love in, exhale lots of love out.”</p>
<p id="U4dQQU">Sequences are plotted out, but dialogue, apart from her go-to opener, is not. It’s breezy, conversational. She can get silly. She breaks out into show tunes and ’70s R&B, makes <em>Zoolander</em> references, and amps up a Texan twang as needed. She laughs at herself. Her blue heeler, Benji, is forever splayed beside her yoga mat, and she’s not afraid to pause the flow to marvel at his deep, contented sigh or real-deal downward dog. The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eueMhVRMJIs"><em>Today</em> show</a> likened her videos to “doing yoga with a really nice neighbor,” and, true enough, <em>Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood </em>provided the <a href="https://www.austinchronicle.com/screens/2017-08-11/yoga-with-adriene-brings-the-yoga-studio-to-you/">initial inspiration</a> for the channel. </p>
<p id="XMNuY8">In her videos, Adriene speaks directly, encouragingly, and frequently to her viewers’ ubiquitous inner voices of doubt or cynicism, to “beat them at the pass,” as she tells me, “lovingly, sweetly, and almost, with my bad humor, anticipate what people are going to think” before they give up. </p>
<p id="dXFOZL">“It’s not my personality to be like, ‘I’m the expert here,’” Adriene says. “I’ve tried to steer clear of the, ‘I’m the leader and the guru,’ and create more of a peer-to-peer relationship. I’ve definitely always tried to position myself as the friend.” </p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="im9wJL">
<p id="AMaFtf">Adriene owes her guiding philosophy not necessarily to her training as a yoga teacher, but to her training as an actor in an ensemble. She found theater by way of her “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/sep/25/yoga-adriene-mishler-youtube-interview">creative hippie</a>” parents, who met at the University of Wyoming in a play called, truly, <em>Home</em>.</p>
<p id="t2KKbk">After leaving high school and enrolling in college a year early, Adriene joined a theater group and studied movement in upstate New York. When she returned to Austin in 2002, she wanted to be strong. So she found a yoga class. What she didn’t expect was to experience, in her words, that “joy and spirit factor.” Up until then, she hadn’t cried tears of joy — “except for the musical <em>Oklahoma</em>, the big number.”</p>
<p id="wWMHJG">Soon, she began to think strategically that becoming a yoga teacher might be a decent way to earn a living that could supplement her acting gigs. She signed on for work/trade with yoga studios around town, sweeping and mopping the floors in exchange for classes. She also completed a 200-hour teacher training program in Hatha yoga — a category that encompasses many different styles and has come to represent modern yoga broadly — on a payment plan. For close to a decade, she taught yoga at small studios in and surrounding Austin, burned CD and incense in tow. She pieced together that income along with gigs teaching theater arts and yoga to high schoolers, and some acting work, mostly commercials and voiceover. </p>
<p id="WuVfra">Adriene met Chris Sharpe, now her business partner and the CEO of Find What Feels Good, on the set of <em>The Spider Babies, </em>a post-apocalyptic horror film that never made it to release. Chris had already co-created a successful YouTube cooking channel with chef Hilah Johnson, his now-wife, called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/hilahcooking"><em>Hilah Cooking</em></a><em>.</em> He wanted to branch out into wellness and pitched the idea of a free yoga channel to Adriene as a side project. If it went well, they reasoned, maybe they could generate enough YouTube income to quit their day jobs and make movies together on the weekends. In 2012, they started the channel and called it Yoga With Adriene. </p>
<p id="S7736K">The first wave of YouTube workouts, in Chris’s recollection, was led by channels like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/blogilates">Blogilates</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/FitnessBlender/">Fitness Blender</a>. There were few yoga channels on YouTube at the time, and none with the reach that Yoga With Adriene has now, nor the production quality. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/TaraStilesYoga/">Tara Stiles</a>, who started her channel in 2008 and could be considered the mother of YouTube yoga, had a following that seemed “huge and unattainable” to Chris back then (328,000 subscribers right now), but she didn’t get into the high-quality video — read: better production value — game until more recently. Stiles’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/nyregion/23stretch.html">popularity</a>, though, demonstrated that there was an early appetite for YouTube fitness driven by its ease for users, an enthusiasm that’s only exploded since. </p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="IMA85F"><q>“You are in charge. You can pause it anytime, you can quit. No one’s watching over you. There’s no door to walk out of.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="cO9HVV">“There’s a very, very low bar for entry for this platform,” Beibei Li, a professor of IT and management at Carnegie Mellon University who studies tech disruptions and human behavior, says of YouTube. Li cites some of the draws that Mirror, Peloton, and apps can claim: You don’t need to leave your house, you can work out at odd hours, you can repeat your favorite videos and skip the ones you don’t love, you can even drag and skip over the parts of a particular workout that are not your bag. But YouTube is, and this can’t be emphasized enough, free. </p>
<p id="NXe0XS">“You are in charge,” echoes Adriene, talking about her own channel. “You can pause it anytime, you can quit. There’s no exchange of money with Yoga with Adriene, and it’s all free. No one’s watching over you. There’s no door to walk out of.” </p>
<p id="t99DPb">Sure, YouTube grants users a sense of self-sovereignty, but its algorithm is also responsible for targeting content to specific audiences. “YouTube itself has a very strong data-driven marketing sense,” explains Li. Couple YouTube’s affordability, ease, and rule sets with the things that Yoga With Adriene<em> </em>does especially well, as noted by Li — the high quality and volume of videos, differentiation of content, high engagement with users — and it’s no surprise the channel’s seen the success it has, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/yogawithadriene/about">half a billion views</a> and counting. </p>
<p id="y7det6">There were two tipping points for the channel, strategic plays that paid off and opened Yoga With Adriene up to a wider audience. The first remains somewhat controversial, a series of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/yogawithadriene/search?query=weight+loss">“Yoga for Weight Loss” videos</a>, that continue to elicit confused emails from fans. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci3na6ThUJc&t=9s">Fat burning</a> doesn’t seem like it necessarily aligns with the Yoga With Adriene<em> </em>mission. </p>
<p id="R1iGEP">“There are usually a few ‘money’ keywords in every niche,” Chris wrote <a href="https://www.chrissharpe.com/blog/5-million-youtube-subscribers">on his blog</a>, in a post about harnessing the power of search engine optimization. “And I felt we had to go after them even if it sometimes didn’t feel very ‘yogic.’”</p>
<p id="QRaozO">Before Adriene and Chris put out the first “Yoga for Weight Loss” video back in 2013, they were struggling to get seen. They point out that a fair number of other yoga channels at the time were using not just SEO but also butt, crotch, G-string, and cleavage-centric thumbnails to get views. “Not everyone has to like me or my work,” says Adriene. “But man, I’m putting some real love into this, and it didn’t seem fair that I wasn’t getting the same [traffic]. So I was like, ‘Okay, let’s try it.’ And it worked.” </p>
<p id="VxgaBj">Their <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci3na6ThUJc">first “Yoga for Weight Loss” video</a> ranked No. 1 on YouTube for that search term pretty quickly, says Chris. </p>
<p id="J2n6wh">The second tipping point became the channel’s hallmark: releasing a new yoga video every day for 30 days beginning on January 1, a “<a href="https://www.chrissharpe.com/blog/why-i-quit">‘stunt’ to move the needle</a>.” The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBu-pQG6sTY&feature=emb_title">first day of their first challenge</a>, back in 2015, remains the channel’s all-time most popular video, five years later. Currently, it has more than 22.9 million views. </p>
<div id="z0CCLC"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KWBfQjuwp4E?rel=0" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="encrypted-media; accelerometer; gyroscope; picture-in-picture"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="EjiVxV">2020’s 30-day challenge, launched this past January, is presciently called “Home.”</p>
<p id="c8ABLF">This moment, amid this global crisis, may reveal a third tipping point for the channel, as Yoga With Adriene’s user base continues to grow dramatically, and as many millions of us are barricaded in our homes. “What a time,” Adriene says during a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79cPGqmNyaY">recent livestream</a> posted to the channel in late March, “to connect to your at-home practice.” </p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="Zdfnva">
<p id="WssUPu">It’s March 10. We’re tucked into a corner inside Kinda Tropical, an East Austin cafe with pink walls and many plants; Adriene drinks hibiscus iced tea. We picked this date because it was just ahead of Adriene’s big South by Southwest event the following weekend. Adriene’s team estimated the event would gather 400 to 500 yoga-loving bodies, jammed mat to mat in a 70,000-square-foot exhibit hall; by the time we meet, though, SXSW has been canceled.</p>
<p id="PN1Uw9">Adriene has received an influx of emails and YouTube comments from people in quarantine overseas the past few weeks, and a wave of direct messages poured in from Italy over the weekend. Her team gifted a two-month membership of Find What Feels Good (routinely abbreviated FWFG), which has an offline mode, to a man quarantined in South Korea without internet access. </p>
<p id="wzktzC">By March 13, the YouTube channel’s analytics will begin to spike. On April 13, the channel will peak at 1.8 million daily views.</p>
<p id="GvhNkp">This moment reminds Adriene of another moment not too long ago, when Hurricane Maria pummeled Puerto Rico, right on the heels of Hurricane Harvey’s devastation here in Texas. She created a video called “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs73lvN0l8A">Yoga for After Disaster</a>” in response. “I tell you what,” she says. “Whenever I freak out, where I’m like, ‘What am I doing? Who am I?’ I always go back to the service of it all.” </p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/DJRqggErHcK3lxHX2iMvzyT4aBk=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19945621/ywa2.png">
<cite>Photo illustration by Sarah Lawrence; Yoga With Adriene</cite>
<figcaption>While the Yoga With Adriene community largely exists online, live events like this one in Texas bring fans together IRL.</figcaption>
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<p id="dADPs2">Later, I check out the comments on Adriene’s channel. One <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiu1SYtAdBg&lc=Ugy0OVlffRLuaL91Zgx4AaABAg">left that week</a> from someone “housebound” in Italy reads, “Your videos, yoga will help me to get through this hard time.” A comment left the week before <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twDBxdmjCA8&lc=Ugyu6VtU09vaO_MuGvB4AaABAg">shares</a> how the channel has “been a godsend living in a locked down city in China.” At least a few people, judging by the comments, have found themselves back on the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs73lvN0l8A&lc=UgyMtJu_VOZ83_OkBol4AaABAg">“Yoga for After Disaster”</a> video, even though it’s more than two years old by now, including a doctor in northern Italy.</p>
<p id="6Wulgf">Just a few days after Adriene and I meet at Kinda Tropical, as the virus permeates country after country, state after state, cities far-flung and close to home, there’s more. </p>
<p id="1rd558">“Who’s here after the corona outbreak to chill out and boost that immune system :D,” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twDBxdmjCA8&lc=UgybsBgmUW1WD4wYxGN4AaABAg">asks a commenter</a>. “MEEEE! IN MADRID!!” reads a reply. “Me! In London.” Another reply is from France. Berlin. Nova Scotia. Istanbul. New Zealand. North Carolina. </p>
<p id="KSg7Ql">“In a week where I’m starting to mark time by how long I go without thinking of coronavirus,” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twDBxdmjCA8&lc=Ugwhf_ay44RIfr2e1tB4AaABAg">reads another comment</a> on the same video, “this really was 40 minutes of oasis from it all.” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twDBxdmjCA8&lc=UgxyU0zKDkz3NctIXAN4AaABAg">Lots of commenters</a> want a quarantine-themed video or series of videos. It’s a request the team can’t meet; they aren’t making professionally produced content right now, because they’re self-quarantining as well, though they’ve already got videos in the can for the channel and FWFG that will roll out through July.</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="HYCmxu"><q>“In a week where I’m starting to mark time by how long I go without thinking of coronavirus, this really was 40 minutes of oasis from it all”</q></aside></div>
<p id="czPORe">Yoga With Adriene’s dedicated community has long been the linchpin of the operation. What started out as a closed Facebook group eventually became a membership-by-request platform called the <a href="https://www.fwfgkula.com/landing?from=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fwfgkula.com%2Fposts%2F5447601">Kula</a>, which means “community” in Sanskrit and is currently 138,600 members strong. Joining and participating in the Kula is, you guessed it, free. </p>
<p id="nwAts1">Leslie Fox, a 35-year-old English professor at Western Kentucky University, steers clear of most social media but joined the Kula this January. “The community just sort of pulls you in,” she says via Zoom from her home in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Leslie began practicing with the YouTube channel last August. She’d recently lost weight and was looking for something to help her “tone up.” Yoga With Adriene popped up at the top of her Google search results. She had fairly low expectations at the outset, but she’s been practicing with the channel every day since. </p>
<p id="6MxNms">There’s been an influx of new people in the Kula these past few weeks, says Leslie. She knows, because she’s on the app repeatedly throughout the day; it serves, now, as a salve after checking the news for virus updates. And with that swell of new members, Leslie notes that there’s a new cohesion to the group. She hasn’t known the Kula to be anything but welcoming and supportive, no “infighting or ideology wars,” but there were certainly Kula cliques: pet people here, vegan people there, meditation people here. Now, however, there’s a unified message. </p>
<p id="KU0DVl">The tenor in the Kula, not surprisingly, resembles that of the YouTube channel these days: fear, anxiety, gratitude that this virtual place and the people within it exist. Leslie describes a post from another community member having a hard time. “I ‘liked’ the post, and commented, ‘I’m not ‘liking’ this because you’re having difficulties. I’m ‘liking’ it because it made me feel less alone.’”</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="lBXK0C">
<p id="oFK66r">Adriene and Chris received a lot of advice in the early days to focus on women in their 20s and 30s, advice that they fought and rejected. “It was not a business move,” says Adriene. “It was me saying, ‘Nah.’ My whole dream is that we’re bringing yoga into the home for everyone.” The highly specific videos, she adds, are meant to “get people who feel like they’re not invited to the party invited to the party.”</p>
<p id="Zo4Kha">Back before the channel’s conception, Adriene had witnessed the cost of yoga skyrocketing. “This is out of control, that only wealthy people can afford yoga,” Adriene recalls thinking. Classes in her Austin hometown had jumped from around $10 to around $30 on her watch. “I’m the one scrubbing the floors, and I was like, ‘This is so weird. Yoga culture has become a business in my city.’”</p>
<p id="enMuV1">It wasn’t just her city. This was true across the country, spurred by <a href="https://www.yogajournal.com/teach/yoga-chains-stay">corporate yoga chains</a> like CorePower Yoga crowding out smaller studios, and fitness apparel companies like Lululemon selling $100 yoga pants. </p>
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<img alt="Adriene Mishler" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Bq4hSneD0PzyzlZI4WQ2hpwqAC4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19945623/ywa3.png">
<cite>Photo illustration by Sarah Lawrence; Yoga With Adriene</cite>
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<p id="josNrC">Yoga for free is the foundation of the Find What Feels Good brand, though the paid membership keeps it afloat. Adriene “definitely worried” that she’d alienate an audience hooked on free yoga with a paid platform, and didn’t market FWFG much for almost two years after its 2015 launch. But selling a paid thing to make a free thing tenable isn’t an unusual strategy. Li likens it to YouTube Premium, which removes ads on the platform for a monthly membership fee. In the Yoga With Adriene<em> </em>universe, however, there’s a level of overt community service involved in this symbiotic relationship. “Your monthly contribution as a member contributes to the lives of other human beings,” reads the <a href="https://fwfg.com/">membership landing page</a>. “Help provide accessible, consistent, high quality free yoga available for all.”</p>
<p id="1MIvjz">The FWFG membership costs $10 a month and is the business’s biggest revenue generator by far. Money earned off the Google-owned YouTube — i.e., money generated by Google AdSense, the advertising program that channels use to earn income off views — is gravy, says Chris, or as he <a href="https://www.chrissharpe.com/blog/5-million-youtube-subscribers">put it on his blog</a>, “fake money” that can’t be relied on since it could disappear if Google changes its policies. Big live events — like Adriene’s class at Alexandra Palace in London that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/sep/25/yoga-adriene-mishler-youtube-interview">brought in 2,400 people</a> in 2018, or her planned appearance at SXSW 2020 — were once a revenue loser, says Chris. But now that the team has a better handle on logistics, Chris thinks events will start to be a meaningful revenue stream, “once things calm down and people are able to go to things again.” </p>
<p id="4LiCzu">And then there are brand partnerships. Adriene has been sponsored by Adidas Women since 2016. Chris says it’s been a great partnership for them: Adriene wears Adidas apparel in her videos, but Adidas doesn’t get involved in content creation or expect promotional messaging.</p>
<p id="vs5E6p">The channel did briefly dabble in the sponsored content game a few years ago, with a spot for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc0xCLv6zJ0">Walgreens</a> and another for the Sofia Coppola movie <em>The Beguiled</em>; they also did a content exchange with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y02yq3jOd4Y&t=239s">Whole Foods</a>. But it’s veered from that track since. “Having that kind of sponsorship in those videos takes a lot away from it,” says Chris, “if before the practice starts, we’re talking about some product that Adriene is promoting.”</p>
<p id="mifHvc">Adriene isn’t cavalier with the trust her viewers place in her. She operates in their homes — private, intimate spaces — guiding them through poses that can challenge their bodies and offering suggestions of self-actualization that can unfurl emotions buried deep. She meets her students at their most vulnerable moments, overwhelmingly without the benefit of meeting them at all, no doubt, but no matter: Those moments are too sacred to sully with selling stuff.</p>
<p id="jnYhue">But her students aren’t just students. They are, in social media parlance, followers, and she is an influencer. She recognizes this, though <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/yoga-with-adriene-interview">she distinguishes herself</a> from those she sees as insincere. “There’s a certain responsibility that I now carry with me everywhere I go,” she tells me at Kinda Tropical. “Because I could be recognized as the person that also guided you through your practice.” No one’s putting that pressure on her, she adds, but herself.</p>
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<p id="MDGW4i">Yoga can be empowering; it can also be slow, meditative, still. For Adriene, it’s an opportunity for contemplation and reflection. And in her role as your “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdsZzKK19Ko">yoga guide</a>” and friend, she makes a simple, loving recommendation: You don’t need to do anything at this precise moment, except take care of yourself.</p>
<p id="ztZTp6">Self-care has been <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/06/04/531051473/the-millennial-obsession-with-self-care">mainstreamed</a> and <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/01/25/self-care-how-to-instagram-political-indulgence-psychology-wellness/2606039002/">monetized</a> up the wazoo, but it’s also at the core of the type of slowed-down yoga that Yoga With Adriene practices. There’s a shift in psyche that occurs, argues Adriene, when people make space (calendar space, physical space, mental space) for themselves to venture inward. Whether it’s called meditation or mindfulness or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy4wvF9Z24A&t=127s">“conscious breath”</a> or rest, it’s quiet, a reprieve from the noise of the world. What if the wider community, she wonders, took her invitation for self-reflection? </p>
<p id="eOM9ej">“Not to create this modern-day church out of it,” says Adriene, “but just to highlight what’s already happening, you know? People come for back pain, but man, they stay because they start to see the world a little differently.”</p>
<p id="A2jhVB">Under regular, non-coronavirus circumstances, yoga has been shown to positively impact mental health. Yoga can be effective in <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5116432/">tackling anxiety</a>, particularly for those with high levels of it; so can <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137615/">breath control</a> and <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/1809754">mindfulness meditation</a>, common elements of a modern yoga practice. Yoga has been proven to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2156587217715927">lessen symptomatic depression</a>. (It can also benefit <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/7/22/9012075/yoga-health-benefits-exercise-science">physical health</a>, for instance helping to <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/49737">reduce high blood pressure</a> and to <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23375926">improve quality of life</a> for those with certain life-threatening diseases.)</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="esAeev"><q>“People come for back pain, but man, they stay because they start to see the world a little differently”</q></aside></div>
<p id="BJERno">But we’re not living in “regular” times. We’re enduring a uniquely anxiety-inducing period with no end in sight. </p>
<p id="zR1q5o">I’m thinking about breathing on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGEMzfXfj-g">day 17</a> of this year’s 30-day challenge. I’m thinking about breathing because Adriene is telling me to — today’s video is called “Synchronize,” as in synchronizing physical poses with breath.</p>
<p id="NoheXs">We, the people, are collectively hyperventilating right now. We’re worried when we go out (if we go out) that we’re exposing our lungs to the virus. We’re worried about our vulnerable family members. We’re freaked out about how to pay the bills after losing our livelihoods, and struggling to balance full-time jobs and full-time parenting. We’re worried about an economy in the toilet, with <a href="https://www.vox.com/covid-19-coronavirus-economy-recession-stock-market/2020/4/30/21241776/jobless-claims-unemployment-rate-april-coronavirus-economy">30 million unemployment claims filed</a> and counting; we’re worried about the rising death toll and infection rate; we’re worried about the ramifications of states <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/4/22/21229398/coronavirus-states-reopen-georgia-south-carolina-tennessee-texas">reopening too soon</a>; we’re worried that the limited antibody tests available <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/antibody-test-coronavirus.html">aren’t reliably accurate</a>; we’re worried about the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/3/30/21195469/coronavirus-usa-china-brazil-mexico-spain-italy-iran">life-costing failings</a> of dangerously inept leaders; we’re worried about the shortage of face masks for health care providers, and the dearth of ventilators for patients. </p>
<p id="53wBCu">Breathing as deeply as possible while trapped in our homes is kind of a revolutionary counterpoint to anxiety triggered by a highly contagious respiratory illness. This moment is exactly what a combination yoga-breathwork-mindfulness practice is built for.</p>
<p id="7R7OOI">“Our brains really don’t like uncertainty,” says Melanie Greenberg, a clinical psychologist and the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Stress-Proof-Brain-Emotional-Mindfulness-Neuroplasticity/dp/1626252661">author of <em>The Stress-Proof Brain</em></a>, who researched the effects of yoga earlier in her career. “Often your brain starts worrying, and it goes five steps ahead. ‘What if this happens? What if that happens?’” When you’re in fight-or-flight mode, adds Greenberg, “Your thinking brain goes offline. You need to slow down so that your thinking brain can come back online.” The great mental health trick of the practice, then, is that it demands fixed focus on what’s happening right now. </p>
<p id="uztivp">What exactly <em>is</em> happening right now? You are breathing in a posture. “Yoga and mindfulness can help you reel your brain back into the present moment,” says Greenberg.</p>
<p id="AaOM0G">You are home. You are safe. You are home. </p>
<p id="Vq805d">Self-isolation and social distancing are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/">necessary measures</a> to flatten the coronavirus’s curve and stave off the pandemic’s progression, there is no doubt; but there’s a side effect of our new, epidemiologically essential reality that’s worth considering, too: <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/3/12/21173938/coronavirus-covid-19-social-distancing-elderly-epidemic-isolation-quarantine">loneliness</a>. </p>
<div id="baQ2Mv"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DFVzpvz0FgQ?rel=0" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="encrypted-media; accelerometer; gyroscope; picture-in-picture"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="dszum5">As workplaces convert into remote operations, as gyms and studios ad-lib a presence in the digital space, as restaurants and bars remain closed, as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/world/europe/italians-find-a-moment-of-joy-in-this-moment-of-anxiety.html">Italians sing on balconies</a>, as FaceTime and Houseparty replace actual face time and actual house parties, Yoga With Adriene, your yoga guide and friend, is here. It’s been here all along, to help you feel less lonely. (In fact, there’s a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFVzpvz0FgQ&t=3s">YouTube video</a> for that.)</p>
<p id="IZy3vR">“We can be soothed by other people,” says Greenberg, even when we’re not in the same physical place — through their tone of voice, their words, their facial expressions, or their body language. “The yoga teacher can become a secure attachment. Maybe you feel looked after by the teacher, or safe in her presence, or comforted.” </p>
<p id="H1LP6r">The already robust community aspect of Yoga With Adriene takes it a step further. Well before the coronavirus pandemic took hold, Adriene would holler to the community mid-practice and remind you, you at home, to picture everyone around the world breathing and moving right along with you, right at this moment. “Even though you can’t see them, there’s this whole community of people doing yoga,” explains Greenberg. “And if you can see yourself as part of that community, perhaps that can help, too.”</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="IXoUnF">
