Building Generational Wealth: Why It Matters for Financial Inclusion

“Investing is about putting your money where your values are. Full stop.” – Lianne Hannaway

Meet Lianne Hannaway: a Chartered Professional Accountant, founder, wealth coach, podcaster, and the daughter of immigrants. She is passionate about financial inclusion and supporting women to build wealth.

The51 has teamed up with Lianne to bring you a unique workshop around generational wealth and exploring it through a gendered and racial lens. We had the opportunity to sit down with her to give you a sneak peek of what to expect at the session on April 27.

Finance needs to be more inclusive. We need to get away from tips and tricks that really only favour people who've had one type of life experience.

Usually, life experience comes from generational wealth: the wealth passed down from ancestors and elders and the environments they were included in financially.

Growing up in an immigrant family, Lianne shared feelings of not belonging and trying to find her way in—not necessarily being from her parents' culture, but also being told you're not a part of Canadian culture. That, in combination with the generational trait that children of immigrants often take on of needing to succeed to give back to parents who have sacrificed so much, Lianne’s is just one story of many revolving around how we all come from different walks of life. And this is why understanding your unique relationship with money, building generational wealth, and financial inclusion is so important.

As a community, particularly as a community of women, we have to not only think about our incomes but how we can more equally distribute and grow wealth—and not only for ourselves but for everybody.

There’s a lot of stigma and apprehension, particularly around women and racialized communities, who make money. We don't talk about it, but we’re told to be of service, and the money will just miraculously come. Everyone talks about making money, but rich is different from wealthy. Wealth building needs to be about learning how to make money, learning how to manage money, and learning how to invest the money that you have.

If you can use money for your values, it has an exponential impact to do different things.

In an exercise that Lianne goes through (we won’t give away too much!), she poses the question: how can we come together for those higher or lower on the finanical ladder with others in the ecosystem to invest and put new ideas into practice? 

Investing is about putting your money where your values are, and your values have a lot to do with your starting point (remember what she said about coming from all different walks of life?). From Lianne’s point of view, she truly believes if women have more money, we will do better things with money. Think: implementing pay equity, minimum livable wages, or four day work weeks to allow people to take time off if we divest from some of the capitalist norm.

If folks have generational wealth, there's less trauma, there's less scarcity, there's less grind culture.

When you have the space to dream, you have the space to reflect, not be grinding all the time, and think about what you really want—and that wealth is health.

Whether you're a first-generation wealth builder or an experienced investor, there’s a lot to learn about creating generational wealth, financial inclusion, and letting your values lead your investment decisions at this workshop with Lianne Hannaway. You can RSVP here—it’s free for Financial Feminist Members and $10 for non-members.

And P.S. — events like these are always free of charge for Financial Feminist members, and they also get on-demand access to the full session recording afterward. If you want in, you can purchase a membership here.