No more money, please

Morgan Curtis and her father, John, seen here in the '90s. Courtesy: Morgan Curtis

The more Morgan Curtis learned her family’s multi-generation wealth, the less she wanted anything to do with it. On this episode, we'll talk with her and her dad.

Morgan Curtis’s relationship with her father started to change after she sold her broken-down biodiesel Volkswagen Passat.

“I sold it for $1,500 and asked my dad like, ‘Hey, where should I put this money?'” she said. “And he was like, you can keep it, but only if you invest it in the stock market.”

Curtis wasn’t crazy about the idea, but she figured she could follow her dad’s rules and invest in something she believed in, like renewable energy. But when she went to open an account, there were already investments in her name — some $350,000 worth.

“All these same corporations that I had been fighting and organizing against,” she said. “I called my dad and he was basically like, ‘Oh no, you weren’t supposed to know about that.'”

That discovery made Curtis reexamine her privileged life. The more she learned about the source of her family’s multi-generational wealth — from gold mining, to fossil fuel investment, to slave ownership — the less she wanted anything to do with it. She wanted to give it all away.

Her choices have challenged her relationship with her dad, and may upend about 150 years of inherited family wealth.

“So, Morgan has turned on its head the whole relationship with money that I grew up with,” said her dad, John Curtis. “It’s turned it upside down.”

Welcome back to “This Is Uncomfortable.” This season is all about uncovering dirty laundry. We’ll talk with John and Morgan about their family history and disagreements about money, then bring them together to have it out and maybe find some common ground.

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