<p id="tyxILK">Yoga With Adriene can’t produce new, high-quality videos right now, but Adriene can film herself using her computer camera. She does so on March 22, in a livestreamed version of the weekly newsletter that she started in the early days of Yoga With Adriene, and that now goes out to half a million subscribers. She calls her newsletter a “love letter”; the livestreamed iteration, a one-off so far, she names “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79cPGqmNyaY">Love Letter Live</a>.”</p>
<p id="yzmUw8">She sits on her yoga mat, Benji at her side, and waves. There are 1,001 YouTube users watching live when I log on at 11 am on the dot. Twenty-five minutes later, there are 11,778 of us tuned in. The video’s been viewed more than 269,000 more times since. “Look at all of us,” one viewer writes, one of many in a continuously updating scroll of live comments. “I’m welling up.” </p>
<p id="iEwapN">Nuremberg, Germany; Sicily, Italy; the Bronx; Morocco; Macedonia; Moscow; Tulsa, Oklahoma; New Delhi, India; Elizabethtown, Kentucky; Israel; Temple, Texas; Singapore; Iran; Ireland; SoCal; NorCal; North Dakota; Brazil; Sweden; Ohio; Afghanistan; Florida; United Arab Emirates; Des Moines, Iowa — there are too many people in too many places to write down them all. </p>
<p id="UhB7lT">“I think a lot of people are lonely,” Adriene tells her computer camera and the people at home on the other side of it, choosing her words with care. “I think it’s a real, real thing.” </p>
<p id="YMd66k">She mentions the viewer counts on her videos, which she’s not paying attention to as she records this message but are something the team keeps careful track of. By the end of a video, any video, “after you rise up from your seated meditation, or Savasana, and see that number and how it’s grown, the practice at the start versus the end, I really think that it’s such a beautiful reflection of this idea, that you’re not alone.” </p>
<p id="gSMHnT">A moment later, she says it again: “You’re not alone.”</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="JanYet"></p>
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/5/6/21241805/yoga-with-adriene-youtube-workout-at-homeStephie Grob Plante2020-03-25T07:21:24-04:002020-03-25T07:21:24-04:00Inside FIRE, the implausible millennial movement to save, invest, and quit the American workplace
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<p>“Financial Independence Retire Early,” with its emphasis on extreme frugality, grew in popularity after the last financial crisis. But can the movement prepare its followers for the next one? </p> <p id="FZW9F2"></p>
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<p id="8knAbu"><em>Part of </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/3/25/21191376/march-issue"><em>Issue #12 of The Highlight</em></a><em>, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.</em></p>
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<p id="PxGe0J">Rebecca, 33, grew up in a single-parent household and graduated from college with a music degree in 2008, at the pit of the recession. She lived paycheck-to-paycheck until she took a job at a Fortune 500 company while putting herself through business school, at which point she paid off about $15,000 of student loan debt she accumulated during undergrad. </p>
<p id="UjrOMl">Rebecca felt the pressure to earn. Since she was 23, she has financially supported her mom, who was laid off in 2008; it’s one of the reasons she left music. “It was really all about money in the beginning,” she says.</p>
<p id="h0khkZ">But she quickly discovered, as she <a href="https://frugalharpy.com/about-me/">wrote</a> on her blog, “I don’t like to go to work.” </p>
<p id="GoXsHw">It wasn’t the work that Rebecca hated; it was the work environment, the Sisyphean cycle requiring deft navigation of office politics and frustrating management, early mornings, and the surrender of nights and weekends in order to climb. On her blog, she would <a href="https://frugalharpy.com/how-to-get-financial-freedom/">describe</a> the relief that washed over her at the end of a workday, writing: “I get home, plop in front of the TV to block out the miserable thought that this [is] my life until birthday #65.”</p>
<p id="uN8PIR">So, for seven years, Rebecca — who blogs under a pseudonym and asked that her real name be withheld to keep her financial information confidential — and her husband, a freelance musician, saved and saved, and invested and saved. They made a combined low-six-figure income, though his was sporadic and hers steady. They also received two inheritances from her grandfather and father, money they put directly into their investment portfolio. </p>
<p id="09kGDr">The less they spent on lattes, clothes, new iPhones, and the like, the sooner she could leave fluorescent-lit 9-to-5 life behind. Rebecca’s goal: to amass a net worth of $1 million by the end of 2019.</p>
<p id="iiLCdX">Rebecca’s extreme retirement plan wasn’t necessarily of her own design. She was inspired by FIRE — a movement that takes its name from the acronym Financial Independence Retire Early. FIRE is buzzy and blog-friendly, attracting followers in their 20s, 30s, and 40s who reject the notions that income earning must steer the bulk of adult life, and that the reward of retirement must wait for their golden years. What if, they propose, a better plan is to live frugally, save intensely, and retire in the prime of life?</p>
<p id="rKTEJ1">Guesses at how big FIRE has become are vague at best, but there are some clues: There are currently more than 700,000 members in an active Financial Independence <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/ffqb0o/weekly_help_me_fire_thread_post_your_detailed/">subreddit</a> founded in 2011, and popular blog and podcast network <a href="https://www.choosefi.com/">Choose FI</a> has registered more than 1.6 million downloads to date. Another FIRE-related blog, Mr. Money Mustache, reported last year that it had been accessed by more than <a href="https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2019/04/01/how-i-sold-this-website-for-9-million/">30 million unique viewers</a> since 2011.</p>
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<cite>Celeste Noche for Vox</cite>
<figcaption>“If you have a conversation long enough about FIRE, you end up getting into this existential crisis of, like, ‘What are we doing here?’” says Scott Rieckens, 36, shown with his wife, Taylor. Many in the movement think the pursuit of <em>stuff </em>traps people in the grind.</figcaption>
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<cite>Ilana Panich-Linsman for Vox</cite>
<figcaption>Kiersten and Julien Saunders, both in their 30s, say the community around FIRE isn’t yet diverse, in part because of cultural differences on money. But they say that’s changing.</figcaption>
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<p id="gHV28j">In November 2019, Rebecca hit her target and retired. But as her FIRE date drew near, anxiety crept in; she feared walking away from a high-paying job. Rebecca’s mom “totally freaked out” when Rebecca shared her plans. So did her in-laws. Who could blame them? There’s a not-insignificant amount of risk involved in FIRE, as the stock market roller coaster and economic ripple effect in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic have recently made worryingly clear. “Not knowing what’s next is really scary, and I didn’t think it would be as scary,” Rebecca told Vox before leaving her job. “I think about it all the time.”</p>
<p id="syfQO1">Her fears are well-founded, particularly for her generation. Many millennials were <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/venessawong/millennials-lives-changed-by-recession-2008-2018">laid off</a> in the Great Recession <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/economy/chart-book-the-legacy-of-the-great-recession">(8.7 million total lost their jobs across all generations)</a>, or <a href="https://talkpoverty.org/2019/09/03/recession-millennials-last-one/">struggled to find paid work</a> after graduating, and many are still playing a losing game of financial catch-up as a result. Today, millennials remain strapped with an unprecedented <a href="https://hbr.org/2019/09/what-will-it-take-to-solve-the-student-loan-crisis">student loan debt crisis</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-last-graduating-class-affordability-crisis-student-loans-housing-2019-5">ballooning</a> housing, health care, and child care expenses. As a result, they overwhelmingly <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/06/why-millennials-cant-afford-buy-house/591532/">put off homeownership</a>, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/half-of-millennials-delay-medical-care-unaffordable-2019-10">medical and dental visits</a>, and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-birthrate-decline-millennials-delay-having-kids-2019-5">having kids</a> because they can’t afford it. All the while, but especially now, evidence has grown that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/upshot/coronavirus-economy-crisis-demand-shock.html">another economic crisis</a> may be imminent.</p>
<p id="I9gdiJ">The rise of FIRE runs strikingly counter to that financial picture. How can anyone dream of quitting their job when they can barely stay afloat? </p>
<p id="lFvHPY">Yet the existential dread Rebecca felt about work is far from uncommon. <a href="https://www.gallup.com/workplace/231587/millennials-job-hopping-generation.aspx">Gallup has reported</a> that more than half of millennials describe themselves as “not engaged” at work, or not “emotionally and behaviorally connected to their job and company.” That dread, and a growing sense of <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/millennials-burnout-generation-debt-work">burnout</a>, may in fact be feeding millennial interest in FIRE.<strong> </strong>The<strong> </strong><a href="https://s1.q4cdn.com/959385532/files/doc_downloads/research/2018/FIRE-Survey-full-research.pdf">Harris Poll found</a> in 2018 that Google searches for “Financial Independence Retire Early” rose 96 percent in five years.</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="8neJ6R"><q>How can anyone dream of quitting their job when they can barely stay afloat?</q></aside></div>
<p id="jVz1GV">“If you have a conversation long enough about FIRE, you end up getting into this existential crisis of, like, ‘What are we doing here?’” says Scott Rieckens, 36, a filmmaker who chronicled his family’s entry into FIRE in the <a href="https://playingwithfire.co/the-documentary/">documentary <em>Playing With Fire</em></a><em>, </em>released on iTunes late last year. “Because it is about your time, this nonrenewable resource. ...<strong> </strong>So what are you going to do with the life that you have left, right?”</p>
<p id="huL4qk">“Financial freedom,” as FIRE proponents call the salvation bequeathed by quitting their day jobs, comes with a cost, however. Saving intensely — some FIRE leaders <a href="https://playingwithfire.co/whatisfire/">recommend</a> saving 50 to 70 percent of your paycheck — is an expense in and of itself. To get there, FIRE requires <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/02/self-improvement-optimization">life optimization</a> to the extreme, optimization that can edge out folks without a 401(k) or more than $400 in the bank at any given time, those who don’t make six figures by 30, those who don’t have partners with whom to split the mortgage, and those who have $40,000 in student debt. And in the end, no one, not even a millennial with a million in the bank can say for sure that the hustle to save will result in the thing that eludes them: happiness.</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="fqXnDR">
<p id="f1MvGm"><strong>FIRE is more complicated</strong> than telling your boss to get bent, hightailing it to the beach, and never answering another “high priority” email again.</p>
<p id="m9iL9y">The first and most crucial part is the FI: Financial Independence. Achieving “FI” is what the movement, and all of its corresponding <a href="https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/">blogs</a>, <a href="https://affordanything.com/podcast/">podcasts</a>, <a href="https://apps.choosefi.com/local-groups/">forums</a>, and <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/ffqb0o/weekly_help_me_fire_thread_post_your_detailed/">subreddits</a>, hinge on. </p>
<p id="jS6q5X">Adherents to the FIRE model reach FI<strong> </strong>by obeying<strong> </strong>an austere financial diet: Cut spending, eliminate bad habits, pay down debt, and come up with target numbers for how much net worth to accumulate and when to accumulate it by. To come up with their FI number, FIRE’s followers multiply the total amount of their yearly living expenses by 25. This formula uses what’s known as the “4 percent rule,” derived from a 1998 academic <a href="https://www.aaii.com/journal/article/retirement-savings-choosing-a-withdrawal-rate-that-is-sustainable">paper</a> referred to colloquially as “the Trinity study” that recommended withdrawing no more than 4 percent of your portfolio (savings, retirement funds, stock market investments, etc.) every year post-retirement. <a href="https://www.bea.gov/data/income-saving/personal-saving-rate">According to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis</a>, the average American saves a little more than 8 percent of their annual income after taxes. FIRE’s followers aim to save half, if not more. </p>
<p id="u2QOAJ">Financial independence and its pursuit predates the term “FIRE” by a few decades, going back at least as far as the landmark personal finance book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Your-Money-Life-Transforming-Relationship/dp/0143115766"><em>Your Money or Your Life</em></a>, which became a bestseller in 1992 after its<strong> </strong>co-author, Vicki Robin, appeared on <em>Oprah </em>and shared with the audience some simple math: If it takes <em>X</em> time to make <em>Y</em> money, and you need <em>Y</em> money to buy <em>Z</em> stuff, then stuff equals time. When Oprah waved her hand over a rack of jewel-toned clothes and asked Robin to impart her algebraic wisdom, Robin — who retired at 24, in part thanks to an <a href="https://money.com/vicki-robin-financial-independence-retire-early/">inheritance from her grandmother </a>— responded, “This is six weeks of your life.”</p>
<p id="bwvS0o">But Robin and her co-author Joe Dominguez proffered a solution: Become financially independent, i.e., accumulate enough net worth to quit your job, and you will be freed from the binds of stuff — because of the plain fact that you will no longer have a seemingly endless supply of money with which to buy it. The book didn’t lead legions to embrace extreme frugality en masse (though <em>Your Money or Your Life </em>sold <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/27/us/joe-dominguez-58-championed-a-simple-and-frugal-life-style.html">600,000 copies</a> in the first five years, and more than <a href="https://yourmoneyoryourlife.com/book/">1 million</a> to date). It did, however, attach a personal price tag to capital-W Work, and would become a foundational text for other folks desperate to find a way off the hamster wheel of capitalist life.</p>
<p id="JMqHdi"><em>Your Money Or Your Life</em> didn’t lead directly to FIRE either, exactly. Tracing FIRE’s history is tricky, in part because its tenets were developed on disconnected personal blogs, largely helmed by people who either believed that they’d discovered some secret sauce, or who discovered one another (<a href="https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/12/18/your-money-or-your-life/">and <em>Your Money or Your Life</em></a>, whose co-author was eventually <a href="https://lifehacker.com/how-to-become-financially-independent-and-retire-early-1825651509">considered</a> FIRE’s “godmother”). </p>
<p id="aj9SKS">It’s even unclear when the FIRE-specific brand took off. The movement’s “<a href="https://www.playingwithfire.co/whatisfire">reluctant and beloved de facto leader,</a>” Pete Adeney, doesn’t even know. “Your guess is as good as mine in this department,” he says via email. </p>
<p id="RfHKVO">Adeney, 45, doesn’t love the name “FIRE.” He prefers “retired” to “fired” or “FIREd,” which is how some prefer to describe their voluntary unemployment status. More specifically,<strong> </strong>he prefers Mustachianism. </p>
<p id="SljPtW">You’d be forgiven if you’re not familiar with Mustachianism, a philosophy of “financial freedom through badassity” that Adeney spun out of his popular blog, <a href="http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/">Mr. Money Mustache</a>. But within the FIRE community, Mr. Money Mustache is required reading, a colorful compendium for anyone serious about achieving FI, and Adeney’s word is near-gospel. A former software engineer, he retired at 30 and started the blog in 2011 to proselytize his idiosyncratic version of personal finance. (It was his blog that inspired <a href="https://frugalharpy.com/how-to-get-financial-freedom/">Rebecca</a>.) More a Gen X-er than a millennial, and having long settled into retirement, Adeney serves as a model within the FIRE community of what is possible. </p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="dt0FKD">
<p id="N8GZSn"><strong>“Once you are off the [tread]mill, </strong>you’ll feel like Neo did when he unplugged the suction cups from his pale naked body in The Matrix and looked around at the other imprisoned humans,” Adeney blogged in his very <a href="https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/04/06/meet-mr-money-mustache/">first post</a>. “‘Holy Shit!’, you will say. ‘I’ve been living in this ridiculous slave world and never noticed...and everyone else still is! <em>WAKE UP DRONE PEOPLE!!!</em>’”</p>
<p id="Pw9ADo">“It’s supposed to be a bit of a cult,” Adeney <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/29/mr-money-mustache-the-frugal-guru">told the New Yorker</a> back in 2016. “The rest of society oppresses us. We have our own symbols. The bicycle, the hatchback.” Adeney’s language is evocative, to say the least. America’s “<a href="https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/04/22/curing-your-clown-like-car-habit/">Car Clown</a>” culture and “<a href="https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-zero-to-hero-in-one-blog-post/">Exploding Volcano of Wastefulness</a>” aside, Adeney is after a revolution. “[A]s we lift up the poorest among us, we also need to cut back the environmental destruction that we rich people are causing,” Adeney — who says his annual expenses in Longmont, Colorado, are under $25,000 — tells Vox via email. Culture, he says, must change from the top down.</p>
<p id="huQMI1">In many ways, it already is. We’re in a moment in which giving up stuff, not acquiring it, is an aspiration. Look to <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/1/11/18175683/marie-kondo-tidying-up-netflix-life-changing-magic-konmari-explained">the declutter craze inspired by Marie Kondo</a>; <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/1/28/18196057/zero-waste-plastic-pollution">the zero-waste movement</a> that celebrates reducing one’s garbage output to one mason jar a year; and the trend away from consumerism with the <a href="https://buynothingproject.org/">Buy Nothing Project</a>. Millennials prefer experiences to stuff, we hear <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/05/millennials-are-prioritizing-experiences-over-stuff.html">again</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/money-advice-spending-tips-experiences-boost-happiness-jean-chatzky-2019-3">again</a>. </p>
<p id="QeJmzL">If the popularity of these concepts is any indicator, the idea of freedom from capitalistic tendencies isn’t so abhorrent for plenty of people. Striving is a millennial way of life, and in that way, we’re a generation primed for FIRE. As Robin <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-retirement-plan-save-almost-everything-spend-virtually-nothing-1541217688">told the Wall Street Journal</a> last year, millennials “understand that the system their parents built is coming apart.” </p>
<p id="OZtru0">Adeney’s ascetic lifestyle is clearly inspirational to those who have followed his blog over the years. The message is also transfixing, channeling our worst fears about capitalism and our powerlessness over stuff. “Most of our spending is a sign of weakness,” Adeney <a href="https://tim.blog/2017/02/13/mr-money-mustache/">told <em>The Tim Ferriss Show</em></a> in 2017, “and it’s a bunch of stuff that we do to compensate for our weaknesses, because we couldn’t solve the problem in a smarter way.” For Adeney, it’s not really about luring the American workforce into early retirement, but instead about breaking money’s grip on the masses, about the end of Work to Buy and Buy to Maintain. Abstaining from consumerism is evidence of piety, restraint, and dedication to the cause. </p>
<p id="ccnleh">But the flip side of this message is that those who still participate in that cycle are weak and don’t have Adeney’s problem-solving skills. FIRE’s bootstraps outlook, however, isn’t necessarily accessible to the vast majority of Americans who work not to buy, but to survive. Nearly 17 million households live in poverty, including <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/06/5-facts-about-millennial-households/">5.3 million households</a> headed by a millennial; and credit card debt is a major hurdle for millions of US households, too, with more than <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/17/55-percent-of-americans-have-credit-card-debt.html">half</a> of credit card holders owing debt. A <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2018-report-economic-well-being-us-households-201905.pdf">quarter of US adults</a> have no retirement savings, and <a href="https://www.bankrate.com/banking/savings/financial-security-june-2019/">28 percent</a> don’t have a rainy day fund for emergencies. Any single one of these factors could make it impossible to retire early, let alone a combination.</p>
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<cite>Celeste Noche for Vox</cite>
<figcaption>Scott Rieckens, left, was inspired by the writing of Pete Adeney (also known as Mr. Money Mustache), one of the most popular FIRE bloggers and leader of the movement. Doing your own home projects is popular among the FIRE set. </figcaption>
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<cite>Celeste Noche for Vox</cite>
<figcaption>Scott Rieckens plays with his daughter at home in Bend, Oregon. “This is for her,” Taylor Rieckens, a corporate recruiter, explains in Scott’s film about their FIRE journey.</figcaption>
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<p id="Xacp2D">Adeney acknowledges that he’s not talking about the working poor — or to them — when he makes these sweeping statements. As he puts it to Vox, “Getting rich people excited about consuming less is by far the most effective way to [protect the environment], which is why I mainly write articles targeted at my fellow wealthy Americans.” </p>
<p id="l9VdQt">Elizabeth Willard Thames, who blogs about her young family’s frugal lifestyle, has been candid about how privilege allowed them to retire early to the woods of Vermont. <a href="https://www.frugalwoods.com/2015/02/16/the-privilege-of-pursuing-financial-independence/">On her blog</a>, Frugalwoods, she catalogs a number of factors that made her and her husband, in her phrasing, “advantaged from birth”: They were raised by parents with college degrees, they didn’t grow up in poverty, their families are “loving, intact,” and they are white. She also cites a number of “smart decisions we’ve made thanks to our privilege,” namely that they went to college, have never been in debt (apart from their mortgage), worked in high-paying jobs, are healthy, and delayed having children. </p>
<p id="MBhHaX">“I wish I could say that if everyone would just save a little more, and live a bit farther below their means, and avoid buying an SUV, they’d be able to quit their jobs and live the life they crave,” writes Thames. “But that’s not the reality. There’s structural privilege inherent in <a href="https://www.frugalwoods.com/2014/07/16/more-than-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-the-frugalwoods-family/">our ability to pursue financial independence</a> at a young age.”</p>
<p id="VDzP3k">Personal finance expert Erin Lowry, author of <em>Broke Millennial</em>, is a <a href="https://brokemillennial.com/2018/03/06/that-time-i-almost-joined-the-fire-movement/">self-described “cynic”</a> when it comes to FIRE, though she understands its appeal. “It’s aspirational in a lot of senses,” she says, “to have that level of autonomy over your life at such a young age, to feel like you can opt out of the traditional workforce and have a lot of control. However, there are certainly some pieces of the puzzle that do not fit together quite as neatly as it sometimes gets presented.”</p>
<p id="We8gmq">Sometimes (not always), an inheritance eases the road to FIRE, as it did for Rebecca and Robin. Sometimes (not always), a successful career in a lucrative industry helps, as it did for Adeney. Sometimes (not always), one-half of the household continues to earn income. And often, early retirement means leaving the grind, only to change careers. </p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="RMpsTa">
<p id="l0agOl"><strong>Much digital ink</strong> has been spilled on FIRE blogs and forums about the definitions of work and retirement, definitions that don’t necessarily align with how critics, average Americans, and the dictionary define both. Many FIRE-ers continue to work. Operating real estate rentals and picking up side gigs are two common FIRE recommendations, not to mention pursuing passion projects. </p>
<p id="C1d8Zn">This is where FIRE draws some flak <a href="https://theoutline.com/post/3840/frugalwoods-frugality-millennials?zd=1&zi=emokomc7">from its critics</a>. While FIRE’s seductive premise is that followers can retire early and quit work wholesale, some of the most public-facing FIRE-ers aren’t living solely off their savings and investments. Their work, often FIRE-related, translates into money — podcasts monetized through ads, blogs that earn money through ads and affiliates, speaking engagements, book deals, etc. </p>
<p id="cyfpuU"><a href="https://ournextlife.com/">Our Next Life</a> blogger Tanja Hester, <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/10/15/20914453/savings-retirement-early-fire-community">who declared herself retired at 38</a>, does not monetize her blog, and <a href="https://ournextlife.com/transparency/">calls for income transparency</a> among other FIRE bloggers. She has noted she did receive a small advance for her book published last February, appropriately titled <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Work-Optional-Retire-Early-Non-Penny-Pinching/dp/0316450898"><em>Work Optional</em></a>. </p>
<p id="ofy2j2">Thames <a href="https://www.frugalwoods.com/credit-card-disclosures/">monetizes</a> her blog through affiliate links, earning a commission each time a reader buys something through that link; she also made money off her book deal, and her husband continues to work remotely. “[W]e work because we enjoy what we do — not because we need the money,” Thames <a href="https://www.frugalwoods.com/2017/04/28/how-i-work-at-home-with-my-baby/">writes</a> on her blog. “This is the extraordinary privilege of financial independence.” </p>
<p id="sOyPX7">True dictionary-definition retirement, FIRE’s followers argue, isn’t the goal, anyway. It’s being able to do what they want. And sometimes they want to make money — albeit in a different way. </p>
<p id="rhnu2Y">“I quit my job, which was very comfy, and made a lot of money in terms of what I was doing, but I wasn’t happy,” says Jamila Souffrant, 37, of her former life as a commercial real estate executive. Souffrant and her husband, who live in Brooklyn with their three young kids, paid off debt, <a href="https://www.journeytolaunch.com/about/">saved and invested $169,000 in two years</a>, and left corporate America behind. (Her husband continues to work as a teacher.) She started her blog, <a href="https://www.journeytolaunch.com/">Journey to Launch</a>, to chronicle her path to financial independence by 40; now the blog, along with a corresponding podcast and her personal finance business, are Souffrant’s full-time work. “This is a freedom that everyone looks for and wants,” she adds.</p>
<p id="ain2ee">There’s freedom, too, many in the <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/8xd8iw/fatfire_vs_leanfire_what_does_fi_mean_to_you/">community</a> argue, to decide how intensely to FIRE. For that reason, the FIRE community uses certain tags — “Fat FIRE” for less stringent savings and a longer road to upper-middle-class retirement; “Lean FIRE” for minimalist lifestyles and retirement ASAP at whatever cost. “Barista FIRE” for those picking up part-time work in retirement (such as becoming a barista).</p>
