On Overvalued Stocks, Tithing & Mutual Aid, and Creating Enforceable Prenups

Listen & follow The Money with Katie Show: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

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About This Episode

We covered more ground than usual in this Rich Girl Roundup, because a few themes dominated your feedback and questions. On today’s show, in addition to recapping feedback to our last three episodes:

• (00:00): Intro
• (01:12): Plastic surgeons encouraging young women to set aside money in “face-lift funds” alongside 401(k)s and IRAs
• (14:00): Feedback to our episode, “A CFP on Outdated Advice, ‘Jumping’ Social Classes, & Why Money Mindset Matters”
• (24:38): Feedback to our episode, “Personal Finance is Broken—Can These Economists Fix It?”
• (44:40): Feedback to our episode, “Why the ‘Double Tax’ is the Canary in the Economic Coal Mine We Need to Pay Attention to”
• (58:20): Other listener-submitted questions

RICH GIRL NATION IS HERE. GRAB YOUR COPY.

Our show is a production of Morning Brew and is produced by Henah Velez and Katie Gatti Tassin, with our audio engineering and sound design from Nick Torres. Devin Emery is President of Morning Brew content and additional fact checking comes from Scott Wilson.

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Mentioned in the Episode

• Our 2023 episode: “When It’s Time to Work with a Financial Professional”
• Exceptions to the Tax on Early Distributions (IRS.gov)
• Beth Pinsker’s new book, My Mother’s Money
• Our episode on Wills and Estate Planning and the relevant checklist
• Nick’s Substack Sound Bytes on audio design and engineering
• Our episode with Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom
• Blog post: 3 Steps for Building Your Personal Philanthropic Plan

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Transcript

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Welcome back to another Money with Katie Show Rich Girl Roundup. I am, of course, Katie Gatti Tassin, and as you know, every couple episodes my executive producer, Henah, and I sit down to discuss your questions, any follow-up thoughts after the last batch of episodes, and then just other odds and ends that don’t really make the cut for their own full length episode. Although today I do feel like there are a lot of episode requests that were raised that we’re going to kind of touch on. So where do you want to start today?

Henah Velez:

Katie.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yes.

Henah Velez:

I need to talk to you about a reel.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Oh God. Okay.

Henah:

I need to talk to you about a reel that a Rich Girl sent me on Instagram.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Okay.

Henah Velez:

So Lindsay O. messaged me and she said, “This reel made me LOL and be sad at the same time. She’s trying to fund the Hot Girl hamster wheel CD,” which made me laugh. It’s such a funny way to phrase it, but it was a reel from a plastic surgeon doctor who said, and I quote, if you’re a female within the ages of 30 to 35, one day, you will get old. One day, you will age. And I know that’s tough to think about right now. Okay. That’s how she started it. And then she basically goes on to say, I want you to start an account called the Facelift Fund.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Oh, fucking hell.

Henah Velez:

No, keep going. It gets better. “To start putting $10, $20, $50 a month. Stop buying things you don’t need. Skip the Starbucks so that when you’re 55 or 60, you can do what you want.” And then she ends on saying, “Everyone talks about 401(k)s and IRAs, but nobody talks about this.” And then she says, “Don’t tell your husband, don’t tell your boyfriend about this. They don’t need to know.”

And I had Nick watch this clip before we started recording because I wanted to get his thoughts too, and I’m going to have you watch it in real time.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Okay.

Henah Velez:

But he said, “Once she said ‘facelift fund,’ my hands dragged down my face, my index fingers then rested on my temples for most of this video until she started saying the line about IRAs. And then I just burst out laughing.”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

So wait, I want to—hold on. The instruction is don’t tell your partner that? What’s the end game here? You’re going to get a secret facelift and they’re not going to notice you’re going to pull one over on them.

Henah Velez:

I guess the end game is you don’t need to tell your partner that you’re saving for it because it would be, I don’t know, potentially frowned upon. Okay, I’m going to drop the link. Okay. I want to hear your real time response. I thought it was satire to be fair, but it is actually very real.

[Instagram Reel]:

I’m a big sister in real life, but I want to be your big sister right now. So if you’re a female within the ages of 30 to 35, I want you to listen to what I’m about to say. One day you will get old, you will age, and I know that’s really tough look to think about right now because you’re young, you’ve got abs, your skin is so elastic, you could bounce a quarter off of it, but one day that’s no longer going to be the case.

My advice to you is this. I want you to create an account. I want you to name it the facelift fund and whether it’s $10, $20, $50 a month, I want you to start putting little bits into it. You can make your coffee at home instead of going to Starbucks. You could not buy things you don’t need. That’s a good one. What I don’t want is for you to be in a position when you are 50, 55, maybe 60, where you can’t do what you want to do when you want to do it because you were financially unprepared or unaware. Everyone talks about 401(k)s and Roth IRAs. No one ever talks about a facelift fund. Just a little bit every month. Don’t tell your husband, don’t tell your boyfriend. They don’t need to know. They don’t need to know about this. Okay.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Dude. Okay.

Henah Velez:

Was there a part of you that thought it was satire as well?

Katie Gatti Tassin:

No, I didn’t because of how this woman’s face looks. This is a believer in cosmetic work. I can tell that much. Okay. Alright. Here’s the thing. There is something so dark about essentially the examples that she gives for how you were going to find the money in order to save up for your facelift is like you can deny yourself all the small joys that make your experience of life worth living over the next 30 years so that you can have elective cosmetic surgery and look a little bit younger. That’s so dark to me.

I love how Jessica DeFino closes every issue of what her publication, it’s now called Flesh World, formerly the Review of Beauty. She signs off every single one, “You’re going to die no matter how young you look.”

Henah Velez:

Bars.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

That’s pretty good. That’s good. Yeah. I mean, I have that split reaction to watching this where the realistic and cynical side of my brain is like, this is so dark. And then the other side of my brain is like, damn, her skin looks really good. I wonder what products she’s using.

Henah Velez:

I knew. I was like, I know that Katie’s could be like, but actually…

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Actually she looks pretty good. She looks pretty good though. That’s not bad work she’s had done. But yeah, it’s so funny to me to rank hypothetical future cosmetic surgery in the same category of financial stability and planning as a 401(k) to be like, yes, your happy retirement just needs this one simple trick, everyone.

Henah Velez:

Okay, but also what about your hands? Now you got to do your hands, right?

Katie Gatti Tassin:

That’s like the new thing. Well, the goalpost is never going to stop moving, so you can either try to keep up with it or you can just be wrinkly and let it all hang out, I guess.

