Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585

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150 million American adults, which is over half of adults in this country, can't afford a $1,000 emergency. There's a lot of reasons for that.
You may get a bum deal. You may get dealt a bad hand of cards.
It's still on us to figure out how we play them. No one's going to show up and save us.
We've got to figure out how to get out of this hole ourselves. Welcome to PassionStruck.
Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles.
And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.
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I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes.
Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hey PassionStruck fam.
Welcome to episode 585. Whether you're a longtime listener or tuning in for the first time, I am so excited you're here.
You've joined a global movement dedicated to unlocking human potential, creating intentional change and making what truly matters matter most. Before we dive in, let's take a moment to reflect on some of the incredible conversations we've had this week.
On Tuesday, I sat down with Dr. Lori Santos, y'all professor and host for the Happiness Lab podcast, to explore why happiness isn't just about personal joy, but about feeling like we matter.
We broke down the biggest misconceptions about happiness and why our pursuit of success and convenience often leaves us more disconnected than fulfilled. Then on Thursday, I spoke with Bryant Wood, a former model and bodybuilder turned breathwork expert about the power of vulnerability, emotional healing, and the importance of redefining masculinity.
If you've ever struggled with connection or self-worth, his insights will change how you think about personal growth. Now, today's episode is something a little different, and I think you're going to love it.
Instead of our regular format with me doing a solo episode, I'm bringing you an episode from a show I truly admire, System Catalyst, which is hosted by my friend Jeff Walker, who you might remember from Passion Strike episode 99 and English Saul. System Catalyst tells the stories of change makers who put their egos aside to transform the systems that shape our world.
In this episode, Jeff sits down with Kerry Jo Grimes, known as CJ, the founder of WorkMoney, a nonprofit with over 8.1 million members that's dedicated to helping Americans save money, increase their financial security, and improve their well-being. Today's episode, here's what will be explored.
Why financial well-being isn't just about money, it's about emotions, security, and having control over your future. They discuss how work money is using personalized communication and community-driven solutions to create real change.
They go into the growing challenge of economic insecurity and why so many Americans struggle to afford a $1,000 emergency fund and what we can do about it. And finally, the power of listening, how Work Money's success is driven by deeply understanding its members and meeting their real needs.
This is an inspiring conversation about how to create meaningful impact at scale, and I'm honored to share it with you today. If you enjoy this episode, be sure to check out Systems Catalyst and follow the link in the show notes to explore more of their incredible work.
Now let's dive in. Here's Jeff Walker's conversation with CJ Grimes on System Catalyst.
Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin.
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Let's Texas. I say a lot that money is about math and feelings.

And when we only think about the math part,

you know, we might solve a problem,

but we only solve half the problem.

You know, people don't just want money for its own sake.

They want money so that they can live their good life.

We can't fix the world alone,

but collaborating isn't easy

and systems are allergic to change.

So how do we do it without losing our damn minds?

That is what we're here to find out.

I'm Jeff Walker.

I'm English Saul.

Welcome to System Catalyst, the podcast that cracks the code for making the world a better place.

There's a saying in politics that sums up why people vote the way they vote. It's the economy, stupid.
And it looks like this last presidential election was no exception. Right now, many Americans feel like they don't make enough money to live comfortably.
It's this feeling that prompted our guest today, Carrie Jo Grimes, or as I like to call her CJ, to create Work Money, a nonprofit organization that provides tools and resources to help millions of Americans save money and earn more.

and when i say millions i mean specifically 8.1 million so far that's how many members work money

has gained in just a few years despite its size though work money feels very much like a tight

community where the team is always listening and keeping That's how many members Work Money has gained in just a few years. Despite its size, though, Work Money feels very much like a tight-knit community,

where the team is always listening and keeping the conversation going with its members.

So I wanted to have CJ on to talk about, among other things,

how they foster such a trusting environment with such a large group of people.