<p id="hMaLlN">Fat and Lean and all the rest are largely irrelevant labels for Kiersten and Julien Saunders, though they don’t abide by frugality dogma on the one hand, and are well on their way to financial independence on the other. FIRE, for them, “is a little bit of art and science,” says Kiersten, 35. </p>
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<cite>Ilana Panich-Linsman for Vox</cite>
<figcaption>The Atlanta-based Saunderses blog, as many in the movement do. Julien left his corporate career to manage the blog, called Rich & Regular, while Kiersten works full-time with a goal of retiring by 2021.</figcaption>
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<p id="5KnAqP">Kiersten adds that despite the current lack of diversity, the community is one of the more welcoming ones she’s participated in, and the space is changing for the better. But the disparity, they say, comes down to cultural differences. There are expenses they prioritize that are specific to their lives as people of color that might otherwise be considered expendable by FIRE die-hards. </p>
<p id="mw34Ny">Kiersten cites self-care as critical in helping people of color heal from microaggressions and trauma endured in daily life, and high-quality day care as essential in giving black children, and <a href="https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/tyc/feb2019/black-boys-matter">black boys in particular</a>, the best chance at lifelong success. Their budget, as a result, doesn’t resemble some of the more spartan budgets elsewhere in the FIRE world. “We give ourselves the freedom to let life happen, and then stay on the path to the best of our abilities,” adds Julien.</p>
<p id="jZcZaW">Souffrant is after work flexibility. “I think that’s more realistic for a lot of people, versus, they’ll never work again and retire in five years,” she says. “I don’t think that necessarily can be possible depending on people’s lifestyle and goals.” Souffrant adds that she’s not particularly frugal herself. “I’m not like, ‘Oh, I want to only spend $20,000 a year.’” Living in Brooklyn is expensive. Kids are expensive. Souffrant made FIRE fit her lifestyle, not the other way around.</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="Rxo35o">
<p id="Uglt67"><strong>Lisa Harrison thought</strong> that her future was FIRE. In 2015, the now 44-year-old corporate scientist Googled phrases like “extreme savings,” “budgeting,” and “how to become rich,” and stumbled on the Frugalwoods and <a href="https://www.budgetsaresexy.com/">Budgets are Sexy</a>. “Even in 2015, I didn’t know what a blog was,” she laughs. She read personal story after personal story, and just like that, she had a new life plan. </p>
<p id="thoo4F">“I’m working in corporate America, and I’m sitting under those fluorescent lights in a cubicle, so it really spoke to me,” says Harrison, who lives with her husband and 10-year-old daughter in suburban Pennsylvania. They paid off their debt, and took a hatchet to their budget, line item by line item; anything inessential, from their Pizza Fridays to Coffee Date Sundays, was out. Soon, Harrison and her husband had achieved a savings rate of 70 percent. She’d even <a href="https://madmoneymonster.com/about/">started a blog</a> to document her journey to FIRE, too. And they were miserable. </p>
<p id="ssmjoK">Harrison grew up in a trailer, the youngest of four. Money was always tight, and she’d put herself through night school while working in a factory, soldering electrical components together. She never expected the frugality she adopted for FIRE to dig up memories of the deprivation she used to feel. But it did. “I feel like sometimes that’s what happens with the FIRE movement. You’re so entrenched in, ‘Do it cheaper, do it better, don’t do this, don’t do that.’ And you don’t allow yourself to enjoy the journey. We want to enjoy our lives both now and later.” </p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="Heefhq"><q>“I quit my job, which was very comfy, and made a lot of money in terms of what I was doing, but I wasn’t happy”</q></aside></div>
<p id="gynOKT">Mental health is a big concern for FIRE critic Lowry. “The movement almost gets presented as this cure-all for angst and anxiety that you’re feeling in your day-to-day life,” says Lowry. “A lot of money and quitting your job is really not going to be the solution to anxiety and depression that some people think it might be.” </p>
<p id="20HnV8">Suze Orman has heard of FIRE, and has her own critiques. “I hate it,” Orman, the “Matriarch of Money” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbeLhKKg9RI">told Paula Pant on her <em>Afford Anything</em> podcast</a> last year. Orman’s issue isn’t with FI, but with the RE, as it is for many FIRE critics. To Orman, FIRE’s followers are unprepared for the cost of unforeseen illness and health emergencies such as accidents, living expenses rising after 60, paying for kids’ educations, paying for aging parents’ care, inflation, stock market crashes, missing out on the <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/23/saving-for-retirement-isnt-only-about-how-much-money-you-have.html">compounding years</a> of a retirement plan by drawing down early (even if you don’t plan to), and on and on. You want to retire early? “You can do it if you want to,” Orman concluded; it would just be “the biggest mistake, financially speaking, you will ever, <em>ever</em> make in your lifetime.” </p>
<p id="FNMLmb">The FIRE community’s response was swift. Robin <a href="https://yourmoneyoryourlife.com/suze-orman-fire-movement/">called</a> Orman a “wet blanket on FIRE” on her blog. Adeney <a href="https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2018/10/05/the-fire-movement/">dubbed</a> Orman’s appearance a “crazy interview” on his blog. “[M]oney will not cure your fear, as mega millionaire Suze proves so clearly,” wrote Adeney. “If you are afraid of what might happen in the future, you have a <em>mental problem rather than a financial problem</em>.”</p>
<p id="eCTpfE">Some FIRE recommendations make sense. Achieving any savings rate, much less a high one, is a step in the right direction, especially considering that <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2018-report-economic-well-being-us-households-201905.pdf">a quarter of Americans</a> have no savings at all. And the advice to invest in low-fee index funds, says Yale University professor of finance James Choi, is a good idea, in part because it allows for diversification of your portfolio at a relatively low cost. FIRE-ers, by and large, do not advocate drawing down on traditional retirement accounts early, and Choi agrees. </p>
<p id="pSVckv">But is FIRE based on good advice? Or even tenable advice? “It’s not crazy advice,” says Choi, but it is complicated. Dividends paid from investments may not provide a sustainable stream of income, as Choi puts it, to your net worth, particularly as worries about an imminent recession have <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/viral-recession/607657/">returned</a>. And this month’s dramatic spiraling of the stock market amid Covid-19 fears revealed how quickly the value of an investment portfolio — a key element of FIRE’s financial model — could simply disappear. On the Frugalwoods blog, Thames <a href="https://www.frugalwoods.com/2020/03/18/how-were-managing-our-money-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic">responded to the corona virus-related instability</a> by acknowledging those fears, but doubled down on her faith in the market: “I can tell you what my husband and I are doing with our money: we’re not touching it. We’re not tinkering with our retirement investments, we’re not selling our taxable investments, we’re not buying tons of stock, we’re doing nothing.” </p>
<p id="AtkBMu">The 4 percent rule raises concerns for Choi, too. That rate only makes sense if the stock market and personal investments are humming along well — and if your individual spending needs don’t go up. And for retirees who will eventually tap into Social Security, the fewer years they work and the less they earn, the fewer Social Security benefits they collect. “There’s a lot more risk if you’re trying to finance 50 years of retirement and not run out of money,” says Choi. </p>
<p id="43hzDr">But most important is the hard truth: For most people, all of this will sound like meaningless steps toward a fantasy. As life expectancy goes up, the US faces a <a href="https://www.vox.com/ad/20827428/retirement-future-longevity-saving-finances-technology">retirement crisis</a>, because much of the aging baby boomer population will not have enough money saved to retire. </p>
<p id="byTy3P">Teresa Ghilarducci, a labor economist and retirement security expert at the New School, says that about half of middle-class people will be poor or near-poor retirees.</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="09UP9U"><q>“A lot of money and quitting your job is really not going to be the solution to anxiety and depression that some people think it might be” </q></aside></div>
<p id="Kqo5lg">Rebecca is quick to point out that the family inheritances she received were critical to her achieving FIRE; she didn’t need to start out on her path to a million-dollar net worth from zero. Robin, too, started her journey to Financial Independence in 1969 with an <a href="https://people.com/archive/cents-and-sensibility-vol-38-no-21/">inheritance of $20,000</a>.</p>
<p id="E9pyEa">“But that’s one of the little secret sources of wealth that most people don’t have,” says Ghilarducci, adding that FIRE’s irrelevance to the great majority of Americans’ lives renders it somewhat elitist. That’s an argument that <a href="https://millennialmoney.com/financial-independence-retire-early/">FIRE-ers rebut</a>, arguing that you don’t need to start out with a lot of money to spend less and save more, and that FI simply emphasizes personal responsibility. </p>
<p id="CmKzof">“This criticism arises from the mistaken ‘all-or-nothing’ assumption that you need to reach full financial independence before you get the benefits,” Adeney tells Vox. “In reality, the principles I am teaching are the opposite of elitist — they make a bigger improvement in your life the lower you are on the income scale.”</p>
<p id="H1svNX">Still, says Ghilarducci, “It’s very, very, very expensive not to work.” </p>
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<p id="au35LT"><strong>When Rebecca quit her job</strong> in mid-November, it was ahead of the deadline she’d set for herself. Since then, she’s been traveling. Her physical health has improved, she tells Vox via email from Australia. She wakes up earlier, watches less TV, exercises regularly, and eats less junk food. Still, she worries about money. She has to remind herself to stay positive, that she did the math right, that she has the cash reserves to do this. “I’ve always struggled with being too self-critical, to the point where it has been detrimental to my mental and emotional health,” she writes. “Hitting my FIRE number hasn’t helped me with that. What it has done, however, is to give me the time and space that I need to look more inward and let me begin healing.”</p>
<p id="mElFEt">She opted to not tell her bosses about FI, or that what she’d done was not actually quit this particular job but leave the grind altogether. Instead, she said that she’d be taking time off to travel. She worried that there were misconceptions that being financially independent meant being “a megamillionaire.” </p>
<p id="EH5dJa">She was surprised at how calm she remained during the short exchange. Her bosses were taken aback, but asked no follow-up questions.</p>
<p id="5rjnLC">“I wish I could say that it was like on TV, where I poured my heart out and then danced a jig as I left the building,” Rebecca blogged later in a <a href="https://frugalharpy.com/i-did-it/">celebratory post</a>. But she didn’t. “I didn’t want to burn any bridges.”</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="1lm2ar">She might need them later as a reference. </p>
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<p id="r8rI41"><a href="https://twitter.com/stephiegrob"><em><strong>Stephie Grob Plante</strong></em></a><em> is an Austin-based features writer and essayist. Her work has appeared at The Goods by Vox, the Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, The Verge, Curbed, Southwest: The Magazine, Playboy, and elsewhere.</em></p>
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https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2020/3/18/21182018/financial-independence-retire-early-fire-early-retirement-mr-money-mustache-pete-adeneyStephie Grob Plante2020-02-06T10:00:00-05:002020-02-06T10:00:00-05:00How to have a baby, even if you’re worried you can’t afford it
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<p>Here’s what new parents and financial planners have to say.</p> <div class="c-float-left"> <figure class="e-image">
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<p id="2bDtfW">Erin Walsh and Andrew Croan didn’t plan to have a baby. </p>
<p id="i0Q8Tc">In 2015, Walsh, now 32, was working her dream job doing maintenance on a boat. She loved the flexibility — she and Croan, 33, who works in the cannabis industry, would travel west from Portsmouth, Rhode Island, each winter, living off the income they’d earned in the preceding months. They went out to eat. She drove a pickup truck with no back seat. </p>
<p id="oZqd9T">The pregnancy may have been a surprise, but Walsh and Croan dove into planning mode as soon as they found out. Walsh quit her job on the boat and found a safer, more stable job as a nanny, though it meant a pay cut. They bought a more affordable Dodge Caravan, ideal for their daughter’s car seat. “We ran with it,” says Walsh, “and we’re making it work.” They spend less. They save less, adds Walsh with a laugh, “because she’s expensive.”</p>
<p id="5DY2xW">It’s no secret that a new baby necessitates a fundamental lifestyle change for parents. What’s also no secret, but is decidedly more opaque, is how much that new baby — a growing child — will end up costing. There are estimations: The personal finance site <a href="https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/insurance/cost-of-raising-a-child/">NerdWallet tallied up</a> what it termed “a ‘no frills’ upbringing” from zero to 18 at more than $260,000, a figure similar to a <a href="https://money.cnn.com/2017/01/09/pf/cost-of-raising-a-child-2015/index.html">US Department of Agriculture estimate</a> that includes only food, housing, clothing, transportation, health care, and health insurance. NerdWallet’s “deluxe perks” childrearing package bundles in “nonessential” expenses such as in-home child care, college savings, vacations, tutoring, private school, and the like, kicking the theoretical total up to $745,000. </p>
<p id="CT3Ixm">These numbers are, no bones about it, terrifying. The speculative cost is nowhere near the typical <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/12/11/young-adult-households-are-earning-more-than-most-older-americans-did-at-the-same-age/">millennial income</a> — roughly $69,000 — and it’s enough to make plenty of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-birthrate-decline-millennials-delay-having-kids-2019-5">30-somethings question</a> whether having kids is financially feasible. (The US birthrate <em>is</em> the lowest it has been in three decades.)</p>
<p id="OE8WVv">Yes, kids are expensive. But if you’re wondering how parents manage to afford it, the answer is, they just do. As Walsh puts it, “People have babies all over the world, and [under] all different circumstances. And they, for the most part, survive. They figure it out [...] and they [often] have a lot less than we do.”</p>
<p id="r5dtji">“I hate to think of people missing out on the joyhood of being a parent, if they want to be a parent, because of money,” says Sheryl Garrett, a veteran financial adviser and founder of the Garrett Planning Network. “We always find a way to make ends meet.”</p>
<p id="r1fYFD">When faced with that staggering grand total, though, it’s overwhelming to know where to begin. What does it take your bank account to have a kid?</p>
<h3 id="pBkl9j">Start a baby budget way before the little one arrives</h3>
<p id="Gp8ydb">There are a couple of things to know right off the bat: The cost of getting to the point of your baby’s arrival is incredibly variable, and dependent on a whole host of circumstances. IVF, donor insemination, egg freezing, surrogacy, and adoption all beget their own scenario-specific costs. IVF, <a href="https://www.self.com/story/the-cost-of-infertility">Self reports</a>, can cost about $12,000 per cycle, without factoring in fertility coaching, drugs, and specialized testing. </p>
<p id="a3AOSc">Adoption, <a href="https://www.americanadoptions.com/adopt/the_costs_of_adopting">according to American Adoptions</a>, an advocacy nonprofit, can ring up at upward of $40,000 for some international adoptions. There’s also the painful possibility that a pregnancy can end in miscarriage or stillbirth — <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pregnancy-loss-miscarriage/symptoms-causes/syc-20354298">10 to 20 percent</a> of known pregnancies do — which run you anywhere from several hundred to <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/7/23/20698480/stillborn-stillbirth-baby-costs-expensive">several thousand dollars</a> in medical costs, depending on your health insurance and recovery time.</p>
<p id="pUxQId">And you might as well slot doctor’s visits in here, too. You’ll be seeing a lot more of your OB-GYN (or midwife, or whoever will be delivering your baby) for ultrasounds, lab work, etc. If you do not have insurance, the cost will be much higher — <a href="https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/health/medical-bills-101-from-pregnancy-to-delivery/">NerdWallet puts</a> the cost at “tens of thousands of dollars” over the course of pregnancy. If you do have insurance, you can still expect out-of-pocket costs. (For the nitty-gritty, NerdWallet has a <a href="https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/health/medical-bills-101-from-pregnancy-to-delivery/">Medical Bills 101 digest</a> with a breakdown of some average estimates, plus a rundown of questions to ask your insurance company and hospital when you call them.)</p>
<p id="77cSMQ">Nine months of doctor visits later and your baby is ready to be born. Barring a <em>Super Sweet Sixteen</em>-level bash, this will probably be the most expensive birthday of your child’s life. Costs vary dramatically nationwide. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/01/how-much-does-it-cost-have-baby-us/604519/">The Atlantic reported</a> earlier this year, however, that the average delivery for insured moms costs over $4,500. </p>
<p id="h7fhJF">But you can get ahead of some unexpected costs: When you call your health insurance about prenatal coverage, be sure to ask about the à la carte fees associated with delivery, like epidurals and anesthesiologists, who could be out-of-network even if your OB-GYN is in-network. </p>
<p id="iPuMdp">Let’s be real: This is all a lot of money, especially considering it’s all being spent pre-kid. And there will likely be unforeseen expenses along the way. But doing your homework on insurance and your chosen hospital can minimize the total cost, and at the very least will help you budget proactively to account for whatever comes up.</p>
<h3 id="5qN2ig">Baby’s here! Time to start thinking about secondhand and DIY options.</h3>
<p id="9zRAOh">If you’re in the throes of baby prep, you’d probably like a list of what you’ll need. (If you’re in the throes of massaging your throbbing temples as you read this, you’d probably like a list of what you’ll be buying.)</p>
<p id="XPwZ8W">Here are some Day 1 basics: diapers, breast pump and accessories, nursing accessories (bras, tops, shields, balm), possibly formula and bottles, bassinet, and infant car seat. Most of these will probably need to be bought new. But don’t panic: Truly, most everything else — clothes, swaddles, crib, stroller, changing table, toys, books — can be bought or passed down secondhand. There are also shortcuts on the other essentials, like <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/1/8/18174453/harvey-karp-snoo-baby-bassinet-rental">renting your bassinet</a> and breast pump; the latter is at least partially covered by insurance <a href="https://www.healthcare.gov/coverage/breast-feeding-benefits/">because of the Affordable Care Act</a>, though you’ll definitely want to buy your own brand new breast pump parts. </p>
<p id="V3c52W">Diapers and baby food will be two of the biggest costs. Researching per-diaper costs (and per-wipe costs) across brands isn’t as silly as it might sound; those cents add up when you’re diapering over the span of a few years. On the flip side, there are lower-cost options, like cloth diapers and making your own baby food. </p>
<p id="AzLJZD">Walsh and Croan initially diapered their daughter in a combo of cloth and disposable before switching entirely to cloth, and pureed simpler versions of what they ate instead of buying commercially made baby pouches and jars. These are cheaper alternatives to be sure, but DIY’s practicality depends on how much time you have, and how you can afford to allocate that time. You can also save on many of these costs by throwing a baby shower: Walsh and Croan registered almost entirely for diapers, and the couple says they didn’t pay for a single diaper for their daughter’s entire first year. </p>
<p id="N9lzGr">The single biggest kid-specific expense for many families is child care. The number varies across the country, but on average child care costs hover somewhere <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/child-care-costs-just-hit-a-new-high-2018-10-22">around $10,000</a> per year. (<a href="https://www.epi.org/child-care-costs-in-the-united-states/#/DC">Washington, DC</a>, takes the gold for the most expensive child care in the country, at just over $24,000 per year.) It’s not unusual to spend <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/why-child-care-so-expensive/602599/">10 percent of your paycheck</a> on child care; in fact, it’s currently the US norm. </p>
<p id="3cUiqh">Day care’s sticker shock can be enough to ramp up anyone’s anxiety. But, there are cheaper alternatives in that department too. If you’re hiring an in-home caregiver, could you team up with other families as part of a nanny share? Do you live close to a family member willing and able to provide child care so that you don’t have to pay for it? Can you bring your kid to work or work from home?</p>
<p id="lhwbrb">As your kid gets older, there is any number of enrichment classes and activities to throw into the mix, though these are by no means essential. Music classes, dance classes, toddler yoga, baby gyms, kids museum memberships, aquarium memberships, sports leagues, swim lessons, astronaut camp, plein air painting workshops, mime school — you name it, it exists, and it costs money. But there are also lots of activities and kid-oriented events that are 100 percent free. Look to your libraries, museums, parks, and wildlife centers in particular.</p>
<p id="61VnsZ">We’re definitely missing some key stuff here: doctor visits, shoes, school supplies, hand-sanitizing wipes (that’s a biggie). Most parents will agree that the shopping list seems endless. But with a little inventiveness, it’s possible to find cost-saving shortcuts for most of this list.</p>
<h3 id="en35Zf">Okay, but … <em>how </em>do parents do it? First, get philosophical about your lifestyle.</h3>
<p id="2h8YPf">Figuring out how to pay for a baby starts with the big questions — financial adviser Garrett recommends engaging in what she terms “philosophical conversations” around childrearing and lifestyle, as well as practical questions about day-to-day life, as far out as possible. How much time can each parent take off from work once the baby arrives? Do you live near family? Hashing out the answers will clarify your child care needs, and in turn begin to articulate a budget there. </p>
<p id="OCLQV3">Clare Rok, 33, a behavior analyst specializing in autism, and her husband Jason Jaacks, 33, a visual journalist turned college professor, moved from the pricey Bay Area to comparatively more affordable Portsmouth, where Rok grew up, a year before getting pregnant with their now 2-year-old son. They’re now pregnant with their second, due in May. </p>
<p id="YGce9l">“We knew we were on that path to wanting to start a family and buy a home and settle somewhere,” Rok says of the decision to move ahead of having kids. “And that wasn’t going to be realistic for us in the Bay Area.” Yes, their salaries took a hit in moving. But in doing so, they not only lowered their cost of living but also bought a home and secured free child care several days a week with Rok’s parents. </p>
<h3 id="q8ssMH">Put money away. Then don’t touch it.</h3>
<p id="Szmz2L">Do you need an emergency fund? In a word: “Definitely,” Garrett says. Despite our best planning, cars break down. Homes need repairs. Hospital visits happen.</p>
<p id="d7HPjG">“I would start out with just getting something” into an emergency fund, Garrett says, “and something that would be decent would be $1,000.” She says ideally she’d like to see people get closer to between $5,000 and $10,000, though, she acknowledges, it’s tough to stay out of that reserve when there are bills to pay: Only <a href="https://www.bankrate.com/banking/savings/financial-security-january-2019/">40 percent</a> of Americans would be able to pay for a $1,000 emergency with their savings, and <a href="https://www.bankrate.com/banking/savings/financial-security-june-2019/">28 percent</a> of Americans have no emergency fund at all, Bankrate found in two surveys published last year. </p>
<p id="nVB1lh">Then, of course, there’s what many parents consider the checkered flag at the end of the childrearing finish line: college. Setting up a tax-free 529 college savings plan when your baby is born, as Rok and Jaacks did for their son and will do for their second, is a solid idea to take off some of the eventual pressure. Financial advisers do prioritize paying off debt, building up an emergency fund, and investing in retirement first, and Garrett adds that you might want to consider an educational trust instead to allow for more control over how that money is ultimately used.</p>
<h3 id="Xd1TBx">Babies change their parents’ lives — and that’s great for their bank accounts</h3>
<p id="0HtEDI">Scrolling through the dollar signs jumbled here can be, for even the worry-freest among us, stress-inducing. The magic not-so-secret secret is this: If you have kids, some of your expenses will automatically go down because your lifestyle will fundamentally change. Plus, new parents can <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tax-breaks-of-having-a-baby-2018-3">claim a child tax credit</a>. Yeah, you’ll need to buy diapers, but you’ll be going out to bars and restaurants less and probably won’t be taking that occasional spontaneous weekend trip. Is that depressing? It isn’t meant to be! Money spent in some areas will be untethered to make way for new needs in other areas. It’s the Newtonian law of baby. </p>
<p id="Tpqxm0">“There’s a little bit of a give-and-take for sure,” Rok says. “Time’s taken up and occupied, and a lot of it’s in a good way. We’re in our early mid-30s. We don’t want to be doing the same things we were doing in our 20s.” Rok and Jaacks still go on dates; they still spend time with other adults. “But we also are enjoying being with our kid and doing those fun activities with him that don’t require the same amount” of money.</p>
<p id="Ye8L5Z">Four years after their daughter’s birth, Walsh and Croan say they don’t worry about money on a day-to-day basis. They can count on two hands the number of toys they’ve bought their daughter; otherwise, they shop exclusively secondhand. They’ve made it work. Walsh puts it succinctly: “I would love for people to know that you can do it differently. And that they don’t have to buy all the shit.”</p>
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<p id="IwkuNT"><em>Stephie Grob Plante is a writer whose work has appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, Playboy, the Atlantic, The Verge, The Goods and elsewhere. She last wrote about </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/10/16/20910346/homeopathic-homeopathy-holistic-alternative-medicine-oscillococcinum-history"><em><strong>the rise of homeopathy</strong></em></a><em> for The Highlight.</em></p>
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2020/1/30/21112407/baby-expensive-costs-can-i-how-to-affordStephie Grob Plante2020-01-07T09:28:44-05:002020-01-07T09:28:44-05:00Finally, really good advice on how to stop killing your houseplants
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<p>Instagram plantfluencers aren’t the only ones who can keep monstera and snake plants lush and green. You can too, with a few lessons from the pros.</p> <p id="k3Crhf"></p>