Henah Velez:

I don’t know, man. Maybe I’m the only person that feels this way recently, but I feel like getting old and having wrinkles is a gift. Although I did say that to somebody and then they looked at me dead in the eyes and said, you don’t have any wrinkles. And I was like, oh.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah, I actually fully, yeah, no, I agree. I think that it is going to be much harder to be aging as a privilege when we look old, I think we’re going to be like, damn, I don’t know. I feel like I’m excited. It means I lived a life check in with me in 20 years. I think it’s going to be tough. I think that it is going to be because ageism is so ingrained in our culture. It is what it is. And I think that the desire to look young is pretty. It’s easy when you’re in your early thirties to be like, I’m not going to do that. I’m like, I might give—

Henah Velez:

She said I’m actually opening my facelift fund right now.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Call me at 45. I’m like, I don’t know. I don’t want to. But I also know that like I said, damn skin looks pretty good, so whatever. Why not? If you can afford it, I guess. I don’t know.

Henah Velez:

The Hot Girl Hamster World CD. New fund incoming. Okay, I want to keep the LOLs coming. So we got a five star review from someone named Rosi titled, “Makes you feel sane and insane at the same time.”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Henah Velez:

They said, “I listened to a fair amount of nonpolitical finance podcasts, but it’s nice to find a podcast that will acknowledge current legislation and societal issues along with their impact on the economy and personal finance. Your book suggestions are great and you have pointed me towards experts you’ve had on as guests that I might have never heard of.”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Well, thank you. That means a lot. I think the shift to interviewing authors this year has happened a bit unintentionally. I didn’t really go into this year with that explicit purpose or I guess I was interested in doing it more, but once I opened the floodgates, there were so many people that I wanted to talk to. I used to put a lot of pressure on myself to basically bring in all the ideas and then regurgitate them to you. And it has just been more fun and I think more valuable to get to engage with some of these thinkers directly and now we have the street cred to make them talk to us. So that’s good. That’s true. To be fair, that

Henah Velez:

Remember when we used to reach out to big names and they didn’t respond?

Katie Gatti Tassin:

To be fair, that does still happen but less so.

Henah Velez:

Also since our last Rich Girl Roundup, we have a new and improved edition to the Money with Katie family.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

That’s right. Our website that we’ve been talking about for the last couple months. It’s finally live. So courtesy of the team at Brand Good Time. We have heard from, actually, wait, I feel like the way that I just said that makes it sound like they did it for free or that this was a partnership. We paid a lot of money for this website, so go use it, please. But we have heard many of you that you love the new look that you are using the search bar, the most requested feature, which is amazing because the old search bar didn’t work. So hoping it will continue to be a treasure trove for all of us.

Henah Velez:

We were pretty hunkered down about what the site was going to look like. So now that it’s out there, we can talk a little bit more openly. What is your favorite feature now that it’s live?

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Well, the impetus for the site was of course “the three financial paths” architecture that we wanted to build so that people could actually find episodes and articles based on specific interests to them no matter where they were on their financial journeys. We’ve kind of segmented it into budgeting and saving kind of that personal finance 101. Then we moved into, okay, investing taxes, some of this more advanced material and then having a totally separate part for, okay, financial independence, retire early. If you are trying to go for gold and you have this very extreme perspective and you really want to get there as quickly as possible, what are the more extreme tactics and mindsets and what are the things that you need to be thinking about that might not be in traditional personal finance content? So I think that this is really going to help that process be smoother for people that have been trying to cipher through the backlog of the site for the last five years.

So Henah, thank you so much for all your hard work in bringing that to life. There was many, many months and many, many hours that were spent going through the old site that even when you have developers and designers working on it, they’re like, oh, so those 500 posts and episode pages. Yeah, y’all have to redo those. Thanks.

Henah Velez:

Well, I appreciate that. Thanks. I think it’s funny that you were like, we spend a lot of money. Please go use it. I spent, I don’t even know how many hours, tagging all the things recategorize things, so please go use it. But yeah, I love the three paths too. Are we going to end up doing that quiz?

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Maybe? Yeah, that kind of fell by the wayside, but my hope was that there could be a fun little quiz where if somebody wasn’t sure what they should really be paying attention to that they could take a quiz about their priorities and where they are currently and what their biggest concerns are. That would kind of suggest this is probably the path that you should be paying attention to. So one of these days we’re already into Wealth Planner season, so one of these days we’ll have some downtime to focus on the fun extra stuff.

Henah Velez:

One of these days. I’m also obsessed with the book section at the end of the Rich Girl Nation page. This is a really fun way we get this question all the time, Katie, which books really changed your life? And so now this is a really fun way to visualize all those recommendations.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

I also like that the essays are in a separate part now being able to distinguish between, they look different too. So if you go to the site and you find a how-to article that gets into here’s how to open your 401(k) if you’re a solopreneur. That type of content now lives in a different place and looks visually different than the essays part of the site, which are more like reflections and pondering bigger picture questions versus like, here is the five step process to doing this thing. And I really liked that too. I think that that felt so mishmash to me before, so I’m pumped about that.

Henah Velez:

Well also, someone emailed us and they were panicking because they said, I’ve been working through the Money with Katie backend for I’m in 2021, 2022 time and now the new site is up and I can’t find anything. And I said, well, it’s because we’ve divided the type of content. So if you are looking for that how to content now you just go to the how to section. But if you are interested in her essays, they’re still in chronological order. They are just in different places now. So I think hopefully it’s going to be a useful tool for everybody, even if it just means relearning how to navigate the site.

But before we get into the episode feedback, I wanted to read this email from Bill S. So we had actually mentioned him in a previous Rich Girl Roundup, and he emailed into say, “I listened to the episode yesterday and caught your reference. I appreciate you guys taking your listeners’ comment seriously, it’s one of the things that sets you apart in the increasingly huge podcasting community. I appreciate Katie’s evolving views vis-a-vis the American version of capitalism and international versions of socialism that for now seem to work better. And I enjoy the back and forth you and she have in the roundup shows. For an old privileged white guy, it warms my heart to see younger folks attacking the world’s problems with an understanding. It took me a lifetime to come to keep doing that.” So Bill, please put that on my tombstone one day.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Do you think Bill would talk to my dad?

Alright, and moving on, let’s dive into the episode where we talk about six financial problems. So the first episode of this batch was with Adrianna Adams, a CFP with Domain Money, one of our longest running sponsors of this show who makes the work possible. The episode was titled “A CFP on Outdated Advice, Jumping Social Classes and Why Money Mindset Matters,” if you missed it and you want to go back and listen to it.

