Photo: Lewis Weil (left) was visited by Elias Henderson from the Redwood Forest Foundation “to talk trees with me,” said Weil. Photo courtesy of Lewis Weil
Financial advisor seeks to help Point Arena community, plant redwoods
By S.J. Black [email protected]
(Republished with permission of Independent Coast Observer©)
“Unscary Planning for All” is the motto for Money Positive, a one-man company advising individuals on finances.
Hailing from Austin, Texas, where his company, Money Positive, is located, Weil is here on a one-month residency with This Will Take Time, a local nonprofit agency in Point Arena dedicated to long-term projects and experiments in land use, education and the arts, according to its website.
Weil’s goal while visiting Point Arena is to offer pro bono financial advice to individuals. “I can help people where finances and their lives interact,” he said.
“It’s a design problem that everyone has to become an expert in this while living their life, pursuing their passions and then they have to build a portfolio as well,” he explained over a cup of coffee at the Point Arena Co-op.
“How do we design a better system?” Weil asked. He wants to find out.
He began his career as a molecular and cell biologist, he said, but eventually changed careers when he saw the need for financial guidance, even mong his own peers. “I was surrounded by the genius scientists and they didn’t know how to set up their 401Ks,” he said.
Weil started doing financial advice on the side, but eventually made the full jump in 2015, becoming a registered investment adviser.
Money Positive is a certified B Corporation. B Corps are for-profit companies certified to “meet rigorous standards of social environmental performance, accountability and transparency,” reads the certifying agency’s website.
B Lab is the international nonprofit that certifies the companies through a performance assessment, rating companies on a scale of 200 points. Money Positive scored a rate of 82 points, enough to pass the B Corp standards and outscoring the median score of all companies who completed B Lab’s assessment by about 30 points.
“They looked at my utility bills, they looked at my suppliers, they looked at my contracts that I use with contractors to make sure I’m paying a fair, livable wages,” Weil said. “It was probably a six-month process.”
Currently there are more than 2,100 B Corps around the world, according to B Lab, which includes Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream and Patagonia companies.
Though he’s only been here a week, he’s already met some former mayors of Point Arena who have, in turn, introduced him to more people of the small city of not-quite 500 people.
“In Los Angeles there’s 5 million people and they have 500 stories,” he said, parroting what was told to him by a Point Arena resident. “And in Point Arena there’s 500 people and they have 5 million stories. And I have found that to be very true.”
His mission is to give people financial literacy. “People are terrified of money,” Weil said, adding many people don’t know how much they make. Getting people to focus and look at expenditures is his first step, he said.
“Which means now it’s time to identify ways to bring that up and ways to bring your income up,” he said. “Recognizing it, processing that is the first step.”
During a time when costs of health care, education and housing are all on the rise, financial literacy is especially important. “Economics is like the tides,” he said. “You can’t change what the ocean does; you have to move with it. The economic ocean has moved.”
With good information, he’s seen people make good decisions and change their lives to become financially secure. It’s possible to be secure with any lifestyle, he said, when people can keep their financial obligations in check.
Being able to spend about 50 percent of one’s income is a good allowance, he said, and he tries to work his advisees toward that goal.
The median income for Mendocino County residents is about $43,000 per year, according to Data USA, which uses U.S. census data to provide various statistics in a given area. That’s about two-thirds of the median California state income. About 20 percent of Mendocino County residents live in poverty, according to Data USA.
But in addition to giving out financial advice, Weil is also here for another reason: to plant redwood trees. For every customer he has, he has a goal to plant one tree.
“The mission is to help as many people as possible and put as many trees into the ground as possible,” he said. He’s already planted about 30 redwood trees on This Will Take Time’s 80-acre property.
While in Point Arena, he said he’s not looking to add 400-plus customers to his current, 40-client base. Rather, he just wants to give advice, not do the work for people.
For now he’s still getting organized, he said, and trying to build up the trust of the community.
“What I’m here doing this month is really listening, because I’m an outsider,” Weil said. What he wants to know, he said, is: “What’s Point Arena about? What’s going on with the people here? And then, how can I help?”
For more information about Weil, or to set up a meeting, visit his website money-positive.com or email him directly at [email protected].