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<p id="T8uUaY">Yellowed leaves. Drooping leaves. Dried leaves. It’s pretty easy (and heartbreaking) to spot a sick houseplant. Who among us has brought home a healthy plant, perhaps a tropical split-leaf monstera or a fuzzy, opalescent succulent, only to soon stand guilty of planticide? (Sheepishly raises hand.)<em> </em>Who has kept a dearly departed air plant on a windowsill months after its expiration as a painful reminder of the crime? (Maybe just me.) What’s less straightforward, and what can be downright daunting, is how to prevent a houseplant’s seemingly preordained demise before it’s too late. </p>
<p id="r9u9du">We’re in the midst of a vibrant houseplantaissance. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/realestate/plant-loving-millennials-at-home-and-at-work.html">Millennials dig them</a>, particularly apartment dwellers in big cities looking to infuse their corners of cramped real estate with breaths of fresh air from the great, green outdoors. And it’s no wonder why: Healthy houseplants mean healthy humans. Studies have shown that indoor plants <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/aug/31/plants-offices-workers-productive-minimalist-employees">boost productivity</a>, <a href="https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2007/ps_3.html">purify the air</a>, and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4419447/">bust stress</a>.</p>
<p id="lt0MD0">Which makes it all the more frustrating — and/or gutting, depending on your personality type — when a houseplant’s health fails. A string of ill-fated plant purchases might even make you wonder if you’re fit to take care of houseplants at all. But friend, you are! It’s absolutely possible to not assassinate your houseplants! Here’s how. </p>
<h3 id="lmoKiv">Treat your plants like they’re your pets </h3>
<p id="iP9m0Z">Step one for keeping a plant alive? Remember this: It’s alive! And now that you’ve brought it indoors, it needs you. Not entirely unlike a dog or a cat, your houseplant depends on you for its care. That means nutrition, hydration, a supportive home environment, and intuiting its needs.</p>
<p id="QXflP6">Plants are aesthetically pleasing and can transform a living space, to be sure, but they’re not simply decoration. “I don’t say that they become a part of your plant family for nothing,” says Hilton Carter, noted <a href="https://www.instagram.com/hiltoncarter/?hl=en">plantfluencer</a> and author of <em>Wild at Home.</em> “Plants are living things. They aren’t props.” </p>
<h3 id="APWUDr">Know thyself, know thy space</h3>
<p id="xlH2cS">Carter suggests that folks in the market for a plant figure out what kind of “plant person” they are before bringing one home. “If you’re a busy person, you don’t want to put yourself in a situation where you’re purchasing ferns that need to be watered every three days,” says Carter. “Because if you do, then you’re going to end up killing these plants over and over again, and you’re going to consider yourself a ‘bad plant person,’ or someone who has a ‘brown thumb.’ But that’s not really the case. It’s that you don’t know what type of ‘plant person’ you are.” </p>
<p id="YP4y65">Do you spend 60 hours a week at work? Do you travel a lot? Are you pretty forgetful? These types of questions aren’t a whole lot different from what to ask yourself before bringing home a dog (at least, we hope you ask yourself these questions). They get at how much energy you are willing to invest in your houseplants. Because let’s face it, plants can be expensive (sometimes <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/style/tropical-plants-rare.html">really expensive</a>). If you’re going to invest the funds, be sure you can invest the time, too.</p>
<p id="ZBjdwh">Every plant requires a different care regimen — running the gamut from every-other-day maintenance to once-monthly check-ins — and the answers to those Plant Person Questions can point you to which plants are right for your lifestyle. An areca palm might look cool and match your rug, but you should bring one home only if the two of you are a good fit for each other. </p>
<p id="CG7ODv">And while you’re at it, take an inventory of what your living space brings to the table. The biggie is sunlight. Do you get much of it (yay!), or do you live in a spooky house straight out of a gothic horror story, all heavy drapes and zero sun (no judgment)? Is it humid in your place? Is it dry? Do you crank the heat in winter and/or blast the AC in summer (and, it bears repeating, is your house haunted)? Don’t buy that dracaena because all the beautiful people <a href="https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/urbanjungle/?hl=en">on Instagram</a> have one; ask your local plant shop what plants might adapt best to the environment you have to offer. </p>
<p id="yUJlx0">Horticulturist Tovah Martin recommends that plant newbies consider starting out with a class of plants that she terms “indestructibles” — plants like the spider plant, the ZZ plant, and yes, the dracaena. She picked 200 for her book <em>The Indestructible Houseplant </em>that, she writes, “tend to tolerate sub-par conditions and less-than-perfect gardeners.” If you Google “set it and forget houseplant,” which I did, you’ll find a slew of articles boasting plants “<a href="https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home/gardening/advice/g1285/hard-to-kill-plants/">that are almost impossible to kill</a>.” But there’s a caveat. </p>
<p id="wAQmOQ">“Anything that is alive can be killed,” Martin says. “[Indestructibles] are plants that can take a lot of abuse, a lot of forgetfulness. But you don’t want to abuse anything, so don’t do it. Don’t go there.” She shares Carter’s earlier point: “Think of them as your pets.”</p>
<h3 id="I0VSwJ">Become fluent in plant </h3>
<p id="uUQGR9">For anyone unfamiliar with the musical <em>Little Shop of Horrors</em>, a very rare Audrey II plant sings, “Feed me, Seymour!” in a resonant baritone when it’s hungry, which at a certain point in the narrative is always. (Audrey II, it must be noted, is a bloodthirsty alien intent on world domination.)</p>
<p id="V8X5vm">It’s a shame that real plants can’t talk like that. What they lack in verbal skills, however, they make up for in body language. Those yellowed or drooping or dried leaves are your plant’s pained way of screaming, “Please pay attention to me!” </p>
<p id="POtDuO">When it comes to sunlight in particular, “Plants have a clever way of conveying when they need more lumens,” writes Martin in <em>Indestructible Houseplant. </em>“When they bend toward the light source, that’s your cue to move them closer and rotate their containers.” </p>
<p id="OhpJz4">Overdry soil? Not enough watering. Soggy soil that isn’t escaping through the container’s drainage holes? Too much watering. Soil speaks! </p>
<p id="WhtDMf">The easiest way to pick up on your houseplants’ cues and become attuned to their needs is to, simply put, enjoy them. “You’re looking at your plants all the time because they’re so beautiful and you’re loving them,” says Martin. “So take a minute to check and see if they need a little drink.”</p>
<h3 id="0N4ava">What to expect when you’re plant parenting</h3>
<p id="3fIpHR">Houseplants don’t necessarily come equipped with a one-size-fits-all how-to. There are a host of factors that play into how best (and how often) to serve your houseplant. Luckily, though, there are only a few key care categories to incorporate into your plantiful lifestyle. </p>
<ul><li id="i7sJtd"><strong>Watering</strong></li></ul>
<p id="cUFL9L">“When I lecture, audience members sit with their pens poised, hoping I will advise them to water every Tuesday or the like,” writes Martin in <em>Indestructible Houseplant. </em>“It doesn’t work that way.” How much and how often to water depends not only on the type of plant but also on weather conditions outside and the temperature you keep your house. The conditions may be variable, but luckily, Martin tells Vox, “The solution is the same. You check the soil to see if it’s dry. That’s the solution.”</p>
<p id="OxahQ6">Martin cites an oft-repeated myth about watering. “Never, never wait for it to wilt,” she says. “That’s like saying, ‘Wait for your teenager to faint before you feed them.’ That’s stressing the plant. A stressed plant is a plant that’s going to be victim to problems.”</p>
<p id="rDjTDz">It’s absolutely possible to be overzealous and overwater, a practice akin to helicopter parenting, says Carter. Learn what balance to strike in the watering department by studying up on your plant and by familiarizing yourself with what healthy soil looks and feels like. “If the soil crumbles apart, that’s good,” writes Martin in <em>Indestructible Houseplant</em>. “If it remains in one soggy glob, that’s not good.”</p>
<ul><li id="dN0uxQ"><strong>Potting</strong></li></ul>
<p id="Fxy9aA">After you bring your plant home, you’ll likely want to repot it in a container that resonates with your personal style. You also probably need to repot it anyway, because often the container your plant comes in doesn’t have drainage holes, which give excess water an escape route. Make sure that water has someplace to run off to. </p>
<p id="42kj2B">Following that initial homecoming, there will come a time when you will need to repot your plant so that it can grow bigger and avoid issues like root rot, says Carter. If your plant is wilting, it might need more space for its roots to spread out. Research what healthy roots look like (light and fibrous!) versus what unhealthy roots look like (kind of a gloopy mess). </p>
<p id="vYZdp2">You might also consider terrariums for certain plants to keep them moist and humid, adds Martin, particularly if you travel for work. Not all plants are made for terrariums, though, so be sure to do your homework first. </p>
<ul><li id="MeOeGe"><strong>Positioning and rotating</strong></li></ul>
<p id="mUyPwM">Reading up on how much water your particular plant friend needs will point you in the direction of another plant-specific necessity: sunlight. Assign your most sun-loving plants to your most generous windows, and don’t be afraid to relocate them from time to time to keep them nourished and happy. On the flip side, your plant might be sunlight adverse and prefer shade. The great thing about the modern age in which we live is that you don’t need to guess. Google your plant, go to the library, ask your local plant shopkeeper, DM your favorite plantfluencer, and equip yourself with knowledge.</p>
<p id="HZ6Qbc">You’ve got to rotate them too, says Carter. Rotating tends to be an overlooked care tip. The side of your plant that’s directly against the window will, of course, get the most sun, but what many plant parents forget is that this can translate into either overgrowth on one side, causing the plant to topple over, or into a half-fried plant. Don’t topple or fry your plants. </p>
<ul><li id="5ExqHn"><strong>Leaf care, soil stuff, and pests</strong></li></ul>
<p id="8DsaQA">You’re going to need to prune those yellowed and dried leaves, and Carter recommends that you wipe your leaves down regularly to boot. Dusting isn’t just for keeping your home clean. Says Carter, “Dust creates a filter between the sunlight and the leaf tissue,” and that barrier keeps the leaf from effectively absorbing the sun’s rays.</p>
<p id="fv7svv">And if you’re enjoying an ongoing conversation with your plants — rotating them, wiping down their leaves, checking their soil, etc. — you’ll notice any unwelcome bugs that might infiltrate Plant Town before a full-on invasion hits. For Carter, it all comes back to the pet analogy. “You take your dog for a long walk in the woods. Most good dog parents check their dogs when they get home to make sure they don’t have ticks.” </p>
<p id="ptXOTx">There are plant enthusiasts, too, who bring in “good bugs” for their plants, like plant YouTuber Summer Rayne Owens. “I think when you get enough plants you’re basically creating this little ecosystem in your home,” Owens <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooMiIm8RItw">told the New Yorker</a>. “And for me it’s the only sensible way to be able to control any kind of outbreak. Otherwise all my plants would be dead.”</p>
<h3 id="amFAEV">Don’t give up!</h3>
<p id="jWuWSV">That poor once-green victim of your forgetfulness or your under-watering or your overwatering or whatever weird confluence of events? Do not despair! It’s possible to revive a dying houseplant and bring it back from the brink of death. And in fact, your yellowed, drooping, dried plant friend might not be as dead as you fear.</p>
<p id="LDwD2o">“It’s not dead until the stem is completely dried out,” says Carter. Many people, he adds, are too quick to throw out plants they mistakenly believe are dead, when in fact they simply need help. “There’s always, always a chance to turn it around.”</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="zk1317">
<p id="edwneI"><em>Stephie Grob Plante is a writer whose work has appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, Playboy, the Atlantic, The Verge, The Goods and elsewhere. She last wrote about </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/10/16/20910346/homeopathic-homeopathy-holistic-alternative-medicine-oscillococcinum-history"><em>the rise of homeopathy</em></a><em> for The Highlight.</em> </p>
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/12/30/21031913/how-to-keep-houseplants-alive-masterclass-plants-swiss-cheese-millennials-plantfluencerStephie Grob Plante2019-10-23T07:15:32-04:002019-10-23T07:15:32-04:00“It’s just a big illusion”: How homeopathy went from fringe medicine to the grocery aisles
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<p>As some lose faith in the factory-like care of conventional medicine, these curious remedies are ascendant. </p> <p id="Oa8E6x"></p>
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<p id="ADncov"><em>Part of </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/10/23/20921238/camp-fire-paradise-latinx-october-issue"><em><strong>Issue #7 of The Highlight</strong></em></a><em>, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.</em></p>
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<p id="iaxeYc">Natalie Grams once believed in homeopathy. She believed that<strong> </strong>sugar pastilles, distilled and diluted as the praxis of homeopathy prescribes, could treat ailments from colds and flus to depression and anxiety, to allergies, asthma, chronic pain, immune dysfunction, and digestive disorders — you name it. </p>
<p id="YbvgbX">As a medical student in her native Germany, she’d become increasingly frustrated with the limitations of conventional medicine. There was no time, the 41-year-old physician says, to really care about patients; treating symptoms was the bottom line. Then, in the midst of her studies, she survived a horrific car accident. She escaped mostly unscathed, but soon suffered repeated fainting spells. Doctors could find nothing wrong. A friend suggested she try a naturopath, a practitioner of alternative medicine, who diagnosed Grams with PTSD, and prescribed a homeopathic remedy — specifically, Belladonna C200, tiny, white pills featuring a diluted form of the poisonous plant by the same name. </p>
<p id="tgZwsJ">“And then I felt better,” says Grams. “So I thought, ‘Oh, it was homeopathy that healed me, that cured my symptoms.’”</p>
<p id="mi5syt">Homeopathy is a school of alternative medicine based on the principles that “like cures like,” that less is more, that a detailed patient intake is necessary to get to the root of a medical issue. After she recovered, Grams devoted herself to it, not only as a patient, but as a practitioner. She first completed her medical training, and then, after seven years of homeopathic training, including 300 hours of coursework that cost her a not-insignificant sum (weekend trainings were as much as 300 euros, or more than $300), Grams became a licensed medical homeopath. And she opened her own practice. </p>
<p id="vdXf7f">Much of her homeopathic training ran counter to what she’d studied in med school. Instructors taught that vaccinations contained chemical ingredients like aluminum, and that antibiotics can’t cure disease, recalls Grams. One supervisor stripped away all conventional remedies for most patients he saw, even those with chronic illnesses requiring medication, like high blood pressure, diabetes, and asthma. Grams, though, was all in. </p>
<p id="3CoqdS">And, as is something of a time-honored tradition in homeopathy, she contended with skeptics and critics. To prove them wrong, she began writing a book in defense of homeopathy. </p>
<p id="YImvHJ">Instead, she found that the facts and research didn’t support the field she’d built her career on. She read up on clinical trial after clinical trial that could find no hard evidence that homeopathic remedies worked; she consulted chemists and physicists, who explained why quantum physics can’t support homeopathy’s claim that water retains “the memory” of any substance it comes into contact with; she turned to psychologists, who talked in-depth about the placebo effect. The result was a very different book that she titled <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Homeopathy-Reconsidered-Really-Helps-Patients-ebook/dp/B07MFP49WF/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Natalie+Grams+homeopathy&qid=1571234560&s=books&sr=1-1"><em>Homeopathy Reconsidered</em></a>.</p>
<p id="rVSe6F">“I was convinced [I was] doing something good, really good,” she says of her homeopathic practice over FaceTime while on vacation with her family at an undisclosed location. (She’s lived “hidden,” as she puts it, since she became a public critic of homeopathy and the death threats began.) “Even perhaps the best form of medicine.”</p>
<p id="Y7Msbu">Homeopathic remedies contain no discernible molecules of their “active” ingredients. And yet, proponents claim they retain the properties of what isn’t there. “It’s like smoke,” says Grams, “like something that if you want to grab it, if you want to get ahold of it, it just vanishes. It’s just a big illusion.” </p>
<p id="s1m870">Homeopathy is a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/homeopathic-drugs-no-better-than-placebos/2015/12/18/037b3976-7750-11e5-a958-d889faf561dc_story.html">$1.2 billion industry</a> in the US alone, used by an estimated <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr079.pdf">5 million adults</a> and <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr078.pdf">1 million kids</a>. It’s become such a staple of America’s wellness industry that leading brands such as Boiron and Hyland’s are readily available at high-end health-focused chains like <a href="https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/site_search/homeopathy">Whole Foods</a> and <a href="https://shop.sprouts.com/shop/categories/241">Sprouts</a>, supermarkets like <a href="https://www.ralphs.com/search?query=homeopathic&searchType=natural">Ralphs</a>, and superstores such as <a href="https://www.walmart.com/browse/health/homeopathic-remedies/976760_1005863_2151354">Walmart</a>. Analysts project that the global homeopathic market will grow <a href="https://www.reuters.com/brandfeatures/venture-capital/article?id=134677">12.5 percent</a> by 2023.</p>
<p id="V0Y80o">Once considered fringe, homeopathy is now bundled by conventional medicine under the banner of “complementary and alternative medicine,” with the other usual suspects of the West’s modern wellness movement, a health wave that swelled in the 1970s and crested twenty years later: acupuncture, massage, meditation, yoga, reiki, Ayurveda, etc. “Back in the 1990s,” writes Jennie Rothenberg Gritz <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/06/the-evolution-of-alternative-medicine/396458/">at the Atlantic</a>, “the word ‘alternative’ was a synonym for hip and forward-thinking.” Today, about <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2017/02/02/americans-health-care-behaviors-and-use-of-conventional-and-alternative-medicine/">half of adults</a> in the US say they’ve tried alternative medicine.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="yQn10C"><q>“It’s like smoke, like something that if you want to grab it, if you want to get ahold of it, it just vanishes.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="rLhMYg">For those who buy into it, homeopathy is synonymous with holistic health. Surely there are more answers out there, more remedies, homeopaths argue, than ibuprofen, antacids, statins, SSRIs, and surgery.<strong> </strong>Its rise has been in tandem with a growing sense of perceived failures in medicine, particularly that doctors fail to take “whole health” into consideration. To its followers, homeopathy does.</p>
<p id="WaXdgO">But these products are <a href="https://www.fda.gov/drugs/information-drug-class/homeopathic-products">not FDA-approved</a>. In 2016, the <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2016/11/ftc-issues-enforcement-policy-statement-regarding-marketing">Federal Trade Commission began a crackdown</a> on the homeopathic remedies that were filling grocery shelves, mandating that they clearly state that they are not, in fact, medicine. Boiron’s website now bears that legally required disclaimer: “Claims based on traditional homeopathic practice, not accepted medical evidence.” </p>
<p id="i95Byo">Consumers are beginning to feel “scammed and cheated,” the nonprofit Center for Inquiry argued, in a <a href="https://centerforinquiry.org/press_releases/consumers-feel-scammed-by-walmart-and-cvs-over-homeopathic-fake-medicine/">lawsuit</a> filed last month against Walmart and CVS over the sale of what it called “homeopathic fake medicine.” A consumer <a href="https://centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/LRP-Report-Center-for-Inquiry-Homeopathy.pdf">survey</a> conducted by the nonprofit found that 41 percent of respondents felt negatively about homeopathic remedies “[o]nce [they] were told the essential facts about homeopathy’s pseudoscientific claims.”</p>
<p id="P18lja">In a statement provided to Vox, Boiron’s chief executive and president Janick Boudazin wrote, “We do not comment on ongoing cases or cases of others. It should be clarified, however, that homeopathic drug products are legally marketed in the United States, ensuring consumers have access to safe and clearly identified homeopathic products from which to choose for their healthcare needs.”</p>
<p id="H1FU2n">Peter Gold, a spokesperson for the American Institute of Homeopathy, cited several studies, including <a href="https://smw.ch/article/doi/smw.2012.13594">a controversial one</a> from <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/homeopathic-medicine-_b_1258607">the Swiss government</a>, that he said proved homeopathy’s efficacy. “Ninety percent of available clinical studies would have to be ignored in order to conclude that homeopathy has no effects,” he said in an emailed statement. “Homeopathy is an important element of an Integrative Medicine, combining the best from conventional medicine and medical homeopathy for the benefit of patients.”</p>
<p id="J3vSy8">Requests for comment from another leading homeopathy organization — the National Center for Homeopathy — went unanswered by the time of publication.</p>
<h3 id="9SWyh4">A history of homeopathy, distilled</h3>
<p id="n0vTiR">Many misidentify homeopathy as “natural” and describe it as plant-based or herbal medicine. It’s not. In his 2016 book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Homeopathy-Undiluted-Including-Comprehensive-Z/dp/3319435906"><em>Homeopathy: The Undiluted Facts</em></a>, Edzard Ernst, a physician, homeopathy researcher, and noted skeptic, classified the “natural” qualifier as one of the many myths about homeopathy disseminated by both believers and skeptics. But there’s “nothing natural” about it, he wrote: Homeopathic remedies include <a href="https://www.homeopathycenter.org/remedy/x-ray">alcohol exposed to x-rays</a> to minimize the effects of radiation therapy, and <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/08/20/queens-homeopathic-pharmacist-selling-pills-made-berlin-wall/">fragments of the original Berlin Wall</a> to “cure a patient’s communication problems,” Ernst wrote.</p>
<p id="9ts5OF">Homeopathy isn’t Eastern medicine either. It’s slightly more than 200 years old, and it was born in Germany.</p>
<p id="mTgWVg">Samuel Hahnemann, an 18th-century physician described by Ernst as a “deeply religious and spiritual man as well as an eccentric, innovator, maverick, and polymath,” first published a new school of medical thought that he named homeopathy in 1790. He’d become disillusioned with the medical model of the time, but was fascinated by cinchona bark powder, then used to treat malaria (and later found to contain the alkaloid quinine, which is still used to treat malaria today). He dosed himself with large quantities of cinchona bark, ingesting it repeatedly to document the fever, sweats, and nausea that set in. His aim: to test whether the remedy for malaria produced the symptoms of malaria in a healthy person. It did.</p>
<p id="4iykCq">Hahnemann declared this the first of what would come to be known as “homeopathic provings.” (The etymology of the word “homeopathy” is “like disease.”) He conducted more experiments and reached more provings. Soon, he defined several so-called laws; two are guiding principles of homeopathy today:</p>
<ul>
<li id="c1SSof">
<strong>Like cures like</strong>:<strong> </strong>Homeopathy posits that a substance that produces a disease’s symptoms in a healthy person is a cure for that disease. (In the case of the aforementioned 20th-century remedy known simply as “Berlin Wall,” conditions caused by communication problems are said to be cured by tablets made from finely ground, diluted shards of the actual Berlin Wall, because it was once a concrete barrier to communication.)</li>
<li id="w96EMJ">
<strong>Law of minimum dose</strong>: The lower the dose, say homeopathic practitioners, the more potent the remedy. To that end, homeopathic remedies are extremely diluted. Many are so diluted, in fact, that they contain no detectable molecules of the “mother tincture.” Hahnemann intended to avoid poisoning, as many of the substances that he introduced as remedies were toxic. But soon his rationale became less, well, rational: “Vital energy” was transmitted during dilution, Hahnemann believed, so none of the original substance needed to remain.</li>
</ul>
<p id="90x3FW">Hahnemann’s theories represented a sea change in medical philosophy, a rejection of what he coined “allopathy” — remedies that produce a disease’s opposite symptoms — and derisively dubbed “school medicine.” Hahnemann thought that doctors of his day harmed patients, and he wasn’t wrong. Late 18th century medicine revolved around balancing the four humors, most frequently through bloodletting. Homeopathy’s less-invasive approach attracted followers, who in turn spread Hahnemann’s gospel across Europe, India, and the US. The American Institute of Homeopathy, founded in 1844, even arrived three years before the American Medical Association. </p>
<p id="rpPRk4">Conventional medicine eventually became increasingly science-oriented, discarding bloodletting and the like for more effective (and drastically less dangerous) treatments. Homeopathy, by contrast, maintained its original dogma, one that hinged on individualized treatment and made it nearly impossible to conduct clinical trials that adhered to the scientific method.</p>
<p id="LeC4Me">By the 1900s, homeopathy was even recognized by the US government. <a href="https://psmag.com/news/fda-homeopathic-remedy-crackdown">Royal Copeland</a>, a surgeon, New York City commissioner of health, storied US senator, and homeopath, used his medical authority to lend credibility to homeopathy and his political influence to ensure its recognition by the law. The Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act of 1938 oversees homeopathy to this day.</p>
<h3 id="wk4A2X">From “alternative medicine” to complementary medicine </h3>
<p id="Pr370I">In the world of homeopathy, there are believers, and there are skeptics. There are also passive participants who seek over-the-counter remedies as supplements, believing in these pastilles (and ointments, tinctures, tablets, creams) enough to buy them, if not necessarily to stake their health on them entirely. There are those who believe in invisible forces, in energies, in spirits; there are those who don’t, who dismiss homeopathic remedies as alcoholic sugar water. And some perspectives, like Grams’s, fluctuate over time.</p>
<p id="edW7X3">Boiron was the homeopathic brand of choice for my Southern California family in the 1990s and early 2000s. I grew up in the suburbs, my dad is a doctor, and my parents fully vaccinated me, but there was something about “natural medicine,” and homeopathy in particular, that spoke to them. Whenever I had the flu, my mom gave me a pinky-sized vial of <a href="https://www.boironusa.com/products/oscillococcinum/">Oscillococcinum</a>, sweet “flu crystals,” as we called them, that I dissolved happily under my tongue. Whenever I had a cold, she gave me something called <a href="https://www.boironusa.com/products/coldcalm-tablets/">ColdCalm</a>, which I took, but begrudged for its chalky taste and easily crumpled blister packs. </p>