So, if you've ever struggled to connect with the people you're serving,

I'm sure you'll learn a lot from this episode. Hi, CJ.
Hi, Jeff. How are you? Good.
Thanks for joining us. That'd be a fun conversation.
Yeah. It's funny.
I was listening to some of the things you've been doing and talking about, and my family is from Sutherland, Illinois. They hung out in Evansville.
Jeff, you know my family's from Evansville? I'm saying this connection. Oh, wow.
First of all, nobody knows where Evansville, Indiana is. And it's a remarkably large town for nobody to know where it is.
You know, it's like right at that apex of where Indiana meets Kentucky. And you can see right across the river to Kentucky.
You know, I grew up in a very working class, middle class family. And my grandparents are hugely inspirational for me.
My mom's parents, Charlie and Rachel Ashton. And neither of them graduated from the eighth grade.
And my grandpa, Charlie, worked at the Whirlpool factory making refrigerators

just down the way from the Sears and Roba where my grandma, Grandma Rachel, she ran the women's department. And they really elbow greased their way to like a good life.
You know, they had two kids and they bought a house and one of their kids went to college. I mean, it was really kind of the way it's supposed to be.
You know, you work hard and you get a good life out of it. And my grandpa, with his refrigerator factory job, saved up enough money to still retire.
And in retirement, he bought himself a black Cadillac Eldorado with a red racing stripe. And every Sunday, my grandma and grandpa would go for a drive after church.
And they would always have the same argument because my grandpa would roll the windows down because he wanted people to see that he was driving a Cadillac because it was a big deal for him and my grandma would go Charlie roll the windows up because it was messing up her hair and I just grew up believing that if you put the time in if you work so so hard you can get that good life my grandpa didn't have 10 Cadillacs. I mean, he was rich.

And I just thought when I worked really hard in my life, I would be able to get whatever my

Cadillac was, whatever that is for me as an adult. And what I've seen happen over the last 30 years,

it's gotten harder and harder for folks to have that moment. And I can't imagine a refrigerator

factory worker saving up enough money over a 35, 40-year career to buy themselves a Cadillac. Well, and you and I are connected because some part of my family grew up in Southern Illinois.
And on Sunday afternoons after church got in their Cadillac, my grandfather's Cadillac and drove around to look at houses and sites. So, you know, I agree with you that that dream, you know, is it still here and is it possible? And so you've been working to try to, you know, make it possible, right? So how do you kind of, how do you think of your model of change and kind of what you've built with Work Money and this six and a half million members you have now, right? Well, it was, and it's funny because we need to update our website.
We've grown to 8.1 million. We just keep growing so fast that I know we can't keep the website updated.
I think I spent a couple of decades as a union organizer where I got to work with working in middle-class folks, figuring out how they use their collective strength and numbers to improve their lives through union contracts. And I'm a proud pro-union person, but I don't do that work anymore because 6% of the private sector is unionized and 11%, 10% overall working folks need to take public sector into account, which is great.
I think unions are vital and important for a healthy democracy, healthy economy, a healthy society, like big, big union person. And I wanted to build something that could give both the benefit of a union, meaning like you get discounts and you make more money and you have access to more resources, a better life materially.
And we can use, we that work in the middle classes can use our collective strength and numbers to help frame and shape an economy that works for us. You know, we can use our strength to be a market and we can bargain for cheaper goods.
We can make clear to either all political parties what we think is really important for working middle class folks. And so Work Money is the organization that kind of grew out of that idea that we can build a place where anybody can go that they can trust to get real resources to help them with their money both individually and collectively i didn't know that we were going to build what became kind of a media company i didn't know that i was asking for our members phone numbers and people were joining so that i could call them because that's all as a union organizer that's how i knew to talk to people yeah I talked to them on the phone it was my whole job for 20 years and it turned out that people were like well just text me I was like oh okay and so work money for a long time like the text and email and the communications like the value that we actually provide people is information we deliver information that they can trust from a source they can trust we deliver it it over text and email and phones and now social media.
And I listened to people and that became like the way that we work. It became the lifeblood of our organization.
Well, you are clearly a movement builder and focusing when you're trying to do system change on what is the problem you're trying to address. And it sounds like you took the hook of the financial need, the angst that comes up with people trying to make it by and trying to build enough to carry their families along, right? Yeah, that's exactly right.
I mean, 150 million American adults, which is over half of adults in this country, can't afford a thousand dollar emergency. And there's a lot of reasons for that.
It may be, you may get a bum deal. You may get dealt a bad hand of cards.
It's still on us to figure out how we play them. No one's going to show up and save us.
We got to figure out how to get out of this hole ourselves. And it's also not that 150 million individual people are screwed up.