Henah Velez:

So speaking of Adrianna specifically, Jani V. reached out to say, “I loved this episode. I got to meet Adrianna a few weeks ago and I loved her energy. Getting to connect with my new CFP at Domain in a few weeks and I’m very excited. I think working with them last year really put things into perspective for me and has been a tremendous help in seeing things in a different light.” And I think we’ve talked about this. Having that third party reassure you that your plan is a good one, especially someone who has the qualifications to do so, feels really key.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

For sure. And then we had a Flfalonious echo that they said, “I listened to this episode first thing this morning. This is always the highlight of my Wednesdays.” Hell yeah, let’s go. “Really appreciated the perspective of the CFP. It is true that money behaviors are deeply rooted in psychology. I’ve been looking into maybe using a CFP and I always told myself that I was not ready as I’m still repaying debt, but this gave me the confidence to check more into it and just start planning for the future that works for me as usual. Great work.” Yes, thank you Flfalonious for your kind words.

Henah Velez:

We do have an older episode we did at the end of 2023 about if it’s time to work with a financial professional and it gets into sort of those granularities of making that sort of decision because obviously you’re going to be spending a couple thousand dollars for a comprehensive fee only plan, which is still better than a 1% model. But if anyone’s curious, we can drop that episode into the show notes.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah, I would definitely say check that out if you’re on the fence because it is an expense for sure. I’m going to say two things that feel contradictory. For some people this is a really, really beneficial and high return on investment thing, particularly if thinking about the Nick Maggiulli episode where we were talking to people who were between level three and level four, you have a million dollars invested, your asset allocation is going to really start to matter. That is the type of person where a couple thousand dollars to get a professional to look over everything and make sure that you have all the right insurance and that your allocation is appropriate for you. That is as Ramit Sethi calls it, a $30,000 opinion.

Then I think there are people for whom if you are earning less than a hundred thousand dollars, if you’re just starting to invest, you actually probably are going to do better learning about money through personal finance books, through self-education.

Henah Velez:

She says, have you heard of Rich Girl Nation?

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah. So there’s this amazing book. I recommend that everybody, I do think that self-education is going to be better at that phase because at that point, the $3,000 you’re going to spend on the plan is that represents such a huge portion of your overall income and wealth that there’s really not that much at that point that they’re going to be able to do for you or help you with. That’s probably going to move the needle. So anyway, that’s kind of how I think about this, but that episode is great.

I also wanted to clarify something regarding the 10% penalty. If you want to withdraw your retirement funds early, Veronica G. reached out to say there are exceptions to the 10% penalty on early withdrawal from retirement accounts. They vary based on the type of retirement account, but having an illness medical expense above 7.5% and disabilities are definitely on the list of exceptions. So yes, because the question and the life circumstance that we were referring to was in the context of someone who had a likelihood of recurrent cancer wanted to include that just to call people’s attention to it. We really didn’t get into the exceptions in the episode.

Henah Velez:

Yeah, I mean I’ll never pass up a reminder to let you know that Katie and I are not CFPs and this is not financial advice. I’m sure Nick somewhere has a compilation of me saying that.

But I’m going to throw the IRS page on the exceptions to the 10% additional tax into the show notes because there are actually quite a few circumstances where you wouldn’t be subject to that penalty that I didn’t know about. The one that I most knew about was first-time home buyers, but there were other things like the birth and adoption of a child for qualified expenses, emergency personal expenses, disaster recovery. So obviously you’d still be on the hook for the taxes and repaying the balance. So I don’t think it’s something that someone should tap off, but I do think your point with Adrianna that it doesn’t always have to be a hard no, if the 10% tax is applicable, really resonated.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

The money is still yours and at the end of the day, sometimes a penalty will be worth paying. That goes for other things, too. I said something in the episode about security being a bit of façade if you are in a W-2 position, especially since in the United States, most employees are at will. And Spyke had followed up with, “If COVID and the current mess of our political climate taught us anything, it’s that no job is secure W-2 or not. All we can do is make financial armor to take harder punches along the way. I also liked the tip about it never being too late to make shifts or changes in your career when yeah, we are expected to have our entire lives planned out at 17 or 18.”

Henah Velez:

Sadly, I’ve realized I’m double that age now and I’m still figuring it out most days.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

But not wrinkly yet.

Henah Velez:

Not wrinkly.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Importantly.

Henah Velez:

That is most important and I still have no, I don’t have any white hair now that I’ve said that, of course.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

No grays? Not a single gray?

Henah Velez:

I don’t know. Do you see one? I check, I don’t see anything. But I appreciate this reminder that it’s always okay to start over and pivot and Janessa H. also felt the same. They said, “Great conversation and her planting a tree example could apply to so many scenarios. Now is the next best time to get started.”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah. Then we had a request for a follow-up episode from Kathleen C, fellow Kathleen, Kathleen gang. “You could do a full episode on how a health diagnosis impacts financial planning for someone planning ahead. Or in my situation as someone with a spouse who has a serious illness and can no longer work, I’m sure there are many scenarios to explore.” And yes, I feel like there is probably some expert out there who specializes in that specifically that we could probably go talk to. So we should keep an eye out for that.

Henah Velez:

If that’s you, email us moneywithkatie@morningbrew.com. Yeah, I mean this isn’t exactly the same, but I wanted to mention Beth Pinsker, she’s a CFP and a writer. She has a new book actually coming out November 4^th, called My Mother’s Money and it’s all about financial caregiving. So Beth is actually a retirement columnist at MarketWatch and she said something like, yeah, I thought I knew a lot about Medicare managing money and estate planning, but I had a lot to learn when I had to take care of my mom’s affairs. So I’ll link it in the show notes if anyone wants to pre-order it could be something that’s helpful.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

That’s really cool.That reminds me, somebody followed me on Instagram. It was like a financial planner, I could tell from the username. So I clicked on it. Their whole bit was like I’m a progressive CFP, they were like a CFP who was taking an explicitly political stance in their marketing material. And I was like, that is really unique.

Henah Velez:

I thought you meant Progressive, the car insurance company. And I was like,

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Oh no. No.

Henah Velez:

Okay, I don’t get it.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

No, no, no, no. Got it. Okay. Not for nothing, but we also did an episode on discussing money with aging parents that we made a checklist for. Some of you have even told us that you’ve used it. So we will also share that episode and the planning checklist in the show notes too. I feel like we’re linking a lot of episodes right now, but I think it’s because that was a tactical episode and we have actually covered some of this stuff in more detail. So a lot of that stuff will be in the, if you go to the show notes of this page and go to our new website, it’ll all be linked there for you.

And then finally, we have Nancy S. who wrote in, “Appreciated this episode made me realize how much I missed the 2024 era of Rich Girl Roundup. I hope the podcast continues to work through the question backlog in some way so we can continue to consider the micro level impact and solutions of the macro problems the show has been highlighting.”

Henah Velez:

Rubs hands together.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yes, we have received actually more questions and response to that episode, so we are going to answer some of those at the end. I am also, I will say really excited about the next two episodes in the hopper that will be coming out in the next couple of weeks. One is with a labor organizer, so the collective bargaining side of earning more money. And then the other is a guest who teaches people how to have many retirements throughout their life. I am personally and selfishly very, very excited about the Latter guest because it kind of flips the FI Orthodoxy on its head a little bit in a really fun way. So we will get back to this Rich Girl Roundup after a quick break.