<p id="hrh2oQ">I know now that the active ingredient in Oscillococcinum is Anas barbariae, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-oscillococcinum18feb18-story.html">extract of duck heart and liver</a>. (The Center for Inquiry asked consumers about their knowledge base of Anas barbariae<em> </em>as part of their aforementioned survey; 46 percent of respondents “viewed the product less favorably” once they learned about this duck stuff.) I don’t know if it worked. My symptoms would eventually abate, but I don’t know that my conditions improved any quicker with the remedy than without. I do know, however, that my parents searched beyond the confines of conventional medicine for ways to improve our health that were more “natural” than prescription drugs and standard over-the-counters, or that seemed more natural anyway — and they’re not alone.</p>
<p id="9HLSE2">As alternative treatments become immersed in mainstream consumer culture (see again: Whole Foods, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/whole-foods-timeline-from-start-to-amazon-2017-9">worth $13.7 billion</a> as of 2017), there’s been a semantics shift, away from “alternative” to “integrated.” To wit, the National Institutes of Health renamed its alternative health-focused department the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health in 2015. </p>
<p id="3IZlfk">“The name change really reflects our deep-seated interest in studying complementary and integrative health as part of conventional care, and not as an alternative to conventional care,” says NCCIH Deputy Director David Shurtleff. He uses cancer as an example: There is no known alternative cancer treatment that’s proven effective, but the research supports that alternative treatments can ease common cancer symptoms, such as <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5843960/">yoga for anxiety and depression</a> or <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2110998">mindfulness for insomnia</a>.</p>
<p id="K3Y11g">For supplemental users, homeopathy is an alternative medicine, another option in the medicine cabinet. Critics see all homeopathic use as an alternative <em>to</em> medicine. It’s a subtle, but important, distinction. To the critics’ point, consider this statistic <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2017/02/02/americans-health-care-behaviors-and-use-of-conventional-and-alternative-medicine/">from Pew Research Center</a>: One in five adults in the US uses alternative medicine instead of conventional medicine. </p>
<p id="e0BFbK">For Grams, this is the biggest risk — that people will forgo conventional, proven treatments in favor of homeopathic remedies which, she says, are nothing more than sugar pills. “You might think, ‘Oh, if that remedy doesn’t help me, I’ll use another, I’ll use another.’ And you lose time. If you have cancer, time is life.”</p>
<h3 id="yFFIIx">In the shadows of mainstream medicine’s failures</h3>
<p id="jheXuc">Doug Brown was happy in his practice as a family nurse practitioner, for a time. Eventually, however, ambivalence about modern medicine set in. “As I became more aware that so many of my chronically ill patients were not really getting better,” says Brown, 62, “that I was managing their illnesses, often by ordering lots of lab tests and adding more and more medications, I began to question what I was doing.”</p>
<p id="ogBxCf">His path to homeopathy followed a familiar script: disillusionment with conventional medicine, a sense of desperation and yearning for what Brown <a href="http://www.homeopathichealing.org/about-me.html">describes</a> as “something ‘more.’” After his 2-year-old son’s ear infection resisted two courses of antibiotics, Brown — who had spent over a decade prescribing pharmaceutical drugs to his patients — turned to homeopathy. The belladonna remedy, says Brown, cured his son’s infection. </p>
<p id="yHpUBW">“It seemed to me like a miracle,” Brown says from his office in Portland, Oregon, where he’s practiced homeopathic healing for almost 20 years. “And then when I saw it work on other people, I began to realize that homeopathy held the key to this missing link that I was intuitively searching for in all my years of doing conventional medicine.” </p>
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<img alt="The founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann, in a religious looking frame." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/V_pJN1yLeCu8oEqrp4lx6KatL-A=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19290567/Homeopathy_Inline_1_v2.jpg">
<cite>Zac Freeland/Vox; Heritage Images/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy.</figcaption>
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</div>
<p id="WixlxY">The people who turn to homeopathy are a subset of a larger wellness-focused demographic that tend to be female, young to middle age, non-smokers, with lower body mass indexes, who make healthy lifestyle decisions (diet, exercise, supplements, you get it). “People who use homeopathy have that same profile, but even more so,” says Michelle Dossett, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who has studied homeopathy usage and published on her national survey findings <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4816083/">in the American Journal of Public Health</a> in 2015.</p>
<p id="Vn4pZw">At the same time, there’s a subset of this population of homeopathy seekers that holds a low perception of mainstream medicine. Conventional medicine, they feel, is failing. </p>
<p id="uL3LdB">“I think there’s a big disconnect between what conventional medicine aspires to do and what actually happens sometimes in the consultation room,” says Dossett. “Because physicians face incredible pressures these days.” A 2017 study found that doctors in the US spend around 20 minutes with their patients, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-doctor-checkup-duration/the-doctor-will-see-you-now-but-often-not-for-long-idUSKBN1DS2Z2">reports <em>Reuters</em></a>. (Even worse: Primary care consultations last just 5 minutes for half the world’s population.) It’s not for lack of trying. Doctors’ schedules are typically stacked, and wait times are typically long, with <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171004005025/en/Physician-Patient-Relationship-Remains-Strong-Cost-Challenge-Future">the Physician Foundation’s 2017 Patient Survey Report finding</a> that only 11 percent of patients and 14 percent of primary care physicians feel “that they have all the time they need together.”</p>
<p id="1yydxq">Most attitudes toward modern medicine are positive. <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2017/02/02/americans-health-care-behaviors-and-use-of-conventional-and-alternative-medicine/">Pew Research Center found</a> in 2017 that more than two-thirds of Americans visited a health care provider in the previous year, with nearly 90 percent of that cohort feeling that they were listened to and 84 percent feeling that their provider “really cared” about their health. But the remainder, albeit a comparatively small sliver of the pie, shouldn’t be overlooked. Misdiagnoses and missed diagnoses may be one reason for their dissatisfaction: According to health care journal <em>BMJ Quality & Safety</em>, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24742777">12 million American adults</a> — around 5 percent of the US adult population — are misdiagnosed every year. </p>
<p id="nXD5yY">“We have sort of an industrial medical system that really isn’t serving patients, and isn’t serving the health care professionals who are trying to serve patients,” says Dossett, who adds that many homeopathic practitioners, on the other hand, tend to spend more time with their patients. </p>
<p id="9kgZdA">They also spend more time exploring aspects of a patient’s health that might not be immediately tied to the reason they’ve made an appointment, the “chief complaint” or “presenting problem” in medicalese. Homeopathy is decidedly more comprehensive, exhaustive even, in its tack, <a href="https://nyhomeopathy.com/sample-page/what-is-classical-homeopathy/">from the inside out, and top to bottom</a>. “Homeopathy is holistic because it treats the person as a whole, rather than focusing on a diseased part or a labeled sickness,” <a href="https://homeopathyusa.org/homeopathic-medicine.html">reads AIH’s description</a> of homeopathic medicine, adding that the practice “stimulates the person’s own healing power” — a.k.a., invisible energy within every individual that Hahnemann termed “vital force.”</p>
<p id="56242A">In homeopathy’s doctrine, mental, emotional, and social considerations are just as important as what X-rays, imaging, and lab tests can reveal, explains Brown: “What the mind expresses, the body expresses.” This is not to suggest that illnesses are psychosomatic, he adds, but more an issue of trusting patients at their word. </p>
<h3 id="PtPeaO">The trouble with homeopathic self-medicating</h3>
<p id="vIj6jP">Buying homeopathic remedies at Walmart and the like, homeopaths would like you to know, isn’t real homeopathy. <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/caec/9d435223c38a1af241e4c0b72923301a5e8b.pdf">Dossett’s research found</a> that most people in the US who use homeopathy self-prescribe OTC remedies, as my family did with Oscillococcinum and ColdCalm; only 19 percent of American homeopathic users see a homeopathic provider. </p>
<p id="VtWerw">“It’s very unlikely that the remedies at a Whole Foods dispensary [are] going to be what the patient needs,” says Brown. There are more than 4,000 remedies available today, he adds, while at any given store, there may be about 10 on the shelves (none of them “Berlin Wall”). “I’m certainly not in favor of restricting that, but I want people to understand that homeopathy isn’t just the remedies, or just taking remedies,” continues Brown. “It is a process of becoming conscious of one’s experiences.”</p>
<p id="O0KduH">Hahnemann believed homeopathy to be the only true medicine. He called the homeopath who combined his teachings and practices with conventional medicine “an apostate and a traitor,” according to Ernst. (Gold, of the American Institute of Homeopathy, dismissed Ernst, writing that “his work lacks the rigor one should expect from serious research.”) He would hate the supporting role that homeopathy’s been cast under the complementary and integrated health umbrella. </p>
<p id="W6pQml">Today’s homeopathic practitioners often train in conventional medicine as MDs (like Grams) or nurse practitioners (like Brown), and largely recommend seeing general practitioners and primary care physicians concurrently, and getting X-rays and imaging and lab tests done. “Nothing can be a substitute for what modern medicine can offer in critical, life-threatening situations,” says Brown. “That’s not to say that homeopathy doesn’t have a role.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="v2PXf6"><q>“It is a process of becoming conscious of one’s experiences.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="F4dq9w">When asked whether its line of homeopathic remedies should be considered supplements to conventional medicine, or substitutes, Boiron’s CEO Boudazin wrote to Vox: “Homeopathic medicines are one of the safest choices for self-treatment of everyday conditions like cold and flu symptoms, allergies, and muscle pain. They are often a first line of treatment that can offer relief with a low risk of side effects when used as directed. There are no known interactions with conventional medications or herbal supplements, allowing users to complement other treatments as well.”</p>
<h3 id="CFGEjN">Can “harmless” homeopathy become harmful to society?</h3>
<p id="EHj09i">There’s not going to be a meeting of the minds on this one. Devotees say that homeopathy works. Critics say that any perceived benefit is <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2015/10/placebo-effect-is-getting-stronger.html">the work of the placebo effect</a>. Devotees counter with success stories among <a href="https://www.britishhomeopathic.org/charity/how-we-can-help/articles/animals/all-creatures-great-and-small/">animals</a> and <a href="https://www.homeopathycenter.org/homeopathy-today/choosing-homeopathy-children">kids</a>. (Ernst reported that Prince Charles wrote of his homeopathically treated animals: “[Homeopathy] is not the quackery they claim it to be. Or if it is, then I have some very clever cows in my shed!”) Critics counter that counter, asking, well, what about <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3230083/">placebo by proxy</a>?</p>
<p id="0uhQ3D">“So much of conventional medicine actually could be legitimately criticized as exercises in the nocebo effect,” Brown says. The <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-is-the-nocebo-effect-5451823/">nocebo effect</a> is the phenomenon where a diagnosis, pill, or treatment provokes negative symptoms associated with that diagnosis, pill, or treatment in the patient. Tell someone they have three months to live, and kill their hope, and the prophecy may very well come true. Brown adds, “Our conscious attitude and our conscious expectations do have a profound effect on our patients.”</p>
<p id="ywYKJP">The old evidence versus feelings debate can be a dangerous one, though, particularly when taken to its extreme. (<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/16/13426448/trump-psychology-fact-checking-lies">See: Trump supporters</a>.) And to that end, with <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html">more than 1,090 people</a> in the US contracting measles this year alone, with the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/9/11/20850836/meales-outbreak-2019-cdc">US at risk to lose its measles-free status</a> after the measles vaccine <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/1/29/18201982/measles-outbreak-virus-vaccine-symptoms">eliminated measles just 19 years ago</a>, and with the number of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/percentage-of-young-us-children-who-dont-receive-any-vaccines-has-quadrupled-since-2001/2018/10/11/4a9cca98-cd0d-11e8-920f-dd52e1ae4570_story.html">unvaccinated kids in the US quadrupling</a> since 2001, we need to talk about anti-vaxxers.</p>
<p id="xozZxW">Vaccinations might appear to follow the same “like cures like” logic as homeopathic remedies, and they do, to a degree; vaccinations, however, contain measurable quantities of their active ingredients. And to be clear, anti-vaxxer ideology is by no means intrinsically part of homeopathic philosophy, or prescribed by homeopathy dogma. “You will find some homeopathic providers who will recommend modifications to [the] vaccination schedule, but it’s not something that becomes part and parcel of homeopathy,” says Dossett. </p>
<p id="bLCF56">Still, there is some overlap between individuals who eschew conventional treatments in favor of homeopathic remedies and individuals who forgo vaccinations in favor of homeopathic substitutes.</p>
<p id="awVP0V">“Immunizations are a controversial subject,” reads a <a href="https://www.homeopathycenter.org/homeopathy-today/immunization-advice-experts">2004 blog post </a>from the National Center for Homeopathy, which appears at the top of the site’s search results for ‘vaccinations’ and ‘immunizations.’ “Before making decisions about them, it’s best to arm yourself with information from many different sources.” Four of the five homeopaths interviewed in the post appear to condone the “choice” to not vaccinate, though not necessarily the decision itself. </p>
<p id="wzIKiA">Concern about this potential overlap is great enough that NCCIH includes a warning box on <a href="https://nccih.nih.gov/health/homeopathy">its homeopathy info page</a> titled, “No Evidence To Support Homeopathic Immunizations.”</p>
<h3 id="Ojibaj">What homeopathy can teach conventional medicine</h3>
<p id="sFr5us">There is a swath of middle ground in the great believers/skeptics debate swirling around homeopathy, and it’s this: empathy. </p>
<p id="JVHeBH">“There’s so much scorn, and so much ridicule, that it creates a tremendous block,” reflects Brown of negative attitudes toward homeopathy. “And to me that is very, very sad.” He’s sick of seeing homeopathy labeled as “pseudoscience,” or “quackery,” or a “scam.” His lived experience, and his homeopathic practice, tells him otherwise. </p>
<p id="bWtVwt">“What is it about homeopathy that patients value?” asks a <a href="http://primarycare.imedpub.com/what-is-it-about-homeopathy-that-patients-value-and-what-can-family-medicine-learn-from-this.php?aid=81">German study</a> published in 2013 in <em>Quality in Primary Care</em>. “And what can family medicine learn from this?” The study singles out empathy as key to establishing positive patient-physician relationships, and to achieving positive patient outcomes. Homeopaths listen to their patients. They believe their patients. Individualization is the most basic driver of their medical philosophy.</p>
<p id="KiW7sj">Conventional medicine, this argument contends, could stand to take a page from homeopathy’s book, and trust more in what their patients feel to be true. Doing so could be the key to bridging the gap between conventional and alternative, for medicine that is truly holistic and integrated.</p>
<p id="aw5ZdQ">Grams left homeopathy behind her, but she still believes in one of its tenets: the power of self-healing. “Our self-healing powers are enormous,” she says. “The patients I treated in my [homeopathy practice], many of them got better. It was not due to homeopathy, but because of their self-healing. And I think we can have more awareness for that power, that it’s really in us.” </p>
<p id="hV1utH"><em>This story has been updated. </em></p>
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<p id="o7fIwe"><a href="https://twitter.com/stephiegrob"><em>Stephie Grob Plante</em></a><em> is an Austin-based features writer and essayist. Her work has appeared at The Goods by Vox, The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, The Verge, Curbed, Southwest: The Magazine, Playboy, and elsewhere.</em></p>
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https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/10/16/20910346/homeopathic-homeopathy-holistic-alternative-medicine-oscillococcinum-historyStephie Grob Plante2019-10-10T07:00:00-04:002019-10-10T07:00:00-04:00Most teachers spend their own money on their classrooms. 7 educators explain.
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/uy6Qqmw1MuUR1chOVDkur1AZ9Q4=/625x0:4376x2813/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65439818/Teacher_supplies.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Teachers buy everything from pencils to printer ink for their own classrooms. | Sarah Lawrence for Vox</figcaption>
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<p>7 teachers tell us what they buy for their classrooms, and how. </p> <p id="6tE9JZ">When you walk into a public school classroom, what do you see? Posters on the walls, baskets of scissors and glue sticks and pencils, dry erase markers, copied and stapled worksheet packets, shelves and bins of books, decorations commemorating the seasons, sometimes bean bag chairs or floor pillows, definitely some kind of big rug for the younger grades. There’s often furniture and a mini-fridge, there are tissues and Clorox wipes and sometimes a class pet. </p>
<p id="3A07pd">Schools don’t typically supply this stuff. Teachers do. <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2018097">94 percent</a> of US public school teachers spend their own money on school supplies. The amount per year varies; what districts and schools provide (or, better put, don’t provide) varies. </p>
<p id="oiiLYH">So too do teacher salaries. The <a href="http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/2019%20Rankings%20and%20Estimates%20Report.pdf">National Education Association highlighted</a> a $40,000 discrepancy between what the average teacher makes in New York versus what one makes in Mississippi, where the average salary in 2018 was $44,926; New York’s top salary ranking drops to 17th, however, when <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/03/16/592221378/the-fight-over-teacher-salaries-a-look-at-the-numbers">adjusted for cost of living</a>. Put simply, teachers are underpaid, and many are leaving education at an alarming pace. The <a href="http://www.nea.org/tools/17054.htm">NEA found</a> that one-fifth of new teachers leave education within three years, and in urban areas, the percentage of teachers who leave within five years is close to half. <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/01/about-one-in-six-u-s-teachers-work-second-jobs-and-not-just-in-the-summer/">According to the Pew Research Center</a>, one in six teachers work second jobs.</p>
<p id="rXPGwm">The fact that teachers buy stuff for their classrooms is another way to say that we fail to provide teachers with the resources they need to teach our kids. That lack of resources feels to some educators like insult to injury, not just that they need to spend their own money to do their job, but that their low pay makes it hard to even afford to do their job. </p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="p8PRux"><q> 9<span class="ql-cursor"></span>4 percent of US public school teachers spend their own money on school supplies. </q></aside></div>
<p id="7ujqjH">School supplies are just the start of it — let’s talk about further education and professional development, about college application fees, about extra sandwiches, about books, about winter clothes, about eyeglasses, about curriculum (yes: curriculum — many districts forgo textbooks, or supply decades-old textbooks, or provide only the most bare-bones of worksheets, leaving it on teachers to cobble together their own instructional materials). </p>
<p id="b1CaGB">We talked to seven teachers across the country to learn what they spend their own money on, how they try to save, how they strategize any school allotments, and more. We learned that some Title 1 schools — where at least 40 percent of students come from low-income families — receive some kind of classroom stipend, but that’s not a universal reality, and they typically can’t count on much of a PTA presence either. </p>
<p id="20kTdn">We learned that many teachers fundraise for supplies through sites like <a href="https://www.donorschoose.org/">DonorsChoose</a>, except if they’re in a <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/3/29/18286095/donors-choose-crowdfunding-ban-school-districts">district that bans crowdfunding</a>. We learned that educational materials purchased at online marketplace <a href="https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/">Teachers Pay Teachers</a> fill in the many gaps created, in part, by insufficient district curriculum, though most of the teachers we talked to wish that their districts would just give them something to work with. These interviews reveal a bigger picture of school funding inequity, undervalued educators (<a href="https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=28">three-quarters of whom are women</a>), and a systemic economic deprioritization of education. </p>
<p id="qWGuhE"><em>These conversations have been edited for length and clarity.</em></p>
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<h3 id="jkjtdG">The teacher who striked last year</h3>
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<cite>Hannah Perkins</cite>
<figcaption>3rd grade teacher Hannah Perkins (second from left) buys school supplies for all her students.</figcaption>
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<p id="GSr43o"><strong>Name: </strong>Hannah Perkins</p>
<p id="9Fjk8N"><strong>City: </strong>Phoenix, Arizona</p>
<p id="gReKlC"><strong>Years teaching: </strong>6</p>
<p id="wQZLeI"><strong>School type: </strong>Public, Title 1</p>
<p id="UpXi3e"><strong>Grade and subject: </strong>3rd grade, all subjects</p>
<p id="E01ZdP"><strong>Students this year: </strong>32</p>
<p id="oE4Kw9"><strong>Amount school allots each classroom: </strong>$200</p>
<p id="eSsITY"><strong>Amount spent out of pocket at the beginning of each school year: </strong>$300</p>
<p id="kvR0JD"><strong>Amount spent out of pocket replenishing supplies throughout the year: </strong>$200</p>
<p id="TeIYcf"><strong>What the money’s spent on: </strong>School supplies for 32 kids, organizational tools</p>
<p id="WLNvL5">When the kids came in for Meet the Teacher day, I already had markers, pencils, crayons, colored pencils, and whiteboard markers. I had folders and binders already. Part of that is being at a Title 1 school. A lot of those things, parents either can’t afford, or they have so many kids to buy for. I try to lessen the load of what I expect them to give me.</p>
<p id="DoET22">The big misconception [with the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/4/25/17276284/arizona-teacher-strike-tax-cut-funding-data">Arizona teachers’ strike</a> last year] was that teachers were complaining that they weren’t getting paid enough. A pay raise was one of the five “demands,” as they called them, but it wasn’t even the first demand. </p>
<p id="OBpgPZ">In Arizona, we’re always being told how we’re last in education, or we’re last in this or that, but our schools aren’t equitable in the kinds of resources we’re given. The biggest concern [of the strike] was the resources, and how schools are not given enough equitable resources to be successful. At my old school, we had a curriculum from the ’80s for social studies. It’s really hard to teach to the standard of what the state wants when they don’t provide you with the curriculum that will support that. That’s why you have schools who are consistently A-plus, and then you have schools who aren’t. Part of that is, well, okay, what do they have available to them to use?</p>
<p id="a50nqY">My district now has updated curriculum, but the standards are always changing. The level of rigor is always changing. Oftentimes, that curriculum doesn’t meet the needs of what the kids have to do. We end up having to make our own assessments, or we supplement stories, or supplement activities. Sometimes you have to spend more time, more hours trying to make sure that it’s rigorous enough.</p>
<p id="N0Eiln">Have you heard of Teachers Pay Teachers? It’s teacher-made resources for teachers. You can find stuff that’s free, and some teachers will sell [curriculum] units. There are times where I’ve purchased different units so that I didn’t have to spend hours and hours trying to make up my own thing. I guess that sounds kind of selfish. I took someone else’s really hard work, and I’m using it. But sometimes it’s the best of what I can do because I don’t have all the hours in the world. And honestly, I have a life outside of school, and I don’t think that’s fair that I have to always go so far above and beyond, and miss out on my own personal life.</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="Q4Ievm"><q>“It goes like the saying: We won a battle, but we didn’t win the war.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="3dI6Dg">When the strike ended, my grandma said the same thing [as the headlines]: “You guys won.” I don’t want to say we didn’t. I think we set a precedent for the people in office to really take a look at us and say, “Okay, they’re serious.” Even with the raise, they made it sound like, “Oh, teachers are getting the whole 20 percent in the upcoming year.” And it isn’t like that. </p>
<p id="Zp25zq">Most districts gave their teachers a 5 percent increase of a raise, and then the following year it will be a little bit more, and a little bit more. [The <a href="http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/2019%20Rankings%20and%20Estimates%20Report.pdf">average salary</a> for Arizona public school teachers in 2017-2018 was $48,723; in terms of teacher salaries, the state ranked 45th.] There is more money to be given. And also, that money is given to <em>districts</em>. It’s the district’s decision to do with the money what it wants. Some districts get that money and can put it in other places.</p>
<p id="6vGdsq">It goes like the saying: We won a battle, but we didn’t win the war. It was a tiny, tiny part to really open eyes. I did a lot of the, you know, standing outside the schools, and we had people yelling at us, “Go back to work,” and, “Oh, stop complaining,” and this and that. But at the end of the day, it was some kind of change. It wasn’t necessarily the change we need at the moment, but it was something, and that’s worth celebrating.</p>
<h3 id="FKJkuB">The teacher who bought her students clothes</h3>
<p id="zNjml5"><strong>Name: </strong>Ryann Dvorak</p>
<p id="3bejTx"><strong>City: </strong>Austin, Texas</p>
<p id="5di9nN"><strong>Years teaching: </strong>7</p>
<p id="0c0XFx"><strong>School type: </strong>Public</p>