There's clearly something wrong with the system overall.

Wages aren't keeping up with costs.

Things cost too much.

And there are ways that we can use our strength

as a large organization

to build an economy that works for us too.

Go on the Work Money website

and you'll find plenty of great tools and resources

to help you with your finances

like a starter budget calculator.

In a problem, but we only solve half the problem. You know, people don't just want money for its own sake.
They want money so that they can live their good life. They can spend time with their family.
They can have the bandwidth to, I don't know, my good life is something simple. It's like, I want to be able to watch the Cubs and the Bears and the Trailblazers.
You know, I would like to have enough time and money to go to the gym. I sometimes have one or the other, but generally not both.
I'd love to buy my teenage daughter one of the million things she says she desperately needs and not feel like I'm robbing Peter to pay Paul. I'd love to take my husband out to eat seafood because when he cooks it in the house, it's disgusting and I hate the smell.
And so like, you know, it's like, that's, it's like, that's the, it's, I don't even mean by good life. I'm not even trying to say I want like five yachts and 10, you know, fancy cars.
And I think that when I think about financial security, it's really to me, for me, about my relationships, you know, my relationship with myself, my relationship with my kid and my husband. And I think that that's ultimately what we want people to have well and there's so many people that are lonely when they find others that are suffering the same questions through the same questions or issues that's right you know it gives them more strength and uh yeah light around it yeah it sounds like once the trust you start being able to talk about that kind of stuff which is very angst-driven and things that people don't like to talk about necessarily as much.

Yeah, that's right.

And then they'll open up to other things, right?

Yeah, that's exactly right.

I mean, we are 100% always, always, always on our members' side. They know that they can count on us, that we have no other angle.
We have no other reason for being other than to raise people's incomes and lower their costs and i think it's it's an unusual thing for there to be an organization or a person that you know is always always on your side and it's because we are them you know what i mean like we're not some other outside force we are an organization of working middle class people who have come together to take responsibility and make it better for all of us. And it's your actions that prove that.
Yeah, that's exactly right. And I text my members, you know, at least, you know, usually once a week or so.
We call, we have a whole phone bank program where we call our members constantly, just checking in, seeing how people are doing, asking lots of questions, listening. We do a lot of listening at Work Money.
And that might be a thing that kind of sets us apart too, is we really spend time listening. And it's incredible.
Our members are incredible. They have, you know, over a quarter of them have texted, called, emailed us, you know, over 10 times, which means we have a lot of information and understanding about what people want and what they would find valuable and useful.
You have it with them. Do they have it amongst themselves, relationship? That's a great question.
Yeah. In smaller groups, we have a lot of member leaders.
We bring people together around specific things. So for example, we have a group of members that's been working to raise the overtime threshold.
And so they get to know each other really well and they cross politics, they cross age, they cross gender, they cross all the rural, urban. And then we found this really interesting thing happening where as we have more social media content, there's a lot of stuff that happens in the comments on some of our YouTube videos and in our Instagram and Facebook Reels where people interact together about how they solve problems or around how to shop and save at the store.
Or we have a lot of members who are interested in things like dinner for four on 20 bucks. And people share lots of ideas back and forth.
And we've done some real life events. We'll do a swing through a state and we'll have an event or a tabling event and people come and sort of chat with each other.
In this next year, I expect we're going to be doing a lot more work in people's physical communities because it's time. We got pretty big.
And so we're going to be moving into a couple of places and working with our members on the ground. I'm really excited for what that will look and feel like.
I think that's the next chapter for work. When I think about work money in its most mature, I imagine work money being physically present in thousands of communities on the ground in states all across the country.
Despite having 8 million members across the country, WorkMoney operates almost like a small business. With regular phone calls and in-person events, each individual member feels seen and heard and understood, which further strengthens and grows the WorkMoney community.
It's a virtuous cycle that I wish more organizations would employ. Some people, when they work on social change, they had to figure out the geographic level to work on.
And you clearly pick the United States, obviously, but many people then start going, well, do I go down to the state? Do I go down to the city? Do I go down to rural versus city? And then there's different levers of change. And so kind of where you focus on, I think, is interesting.