Okay, welcome back. Next up we are discussing our episode that we had with economists, John Campbell and Tarun Ramadorai called “Personal Finance is Broken. Can These Economists Fix It?”

Henah Velez:

So I’m going to start with a comment that made me laugh out loud. It came from Sarah W. who said, “Katie saying ‘we’re cooked’ to two distinguished economists is undoubtedly my favorite part of the episode.” And Sarah, I always love where we’ll be in an interview and I’m in the background and Katie’s interviewing a very distinguished person and then she’ll be like, hell yeah brother.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Okay, I’m gutter slop. Remember, I am gutter slop. I’m not an academic.

I think the general consensus from this episode was that while the ideas seemed really promising, that it might’ve felt like a little bit too much of a moonshot. So MMM756 said, “I haven’t read the book, but as sensible and appealing as these policy proposals are, they seem totally politically naive to me what legislator isn’t funded by financial institutions and their investors and would be willing to put their neck on the line for the public good. I can’t think of a single one.” And honestly right now, I think that sometimes it does feel a little naive in general to talk about improvements of any kind given the circumstances that we are in. I think we can kind of get into that with some of the other feedback. But I don’t know, I think that my hope core optimism has, I’m fresh out, I think.

Henah Velez:

Sometimes we get DMs—I got one recently from someone who asked how you and I are approaching things and I kind of have to just remind them. We also don’t really know and we are also trying to stay hopeful.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

And when they say approaching things, in what way, do they clarify what they mean?

Henah Velez:

How are you and Katie staying sane when you see all these headlines and you see, again, assuming that we’re staying sane is very generous of you, but just how are we coping with what we’re seeing in the recent years?

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah, we’re not, we’re might be the best answer.

Henah Velez:

I guess what I’m saying is the human aspect for me is that I have to be hopeful because if I’m not, I will lose my mind. And so I kind of force myself into a hope core, but I’m also running thin.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

I was talking to Caro about this the other day. She used the phrase ‘post emotion.’ She was like, I think I just recognized recently this is happening. And this isn’t like, oh, we are about to experience the really bad thing. It’s like it’s already underway, it’s already happening. And kind of the approach at this point, there is almost a certain acceptance that I think people come to at different phases and the phrase post emotion just kind of stuck with me a little bit. I will say to keep it $1.50, I don’t feel hopeful right now. That’s not how I would characterize my perspective about what is going on.

But I think I understand the gravity of the moment and I’m listening to a really good podcast series on 1933 that basically goes month by month through the rise of the Third Reich and kind of describes during authoritarian takeovers, this is how culture is manipulated, this is how facts themselves become distorted. This is how popular institutions are policed. And there is something that is weirdly comforting about recognizing that this has happened in other ways before. This is not the first time that a country has gone through this. But yeah, I think the hope is not the word that I would say that I have right now, but I do think I still have resolve.

Henah Velez:

I think I’m an optimistic realist maybe, and I’ve been telling people I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better, but it will get better and better might be relative. But I think I have to remind people that you and I, we’re also human. We don’t have some insider information or magic trick that we have to cope with this any differently than anyone else might, but I want to be able to have something to offer people. So I just kind of say that. And I guess I would just add, find your one thing and be really passionate and activate around that one thing. And I think you’ll feel a little bit more like things are in your control and you’re doing what you can about it versus this vague helplessness.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

It’s a little off topic, but I actually think that it is pretty closely tied to a lot of the feedback that came in about this episode, which was basically like, wait, they think our politicians are going to do something positive like LOL.

Henah Velez:

Well, I mean, and that’s sad. That’s what I felt sad reading was that everybody was just kind of like, yeah, that sounds nice, but realistically, let’s be honest. So someone else added it in, “As much as I love the ideas here, my cynical mindset thinks unfortunately a lot of this won’t happen. These banks, lenders and other companies know exactly what they’re doing and most likely want to keep it that way. I do hope that this will empower people to review things though.”

Which honestly, yeah, I think the only way that we can get a lot of these companies to act differently is to, one, withhold your spending somewhere until changes happen and had kind of mentioned about one of the few levers that we have for change or two, somehow convincing them that improving material conditions for everyone would improve everyone’s bottom lines. But yeah, Katie, I’m curious what you think, because I hate this idea that we have to individually review terms and contracts and products to ensure that they’re not screwing us over.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah. Especially because arbitration clauses are so common now that every single terms and conditions you’re going to read is basically giving up your right to sue them for something.

Henah Velez:

Right.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah, I mean, even on the consumer thing you just mentioned, I would tweak that a little bit to say yes, not spending money with those people, but I think the bigger thing is the reputation piece, the thing that actually impacts share price, and I mean enough consumer advocacy of if enough people stop shopping there, then that is going to make a difference. I’m actually really excited to talk to our next guest about this because he is the person and the labor organizer whose book I was referring to in the conversation with Anna about reputation being such a powerful tool for labor organizing. And I think that there are actually other downstream effects of that.

But yeah, I agree. I mean, I think you heard that toward the end when I was pushing back on the idea that the best path forward is cajoling private companies, deprioritizing people, that that’s just as politically unrealistic as shooting for a public option. So why not just go for the public option, all else considered equal? What is actually the better solution if we could achieve any of them? Public option, I would argue is the better solution. And at this phase, I think that that’s just unrealistic.

So if we’re going unrealistic either way, but I do think that their work felt worth highlighting for two major reasons. One is that these are highly educated capital S, capital A, Serious Academics who clearly recognize that something is wrong. And I think that actually does signal a really big step forward from where we were just two decades ago. I think it’s becoming harder for people in positions of academia and power to deny that these things are happening or that these systems aren’t working properly. That was the first time that I had ever seen a personal finance book written by people in their position who was calling attention to these things.

And number two, getting specific about what these middle ground fixes are and debating them on their merits, I hope will push us further to see that some things actually do require more heavy handed intervention. I think what you often hear is when you advocate for a public option or when you advocate for a quote more radical shift, people will be like, well, no, we don’t have to go that far. We can find a more moderate solution. We can compromise. Right? It’s like, okay, well let’s get specific about what those compromises are. Let’s actually talk about what that would look like. Because typically what happens is when you talk about what the compromise looks like, it’s like, oh yeah, that probably wouldn’t work. The incentive structures are not set up for that to be the case. You are always going to have lobbyists that are pushing against that.

So anyway, we then had Brittney S. chime in with a bit more hope saying, “None of the concerns from the authors about removing the private sector out of the loop entirely are insurmountable. Software glitches happen in the private sector too. There is no magic in the private sector to prevent this outside of following standard architectural best practices. The government would need to spend more on labor and materials to build a robust secure infrastructure. Then we just have one less drone.” Love that.