<p id="tRAcLy"><strong>Grade and subject: </strong>3rd grade, math and science</p>
<p id="78hicF"><strong>Students this year: </strong>40</p>
<p id="z6csTe"><strong>Amount allotted by PTA: </strong>$200</p>
<p id="VJGJB1"><strong>Amount spent out of pocket at the beginning of this school year: </strong>$100 to $150</p>
<p id="b8FFnZ"><strong>Amount spent out of pocket when starting a new grade or subject in previous years: </strong>$300</p>
<p id="Y12aLF"><strong>What the money’s spent on: </strong>Instructional materials, classroom library, activities, printer ink</p>
<p id="RiqNPN">I’m pretty frugal. When teachers retire, you know, you’ve just got to be fast. What’s in the hallway, and who’s giving away what — you have to get out there. If you’re not outgoing, then you probably won’t be able to find things. I’ll look on Facebook Marketplace, I’ll look on Craigslist, I’ll barter and plead my case, “Please donate.” </p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="k1BMlg"><q>“I’ll look on Facebook Marketplace, I’ll look on Craigslist, I’ll barter and plead my case, ‘Please donate.’”</q></aside></div>
<p id="Xlgpsc">Have you heard of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/us/donors-choose-donation-ripple.html">DonorsChoose</a>? In my teaching career, I’ve always worked at Title 1 schools, except for the school I’m at now. Title 1 schools, usually they have a lot — well, it’s weird. They usually have a lot more supplies, like notebooks, papers, pencils, they’ll have that for you. But they won’t necessarily give you money at the beginning of the year to help you set up your classroom. At my last school [in Arizona], I got $40. And families don’t really give you much money through PTA fundraising. You don’t have a whole lot of money to play with, and so you don’t really feel supported, or like you can ask for money from the school somehow.</p>
<p id="mt9QmZ">[Back in Arizona] I used DonorsChoose to get literacy kits, and a caterpillar/butterfly garden growing kit, which is fun for first graders. It’s amazing because sometimes you do get strangers that, out of their heart, give you money. But a lot of times, if there’s a deadline coming and you don’t [meet the fundraising goal], then the money will be returned to donors, and then your project won’t be funded. So you feel pressured to share it on your Facebook page, or reach out to family or friends, and tell the staff about it, just to let them know, “Hey, if anyone wants to donate, that’d be great.” A lot of times it is people from my Facebook that end up giving me money. It’s really nice, DonorsChoose does match. But you need to get those donations first.</p>
<p id="gefO2S">My very, very, very first year was my most expensive year for a lot of reasons. One, because I had to build everything. And also, it’s your first year, you’re excited, you want to get absolutely everything. You don’t really know what you need, so you overbuy. Back then I was a little bit stubborn and didn’t want to spend the money on Teachers Pay Teachers. So I would create everything and spend extra money for crafty stuff, where I should have just bought it all on Teachers Pay Teachers. </p>
<p id="M85b5m">At that school [in upstate New York] I taught English to Somalian refugees. They had just arrived, and didn’t really have a lot of clothes. Some of my kids would come to school in cleats, they would wear Halloween costumes throughout the year. They needed the clothes. So I would go to Salvation Army, and I’d go on Wednesdays because it was Red Tag Sale Wednesdays, and I’d purchase some clothes for the kids. It’s iffy, because you don’t want to offend parents; but at the same time, they’re wearing the same thing every single day. And I felt I had a duty to help them out a little bit. You get to love them, and you care about them. </p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="L5KgaV"><q>“My very, very, very first year was my most expensive year for a lot of reasons.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="V5j28v">I spent probably over $1,000 dollars that year. They also didn’t have any experience with snow, and Syracuse is really cold. So I did buy some sleds for them to go sledding for the first time ever. I had to get mittens and gloves and scarves for some of them — they didn’t have appropriate clothing to survive in the blizzards of Syracuse. They also had never experienced a lot of fruits before. One time we had a unit on nutrition, so I bought kiwi and a bunch of other types of fruits to try out. And it was worth it, you know, just to see them like, “Wow, this is cool.” </p>
<p id="N21hdZ">I’m most surprised now about how much I have to spend on Clorox, and that’s the thing that I’m most annoyed about too. I wasn’t expecting to spend that much money on cleaning my classroom all the time. I wish there was an endless supply, but it’s on me to do that. Because it directly affects everybody. If they’re sick, they’re not in school. If I’m sick, then I have to get a sub, you know? </p>
<p id="l9w8BF">I have nine sick days and personal days that I can use throughout the year. If you use those days up, you can get a sub — but you’re not going to get paid that day.</p>
<h3 id="zrVE6o">The teacher-librarian going back to school</h3>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/whdQr2to2v65ZdcUUSppPJxSEsg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19273391/Screen_Shot_2019_10_09_at_2.38.53_PM.png">
<cite>Scott Martin-Rowe</cite>
<figcaption>Librarian and teacher Scott Martin-Rowe with his books.</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="HoOMjT"><strong>Name: </strong>Scott Martin-Rowe</p>
<p id="O7omkR"><strong>City: </strong>Los Angeles</p>
<p id="mc4FC8"><strong>Years teaching: </strong>15</p>
<p id="U91SIK"><strong>School type: </strong>Public, Title 1</p>
<p id="abu70f"><strong>Grade and subject:</strong> 9th-12th grade, librarian (previously: 9th-12th grade, English)</p>
<p id="sqkd7N"><strong>Students This Year: </strong>450</p>
<p id="8xrv2p"><strong>Amount spent out of pocket at the beginning of this school year: </strong>$150</p>
<p id="ok2wuM"><strong>What the money’s spent on:</strong> A lot of extra lined paper, pens, pencils, organizer charts, books</p>
<p id="TyRJkn">What I spent money on [as an English teacher] more than anything is books for my own classroom library. A lot of those I’ll buy through Amazon, and try and find used. I use DonorsChoose a lot. I’ve probably gotten about $8,000 worth of stuff through DonorsChoose in the last five or six years.</p>
<p id="cI58ac">Sometimes DonorsChoose will take a while to get funded. So if I have a kid who I’m having a hard time getting them reading, but then there’s a certain book series that they get into, and I only have the first book of the series, and there’s three more books, I might just purchase the next three books myself so that we don’t lose that momentum with them reading. It’s hard to get things purchased through the school because there’s a whole system you have to go through. Sometimes it’s easier to whip out my credit card, and order it, and just, okay, here it is.</p>
<p id="1TWOIW">When I first started teaching, I put together this big packet of poems for this poetry unit, and I took it down to the copy room. And I said, “Hey, I need 120 copies of this.” And it was like, 40 pages. And [the administrative assistant] said, “There’s no way. I can’t make all those copies. It’s not going to happen.” So I was like, all right, I’m going to Kinko’s. And off I went. That was something where I realized, oh, I guess if I’m going to do this, I better be prepared to buy it. I learned later that the trick is just to take them in a few poems at a time, and then you get them all and just staple them yourself.</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="4RtdNG"><q>“Sometimes it’s easier to whip out my credit card, and order it, and just, okay, here it is.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="gGpPKd">I just became the school librarian this year, and the teacher-librarian position means that I have to go get a teacher-librarian credential. There’s only four programs in the area that they recommended. One was Cal State Long Beach, which is where I’m going to go, but that’s $3,000 a semester. Or you could do USC, which is $10,000 a year. So I have this quote-unquote — I wouldn’t call it a promotion, it’s the same salary and same schedule — but, for this new position, I now have to go get another credential in order to do that. It’d be nice if the district paid for that, being that I have to have it, and they hired me as the new librarian. But yeah. It is what it is. </p>
<p id="3JiQLK">It’s kind of indirectly paid for because by taking the classes I accrue what are called salary points, and those will raise my salary. But at the outset, I’m paying for school. I have to wait until I get a certain number [of salary points], and only then can I start collecting on it.</p>
<p id="O5N1lI">For the most part, our students are able to apply to college for free because of the waivers through College Board, or through the UC system and the Cal State system. But I have floated students money before and said, “I’ll pay for your application fee.” Especially students who just miss that cut-off number. Their family makes, you know, $500 more than the cutoff. “Just pay me back down the road or something.” Stuff like that. I know some other teachers have done that as well.</p>
<h3 id="QHRUGi">The teacher who picks up side gigs</h3>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A blonde woman in a school photo" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/K_CCCRTPSgprQ0jJf21cofeSPho=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19272725/unnamed_2.jpg">
<cite>Lifetouch</cite>
<figcaption>6th grade math teacher Stephanie Ledak buys “tons” of post-its and other supplies for her classroom.</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="QrnKrs"><strong>Name: </strong>Stephanie Ledak</p>
<p id="yZY9u4"><strong>City: </strong>Austin, Texas</p>
<p id="css6zZ"><strong>Years teaching: </strong>6</p>
<p id="f5NET6"><strong>School type: </strong>Public</p>
<p id="0EyOcI"><strong>Grade and subject: </strong>6th grade, math</p>
<p id="RG0heJ"><strong>Students this year: </strong>150</p>
<p id="I3EFVt"><strong>Amount spent out of pocket at the beginning of the school year: </strong>$300 to $350</p>
<p id="2D9Rna"><strong>Amount spent out of pocket replenishing supplies throughout the year: </strong>$200</p>
<p id="EJwOY9"><strong>What the money’s spent on: </strong>Tons of Expo dry erase markers, tons of Post-Its, curriculum</p>
<p id="yysAAL">[My school provides] plain white copy paper, some pencils. We all get one stapler and one pencil sharpener, and I think they hand you four Expos, some sticky notes — but not nearly enough of what you need. It’s like, “We’ll give you enough as if <em>you</em> were going back to school,” I feel like, but not as if you were teaching kids. </p>
<p id="h0ytPq">I used to work at a Title 1 school, and I would always have snacks with me. If they were hungry, they could come to my room and grab something, no questions asked. Sometimes I’d buy some football players food before their games because they hadn’t eaten since lunch. I’d bring stuff from home, make an extra sandwich when I’d make myself a sandwich. A kid’s going to need it, and I never want a kid to be in a position where they’re hungry and don’t have food. </p>
<p id="jvCeRX">At my old district, we weren’t allowed to [fundraise through DonorsChoose]. They were like, “No, you can’t do that. It’s not allowed.” So I’ve never been able to even attempt it because I was told not to do it. I honestly don’t know why. Like, why would the district not allow you to fundraise for your classroom?</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="WTjZaV"><q>“Like, why would the district not allow you to fundraise for your classroom?”</q></aside></div>
<p id="ZdrcQt">The biggest shock for me was buying my curriculum, and my activities for my kids. It’s $2 here and there, here and there. But by the end of the school year, I probably spend $200-plus just buying curriculum, where I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I need these activities, I don’t have time to make them, I’m just going to go buy them.” And we don’t have textbooks, actually. So I’m pulling from any place I can get.</p>
<p id="r8jH2N">The district tries to give you resources. But they’re just worksheets. We all know that it’s the bare minimum. If you’re doing what’s best for kids, you’re probably not using all of their stuff. I honestly don’t know any teacher who uses any curriculum that their school gives them. None of it is good. It’s not fun, it’s not engaging, it’s not strong enough, it’s not all of these things that we’re supposed to do.</p>
<p id="p3h7vz">I really wish the district would just provide good curriculum. I know that sounds crazy, but having to make up every activity I do every single day [and having to build my own textbook] is a lot of work. It’s hours and money. </p>
<p id="vBXX8C">Honestly, Teachers Pay Teachers is the best source. It’s a lot of my personal money that goes into buying curriculum and activities to the point that I’ve asked for gift cards for Christmas. I’m like, “Hey, you want to buy me a gift card for Teachers Pay Teachers?” And my mom’s like, “Wait, what?” I’m like, “No, for real. That’s where my money goes. That would save me so much money.”</p>
<p id="qBYPbM">I pick up any side job I possibly can. If they’re like, “Oh, we need somebody to do this, we’ll pay you,” I’m like, “I’ll do it.” I don’t care how many hours I’m at school. I’m probably one of the few teachers I know who doesn’t have a second job. I kind of refuse to have one. I know teachers get underpaid, I just don’t want to spend all my time doing other jobs. So I try to tutor kids at school, be on different committees that are paid, and get money in that way. </p>
<p id="k3biiz">But that’s very rare. Most of my teacher friends have a second job on top of their main job. Sometimes seasonal work, but a lot of people work at Best Buy, they’re referees for something, like volleyball. I know some teachers who are Uber drivers and Lyft drivers. A lot of teachers do Instacart because they can just put their headphones in, go shop, and be done with it.</p>
<h3 id="KLIrzp">The teacher with three jobs</h3>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TPKk70gMiyYSmDvZMDJEN7fenME=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19252643/image1_2.jpeg">
<cite>Aislinn Call</cite>
<figcaption>Vocal music teacher Aislinn Call in her classroom. </figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="2jZl4M"><strong>Name: </strong>Aislinn Call</p>
<p id="BQfhiA"><strong>City: </strong>Fort Mill, South Carolina</p>
<p id="9rkA48"><strong>Years Teaching: </strong>20</p>
<p id="6XTE4e"><strong>School Type: </strong>Public</p>
<p id="rtgmoK"><strong>Grade and subject: </strong>6th-8th grade, vocal music</p>
<p id="r5dte6"><strong>Students This Year:</strong> 180</p>
<p id="yIaXxv"><strong>Yearly stipend allotted by the district: </strong>$275</p>
<p id="jN50NA"><strong>Amount spent out of pocket at previous schools: </strong>Upward of $500</p>
<p id="lpuGEQ">I have to say, out of pocket, my district now doesn’t really expect me to spend a whole lot. I have a fund, and my big expenses like T-shirts for my honors group or field trips, things like that, are paid for by the parents. I probably go through $500 [on sheet music] a year, I’d say, and that’s covered by my district. I just put in the school credit card when it comes time to order. </p>
<p id="mkHLdU">I’ve been in other districts when I taught in New York, that are completely different. I had no budget. Everything was on my own. In New York I probably spent $500 a year on my own. The burden was very much on the teacher, and the school district just didn’t have the money for it. If you wanted any kind of program, then you had to fund it yourself. So the way I’m set up right now is really good. </p>
<p id="cwYMg5">But here I have a very well-to-do community. Our demographic is about as close to private school as you can get without paying for it, but it’s traditional public. I have super involved parents that are always interested in, “What can we help with, what can we do, you name it, it’s done.” The region I’m in is extremely fast-developing. We’re building a new high school, elementary school, or middle school every year. We have Duke Energy nuclear plants very close by, which supports the schools tremendously through their tax dollars. Where if you drive maybe half an hour, 45 minutes down the road, you’re going to find much less fortunate, much more rural districts where they don’t have the resources that we do.</p>
<p id="HUTqPS">Parents move here for the schools. We’re consistently the No. 1 or No. 2 district in the whole state in terms of test scores and rankings and all that stuff. I think that the district definitely feels pressure from the community to live up to that. Like, “We’re going to move here for this school, and so we expect this, this, and this.” I think parents would be horrified to find out if teachers had to pay for their own supplies, or their own music, or anything. </p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="EL9qji"><q>“The burden was very much on the teacher, and the school district just didn’t have the money for it.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="CCLEEO">I do [work three jobs], because I love teaching. I’ve taught for 20 years, but it does not pay the bills. I’m a single mom: teacher by day, cocktail waitress on the weekends, and then I got my real estate license over the summer, so I’ve been selling houses as well. I work probably between 75 and 80 hours a week, I’d say. Although, I did just put in my two weeks notice at the bar, because it’s been running me ragged. Thursdays I was working at the bar until 1, 2 in the morning, and then getting up at 6 for school. It was rough. </p>
<p id="S8aA66">I’ve thought about [leaving teaching]. If real estate takes off, and I end up making as much as teaching or more, then I would switch over, simply because I would love to just be able to do one job, be good at that job, and give it all my energy. It’s hard to be spread so thin, you know? I always laughed at the bar when people were like, “Well, what’s a fun thing to go and do, what’s good for nightlife?” I don’t know. I don’t go anywhere. I don’t do anything. At night I’m either here or I’m sleeping. </p>
<p id="CkelFZ">Teachers still don’t make what they should make, being expected to have a master’s-level professional degree. In New York, it’s a necessity. You have to have a master’s degree in order to have a professional certificate in teaching. Down here in the South, it’s not mandatory, but it comes with more pay if you do. </p>
<p id="VJe4N9">I mean, I love teaching. I’m glad that I got into it. It’s been really good to me. I feel like I’ve changed a lot of lives, and they’ve changed mine, and that’s a good thing. </p>
<h3 id="VyOGVh">The teacher invested in buying her kids books</h3>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Xax-9LnVQSgJlcjZ6vNYd8wifgc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19256000/Emily.png">
<cite>Emily Erwin-McGuire</cite>
<figcaption>2nd Grade teacher Emily Erwin-McGuire in her classroom with her library. </figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="M5w1Sh"><strong>Name:</strong> Emily Erwin-McGuire</p>
<p id="ltUIZ9"><strong>City: </strong>Bronx, New York</p>
<p id="fkm6Zi"><strong>Years Teaching: </strong>5</p>
<p id="u9HdMy"><strong>School Type: </strong>Public charter, Title 1</p>
<p id="sB8PGq"><strong>Grade and subject: </strong>2nd grade, leads English and language arts</p>
<p id="wKAu7D"><strong>Students this year: </strong>26</p>
<p id="LtZ4yh"><strong>Amount spent during first year teaching:</strong> $500 or $600</p>
<p id="BTxhTr"><strong>Amount New York City reimburses each classroom through </strong><a href="https://www.uft.org/your-union/uft-programs/teachers-choice"><strong>Teacher’s Choice</strong></a><strong>: </strong>$250</p>
<p id="JG3Y2L">The $250 [the city gives] is not enough to get a classroom up and running. Society should value teachers more, and give teachers more of what they need. Every class, every student should have a beautiful classroom. It shouldn’t just be the schools that have money, or the teachers that choose to spend their own money, which they do not have a lot of. </p>
<p id="1uYm6Q">Yeah, families expect [teachers to be provided with supplies and resources]. But the way that I’m feeling is that they should be able to expect that. And it’s not the school’s fault. It’s not the family’s fault, and it’s not the teacher’s fault. It’s that, as much money as we charge in taxes, we don’t put that tax money toward our schools.</p>
<p id="e9u8di">In many schools, and especially in more affluent schools, the expectations are that the children are individually using their items. For us the expectation is, school supplies help our school not spend as much money, and we’ll give items to the places that we need to give it. But this is not Johnny’s pencil. This is not Johnny’s notebook. This is the school’s notebook.</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="qKv0dX"><q>“This is not Johnny’s pencil. This is not Johnny’s notebook. This is the school’s notebook.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="1S4Jqu">Where I work, I would not be comfortable asking for donations of anything from parents, both logistically — many of our parents don’t speak English — but also ethically, working in a community with such high poverty. I don’t think that it’s right to ask for parents to donate anything to anyone else’s children, even if it is to their child’s classroom. It’s not a good look. </p>
<p id="O5Jmou">As a teacher, you learn to be a hoarder, and you learn to stop. If you drive a car in the suburbs, and you see something on the side of the road, you stop the car. </p>
<p id="XT3obt">Because we are a Title 1 school, we can go to <a href="https://projectcicero.org/">Project Cicero</a>, which is this nonprofit that provides high quality literature to Title 1 schools. You go to this giant hotel ballroom in Midtown [Manhattan], and you can bring two suitcases. You and 200 other educators go in this room for 45 minutes. There are thousands and thousands of educators that converge upon this place across a whole weekend, and just grab books. That’s a place where you have to do some really polite elbowing, like, “No, I want that book. I had it first.” It’s a little Black Friday. </p>
<p id="OrmcMB">I spend the most on my classroom library. For example, this one Amazon order, I got the entire <em>Artemis Fowl</em> series at like $9 a book. I probably spent $90 on books this one day where I was like, “Well, we need these books for our library. My children need to read these.” Which is overkill, and I really can’t afford it. But it’s hard to say no when it’s something so wonderful. You can feel as frustrated as you want about having to buy $85 worth of table caddies. But I feel really joyous when I can give them something like a really great class library. </p>
<p id="ajXZvw">And the thing is, I’m proud in some ways of how much money I have spent on my books. If I can give that to kids, I’ll spend that money. I’ll eat rice another day, if I can get a really wonderful book that this kid will really, really love in their hands.</p>
<h3 id="9cKXzW">The teacher who bought portable fireplaces, migraine patches, and one pair of eyeglasses</h3>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/aZ7hGwa9l4nwx1j6Bs8rn99qhd0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19252730/IMG_20190807_174120023_BURST000_COVER_TOP.jpg">
<cite>Deanna O’Brien</cite>
<figcaption>Reading and writing teacher Deanna O’Brien at a fundraiser.</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="IhV6xi"><strong>Name: </strong>Deanna O’Brien</p>
<p id="SV9ZQV"><strong>City: </strong>Chicago</p>
<p id="7DzKj3"><strong>Years teaching: </strong>25</p>
<p id="MHu6QK"><strong>School type: </strong>Public</p>
<p id="5JyWBL"><strong>Grade and subject: </strong>8th grade, reading and writing</p>
<p id="1lP4oe"><strong>Students this year: </strong>100</p>
<p id="g7ZwES"><strong>Amount allotted by the school: </strong>$250</p>
<p id="Vo16YD"><strong>Amount spent out of pocket at the beginning of the school year: </strong>$400 to $500</p>
<p id="stqCcU"><strong>What the money’s spent on:</strong> Room decor, supply section for kids who don’t have supplies</p>
<p id="LfC2p0">I like to decorate my room to make it more aesthetically pleasing and comfortable. So I buy lamps, I buy bouncy chairs, I buy a rug every year. I buy name plates to put on the desks and lockers. One year I bought this couch for the back of my room, with the chairs, and the rug. It had to have been almost close to $700 that year. </p>
<p id="Nyo83M">A lot of times things get ruined. The chairs get broken quite a bit. I try to explain to my students, it’s like setting up a whole new classroom every year. Someone had gum on my rug last year. I was hoping to save that rug, but then the gum was on it, so I couldn’t save it. Then you have to buy a whole new rug, and that costs 30 to 40 bucks just for the rug. </p>
<p id="OD5wfz">I even bought portable fireplaces last year. Oh my gosh, those portable fireplaces. It was always freezing in my room, and they couldn’t adjust the temperature well enough. So I bought two of those to have in different corners so the kids weren’t freezing. And you can’t write off those things, because those are personal use. Not for my personal use, but for the students’. I couldn’t write that off as a school supply. </p>
<p id="4UXeyr">The school doesn’t really provide any supplies. Maybe some copy paper at the beginning of the year, but last year I had to buy my own. They ordered some, but it didn’t come in, and I needed it because I create my own curriculum. I don’t have a textbook per se. I make it all up, I create my own units, so I have to make a lot of copies. I had to buy electric staplers, and my own electric pencil sharpeners, and things like that. They used to supply me with my ink. This year, no.</p>
<p id="Oj83RF">Last year, they said they would hook us up to the copy machine in the copy room, which was a very old copy machine and never worked. You couldn’t rely on that. People started buying their own printer/copiers. You do what you’ve got to do. I was fortunate to get a computer three years ago, but most teachers don’t even have their own computer. Luckily, the principal at the time got me one. She was my student-teacher a long time ago, so maybe that had something to do with it. I don’t know. I got lucky.</p>
<p id="CzJYBv">Every time we test, I buy food. Back in the day, we had principals that provided us with carts of snacks for standardized testing. Now we’re on our own. I’ll buy packs and packs of cheese and crackers, fruit snacks, bottles of water. </p>
<p id="gjx8po">I buy boxes of these migraine patches. They sell them for kids with fevers. They’re a gel and they stick to your forehead, and are cooling. That’s become my thing lately, buying these migraine patches and giving them to kids when they have headaches. It helps them so much. I always say, “Make sure you have a headache because these are really expensive.” </p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/2z3dk9yh9p8Hpn4tMnMnU-kxBQs=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19252753/IMG_20190829_142349888.jpg">
<cite>Deanna O’Brien</cite>
<figcaption>Deanna O’Brien’s classroom library.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="ABbNOZ">I bought eyeglasses for a student once. It was a big purchase, like $300. And I couldn’t use insurance because I’m not the parent. Myself and another teacher first noticed that he kept squinting. He said he was having a hard time seeing, so we kept trying to get the parent to take him, but she was busy. She just, she never did. </p>
<p id="ZnaLGl">And then all of a sudden it was right before testing and I said, “He needs to have glasses before this test.” This was a promotion-based test for him. If he didn’t pass it, he would have not graduated. So I addressed the parent and said, “You know, your child really needs to see the eye doctor, and he says that you’re busy. I will take him, do I have consent?” And she gave consent.</p>
<p id="P6pE1W">Oh my god, [when he put his glasses on for the first time] he said, “I can see. I can see trees, I can see things out the window.” He really needed them. The eye doctor said, “I cannot believe you waited this long.” </p>
<p id="zV0zNe">He comes back to visit regularly. He’s an appreciative kid.</p>
<p id="GqayxI"><a href="http://vox.com/goods-newsletter"><em>Sign up for The Goods newsletter.</em></a><em> Twice a week, we’ll send you the best Goods stories exploring what we buy, why we buy it, and why it matters. </em></p>
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/10/10/20893780/teacher-cost-classroom-school-budgetStephie Grob Plante2019-10-07T07:10:00-04:002019-10-07T07:10:00-04:00Shopping has become a political act. Here’s how it happened.