Could you have a Work Money New York and a Work Money Arkansas, you know, and have them

work together?

Yeah, we do.

We were born, Work Money was born out of the pandemic.

You know, I was a union organizer for a couple of decades and I left the union maybe two

and a half years before that.

And I was kind of knocking around, working on getting jobs here and there.

And then, you know, everyone's money kind of got turned inside out when we shut down and I started fielding lots of questions for folks I'd spent a lot of I mean I spent two decades working with people about you know how to improve their financial lives like through union organizing and so I got together with some friends from that world and we built this website and that kind of took off you know and so we were born digitally because there was no other option you know then there's no in-person anything at work money for two years practically and so we grew nationally immediately because we were just online and now we're so big that we have enough members in a bunch of states that we're taking pretty seriously.

What does it mean to be Work Money New York, Work Money Pennsylvania, Work Money Arkansas?

Obviously, there's geographic differences, right? If you want to talk about changing, like bargaining for cheaper stuff in Arkansas, there's different companies there sometimes and there are in New York.

Sometimes there's the same companies.

Sometimes you can bargain with companies at the national level. Walmart's in Arkansas and Walmart's everywhere.
Walmart, that's a great example. Walmart really is.
That's an excellent example. And then there's also like you can do things at the city level and the state level.
But what we find to be the most helpful is not even thinking geographically or even demographically. It's thinking about people who have like a similar set of problems.
So this kind of person's financial security issue is that they haven't saved enough to retire. And they're between like, you know, 40 and 60 in that age range.
And they're trying to catch up, but their income is low. So like, what are the tools, resources, information we can help that person with? Or this person who's in the sandwich generation, like I was for a while, you know, with a kid and a parent, both of whom need care.
And I was a single mom. And it's like, there's like, that's a different set of problems or someone who is, you know, in the thick of it as a parent, you know, I have a 17 year old daughter who's probably going off to college.
i know she's going to go off to college in the fall in a year yeah it's wonderful it's also like what is going on with college tuition oh my gosh so there that's like a whole separate very intense problem that i mean many of us go through for four years or more so we think a lot about that like what are the what are the kitchen table problems and solutions that our members have and we think more about groups in that way so historically than we do about like where do you live so it's not treating a member as a single solitary image but you know an evolving personality that changes their needs yeah and so in your 100 year goal you will live their entire life with them. So what they need when they're 22 and then married and 27 and having their first kid and then on to 35 and retiring is going to change.
Yeah, I had this vision of, you know, we're there for you when you get your first job and we're there for you when you transition into like real full retirement.

You know, that like we help people understand and navigate.

This all sounds wonderful,

but of course, work money doesn't run on goodwill.

It relies on funders to operate.

So how do you get funders to care about increasing wages

and lowering costs of working class Americans?

I think it's better for my funders who are,

you know, who are very wealthy,

who are in the, you know, one or 0.1%, like that's who, that's who largely funds work when these work. I think they really understand that they are better off when everyday Americans are better off, that it doesn't work even for them in the long run.
If most of the country is hollowed out and can't afford to buy the products and services their companies make or use the products and services that their companies make. So I think that there's, I don't want to describe them all as self-interested.
I mean, of course, it does feel good to them. I hope it should to invest in an organization that's really helping people achieve financial security.
I think they get it. It's not just altruism.
I think people are properly self-interested. America does not work if only a small number of people are reaping the economic benefits from our economy.
Like, it doesn't work in the long run. We won't be here, I would argue, in the long run.
Well, and they must do. I mean, clearly, if you're looking to change the system, you look at your return on investment.
And so we as a donor, you know, would come in and say, hey, long term, not just personally, but, you know, ROI to the world. Yeah.
It's got to be positive. Yeah.
You know, having people be able to be self-supportive, being able to be connected into a larger system, have more confidence, you know, right? Yeah, that's exactly right. So learning those levers and kind of thinking about it is, you know, data as well.
And you have a 15 million, you know, member goal over, you know, a reasonable timeframe.