Henah Velez:

Brittney always clocks ‘em.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

And finally, on the housing of it all, Caitlin said, “Incredibly useful info about deferred property taxes and reverse mortgages!” Which I agreed, and I was really excited that that conversation did have a kind of solid chunk where there are specific like, okay, these are financial products that are out there right now. And the problem is not that the products are bad, but that there is a lack of education. There’s a mismatch between the education required to use them properly and how useful they might be, or how many people they might actually be good for. So I was excited that we got to talk about that.

Henah Velez:

Yeah, when Tarun said, if you have family members who are aging and need income but don’t want to move, I’m pretty sure I heard 99% of our millennial audience’s ears perk up. So I honestly didn’t really understand how that could be a financially sound idea. And I remember typing into the document like, Katie, I still don’t get it, but I did look it up. Is there anyone that a reverse mortgage is a bad idea for?

And basically there were a couple different buckets. One is where the higher closing costs and fees and interest rates might be more than it’s worth versus traditional home loan costs, those who are planning to move pretty soon. The other one that I saw people say is if the owner of the home plans to be in a long-term care facility for longer than a year, apparently the bank can go try to make good on the note.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Interesting.

Henah Velez:

You have to be living in that property. So I don’t know. I do think one of those things, I will refrain again, do your own diligence with the CFP and CPA.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

There’s always going to be a lot of nuance and fine print with deals like this, even though we’re discussing it in broad terms, every lender that will set you up with something like this is going to have different rules and details that are going to make the difference between whether it makes sense or not. But I do think that in order to even consider whether something like this is right for you or your parents, you have to at least know it’s out there. And so I think it’s nice to be able to say, okay, I know that this is an option that we could at least consider. Let’s go find a CFP for an hour and get their thoughts on this. Or let’s go to our bank and see what kind of terms we could get. Because if you don’t even know to ask for it, then that’s the end of the story.

Henah Velez:

I was thinking about that recently where you had talked about negotiating an interest rate for a loan for a car, and you were saying you don’t have to just accept what the dealer gives you. You can go ahead and shop around.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Taking a pre-approval to the dealership.

Henah Velez:

Yeah. I think it’s one of those things that if you don’t know, how would you know that it’s an option?

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah. So what Henah’s referring to is just that when you go to buy a vehicle, oftentimes people will just go to the dealership and then the dealer financing will be offered to them. And some people think that that’s the rate that you’re going to get, and there you go. But if you have a relationship with a bank or a credit union, oftentimes credit unions are better for this. You’ll get better rates there. But you can go to the credit union and say, I’m seeking a pre-approval for an auto loan. These are my numbers, this is my stuff, whatever. And they will produce a pre-approval loan offer that you can then take to the car dealership and say, this is my pre-approval. Do you want to try to compete with this? Or should I just move forward with this? So yeah, just a little bit of extra negotiating power.

And then finally, I wrote a essay about the housing crisis that went out in the newsletter a couple of weeks ago. I also ended up hearing back from the economist that I interviewed for that piece, and he was like, not only did you accurately describe the housing crisis, but that was really funny. I was like, thank you. So it’s like the dream when you interview someone and they’re like, wow, you really represented that correctly? I’m like, thank God. Because the nightmare is interviewing someone, putting their opinions into an argument and having them be like, nah, you kind of misrepresented what’s happening there.

Henah Velez:

Jump cut to me and Scott getting a DM from you that’s like, “Okay, so I included, but I need both of you to triple check this and triple check every number I’ve ever included.”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

The thing is my stuff goes through so many editors, and so when things still get through, I’m like, you know what? You really just can’t win. I have Henah look at things. I have a fact checker look at it. And then I have another external editor that reviews everything. So if you are finding mistakes, four people have missed them.

Henah Velez:

So basically we’re all morons.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah. Yeah. So the essay was called America’s Housing Paradox Hiding in Plain Sight, and we heard from a reader named Regan, if you will read that for us, Henah.

Henah Velez:

Sure. So they said, “I would love to see you dive deep on how the differing sentiments of our generation impacts housing availability. 30 years ago, smaller and older homes often brought affordable value and price. If we wanted more affordable new construction at a lower price, you had to sacrifice location and move to sprawling suburbs. As millennials embrace minimalism and newness, they don’t want grandma’s old stuff, not even her house. They want to buy the house next door, raze both houses and build something big and new in that highly desirable area, which was once an outer suburb. That now feels like an urban core because grandma and grandpa worked hard to build the value in that neighborhood.

“Two examples where affordable neighborhoods from 30 years ago are now outrageous due to tear downs are Bel Air, Texas and Prairie Village, Kansas. I’d love your take on how the top of the housing market differs from low cost fixer uppers that used to make housing more affordable for young buyers who are willing to invest sweat equity in addition to their savings and hard earned mortgage payments. Thanks for listening. I enjoy your perspective as it often challenges my traditional boomer lines of thinking. More importantly, it reminds me of challenges we faced 30 years ago, many of which we found a way to overcome due to smart people like you.” And it’s funny, their sign off on the email was “Retired at 62!”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Aw. That’s very kind. Thank you. Yeah, I think this is a pretty common line of thought actually, that well, younger people want nicer, newer stuff. They want more modern homes, they want bigger homes. They have higher expectations for their lifestyle than previous generations did. And it is true that homes are bigger now on average, if you’re comparing median square footage, the median single family home is larger now than it used to be.

And I wrote about that back in 2023. Actually, I remember digging into that because I was kind of curious how much of the price increase came from the houses themselves just getting bigger. But the only thing that I want to spend more time with and want to kind of tease apart in this question is, are homes bigger because the market is demanding bigger homes? Or are developers building bigger homes because they’re more profitable and there are enough rich people to create a market for them? I’m actually not sure. I think Occam’s Razor is probably, it’s a little of both, if I had to guess.

But I do think that the example given of they’ll come in and they’ll tear it down and they’ll use two lots and do a big new build. My guess is that 90% to 95% of millennials and Gen Zs are not financially capable of knocking down two homes, buying two homes, knocking them down, and then building a modern new one that is twice the size even if they wanted to, even if that were their preference. So I am curious, and maybe I will follow up with that expert that I talked to for the original essay, to what extent the top 10% of people who have the lion’s share of purchasing power in this country are distorting market incentives for everybody else.