<figure>
<img alt="Protesters hold signs that read, “Honk for accountability,” “EquiNOT,” and, “Equinox supports a white supremacist.”" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/rZPn7DYziwaVKBNeVnwHmAJB4lY=/282x0:4718x3327/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65408419/GettyImages_1160492824.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Protesters outside the luxury gym Equinox in West Hollywood, California, demonstrating against gym owner and Trump backer Stephen Ross on August 9, 2019. | ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Consumer activism and conscious consumerism mean more people are buying from brands they agree with — and boycotting ones they don’t.</p> <p id="Yn0ZR8">In August, it was <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/8/8/20759190/equinox-soulcycle-boycott-trump-stephen-ross-fundraiser">SoulCycle and Equinox</a>. The month prior, <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/7/11/20690382/home-depot-boycott-trump-bernie-marcus">Home Depot</a>. Back in 2017, <a href="https://www.racked.com/2017/1/12/14250344/trump-ll-bean-boycott">L.L.Bean</a>. These are only a few of the companies to ignite the collective ire of progressive consumers over corporate ties to Trump. In the case of the boutique fitness studios, it was a Trump fundraiser hosted by their majority stake investor Stephen M. Ross; with the home improvement chain, it was co-founder Bernie Marcus’s promise to donate to Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign; with the duck boot and outdoor apparel brand, it was Bean descendant and board member Linda Lorraine Bean’s $60,000 donation to <a href="https://www.pressherald.com/2017/01/06/linda-bean-in-trouble-with-fec-over-pro-trump-pac/">Trump super PAC Making America Great Again, LLC</a> (itself a violation of the Federal Election Commission’s permitted donor limit of $5,000). </p>
<p id="jSsWtE">For Americans opposed to Trump’s policies — from the <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/7/3/20681071/border-detention-aoc-shampoo-personal-hygiene">inhumane treatment</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/9/24/20882070/immigrant-families-mexico-catch-release">targeting of detained migrants</a>, to detrimental <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/6/19/18684054/climate-change-clean-power-plan-repeal-affordable-emissions">inaction on climate change</a>, to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/8/21/20826511/trump-background-checks-nra-el-paso-dayton-shootings">refusal to regulate guns</a> in the wake of unprecedented mass shootings — shopping at retailers connected to the celebrity-entrepreneur-turned-sitting-president is tantamount to hypocrisy. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="zLupmP"><q>“The goal came originally from a place of really wanting to shop the stores we loved again with a clear conscience”</q></aside></div>
<p id="WlMLyS">Calls to boycott Trump-tainted brands stretch back to the <a href="https://www.racked.com/2016/11/14/13623970/grabyourwallet-trump-boycott">#GrabYourWallet movement</a> that began in the wake of the 2016 election. Organizers Shannon Coulter and Sue Atencio turned outrage into action with a <a href="https://grabyourwallet.org/">spreadsheet</a> of companies linked to Trump or the Trump family, both explicitly (Trump owned) and implicitly (Trump funders, Trump brand sellers), detailing why those companies are on the list and what they need to do to get off it. “The goal,” Coulter <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/25/business/the-unlikely-general-behind-an-anti-trump-boycott.html">told the New York Times</a>, “came originally from a place of really wanting to shop the stores we loved again with a clear conscience.”</p>
<p id="Eidzt0">Of course, boycott calls are not unique to Trump’s critics; Trump himself is an <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/09/trump-home-depot-boycott-1404870">avid boycotter</a>, and his <a href="https://www.racked.com/2017/2/10/14577910/pro-trump-boycotting-nordstrom-netflix-starbucks-tj-maxx">MAGA fans follow suit</a>. Nor are boycott calls unique in the Trump era. Consumers have long registered their disapproval of businesses’ practices by refusing to shop them and calling on others to do the same, dating back to this country’s birth (and further back elsewhere in the world, like in ancient Greece and early Christianity, in the form of organized ostracism). </p>
<p id="Ff8DHb">What do you get when consumers takes action? Consumer activism. And by the inverse action, consumers are shopping alternative products and companies that complement their worldview more now than ever before — particularly when it comes to combating climate change. Sustainability-tinged consumer activism is a new flavor of an old tactic, one that falls under the umbrella of what we now call conscious consumerism. </p>
<h3 id="5T1X3S">Consumer activism can take the shape of two diametrically opposed actions — buying en masse and boycotting en masse — that are after the same goal</h3>
<p id="pQkdsj">“[Consumer activism is] either grassroots collective organization of consumption or its withdrawal,” explains Lawrence Glickman, an American historian at Cornell University and author of <em>Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism</em>. </p>
<p id="TDpreK">Meaning, it’s “Buy Nike!” to express support of Colin Kaepernick’s 2018 pick as brand ambassador following his kneeled protest against police brutality targeting people of color and his <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/9/6/17820158/colin-kaepernick-eric-reid-collusion-grievance-protest-settlement">collusion lawsuit against the NFL</a>. It’s also, “<a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/9/4/17818148/nike-boycott-kaepernick">Boycott Nike</a>!” and even, “<a href="https://twitter.com/search?vertical=default&q=%23burnyournikes&src=tyah">#BurnYourNikes</a>!” to express outrage over “when somebody disrespects our flag,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/sep/22/donald-trump-nfl-national-anthem-protests">as Trump put it</a> in 2017, supposedly provoked by Kaepernick’s peaceful demonstration. </p>
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</div></a> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B1EWqctnL-E/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">@adamcalhoun1 is the man. He’s not afraid to be blunt and show his patriotism and show what a real man is in this world full of pussified people. We need more of this. #fucknike #dontsupportnike #boycottnike #nikeboycott #fuckthenfl #patriot #patriots #adamcalhoun #acal #crazywhiteboy #crazywhiteboytour #wesupportlawenforcement #wesupportthepolice #blueline #supporttheblue #rhec #rhecnation #rednecknation #rednecks</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/oldschoolrooster/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;" target="_blank"> Oldschoolrooster</a> (@oldschoolrooster) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2019-08-12T14:55:08+00:00">Aug 12, 2019 at 7:55am PDT</time></p>
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<p id="tEKdhD">Calls to boycott, though, are a heck of a lot more visible on social media than are rally cries to pledge brand support. Glickman writes in <em>Buying Power</em> that two-thirds of Americans take part in at least one boycott a year. </p>
<p id="T4O7wi">Boycotts stem from anger. Anger spreads faster and farther on social media than any other emotion, as uncovered by computer scientists at China’s Beihang University and <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/519306/most-influential-emotions-on-social-networks-revealed/">reported by MIT Technology Review</a>. And there are many, many ongoing and overlapping boycotts at any given time. AP News even has a <a href="https://www.apnews.com/Boycotts">feed</a> to track boycotts worldwide. </p>
<p id="XnGrLb">Consumer activism, boycotts included, puts power in the hands of the people — ”or at least they think it is,” adds Glickman. </p>
<h3 id="ZudQfb">We boycotted before there was even a word for it</h3>
<p id="7ylqlz">“Boycotts are as American as apple pie,” #GrabYourWallet co-founder and digital strategist Coulter <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/3068116/five-ways-boycotts-have-been-transformed-in-the-trump-era">told Fast Company</a> in 2017, referring to the Boston Tea Party’s 1773 dump of British imports that precipitated the American Revolutionary War. Colonists had <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/on-this-day-the-boston-tea-party-lights-a-fuse/">boycotted British tea for several years</a> by then; “No taxation without representation,” they demanded. Refusing to purchase British tea was a pointed way to voice their mounting resentment of their decidedly un-independent status. Short of revolt, it was the only power they had — until, of course, they revolted.</p>
<p id="rwg5qF">Glickman dates the boycott much further back: to ancient Greece. <a href="https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/boycotts-bribes-and-fines/">Expedition Magazine cites</a> the city of Athens’ historic boycott of the Olympic Games in 332 BCE as a key turning point. The city had incurred a massive fine after its endorsed athlete attempted, and failed, to fix a match, and refused to attend the games in protest unless the charges were dropped. (They weren’t, and Athens eventually relented.) </p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="IEaSz4"><q>Boycotts are employed the world over, and not all of them are about consumerism</q></aside></div>
<p id="VPNqnV">The term “boycott” didn’t emerge, however, until 1880, in Ireland. Captain Charles Boycott was a British land agent in County Mayo — and “<a href="https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/irish-invented-boycott">the man who became a verb!</a>” — whose evictions “were many and bloody,” as described by IrishCentral. After Boycott attempted to evict another 11 tenants, the Land League (an Irish political organization of the 1800s that rallied in aid of poor farmworkers) convinced Boycott’s employees to walk out and compelled the community to, essentially, ice him out. Shops and the like refused to do business with him, the post stopped his mail. He left Ireland humiliated.</p>
<p id="O1118e">Boycotts are employed the world over, and not all of them are about consumerism. Just last month, <a href="https://www.apnews.com/30be5a9da41245b2b8738d6ce5243395">tens of thousands of students in Hong Kong boycotted</a> the first day of school as part of <a href="https://www.vox.com/videos/2019/6/24/18701607/hong-kong-huge-protests-explained">ongoing protests</a> over an extradition bill that could send Hong Kong citizens to China, <a href="https://www.apnews.com/3bac1f75122e4a928b292fd28aff5a54">Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for a boycott</a> of the Israeli TV channel that co-produced the HBO show <em>Our Boys</em>, and <a href="https://www.apnews.com/9b14d3b0979c403a9326af75388c73ef">Sweden’s top female hockey players are boycotting</a> the national team over unfair pay and poor working conditions. </p>
<p id="AfWuMW">Still, there is a certain Americanness to the ubiquity of the boycott today. Take #GrabYourWallet, which at present calls for boycotts of 31 different companies (not including subsidiaries or partners), five over their Stephen M. Ross connections. Says Glickman, Americans “didn’t invent [the boycott], but the frequency with which we use it is somewhat exceptional.”</p>
<h3 id="2QOlWV">Consumer activism in 2019 is not a whole lot different from consumer activism in the 1840s — except when it comes to the causes</h3>
<p id="8wBgy5">“A lot of people think that what we’re seeing now is new,” says Glickman. “But there are a lot of parallels with history.” Particularly, America’s history of slavery and abolitionism. </p>
<p id="iFo6QJ">The Free Produce Movement, led by Quaker abolitionists in the 1840s through the Civil War, hinged on boycotting goods made by enslaved people, cotton key among them. Buying these products, as far as Free Produce stalwarts were concerned, was analogous to supporting slavery outright. </p>
<p id="usVFz9">The issues are different today, but the strategy remains the same: Vote with your dollar and don’t contribute a cent to the bottom line of companies whose values don’t align with your own. Says Glickman, “That fundamental question of, ‘No one stands outside of moral problems, that we’re all implicated in [them]’ — that’s the essence of consumer activism.” </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="8ycsDa"><q>“‘No one stands outside of moral problems, that we’re all implicated in [them]’ — that’s the essence of consumer activism” </q></aside></div>
<p id="tvmJBR">Voting with your dollar doesn’t just mean <em>not</em> spending your dollars in problematic places (i.e. <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/7/16/20696392/amazon-prime-day-2019-boycott-strikes">Amazon</a>, <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/6/25/18758860/wayfair-walkout-bcfs-border-detention">Wayfair</a>, etc.); it also means supporting companies that practice what they preach, both by way of their company culture and by what they sell. Conscious consumerism drives at that very point, particularly when it comes to “voting” for sustainability and humane working conditions. </p>
<p id="j20yHo"><a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/boycott-sugar-slavery-bds/">Says the Nation’s Willy Blackmore</a> of the boycott’s antebellum lineage, where abolitionists bought wool over cotton and maple sugar over cane:</p>
<blockquote><p id="l9dSni">The same thinking—that it’s better to buy products that we believe are made without exceptional suffering—animates some contemporary conscious consumerism. The desire to minimize the harm we cause as consumers has led to a variety of fluffy marketing terms as well as third-party verification organizations, so you can buy everything from cruelty-free makeup to Fair Trade food products. </p></blockquote>
<p id="ig94xM">Conscious consumerism (alternatively called ethical consumption) is today’s catchall to cover consumer dollars invested in a host of progressive values: worker rights, animal rights, low-carbon footprint, recycled and/or renewable materials, organic, local, etc. — your fair-trade fashion, your <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-ikea/ikea-targets-big-cut-in-greenhouse-gas-emissions-from-production-idUSKCN1NZ1EJ">greenhouse-gas-cutting Ikea</a>, your metal straw. It’s a term that’s caught on in the last 10 years, but it was not only predated by the <a href="https://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2010/03/29/green-consumer-1990-2010">green consumerism of the 1990s</a>, it’s also the driving argument behind all consumer activism from the tea-in-the-harbor get-go. </p>
<p id="8jsoau">What is newish, however, is the phenomenon of sustainable shopping and widespread availability of ethically made, eco-friendly goods — where consumers concerned about climate change, for instance, “live their values” vis a vis their plastic-free purchases. </p>
<p id="GLD2UE">“It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when we saw consumers trying to make positive environmental change in their shopping,” says Emily Huddart Kennedy, University of British Columbia sociologist and author of <em>Putting Sustainability into Practice: Applications and Advances in Research on Sustainable Consumption. </em>Data analytics company <a href="https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2018/was-2018-the-year-of-the-influential-sustainable-consumer/">Nielsen called</a> 2018 “The Year of the Influential Sustainable Consumer,” adding that “it’s soon to be the decade of the sustainable shopper.” Sustainable product sales reached $128.5 billion in 2018, up 20 percent from four years prior; Nielsen projects 2021 to cash in on $150 billion worth of sustainability sales.</p>
<p id="4J6XfU">There are several theories, says Kennedy, on what caused the shift, including mistrust in government to adequately address climate change and the growing “sense of doing <em>something </em>in the face of these huge sustainability crises,” as she puts it. Kennedy’s research has shown that conscious consumerism’s popularity can also be tied to its elite nature — in part because of high price tags, in part because of championing among celebrities, in part because of its en vogueiness, “it’s seen as a ‘high-class’ thing to do.” </p>
<p id="0MUjHj">Consuming consciously is aspirational, both for individuals and for the planet. University of Toronto sociologist Josée Johnston, a colleague of Kennedy’s, found that nearly two-thirds of consumers resonated with the statement, “shopping is a powerful force for social and environmental change.” Elaborates Johnston’s survey report <a href="https://www.academia.edu/32927030/Can_consumers_buy_alternative_foods_at_a_big_box_supermarket">in the<em> Journal of Marketing Management</em></a>, “This suggests that the majority of the shopping public believe that their shopping dollars can promote a social and environmental alternative to the status quo.”</p>
<h3 id="nJk8P6">Consumer activism, for all its prevalence, might be an unintentional misdirect, say critics</h3>
<p id="l2NVjO">Activists for any one particular cause are in no way united that consumer activism is the most effective way — or even <em>an</em> effective way — to enact change. The main criticism is that individual product swaps do nothing to impact legislation and corporate responsibility.</p>
<p id="sv8gXD">That’s not a new argument; many abolitionists disagreed with their Free Produce Movement cohorts. As Glickman writes in <em>Buying Power</em>, “Critics accused free produce activists of overvaluing private rectitude to the point where it had little connection with the public good.” Maybe wearing wool and eating maple makes you abolitionists feel better, Free Produce critics seemed to say, but it does squat to end slavery.</p>
<p id="0G74y2">Twenty-first century shoppers face, in spirit, the same conundrum. </p>
<p id="MO0R24">“Conscious consumerism is a lie,” writes sustainable fashion expert and frequent Vox contributor Alden Wicker <a href="https://qz.com/920561/conscious-consumerism-is-a-lie-heres-a-better-way-to-help-save-the-world/">for Quartz</a>, quoting a speech she delivered at the 2017 UN Youth Delegation. “Small steps taken by thoughtful consumers — to recycle, to eat locally, to buy a blouse made of organic cotton instead of polyester — will not change the world.” Instead, she argues, conscious consumerism is an expensive distraction from the real work at hand. </p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A crowd of Amazon employees at a walkout carry signs that read, “Amazon, let’s lead: Zero emissions by 2030!” and “Amazon, let’s raise the bar, not the temperature.”" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ZqHkYLA9ubj-vxi8NWqQARRyRKA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19253006/GettyImages_1169909955.jpg">
<cite>Karen Ducey/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Amazon and other tech employees walk out during the Global Climate Strike on September 20, 2019, rallying the company to be more sustainable.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="7TSIYw">Sure, vote with your dollar, the criticism stands — but you do a whole lot more by simply voting for politicians who give a damn that the <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/big-thaw/">Earth is melting</a>. Only <a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2017/05/voting_in_america.html">46.1 percent of voters aged 18-29 voted</a> at all in 2016, <a href="https://www.kqed.org/lowdown/24448/how-millennials-voted-in-the-2016-presidential-election">55 percent of which voted Democrat</a>. Nielsen found that <a href="https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2018/was-2018-the-year-of-the-influential-sustainable-consumer/">90 percent of millennials</a> (aged 21-34) are willing to pay more for eco-friendly and sustainable products. These stats don’t necessarily provide a one-for-one since there’s a gap in the age categorizations, but if the entirety of that 90 percent of conscious consumer millennials had gone to the polls and voted how their dollar votes ... We don’t have to spell it out, right?</p>
<p id="rHLVhY">With more opportunities to be a conscious consumer — thanks to more and more “leading brands that compete to see who is greener,” as Joel Makower, author of 1990’s <em>The Green Consumer,</em> writes <a href="https://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2010/03/29/green-consumer-1990-2010">for GreenBiz</a> — so too do opportunities for economic existential angst mount. Ditching plastic straws, in the grand scheme of things, will do diddly for the planet, representing <a href="https://earth.stanford.edu/news/do-plastic-straws-really-make-difference#gs.5k3q2e">less than 1 percent</a> of our sweeping plastic problem. </p>
<p id="ltZwc9">And as such, conscious consumerism can deliver unearned complacency, house-on-fire calm akin to <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/5/11592622/this-is-fine-meme-comic">“This Is Fine” dog</a>. As Jim Leape, co-director of the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions <a href="https://earth.stanford.edu/news/do-plastic-straws-really-make-difference#gs.5k3q2e">told Stanford Report</a>, “The risk is that banning straws may confer ‘moral license’ — allowing companies and their customers to feel they have done their part. The crucial challenge is to ensure that these bans are just a first step.”</p>
<p id="0VKHQn">Sen. Elizabeth Warren homed in on this very point during CNN’s recent climate change forum, following a series of questions to Democratic candidates on regulating lightbulbs, banning plastic straws, and encouraging people to cut down on red meat, as <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/9/5/20850490/elizabeth-warren-climate-change-forum-2020">reported by Vox’s Li Zhou</a>: </p>
<blockquote><p id="k2DKwx">“Oh, come on, give me a break,” Warren said in response to the lightbulb question, in one of the breakout moments of the night. “This is exactly what the fossil fuel industry wants us to talk about. ... They want to be able to stir up a lot of controversy around your lightbulbs, around your straws, and around your cheeseburgers, when 70 percent of the pollution, of the carbon that we’re throwing into the air, comes from three industries.” </p></blockquote>
<p id="1jtZ9N">There’s an added tension when it comes to green shopping and movements like <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/9/17/20864740/greta-thunberg-youth-climate-strike-fridays-future">Fridays for Future</a> and the <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/9/10/20847401/sunrise-movement-climate-change-activist-millennials-global-warming">Sunrise Movement</a>, that conscious consumerism’s prescribed solution is antithetical to sustainability’s aims. </p>
<p id="9CBEcN">“The idea of ‘shopping’ your way to sustainability is fundamentally flawed,” says sociologist Kennedy. “That is, if we need to slow down growth to protect the environment, then we can’t rely on ‘better’ consumption — we also have to reduce consumption.” To her point, climate activist <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/09/23/763452863/transcript-greta-thunbergs-speech-at-the-u-n-climate-action-summit">Greta Thunberg’s speech</a> at the UN’s Climate Action Summit on September 23 addressed world leaders but zeroed in on an oft-repeated delusion that cutting emissions by 50 percent in 10 years will do the trick. “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you.”</p>
<p id="6OvYd8">There are alternative ways that consumers can “do something” impactful with their money, writes Wicker in Quartz: Donating to activist organizations and donating to politicians who vow to vote for green initiatives (i.e. passing a <a href="https://www.vox.com/videos/2019/6/12/18653754/green-new-deal-video">Green New Deal</a>) and holding big corporate offenders accountable are good places to start. </p>
<h3 id="hoiokr">Okay, okay, but does consumer activism do … anything? </h3>
<p id="zueZF9">In a word: sometimes! In more words, whether or not consumer activism and conscious consumerism “work” depends, really, on the definition of success.</p>
<p id="ctAf9e">Historian Glickman likes to differentiate between short-term and long-term goals. Sociologist Kennedy separates material benefits from ideological gains. </p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="TDIEa3"><q>“Oftentimes the boycott starts with a great deal of enthusiasm and ends with a whimper”</q></aside></div>
<p id="uN4Zza">“Almost every boycott fails to achieve its punitive goal,” says Glickman. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, he adds, is a rare example of an “unambiguous victory,” where the boycott attained its <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/montgomery-bus-boycott">demands</a>: hiring black drivers, promising respectful drivers, and first-come first-seated policy. The SoulCycle boycott is another: Last month’s consumer activism over Ross’s Trump fundraiser did in fact <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/9/5/20851538/soulcycle-boycott-attendance-down-data-earnest">dent SoulCycle’s attendance</a>. But these are notable exceptions (the former inarguably more impactful than the latter) to the rule.</p>
<p id="PZ2a7C">Adds Glickman, “A lot of times boycotts of big corporations don’t really affect the bottom line of that corporation. Oftentimes the boycott starts with a great deal of enthusiasm and ends with a whimper.” For instance, Amazon: Despite calls year after year to boycott Amazon Prime Day over factory conditions (and this year over <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/7/16/20696392/amazon-prime-day-2019-boycott-strikes">contracts with ICE</a>), the retail behemoth repeatedly manages to <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/7/17/20698328/amazon-prime-day-2019-boycotts-protests-aftermath">smash its sales record</a>.</p>
<p id="e9eZyj">In terms of the material benefit of product swaps, “the jury is out,” says Kennedy. Yes, phosphate-free dish detergent can curb water pollution, she says; but Kennedy’s research shows that conscious consumers often maintain very large carbon footprints themselves. “Conscious consumers tend to be well-educated,” explains Kennedy, “and well-educated people typically earn a good income,” income that buys them nice cars and tickets on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/climate/air-travel-emissions.html">commercial planes</a> and <a href="https://climate.org/cooling-your-home-but-warming-the-planet-how-we-can-stop-air-conditioning-from-worsening-climate-change/">air conditioning units</a> and so on.</p>
<p id="FQOnCw">“The ideological benefits are not much more conclusive, unfortunately,” adds Kennedy. “I think it’s fair to say that conscious consumption has made more people think about the resources that go into the stuff we buy and about what happens to our stuff when we throw it away.” This, in effect, is consumer activism’s long-term goal, what historian Glickman calls “a transformation of consciousness.” On the other hand, Kennedy says, “When people obsess about the environmental impact of their goods, that can let companies and governments off the hook. So it’s a mixed bag.”</p>
<p id="mpNump">Where and how we spend our money does matter. But how much it matters depends on what else we do with our money and what governments and corporations do with their (considerably larger) pots. At best, the rising popularity of conscious consumerism, for instance, suggests that the buying public will at least spend their way to a healthier world; the big problem, though, is that individual monetary action — even when performed collectively — is only the beginning.</p>
<p id="4dbYdr">“I can’t imagine that the world is worse off because of conscious consumerism,” says Kennedy, “but I doubt it will be enough to save the planet.”</p>
<p id="WKHUU6"><a href="http://vox.com/goods-newsletter"><em>Sign up for The Goods’ newsletter.</em></a><em> Twice a week, we’ll send you the best Goods stories exploring what we buy, why we buy it, and why it matters. </em></p>
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/10/7/20894134/consumer-activism-conscious-consumerism-explainedStephie Grob Plante2019-09-06T07:00:00-04:002019-09-06T07:00:00-04:00Back-to-school shopping has gotten easier — but at whose expense?