But that's a huge number.

Yeah.

And so creating, you know, a group of people who have that kind of power,

if I'm a system catalyst,

if I can pull together 50 million, holy moly,

you know, that's sea changing.

You know, you can do things, you know,

how would you look at measuring it

so that you're talking to, you know,

your catalyst looking out saying,

hey, this is how the world's going to change

in five to 10 years because of what we're doing.

Oh, that's a great question. I don't get to think this way often enough.
I think we would be with that kind of power. I will know that we have demonstrated the impact we want to have when we're seeing wages go up for working middle class folks folks.
We're seeing debt go down for working middle-class folks. We're seeing home ownership go up for working middle-class folks.
We're seeing... I don't know how to measure this one.
So this just give me a second to kind of say it a little sloppy. But there's a big question mark in a lot of folks, my members' minds like the value of going to a four-year college and paying all that money even with grants and still out of reach for a lot of people there's a lot of like I end up with all this debt and my salary doesn't quite make sense for a long time like how many people are in bondage to their student loans I'll just put a I just want to you know throw a little oar in the water here and say, we are desperately on, we don't have enough electricians and plumbers and, you know, skilled carpenters.
Like we are missing a lot of important trades work that we need. I mean, the infrastructure in this country, I mean, the amount of factories we need to build and roads we have to fix and bridges we have to build.
And boy, wouldn't you love some high-speed railing? Who's going to do all that? You know, I think we really need to think more broadly about education. And then the last thing I'll say about how I'll know is that, you know, my little hobby horse I ride right now, like precarity, people will feel like they are financially stable.
People will believe that, like what I believed when I was a kid, that I would have my version of my grandpa's, you know, like low-end Cadillac, that I could get the American dream, that I would be able to retire a life that I could afford, where I could spend time with my family and my kid and my beloveds and, you know, be happy. Part of what system catalysts tend to do is look at influencer maps, system maps, partner maps.
And so I'm curious who your partners could be. And maybe there's an uncovered group of them, I think.
Whereas I think you're really hitting it where it says, our country is going to change. Our country is going to go to more plants that are going to be based here.
You know, there's going to be, you know, there still is a big demand for a lot of high skilled jobs like plumbers, like electricians, like others who understand what AI is and how it kind of connects together. That's right.
And if you can take your middle class and blue collar teams and find others who care about that problem. Yeah.

That issue. They'll be your funders.
They're going to be your supporters. Yeah.
And they're going to be your partners. Because it's going to be more and more an issue and we need to help support them.
And where else do you look other than looking at a union and there's issues around that? And you're trying to say, hey, I'm taking it out of that, right? Yeah. This is a conceptually difficult question to answer,

meaning like,

who should we all be partnering with?

But I find that it gets really simple about when you tackle a specific problem.

Hey, we don't have enough skilled electrical engineers

to wire the stuff we need to wire

to build all these factories and all of the, that are coming home in the next, you know, decade or so. And so when we ask the question like that, it's amazing how business and labor and government can come together without flinching at each other, regardless of politics, regardless of ideology.
And so when I think about that, I think about, okay, so work money is going to keep our eyes on what are the practical things that we can partner with folks on and things like that. So for example, we have a lot of members in Pennsylvania.
So we're going to be looking at what are the opportunities in Pennsylvania to give our members a chance to upskill into work we know is coming. So we'll be looking for actual material, like partnerships that are material that makes sense or partnerships in California and Arizona where there's a desperate need for healthcare workers.
And so do we have members who want to go into the, there are training programs that we can partner with to get our members in the door and like learning those skills. See, that's an opportunity.
That's a big deal. You know, we are coming to the end

and there's a lot of interesting ideas

that you've been bringing out

that people can leverage off of.

But as you're giving advice to people

who want to change the world for the better purpose

and you created something in 2020

that's amazing and growing dramatically

and setting up, you know,

really an audience and a group of members

that are just, you know, you consider yourself in them.

You see yourself in them.

What advice do you give?

What would you say is the parting kind of gift to our listeners, you know, for them

to think about that based on your experience?

I'm torn between two things.

I'll try to say them both quickly.