Henah Velez:

When they said the line about they want to raze this home, I was like, I don’t know a single person that has the means to do something like that. I think also there’s an interest in being closer to a city center to a more walkable style of life that a lot of the houses that are in those areas are just not homes that people can afford, period, whether or not they are big or small. And so I think a lot of my friends who are looking for a home, it’s like, well, I have no choice but to buy the 1200 foot home at a premium cost because I want to be in a walkable part of town. And so I think that’s, to me, the bigger part of it, rather than like, oh, I just need the biggest house possible, or I want to raise a house for that.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think if I’m just purely looking at the income and wealth distribution of everybody under 40, you almost don’t even have to think about what does this generation desire? What are the real estate preferences like? Well, the only people whose preferences are really making any sort of difference is the top 10%, the only ones that can actually afford to push prices up or be choosy. Okay. We will get back to your thoughts on the double tax episode after a quick break.

All right. So our final episode from this batch was with Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, about the double tax and about how Black women’s experience of money might actually be the canary in the economic coal mine for everyone else, which I thought was a very, very interesting thesis. And I actually had such a good time in that conversation connecting dots in real time with her. It felt like she was helping me reach conclusions kind of toward the end, especially the relationship between the welfare queen trope and the federal government’s attempts to make Americans expect less. I was like, oh, wait, that’s interesting.

Henah Velez:

Right, Like, oh, we hate Black women. We don’t want Black women to get anything, so we’re going to take away SNAP benefits for all of you.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

And therefore, you get nothing too.

Henah Velez:

Yeah. Which the whole thing was so good and so astute. So I also want to shout out, I hope everyone enjoyed our Family Feud muzak, I guess I’ll call it, because Nick’s work over Anna’s joke was so funny to me, and then Riley K. wrote in and said, “LOL. Nick crushed it on this one.”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

So agreed. And I love that Nick has a fan club.

Henah Velez:

Which he should. I was going to say, if you like hearing about Nick’s approach to adding in sound design to our episodes, he has a very dope Substack called Sound Bytes, B-Y-T-E-S, get it? That I’m going to add to the show notes. He does these really cool newsletters and video deep dives about podcast sound design, and he’s featured our episodes and a lot of them, he’s done some of the old creative ad tosses we used to do. He’s planning to do some of the Rich Girl Roundup cold opens that we used to do. So if you have a podcast, know someone with a podcast that wants to up their game or even just learn more about sound design, this is a perfect resource, so definitely check it out. But I guess we’re a team of Substackers. What can I say? And then Joann reached out and said, “So good. I had to listen twice. Amen.”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

I love that. Our downloads love that too. Okay, as for listener feedback, Alison B. reached out to say, “Incredible episode. Please consider getting Anna Gifty back on to finish the second half of the convo because I was living for this episode. In your conversation, you mentioned some other writing and books, but I couldn’t catch the name of the writer.” And then she spelled out how she thought it sounded. Can you share the name of the work that was referenced throughout?

And yes, that was Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom. She was a previous guest this year. So to keep up our linking in the show notes, we will link her episode in the show notes too. We talked about her book Thick, which is a book of essays, and we also talked about some of her op-eds in the New York Times because she’s a New York Times opinion columnist. And then Alison continued on, “And for my contribution to your TBR pile, I want to recommend the book Our Separate Ways by Ella Bell and Stella Nkomo. It examines several hundred of Black and white female corporate managers and executives pulling out themes from their childhood upbringing to their professional success and how gender, race, and class shaped their development in leadership styles. Research was conducted in the 1980s, but incredibly relevant to themes still seen today. Thank you for all the work you do. It’s been impactful on me personally and ideologically, so thank you.” Alison, tat is awesome. And yes, we would love to bring Anna back for another conversation I want to bring back too.

Henah Velez:

Speaking of Tressie, someone loved to comment recently on our episode with her that said, “Best podcast episode of the year, calling it now.” So Chelsea B., if you were listening to this, I would definitely say it’s up there. On that note, Spyke had said a line from what Anna said, which was, “When we talk about women, who are we talking about?”

And then Spyke goes on to say, “Oh my goodness, this was such a good and thought-provoking conversation. This and the Tressie one have been by far my favorite set of stuck with me. Not only does it speak to me as a woman, but how as a white woman, I can better support Black and brown ones and recognize their additional struggles, especially when it comes to money. Please have more guests like this on in the future. I take so much from them and find them inspiring.”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah. I know I said this in the beginning, but I do feel very, very fortunate to have gotten the guests that we’ve had this year because we got street cred bitch. So Jia Tolentino, you hear this, the invitation stands, we still would love to have you on.

Henah Velez:

A woman on a mission.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

That’s how we got Tressie, by the way, is I kept just name dropping her and enough people tagged her on Blue Sky being like, will you go talk to her? So she’ll shut up about this.

Henah Velez:

Stephanie Kelton, hear us out.

Regarding guests sharing their lived experiences, DebiC27 wrote in and said, “I feel like the women of color listening to this episode are all nodding their heads thinking, tell us something we don’t know. But I love learning about others’ lived experiences, and I’m so grateful that Katie brought this to us.”

And to echo how Anna would say it, I want to double click on that a bit. Okay. When she talked about skin whitening and bleaching, I had that That’s So Raven moment of PTSD, because I remember being a kid and we would play out in the sun all the time, and then we’d be yelled at for going outside because we would be too dark. And then there were these instances as a kid where it was really common to hear of people in my community using Fair and Lovely. I don’t know if you know what that product is, they changed the name now, but it’s basically like a skin whitening cream. And then there was a time that someone unprovoked, I never brought this up, I never mentioned that it was something I was insecure about, but someone just generally came up to me and I asked me, do you want to try skin lightning cream for your underarms? I’ll buy it for you and bring it back.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Why are they looking at your underarms?

Henah Velez:

Well, that was my question.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

That’s so weird.

Henah Velez:

But then I also was like, oh, I guess I do have to be insecure about it because you pointed it out.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Were they negging you? Was it someone that wanted to sleep with you?

Henah Velez:

No, it was [bleep].

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Oh my God. That’s fucked.

Henah Velez:

I eventually had someone reach out to them and kind of tell them off as like, that’s not a nice way to treat people. Even now, if you have a child in the South Asian community, it’s like, oh, they’re so fair skinned. Their skin is so beautiful. It’s so fair skinned.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

I had a friend in Dallas who is Pakistani, and we were on a boat trip once with a bunch of people, and I was putting on tanning oil, trying to get darker, and he was slathering on sunscreen and wearing a sun shirt and wearing a PFG, and I was like, what’s with all the sun protection? And he kind of explained it to me. He’s like, where you want to go in the sun and get darker? He’s like me getting darker and the sun has a very different impact on my life. And I was like, oh, damn. That was the first time that I’d ever heard someone lay it out that clearly of like, no, no, no. I want to look lighter. I was like, oh, Jesus.

Henah Velez:

I mean, look, I think there’s an argument for you want to protect yourself against sun damage. Great. Go off. You should absolutely do that.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Not me at 23—No, I was like Palm Beach tan, where you at? Jersey Shore tucking my pink sweatpants into my Uggs, putting the little poof in my hair.

