Welcome to Friday Financial Focus!
Each week, we bring you a round-up of the headlines that impact your bottom line. Some you may have heard about, and others may have gotten buried in the chaos of the week. Either way, they all matter when it comes to managing your money!
Distilling all of the current events into a single newsletter is impossible, so be sure to follow us on Bluesky. Join our Patreon community for financial history and resistory stories that inform and inspire, along with astrological and tarot support for the month. There are 3 paid tiers and a free level with limited posts - something is accessible for everyone!
Have a news story or financial topic you want us to explore further? Let us know about it!
Upcoming Classes
Most of the January classes are now up on our website! Remember that our monthly resource forecast workshop and financial class are included in their respective Patreon tiers, but you can still register for individual classes even if you're not a Patreon member. Patreon also has a free level, so there is something accessible to everyone. Join today!
We're also hosting a live Solstice Celebration on Patreon! Grab a hot beverage and join us to welcome back the light on Sunday, December 21, at 2pm EST. We'll pull some cards and talk about intentions for the days ahead. This is a free event, but you can join at any level to get notified.
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Planifesting 2026! A Resource Reset for Growth in the Year Ahead (January 14)
Do your resolutions last about as long as a cheeseboard at the holiday office party?
We get it. It's great to have a "new year, new me" ambition, but change doesn't happen overnight. You probably need a plan and a bit of cosmic support to get things rolling. That's where we come in!
Join Rebellious Resources for Planifesting 2026! A Resource Reset for Growth in the Year Ahead. In this live virtual workshop, we take you step-by-step through assessing where your resources stand, being specific about what you actually want to achieve in the new year, and breaking down those goals into realistic steps.
We'll also show you how to work with the Lunar Phase Cycles to add some cosmic oomph to your short- and long-term manifestations!
During this workshop, we'll focus on:
- π± A Resource Inventory and honest evaluation
- π± How to prioritize Needs vs Wants while still having fun
- π± Using Lunar Phase Cycles to plan out large and small goals
- π± Syncing mundane projects with the cosmos to create real change
You donβt leave empty handed! This live workshop includes:
- Interactive activities
- Q&A sessions
- A workbook for continued support
Get the Deets
- Date: Wednesday, January 14, 2026
- Time: 7:00 pm EST
- Where: Online (Zoom link will be sent prior to event)
This Week's Financial Focus
Folks, I'll be very honest with you. It was a real struggle to find a topic for this week's newsletter. That isn't because there aren't financial stories worthy of discussion. If anything, there are too many to count, but they all seem to have one thing in common: they favor Money Culture as it fucks over the rest of us. That's... depressing.
Now look, we don't do spiritual bypassing or sugarcoat shit around here. You want synthetic sweet? Go buy a bag of over-processed over-priced candy. However, it also gets defeating to constantly share stories of how we're all in debt and financial access is being restricted and folks just seems to not get why that is a bad thing. SMDH...
In short, it is a really shitty time to be an observant historian, financial advocate, and astrologer with critical thinking skills because all of those identities see exactly where we are and what is coming. In fact, I've been warning about this for close to 20 years, and yet? Here we are.
So, this week, I decided to do something a bit different. I always say the "what" is meaningless without the "why", meaning that knowing what happened is often only half the story at most. Unless you know the "why" - the motivation and inciting events - you can't fully understand and appreciate the "what". You need context.
This week I am sharing some of the "why" behind my mission of financial literacy, access, and inclusion, and why history is such an important part of that work.
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Forged in Fire
I learned from an early age that money had power. That it could manipulate, frustrate, threaten, and coerce. Well, not money so much as the people who possessed it, but I didn't understand that nuance at the time. All I knew is that the people closest to me could use it to bless or burden, and somehow, they managed to do both simultaneously. Any gift came at a cost not written on the price tag. It was now a debt that could be held over your head. Yes, even over a child's head.
I learned that people would stay in terrible situations if they didn't hold the financial power. They would use children as pawns and sacrificial lambs to keep their own head above water. For the longest time, I hated money because I saw all the ways it was used to harm. In reality, what I was seeing was Money Culture. It took a while to realize that.
Thankfully, I had some amazing history teachers along the way. They were passionate, insightful, encouraging, and hardworking. They wanted us students to understand the why of what we were learning, not simply the what that could be neatly aligned with a Scantron bubble on a standardized test. They wanted us to understand that history wasn't just "then", it was NOW. We were making history every day, so let's try to make a better history for future generations to learn about!
I'm pretty sure that some of them had been hippies, or at least hippy-adjacent. Perhaps they grew up in the shadow of the Viet Nam war, or buried under the weight of the 80s, a decade of excess. Reaganomics soured a lot of folks on power, but others got high on it. Whatever thread wove their origin story, they all had one thing in common: a rebellious streak. They weren't just going to teach history, they were going to instill it in our veins, encode it into our DNA, and mold the next generation of rebels. I think they did some mighty damn fine work.
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Disrupting the Norms
As I began working, my negative view of money was only reinforced. Sexist managers, misogynistic comments, overt discrimination and retaliation. I experienced it all. Work was frequently an unsafe place, especially as a freelancer. I had to be my own union... even when a union was supposed to protect me. I developed a particular reputation for not taking any shit, and yet? People still tried!! Foolishness...