<figure>
<img alt="A young girl surveys her back-to-school supply list in a big box store aisle." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/bImA-x7dhS_wIQSTfqi-bT4QOOQ=/320x0:5440x3840/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65190653/GettyImages_1038792374.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Most Americans make 16 trips to the store for back-to-school supplies over the summer. | Elva Etienne/Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Walmart and Target have teamed up with TeacherLists to digitize school supplies, but mom-and-pop shops are missing out. </p> <p id="1If3Vx">Ah, September! ’Tis the season that shatters the holidays as the most wonderful time of the year: back-to-school. Parents of children K-8, rejoice! But while adults have long <a href="https://twitter.com/Mr_Mike_Clarke/status/1167014857905987584">exulted</a> in the notion that summer’s end means their kids are once again out of their dang hair, they’ve long <a href="https://www.redbookmag.com/life/mom-kids/a39723/i-hate-back-to-school-shopping/">bemoaned</a> the Back-to-School Shopping Industrial Complex, too. </p>
<p id="dqBhBV">Big-box stores like Target and Walmart, meanwhile, are utilizing tools that essentially take the shopping out of shopping. Target’s <a href="https://www.target.com/c/school-list-assist/-/N-ojfyt">School List Assist</a> and Walmart’s <a href="https://www.walmart.com/lists/back-to-school">Teacher’s Shelf</a> are two online services that invite parents to search by school for their kids’ classroom-specific school supplies lists. One-click shopping cuts to the chase even more: List items can be added right to shoppers’ carts for delivery or curbside pickup, likening the service to online registries for kids. <a href="http://help.target.com/help/subcategoryarticle?childcat=Shopping+Lists&parentcat=Registries+%26+Lists&searchQuery=search+help">Target’s FAQ</a> shares that School List Assist hosts almost 2 million class lists on Target.com. Target declined to comment on specific numbers related to participating schools, teachers, and shoppers, as well as whether this figure reflects 2 million classrooms to date since the program launched in 2015 or 2 million classrooms hosted in 2019 alone. A request to Walmart for comment went unanswered by the time of publication.</p>
<p id="4P4kDX">These offerings — touting convenience and simplicity — are the product of partnerships with TeacherLists, a school supply list platform founded in 2012 by School Family Media, a marketing services provider that works with <a href="https://schoolfamilymedia.com/about-us/">“family-focused retailers and consumer brands”</a> to reach parents and teachers. Back-to-school shopping is a “dreaded chore,” <a href="https://www.teacherlists.com/about-us">says TeacherLists</a>. It’s so notoriously stressful, in fact, that TeacherLists created Facebook-, Twitter-, Instagram-, and Pinterest-ready <a href="https://www.teacherlists.com/blog/funny-back-to-school-shopping-cartoons/">cartoons</a>, featuring a bored genie, a shell-shocked mom who appears to have seen things, a sunglasses-wearing character who can score purple pocket folders on the black market, and shopaholic children running amok with a cart and no regard for their PO’d parent. TeacherLists promises, however, that there’s another way.</p>
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</div></a><p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BxxMwLKAZcG/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">A post shared by TeacherLists (@teacherlists)</a> on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2019-05-22T14:48:47+00:00">May 22, 2019 at 7:48am PDT</time></p>
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<p id="GTLnnm">“What we were trying to do was make the back-to-school list easier for parents to find and use, and do that by taking it from a paper-based process to a digital-based process,” School Family Media CEO Charles Field tells Vox. A TeacherLists marketing <a href="https://youtu.be/MVbCZLn4O4U">video</a> shows the labor and woe bedeviling the days of yore: A school administrator collects a stack of classroom lists, posts each individual list within the stack online, a mom waits for the list, prints the list, forgets the list, drops her head in sorrow over the list, and leaves the store empty-handed, defeated, and, y’know ... listless. TeacherLists’ digital-based process enables direct uploads from teachers, mobile alerts for parents, a checklist format for in-store shopping, and direct connections to online outposts of partnered retailers like Target, Walmart, Amazon, Staples, and Office Depot/OfficeMax, mainstays of the back-to-school shopping universe. </p>
<p id="zzponx">In July, <a href="https://www.teacherlists.com/blog/1-million-lists/">TeacherLists announced</a> it had passed 1 million supply lists this year; Field estimates that this number will reach 1.7 million classrooms by the end of this season. </p>
<p id="xEZPyc">The draw of simplifying back-to-school shopping for parents can’t be emphasized enough. According to data shared by <a href="https://marketing.wearemiq.com/hubfs/Back_to_school_whitepaper_CA.pdf">marketing intelligence firm MiQ</a>, American shoppers make around 16 trips to stores for back-to-school stuff between July and September, and they spend over $500 per family. “Price, product, and convenience are analogous to reading, writing, and arithmetic,” reports research and consultancy network <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/consumer-business/us-cb-2019-back-to-school-report.pdf">Deloitte’s 2019 back-to-school survey</a> results. Reads one of the report’s quoted parent testimonials, “If I have to search more than 10 seconds I move on to another store.”</p>
<p id="fvBujk">TeacherLists vows to save parents time; it also hopes to save parents money. Though TeacherLists doesn’t offer a price comparison function, shoppers can do that by clicking the different retailer button options that appear alongside class lists on TeacherLists’ site. “What we find is a lot of our users will click on multiple retail buttons and then decide which ones to purchase through,” says Field. “I’m a parent and I did that myself.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="sEBqEd"><q>American shoppers make around 16 trips to stores for back-to-school stuff between July and September</q></aside></div>
<p id="0JrTlB">The tool itself is free, which is to say that parents pay the retailers’ list prices for products, with no fee added to use the list service. Retailers who partner with TeacherLists, like Target and Walmart, pay TeacherLists a fee to be part of the program. The partnership involves a significant amount of labor on TeacherLists’ part: of gathering, cleaning, and digitizing classroom lists before then matching classroom lists with retailers’ and brands’ product listings. (Yes, it is a business dedicated to simplifying list generation that is <em>also</em> governed by lists!) </p>
<p id="mG4tWl">TeacherLists also does the work of interpreting the sometimes-not-so-straightforward school requests into action items. Field gives the example of a very Generation Alpha school supply requirement that now appears frequently on lists: earbuds in a Ziploc baggie with the student’s name written on it in Sharpie. The only item needed in this specific scenario is the set of earbuds, not the Ziploc and not the Sharpie, and TeacherLists’ job is to parse this request. “We do all the work that makes this possible on the backend,” says Field. </p>
<p id="5YTkoa">On the school side, TeacherLists promises an efficient, streamlined, auto-distributed process, a tremendous selling point on the district level in particular. <a href="https://www.mnps.org/backtoschool#supplies">Metro Nashville Public Schools</a> in Tennessee encompasses 168 public and charter schools, and is one example of a massive school district that opted to consolidate the school list process through TeacherLists. “The district used to manage these lists by asking every single school to provide them with a list,” says Field. “Now they use our platform to manage all of their lists.” As of 2017, <a href="https://innovation.ed.gov/files/2017/11/MetropolitanNashvillePublicSchoolsNAR.pdf">MNPS served</a> close to 88,000 students.</p>
<p id="uTKiMS">Target, Walmart, et al’s adoption of this platform is a small piece of a longtime trend that’s increasingly relevant, one perhaps best represented by Staples’ iconic Easy Button™: ease! (The correct answer is ease.) </p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="seCAOn"><q>“[C]ompanies across the industrial spectrum are looking for ways to make their customers’ lives easier”</q></aside></div>
<p id="o2Bms0">“[C]ompanies across the industrial spectrum are looking for ways to make their customers’ lives easier,” says trends expert and director of the Avant-Guide Institute Daniel Levine. “Prevailing wisdom among businesspeople is that we are living in the busiest times in human history. And the world continues to move ever faster.” Companies, in effect, must keep up, and back-to-school is no exception. </p>
<p id="Pgdo7r">It’s a sizable market to capture. There are 54 million school-aged kids in 29 million households in the US, <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/consumer-business/us-cb-2019-back-to-school-report.pdf">reports Deloitte</a>, with families projected to spend $27.8 billion during the 2019 back-to-school season. Sixty percent of Deloitte’s survey respondents planned to use mobile for their back-to-school shopping needs — including price research, coupon collection, and purchase completion — up from 53 percent in 2018, making them prime candidates for TeacherLists’ mobile function on three different fronts. So too does this staggering stat: Eighty-eight percent of shoppers surveyed by Deloitte prefer to shop in big-box stores.</p>
<p id="rXSYcu">The overwhelming popularity of “buy online pickup in-store” — BOPIS, in retail speak — may be one reason why. Nearly 70 percent of American shoppers use BOPIS, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-consumers-use-buy-online-pickup-in-store-2019-2">reports Business Insider</a>, adding that 85 percent of those shoppers have <em>also</em> made in-store purchases during BOPIS trips, making BOPIS a potential “driver of additional sales.” Its hallmark (much like what parents seek from back-to-school shopping) is convenience. </p>
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</div></a><p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B0JhINTAZAE/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">A post shared by Target (@target)</a> on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2019-07-20T18:32:05+00:00">Jul 20, 2019 at 11:32am PDT</time></p>
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<p id="j6MhBa">On the back-to-school front, amenities-on-top-of-amenities like Target’s School List Assist <em>plus</em> curbside pickup get shoppers to the store, but kids seem to get parents inside. “Our research shows that the big players are catering more to what the kids want, not what the school is telling them to get,” says Allen Adamson, co-founder of marketing and product consultancy group Metaforce and adjunct professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business. “What the schools are telling them to get are ‘table stakes,’” or, in nonpoker terms, the bare minimum required to stay in the game. “The market opportunities are on the, ‘Mom, can I get new [insert backpack brand, sneaker brand, or clothing brand here] for school this year? All my friends have them.’” </p>
<p id="XA2pAv">Of course, these programs are yet another way that superstores box out small businesses, with offerings of ease and convenience (to speak nothing of low, low prices) disincentivizing consumers from shopping local. And there are a lot of reasons to be concerned about this phenomenon in the broad. As Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/amazon-doesnt-just-want-to-dominate-the-market-it-wants-to-become-the-market/">writes for the Nation</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p id="OrSwbw">Economists have recently begun to document a link between corporate concentration and rising inequality. Dominant companies, they’re finding, are funneling the spoils to a small number of people at the top. And by reducing the number of their competitors, these companies are also making it harder for workers to get a fair wage and for producers to get a fair price. [...] Between 2005 and 2015, the number of small retailers fell by 85,000, a drop of 21 percent relative to population.</p></blockquote>
<p id="jLYKQ9">It’s near impossible for small businesses to truly compete with the likes of Target, Walmart, and Amazon. As far as TeacherLists goes, though, independent retailers may be able to harness the same tools if they can afford it. “There’s nothing to stop a smaller store from working with us from the technology solution perspective,” says Field, adding that their app can be embedded on any store’s site, and local stores have participated by printing classroom lists collected and provided by TeacherLists. “It all depends on how much local school business can do for it to make sense.” TeacherLists declined to comment on how much it costs to be a part of their program.</p>
<p id="WZtY50">Is anything lost for parents or kids by forgoing back-to-school shopping as an outing and transforming it into a quick, clickable task? “School supplies, especially those recommended by teachers, are not emotional purchases,” says trends analyst Levine. “They are commodities. [M]ost busy parents are happy to dispatch with this chore in the easiest ways possible.”</p>
<p id="ReQsrT"><a href="http://vox.com/goods-newsletter"><em>Sign up for The Goods’ newsletter.</em></a><em> Twice a week, we’ll send you the best Goods stories exploring what we buy, why we buy it, and why it matters. </em></p>
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/9/6/20851349/back-to-school-shopping-supply-digital-target-walmart-teacherlistsStephie Grob Plante2019-08-09T12:10:48-04:002019-08-09T12:10:48-04:00The Rock ’n Play was recalled after it was linked to 32 infant deaths. It’s still used at some day cares.
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<img alt="A Fisher-Price Rock ‘n Play Sleeper for babies, photographed in a dark space lit by a spotlight." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/EsMzwPdk3gYhcjeLdl7AEnXU1y4=/305x0:5173x3651/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/64970941/GettyImages_1147144140.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>The Rock ’n Play Sleeper by Fisher-Price has been linked to infant fatalities. | The Washington Post/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>The situation shows how recalls don’t always work as intended.</p> <p id="fgp7Ey">One in 10 surveyed day cares still use the Fisher-Price Rock ’n Play, a popular infant sleeper <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/4/16/18410583/rock-n-play-fisher-price-recall-baby-sleepers-sids">recalled in April</a> that was linked to at least 32 infant deaths, says a new <a href="https://uspirg.org/feature/usp/recalled-infant-sleepers">report</a> released Wednesday by two consumer watchdog groups. </p>
<p id="fHY6o1">US Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG) and Kids in Danger (KID) — two nonprofit advocacy organizations — contacted 600 day cares and polled the responding 376, focusing on states that mandate day cares remove recalled products, as well as states without clear laws regulating child care facilities. In states with lax recall-related laws on the books, like Georgia, “regulations relied on vague statements, not even mentioning the word recall, or suggesting some items do not need to be removed,” says the report. </p>
<p id="npsRts">Adam Garber, the consumer watchdog for US PIRG, discovered that Rock ’n Plays were still in use at his son’s day care in June, two months after the nationwide recall. His son’s teacher hadn’t heard about the recall at all, Garber tells Vox, and instead mistakenly believed that Fisher-Price had only issued a warning and that Rock ’n Plays were safe if used correctly. </p>
<p id="QL21LV">Fisher-Price and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) had indeed issued a <a href="https://www.cpsc.gov/Newsroom/News-Releases/2019/CPSC-ALERT-CPSC-and-Fisher-Price-Warn-Consumers-About-Fisher-Price-Rock-N-Play-Due-to-Reports-of-Death-When-Infants-Roll-Over-in-the-Product">warning</a> on April 5 that caretakers only use the Rock ’n Play with babies younger than 3 months and with babies who can’t yet roll over, along with a disclaimer to use the product’s provided restraints. As <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/4/16/18410583/rock-n-play-fisher-price-recall-baby-sleepers-sids">Vox’s Chavie Lieber noted</a>, however, the warning flip-flopped on the product’s original minimum weight requirement of 25 pounds — the weight of a baby much older than 3 months. </p>
<p id="KBw4cE">The manufacturer’s warning coincided with the release of a Consumer Reports review documenting at least 32 infant deaths between 2011 and 2018 linked to the Rock ’n Play, many from asphyxia or suffocation. A <a href="https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/Pages/AAP-Urges-U-S-Consumer-Product-Safety-Commission-to-Recall-Fisher-Price-Rock-n-Play-Sleeper.aspx">statement</a> from the American Academy of Pediatrics soon followed, highlighting that the Rock ’n Play’s documented infant deaths included babies <em>younger</em> than 3 months (the Rock ’n Play’s instructed maximum age), adding that the AAP never recommends infant sleepers requiring restraints. </p>
<p id="Wy6gVR">“We cannot put any more children’s lives at risk by keeping these dangerous products on the shelves,” said Rachel Moon, chair of the AAP Task Force on SIDS, at the time. “The Rock ’n Play inclined sleeper should be removed from the market immediately. It does not meet the AAP’s recommendations for a safe sleep environment for any baby.” (The AAP’s <a href="https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/Pages/American-Academy-of-Pediatrics-Announces-New-Safe-Sleep-Recommendations-to-Protect-Against-SIDS.aspx">safe sleep protocol</a> details that infants should sleep on their backs, on flat, firm surfaces, without bedding or bumpers, on a tightly fitted sheet alone. The Rock ’n Play is inclined, not flat, and features not only waist restraints but soft bedding atop a concave base.) </p>
<p id="Uf9UjZ">Fisher-Price’s recall of <a href="https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2019/fisher-price-recalls-rock-n-play-sleepers-due-to-reports-of-deaths">4.7 million Rock ’n Play sleepers</a> followed in quick succession on April 12, with competitor Kid II recalling its <a href="https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2019/kids-ii-recalls-all-rocking-sleepers-due-to-reports-of-deaths">694,000 Rocking Sleepers</a> two weeks after that. </p>
<p id="i85lvp">“It started me thinking,” says Garber to Vox, “did I get an unlucky day care or was it a larger problem?”</p>
<p id="Sn2H63">What Garber uncovered speaks to a thorny issue: Recalls don’t always work as intended. As of 2016, says US PIRG and KID’s report, only 18 states ban recalled products — like the Rock ’n Play — from child care facilities. For the rest of the country, there’s an accountability lag; recalling companies currently don’t have any other legally required responsibility beyond simply issuing the recall itself. </p>
<p id="n3jPkH">Garber believes that should change. “Parents and day cares and caregivers prioritize keeping their kids safe, but can’t do it if they don’t have the necessary information,” he says, adding that the past six months alone have seen a not altogether unusual rash of recalls, from <a href="https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2019/Childrens-Toy-Instrument-Sets-Recalled-Due-to-Violation-of-the-Federal-Lead-Paint-Ban-Made-by-Creative-Sto-and-Sold-Exclusively-at-Amazon-com-Recall-Alert">toys that contain toxins</a> to <a href="https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2019/Target-Recalls-Wooden-Toy-Vehicles-Due-to-Choking-Hazard">toys that pose a choking hazard</a>. It’s too easy to miss news of product recalls when they happen <a href="https://www.safekids.org/2019-product-recalls">every month</a>. Says Garber, “This is a good example of a larger hidden danger.”</p>
<p id="Xrof3a">US PIRG recommends that states without legislation banning recalled products change their laws immediately. But state legislation isn’t known to be a particularly swift or straightforward process, as the <a href="https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/state-advocacy/Documents/How%20a%20Bill%20Becomes%20a%20Law%20at%20the%20State%20Level.pdf">AAP laid out</a> in its 2009 Advocacy Guide. And passing a law can become even more mired in bureaucracy on the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/5/22/5723878/how-a-bill-becomes-a-law-in-2014">federal level</a>. In the absence of new legislation, companies like Fisher-Price can — and should, says US PIRG — do more to inform and educate consumers.</p>
<p id="WlneM9">“Companies collect huge amounts of information on each of us,” says Garber. “They know what I bought, and they use it to target me for more things that they want me to buy. If they’re going to collect all this information about me, whether it’s through a loyalty rewards card program that tracks my purchases and account or for their marketing purposes where they buy this information, they should use that information for good in the world by helping to keep us safe.” </p>
<p id="6wSVpk">Garber adds that Fisher-Price and others should do a better job of publicizing recalls via social media and direct marketing. Fisher-Price does indeed <a href="https://twitter.com/search?lang=en&q=recall%20(from%3Afisherprice)&src=typed_query">tweet</a> out news of recalls, and engages with customers on the platform to answer questions. But <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/5/21/18634323/new-york-times-emotion-based-ad-targeting-sadness">targeted ads</a> could be a more immediate way to reach consumers since, as Garber points out, they can be “eerily accurate.” </p>
<p id="85q9qS">“Ensuring that consumers are notified of a recall is critical,” Fisher-Price said in a statement provided to Vox, adding that the company takes several steps to alert the public about recalls. In the case of the Rock ‘n Play, Fisher-Price created a <a href="https://service.mattel.com/us/recall/BJD57_ivr.asp">website</a> translated into nine languages to “centralize information for consumers,” in addition to publishing news of the recall on Twitter and Facebook, and alerting resale companies to “prevent unlawful resales” of the Rock ‘n Play. </p>
<p id="WZUiws">“One of the best ways for consumers to ensure they receive notice of a product recall is to register their products when they are purchased or at any time after that — which takes only a few minutes,” said Fisher-Price. When products are recalled, Fisher-Price says it immediately notifies everyone who has registered their product — that is, everyone who takes the time to mail in those white cards that come inside the product packaging, or submit their information and product number online.<strong> </strong></p>
<p id="uOIVa1">The thing is, says Garber, many people don’t. “Most of us look at those [cards] and go, ‘I’m going to fill that out later,’ and then never do because we’re busy, especially if you’re a new parent.” The onus remains on the consumer — and in the case of day cares, relying on product registration means that the burden of responsibility falls on both businesses providing child care and on parents to ask their day cares, essentially, if they’ve seen the news. Fisher-Price also suggests that consumers sign up for product updates on its site, and register for product recall alerts from the CPSC at <a href="http://recalls.gov/">recalls.gov</a>. </p>
<p id="xx7gt5">Government agencies are not off the hook, however. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission could demand that these social media and advertising recommendations are essential policies stipulated by recalls, says Garber. US PIRG also advises that the CPSC must work more closely with recalling companies to inform day cares of recalls, and calls on the commission to hold both child care facilities and recalling companies accountable. Adds Garber, “That would go a long way to keeping kids safer.”</p>
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https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/8/8/20792192/fisher-price-rock-n-play-recall-infant-deaths-day-careStephie Grob Plante2019-08-06T17:40:00-04:002019-08-06T17:40:00-04:00Uber and Lyft have admitted to making traffic worse in some US cities
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<img alt="A man holds a cell phone open to the Uber app." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Xnf4JG-KTvOcAzGlWJ5xno8_ors=/296x0:5020x3543/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/64926196/GettyImages_1149449382.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Olly Curtis/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>According to a new report sponsored by both companies.</p> <p id="urzFRU">Uber and Lyft contribute to worsening traffic, the companies revealed in a co-funded study, and riders may soon see an uptick in fares as an indirect result.</p>
<p id="M8hLLz">The <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FIUskVkj9lsAnWJQ6kLhAhNoVLjfFdx3/view">study</a>, released by Uber and Lyft last week, found that their cars contributed to increased overall congestion in six major cities surveyed: Boston, San Francisco, DC, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Seattle. Handled by transportation consultancy group Fehr & Peers, Uber and Lyft’s report analyzed data from the ride-share behemoths, alongside data from federal, state, and local agencies. </p>
<p id="Mp2XNL">The aim: to “determine our combined contribution” to car activity in specific regions, said Chris Pangilinan, Uber’s head of global policy for public transportation, in a <a href="https://medium.com/uber-under-the-hood/learning-more-about-how-our-roads-are-used-today-bde9e352e92c">blog post</a> on Monday. The report takes into account two transportation concepts whose acronyms see a lot of mileage, so to speak: VMT for vehicle miles traveled, and TNC for transportation network company, or as Pangilinan puts it, “shorthand for Uber and Lyft.” </p>
<p id="ssbLxS">Uber maintains that non-TNC vehicles — private and commercial vehicles, taxis, and limos, — are responsible for the bulk of city traffic. As per Fehr & Peers’ report, Uber and Lyft rides account for only 1 to 3 percent of cars on the road in the cities studied. Still, says Uber’s Pangilinan, the two companies “are likely contributing to an increase in congestion.” In San Francisco, Boston, and DC, for instance, Uber and Lyft’s miles traveled is much higher, ranging from 13.4 percent (San Francisco) to 7.2 percent (DC). Per Uber’s Pangilinan: “The research shows that despite tremendous growth over the past decade, TNC use still pales in comparison to all other traffic, and although TNCs are likely contributing to an increase in congestion, its scale is dwarfed by that of private cars and commercial traffic.”</p>
<p id="JcDBmZ">Fehr & Peers also found that a third of Uber and Lyft’s vehicle miles occur between paid rides, as <a href="https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/08/uber-lyft-traffic-congestion-ride-hailing-cities-drivers-vmt/595393/">CityLab reports</a>. Uber and Lyft’s joint study comes several months after an <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/5/eaau2670">independent report</a> on traffic in San Francisco found that transportation network companies accounted for more than half of the city’s 62 percent surge in weekday traffic delays between 2010 and 2016, as <a href="https://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-uber-lyft-traffic-worse-20190508-story.html">reported by the Los Angeles Times</a>. </p>
<p id="KlxmQB">Taking ownership (at least in part) for congestion could come with an ulterior motive, however. <a href="https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/08/uber-lyft-traffic-congestion-ride-hailing-cities-drivers-vmt/595393/">Reports CityLab</a>, Uber and Lyft use data on congestion to justify congestion pricing. The two companies <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/nyregion/uber-taxi-lyft-fee.html">recently introduced congestion pricing</a> to Manhattan, a governmentally imposed policy used in cities outside the US <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/29/18286830/congestion-pricing-nyc-gridlock-autonomous-vehicles-traffic">like London, Stockholm, and Singapore</a> that tacks on user fees for high-traffic areas during high-traffic times of day. </p>
<p id="c1bLPe">In Manhattan, that means $2.75 added to the base fare of so-called “for-hire vehicles” driving south of 96th Street. The public policy is part of New York’s city-wide effort to curb gridlock and raise $1 million a day to repair its beleaguered subway system, and will affect taxis as well. Uber and Lyft already implement company-wide policies of surge pricing, or “pricing when it’s busy,” <a href="https://help.lyft.com/hc/en-us/articles/115012926227-Pricing-when-it-s-busy">as Lyft puts it</a>.</p>
<p id="ku0SbC">Of course more ride-shares on the road doesn’t just mean more traffic; more cars also means <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/1/8/18174082/us-carbon-emissions-2018">more greenhouse gas emissions</a>. Lyft chief policy officer Anthony Foxx, the former transportation secretary under President Obama, sees congestion pricing as a means to tackle the emissions crisis, and <a href="https://medium.com/sharing-the-ride-with-lyft/the-new-frontier-congestion-pricing-in-america-ba99c3721c98">writes</a> that cities adopting congestion pricing “should charge hybrid and electric cars less.” </p>
<p id="rxoOvX">While not necessarily addressing the issue of number of cars on the road period, Lyft recently introduced a “Green Mode” in Seattle and Portland, an option that lets riders request clean cars, effectively rewarding drivers who care about the environment. </p>
<p id="ME62Vj">While New York has already allocated its new congestion pricing policy to the city’s troubled subway system, some cities are adopting ride-share apps on a mass scale at the expense of mass transit. </p>
<p id="xNDcHW">As seen in the case of Innisfil, a town of 40,000 in Ontario, Canada, that replaced public transit with Uber, cities that prioritize ride-shares over buses, subways and metros force low-income communities into using transportation that they can’t afford. And in subsidizing Uber, the town now bears the burden of policy that isn’t scalable. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jul/16/the-innisfil-experiment-the-town-that-replaced-public-transit-with-uber">Reports the Guardian</a>, “Because Innisfil subsidises each ride, the more successful it is, the more the town pays to Uber. That figure is now projected to reach $1.2 million for 2019 — more than the bus programme would have cost, and well above the $900,000 the city allocated.” </p>
<p id="Iodp3W">Other cities may not take such drastic steps as to swap out bus routes with Ubers, but ride-share companies’ effects on mass transit are clear: As noted by the Guardian, mass transit use in major US cities fell 2 percent since Uber and Lyft appeared on the scene. </p>
<p id="rw4LI4">Despite unprecedented growth — Uber’s Pangilinan <a href="https://medium.com/uber-under-the-hood/learning-more-about-how-our-roads-are-used-today-bde9e352e92c">cites</a> 15 billion trips over the past ten years as a recent benchmark — both companies are dogged by unknowns. Uber <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/04/uber-ride-share-lyft-ipo-earnings">will release</a> its earnings for the second time after going public in May this Wednesday, after announcing a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/29/technology/uber-job-cuts.html">mass layoff</a> of 400 employees last week. Lyft <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-29/lyft-operating-chief-who-joined-last-year-from-tesla-to-depart">lost</a> chief operating officer Jon McNeill last week after only a year on the job; the company has said it will not be replacing him. </p>
<p id="jebRjs">Whether or not cities will adopt congestion pricing is another unknown to add to the list — and whether the public will support such a measure is yet one more. </p>
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https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/8/6/20757593/uber-lyft-traffic-congestion-pricingStephie Grob Plante