Henah Velez:

Oh, not the poof.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

The poof on the top that you, oh, you gotta have the poof. The layered Abercrombie camisoles.

Henah Velez:

Just saw the video of a woman throwing it back to 2013, where it was the infinity scarf with the with the ballerina bun where you rolled it into that—

Katie Gatti Tassin:

The sock bun?

Henah Velez:

Yes, the sock bun.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Who amongst us has not sock bunned?

Henah Velez:

I genuinely sometimes think about doing it again because it did look nice.

But anyway, I have seen people who really want to fight against skin damage. Totally valid and fair. But then I’ve also traveled with many people who wear the sun hats, those big umbrella style hats. They carry around an umbrella. They don’t want any sun exposure for the sheer purpose of staying as light as possible. And so the whole thing just felt very PTSD hearing Anna talk about that.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah. Speaking of being white, I think that what was so interesting to me and so fun was there were parts of the conversation where it felt like we were the Spider-Man meme pointing at each other, where I was like, well, what it’s really about is proximity to capital. And she’d be like, and capital is about proximity to whiteness. And we’re like, wow, they’re all connected.

So we had Keef doing the Lord’s work for us. They said, “Sharing this episode with my entire African-American studies class, because everyone needs to listen to this. Love the show,” with the heart. So Keith, thank you.

Henah Velez:

Could you also share it with your non-African-American studies class with everyone else?

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Share it with your algebra class, too.

Henah Velez:

Finally, we have this last piece, which technically wasn’t from the episode, it was actually in relation to our previous Rich Girl Roundup, but I think it ties in really well with what you and Anna were discussing at the end of the episode around Ronald Reagan and the narrative around welfare queens. So listener Julia said, “I’ve discovered you over the last few years from Morning Brew, and I thoroughly enjoyed your show for helping me puzzle out some financial questions. It’s really admirable to see how you’ve gone about this passion project and continue to find ways to check yourself and stay grounded.” Another generous interpretation of Katie but…

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Okay. Me eating a 24 karat gold muffin, like, yes, I’m so humble, so grounded. I’m so relatable, so relatable.

Henah Velez:

Meanwhile, she’s like, so I’ve hit FI next year. And I’m like, okay, I think I’m like 10% there. Okay, so Julia continues. Okay. Julia continues to say, “I was listening to the 8/27/25 show about taxes and discouraging labor control. I look forward to reading more from Jason Hickel. I wanted to add my own thoughts about it.

“The Reagan tax cuts absolutely made acquiring more wealth. Again, duh, but who is best suited for that game? People with a touch or heavy dose of sociopathy. They see cutting labor and benefits as collateral damage for stockholders. And the more that you have to pinch, the more rewarding it is to have less and less empathy. Of course, that is not every wealthy person, but at the very top, you have to be willing to make some corrupted decisions to get more wealth. A tale as old as time: Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely money equals power, and yet the welfare queens are somehow seen as the ultimate boogie woman.

“The Goldwater rules have really served to protect trained professionals from saying, yeah, they’re sociopaths, and we should protect ourselves from sociopaths. I recognize that these are not novel observations in late stage capitalism, but I cannot stop thinking about how to get our politicians—cough, cough also rewarded for a lack of empathy—to message that the purpose of being alive is not to increase shareholder value at all costs. How do we break the greed is good/greed is God shared delusion. Maybe the labor argument is a good one, but it still feels like, well, that billionaire is rich, so he must be brilliant. So he should manage those dumb, low paid laborers. They could finally learn something.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

I loved when Anna was like, there are politicians who hate the people they represent, just looking how they vote. I was like, damn, clocked.

Henah Velez:

Many such cases.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Many such cases. So this is super interesting actually. I am reading a book right now called Karl Marx in America, and every time I look at the title of it in my head, I go, Karl Marx in America, we’re the kids in America. So every time I see that—

Henah Velez:

I’m like, this is what I mean by saying staying grounded, generous, interpretation, everybody.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

I’m like, yes, my Marxist readings, no, but I really like this book because it’s written by a history professor. So it’s really talking about how Karl Marx in the United States became kind of like a boogeyman, a Fox news buzzword where everything people hate is called Marxist. It’s like a word that doesn’t mean anything anymore.

But it goes through the history of Marx in the 1800s in Germany and then in London, and then how he was influencing thought there, and then the Germans that came to the United States and how they were in the labor movement, and then the early socialist and communist parties in the United States in the 1910s and 1920s. And how right now I’m at the part where it’s all culminating in the 1930s because the Great Depression is happening. But the reason that the book is interesting is because a mix of history and Marxist theory.

And so something that this conversation is reminding me of is this idea that, and this is again, we’re talking about political theory, right? No economic theory is a hard science. All of this is like we think when this happens, when X happens, then Y happens. These are the third order effects.

But part of the Marxist approach to labor theory of value is that when you cut wages over time, that actually lowers profits. He has a kind of mechanical formula for how that happens where he explains that the long-term effects of continuously cutting your labor costs is that over time your profits will actually get smaller and that becomes its own spiral. I kind of want to spend more time with that and get more in the weeds of how that works, what the pushback is, whether or not we actually see that in the real world.

But beyond that, in response to this question of how do you move forward, what is the best option for moving forward? I do think our episode is going to address this pretty head on and do a lot of heavy lifting on this question, so keep an ear out for that because my guest in the next one is basically of the opinion that worker organizing is actually the only way forward at this point. There is no other option.

Henah Velez:

I’m just thinking about how you said Marxism, socialism and something else, maybe fascism, I don’t know, all in one sentence. So somewhere, someone’s keyword trifecta went off and I’m sure we’ll get some angry emails.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

That’s what I mean. It’s funny that it is like a bad word, but if you ask when someone calls you, oh, it’s the Marxist radical whatever, if you ask them what is Marxism? They don’t know. It’s just anything that—sounds scary to them. Anything that sounds scary, yeah, when in reality it’s like democratic ownership of the means of production.

Henah Velez:

So today we have plenty of tactical questions for you, all of your requests. So these really run the gamut. Hopefully you find one that relates to your own financial life, but if nothing else, you could see how we would work through questions like these. So I’m going to start with one that feels particularly timely since we’re back at market highs as of this recording. So Kate H. said, “Hi, Henah and Katie, I’m a new listener and I wanted to say thank you so much for doing what you do and a recent episode, Katie mentioned the market being overvalued. I was wondering if you could elaborate on that. As a rich girl in training, I currently do not have a lot invested. I have the funds to start investing more seriously now, but I’m unsure what that should look like if the market is so overvalued. This feels like the worst time to be starting my personal finance journey, and I’m hoping for some big sister advice.”

Apparently big sister advice is start the facelift fund. But anyway, they add on, “For context, I’m in my twenties with a relatively low income and a very tiny net worth.”