Along the way, I would often found myself teaching others about business, money, and power dynamics. Some were interns, brand new to the industry. Others were veterans that had been brought up to believe a true artist was a "starving artist". Anyone who cared about getting paid was a sell-out. That Money Wound cost more than one of them their life. It damn near cost me mine, too.
The number of times I was expected to work for "exposure" instead of financial compensation were too numerous to count. My response was that as soon as I could pay my rent and purchase groceries with "exposure", we could talk, but until then I needed to be paid for my knowledge, skills, and time. If their budget didn't allow for that, then my schedule didn't allow for them. PERIOD.
Then I began my preserves business and shared kitchens with other entrepreneurs who worked just as long and as hard as I did. Many had dreams of breaking a cycle of inherited scarcity and creating generational wealth for their families. I saw their hopes and, unfortunately, ignorance of finances be exploited to overpay snake oil sellers and under-protect themselves. Money Culture strikes again.
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Creating History Worth Repeating
As the pandemic closed the world, I knew that my chapters in both theatre and the food industry had come to a definitive close. What was next? Well, what did I want to come next? Good question...
I found myself going back to the history books and seeing that while many things had changed in legislation, far fewer had caught up in practice. How do I disrupt that? How do I shift the power and level the playing field?
Then I remembered the teachers who made me love history. The ones who encouraged my political voice and cheered on my activism. I'd never actually forgotten them, but perhaps it was time to channel their spirit more strongly. Perhaps it was time to be the teacher.
I remembered how they didn't simply teach history with the broad strokes of oppression, enslavement, and greed. They layered in the finer details of resistance, community, and resilience. After all, a story where the villain always wins wouldn't be worth telling!
I remembered that when Black communities were denied broad financial inclusion, they built their own local economies that thrived. The Black Wall Streets - Rosewood, Greenpoint, Fourth Avenue District, and so many more.
I remembered that when an earthquake and subsequent fires leveled all of San Francisco in 1906, members of the Asian community - who were denied financial assistance in the wake of the tragedy - created their own bank to grant loans and enable rebuilding.
I remembered that when women were consistently denied financial inclusion without the consent of a male relative, three smart and outspoken members of Congress - Rep. Margaret Heckler, Rep. Lindy Boggs, and congressional fellow Dr. Emily Card - worked together to ensure the Equal Credit Opportunity Act was passed, enshrining legal protections against financial discrimination. FWIW, those legal protections are now under attack by this regime.
In reality, our rights and legal protections are always under attack. They are new and fragile in the great scope of history and while we may feel entitled to them, every generation has the responsibility to protect what is passed down to them and strengthen it for the next generation to come. That fragility and mission seem to be lost on too many.
It is far too easy to look at history - and perhaps the present - and only see the negative. The pain. The cruelty. The injustice. But within all our days past and present, there is also joy. Resistance. Resilience. Much of the progress we've made comes when we work together, like when the Black Panthers supported the 504 sit-in protest for disability rights. Without that community support, the protest may have failed.
I have absolutely no illusion that the past is not filled with pain. I teach about it all the time, but with that comes the responsibility to also teach about the wins - the "why we keep going." There are so many and by knowing both, we have the power to create history that is worth repeating. We have the ability to do so much better.
Instead of following past generations off the wrong exit ramp, we can make better, more informed decisions. That is why I chose to include our Today in Financial History and Today in Resistory posts on the free level of Patreon - so that this knowledge can be accessible to those who may not be in a financial position to join a paid tier, but to be very honest, it too often feels like I'm screaming into the void.
So, if you've actually read this newsletter and made it this far, thank you. Thank you, ten-thousand times over. Please respond with absolutely anything to let me know that I'm not alone. If you're able to, please join our Patreon (yes, even the free level is fine) or sign up for a class, like Planifesting 2026! We have some special deals on our website, too.
The Friday Financial Focus will be on hiatus over the holidays, but we'll still send a few quick emails and go live on Patreon. We hope to see you there, but either way, have a warm and restorative holiday season. Blessed Solstice and may the light return to guide our path.
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What are your thoughts on the matter? Let us know!
Rebellious Services & Communities
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Find support and guidance for navigating change, protecting your resources, and reclaiming your power with a 1:1 Resource Toolbox Tarot Reading.
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This community focuses on financial history and literacy to help you better understand current events, while also working on healing Money Wounds. Tarot and astrology support your learning process.
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This informative community will offer insights into world events through the lens of political, corporate, and historical astrology (AKA: mundane astrology). This unique approach highlights patterns on a larger scale.
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Sometimes you need 1:1 help as a business owner and need insight from someone with years of experience. Power Hour is a single 60-minute 1:1 session designed to give you clarity and action items to move you forward.
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Arcana Resource Coaching is a 13-session program designed to explore your relationship to your resources. We uncover the hidden opportunities and challenges you have to embracing your full potential.
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As always, your support is appreciated. Stay well!
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Sincerely,
Rayna, Money Culture Disruptor & Financial Inclusion Advocate
Rebellious Resources
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