You know, the first thing I would say is that it takes just as much time and effort to do big things as it does to do small things. The skills

are often the same. And somebody told me that once, and it really changed my perspective.
It's

like, oh, I could do this in a city or I could do this in a country. And the mechanics for me

were largely the same. It takes more money, obviously, often to do things on a bigger field.
So I would really encourage folks, if you want to think systemically, you probably have all the tools you need to do it. And whatever work you've done, you can take that and just like stretch it out and put it over a larger frame.
And I bet you can think it through. And the second thing that I would say is, boy, do I listen.
Listening and listening and listening to our members, to partners, and to myself. I listened to people.
And that became the way that we work. It became the lifeblood of our organization.
And so those are my two pieces. That's great advice.
And I can take back listening. You can take back focusing on people you're trying to have an impact with, partnering with them, building that vulnerability and trust as you're trying to create this massive movement that can change the world.
And people can take that and build their own based on what they think is an important lever to push so uh lots to learn here and i appreciate you taking the time to helping us transfer some of that knowledge thank you it's always so fun to talk to you and i just will say that i love this podcast it's such a delight to have a space where people think about systems change. It's necessary and it helps me feel less alone.
So thank you for your work. That's it for today's show.
Please don't forget to subscribe to System Catalyst so you don't miss out on the new episodes. Also, do us a huge favor by rating our podcast and leaving us a review.
Thank you so much for joining us, and we'll catch you all in the next episode. Before we go, I'd like to thank our producers at Human Group Media.
We'd also like to thank our incredible network of partners who are supporting our mission. The Skoll Foundation, the Aspen Institute's Aspen Global Leadership Network, Echoing Green, DRK Foundation, Maverick Collective, Virgin Unite, Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project, Boldy Go Philanthropy, Synergos, Ford Global, Nexus, and New Profit.
if you're interested in becoming a system catalyst and would like to learn more about our partners please visit systemcatalyst.com views and opinions expressed during the podcast are those of the individuals expressing them and do not necessarily reflect those of system catalyst or human group media And that's a wrap.

What an incredible conversations from our friends at System Catalyst. C.J.
Grimes' insights on financial well-being, economic security, and the power of listening to create meaningful change remind us that real impact happens when we meet people where they are. For leadership over work money is a testament to how intentional action and community-driven solutions can transform lives, and I hope it left you as inspired as it did me.
As we wrap up, take a moment to reflect. What does financial security mean to you? Not just in numbers, but in emotions and freedom.
How can we use our collective strength to build systems that truly support people, not just economies? And how do you take action today, whether in your own life or in your community, to create a more secure, purpose-driven future? If you found this episode valuable, please take a moment to leave a five-star rating and review. Your support helps fuel the PassionStruck mission and ensures we continue bringing you the thought-provoking conversations like this one.
And if you know someone who could benefit from CJ's insights, share this episode with them. It could be the spark they need.
For all the resources we discussed today, including more from System Catalyst and Work Money, visit the show notes at PassionStruck.com. Want to dive deeper into intentional living? Then subscribe to my Live Intentionally newsletter at PassionStruck.com, where I share exclusive insights, tools, challenges, and strategies every week to help you live with greater clarity and purpose.
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And if today's discussion sparked ideas for your organization or team, let's bring these insights to life. I speak with companies, leadership teams, and conferences about creating intentional change.
Visit johnrmiles.com slash speaking to learn more. On Tuesday, I'm sitting down with bestselling author Nir Eyal, the expert on habit formation, focus, and mastering distractions.
If you've ever felt like your attention is constantly being hijacked, Nir will show you how to take back control and become truly indistractable. You won't want to miss it, so make sure you're subscribed and ready for another transformative conversation.
When I applied to college, the most important thing when you looked at a university was how many books were in their library. Who cares? It's completely pointless.
Nobody cares how many books you have in the library because everybody has Google on their phone. And now we have chat GPT and we have all these great products on our devices that allow us to have all the facts and figures we could possibly want at our fingertips.
So information is no longer scarce. We're drowning in information.
What's scarce today is the ability to focus your attention long enough on that information

to turn it into wisdom.

And remember, the fee for the show is simple.

If you found value today, share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Because knowledge alone doesn't create change.

Action does.