So Katie, I did email them back with the blog post that you once did on why do people say that stocks are overvalued right now as a primer? And I kind of said I would still personally invest. I would just prioritize diversification, but I think it’s worth reiterating here again for the class.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

I have brought this up several times now, so I’m not surprised that someone’s finally asking, why do you keep saying that? What are the practical implications of this? So the market, the “market”, the colloquial phrase that we use to describe the US stock market, and often what we’re talking about is just the S&P 500 at that is influenced by a lot of things, the cost of these stocks, monetary policy, broader economic outlook, instability, how easily can businesses plan for the future, speculation about innovation and more. A lot of these different factors that influence the cost of the market. Right now, the primary speculation that is driving the value is AI and how AI is going to change things.

And there are a couple different metrics that people will look to in order to say the market is undervalued, the market is fairly valued or it’s overvalued. The main one in my opinion is called the price to earnings ratio or P/E ratio, which basically just tells you how much am I going to spend for every dollar of earnings that I’m buying? Which makes sense when you remember that what you’re doing when you’re investing is you are buying little shares of public companies and those public companies are generating revenue. So you’re just asking yourself, how much am I paying for that little piece of this company for a dollar of their revenue? And it is on the higher side right now, but it’s not outrageously high since 2020, it has definitely been higher than it is now. We have seen more inflated values than what we’re seeing right now.

There are certain stocks that are extremely overvalued that if you were to isolate just one, you would see like, oh, Nvidia, Palantir, a lot of these companies are as far as what their current earnings are, they cost a lot because people think that their earnings are about to go up a lot.

So the stock market as we know, is not the economy. These are not the same thing. The stock market is forward looking. So some have pointed out that even though the economy itself looks to be on much shakier ground while the stock market is hitting all-time highs, that disconnect feels a little off. But theoretically, analysts are pricing in that economic instability and that uncertainty. But of course, nobody knows the future and that’s why there are corrections where when more information comes in, those prices adjust and go down. And so some people are looking at the prices right now going, eh, this is looking a little toppy. Big corrections are only a matter of time. So it’s not a matter of if there’s going to be a crash. It is just a when.

Henah Velez:

Would you say that the 2022 bear market, would you say that was a correction after a lot of the overvalued? Yes, because I think you wrote about this in 2021 originally.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yes, yes, yes. In 2022, the S&P 500’s return was negative 18%. That was a correction to what had happened in 2021 and 2020. So yeah, I’m saying that to mean, big corrections are just part of it. If you invest for 50 years, you were probably historically speaking, going to experience at least a dozen times where your investments are going to lose between 20% and 40% of their value. That is going to happen to you on average 12 times over five decades where you’re going to lose that much money at once. That’s just part of it.

So what are the practical implications of this? Well, it means that you should stay invested, assuming you believe that over time the market will go up and profits will continue to rise, which we’ve talked about this before. It’s kind of like if you want to benefit from capitalism, this is the way to do it. You stay invested. You don’t sell during the crashes. That’s number one. You expect the dips, right? You just know that they’re going to happen and you do your best to mentally fortify yourself on a subconscious level. That’s why I keep saying, hey, this is overvalued. Hey, this is overvalued. I want people to kind of start preparing for the fact that they’re probably in the next couple of years, just you’re going to see a correction of some kind. It’s not a reason to panic and pull your money out.

And finally, start investing now with that long-term perspective and just diversify outside of large cap US stocks buy more than just the S&P 500. That means small cap value funds, that means international funds like developed and emerging markets funds. You just want to own more than the United States and the biggest companies in the United States. But I would definitely not look at where we are right now and go, oh, I should not invest. That’s not at all what I’m saying.

Henah Velez:

I know Nick somewhere in the background is getting his past returns are not indicative of future returns.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah Nick, cue that shit up.

[Clip]:

Past performance is not indicative of future returns.

Henah Velez:

So next up we have Haewon who said, “I recently discovered your podcast and I’m enjoying it very much. I listened to your podcast whenever I drive, I’m 51 years old and divorced. I’m currently in between jobs while I’m searching for another job, I keep thinking about going solo as a consultant and feel like it would work out in the end. The only puzzle that I haven’t solved is health insurance, healthcare. I’m sure there are many people in my situation either working as a solo consultant or contractor and I wonder how they afford a decent health insurance? I’m not making any money, so not so excited with Obamacare. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, I’d really appreciate it.”

And here I would normally direct them onto our primer on how we afford health insurance, but this is obviously quite different if one, you don’t have employer subsidized health insurance as an option, and two, you’re not making any money at the moment. So Katie, what would you recommend?

Katie Gatti Tassin:

So I think my standard approach would still apply here, which is when you’re shopping around the high deductible plan paired with the HSA tends to be the most cost effective option. And kind of thinking about this as catastrophic care or it’s for if you received a cancer diagnosis and you had to go into a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of medical procedures.

But that said, our guest in two episodes from now, the one that is going to be about mini retirements has an entire strategy around pursuing health insurance as a self-employed or temporarily unemployed person because obviously her whole thing is every single person would benefit from taking regular sabbaticals. And there is a financially sound way to do that. And she will talk about the fact that healthcare is the number one piece of pushback that she hears of like, well, I can’t take six months off. I need health insurance. So I would just say stay tuned because that episode that we’re going to do in a couple of weeks will be a much deeper dive on some of these specifics from someone who actually coaches people through this exact transition that you’re talking about.

Henah Velez:

So let’s shift gears to talk about withholding, my favorite topic. You may remember the time a few years ago when I first started and when we ended up with a $8,000 tax bill, and then we worked frantically to bring it down kind of within the last few months of the year. So I think we landed somewhere closer to $3,000 or $4,000 when this was all said and done.

But this question comes from Adham, who is clearly thinking more intentionally than I knew how to back then, but they said “My partner and I are W-2 employees in high tax brackets, and because our raises come partway through each year and generally wind up being pretty significant, we’re always struggling to manage our withholding so that we’re not under withholding too much from paycheck to paycheck. This takes a lot of time and effort and it’s been driving me crazy for years. I’m wondering if you’ve considered or read about high earning employees who basically zero out their federal withholdings earlier in the year by adding a ton of extra dependences or deductions or something to their W fours and then at some point just contribute their entire paychecks to federal taxes. I imagine it would be pretty tricky to get the math and timing, but I guess you’d only have to do it once and that front loading your money in this way might have some benefits in terms of investing, cashflow, et cetera. What do you think?”

I don’t know. I guess I would just personally say that if you can afford to basically take $0 home for a while just so you don’t have to worry about withholding the right or wrong amount, you might be overthinking it, which is to say whether or not you owe the government the following year doesn’t seem to really impact your day-to-day finances. It sounds like if you’re willing to give up how your W four finances go, so it might be too much in the weeds to care this much. But yeah. Katie, what do you think?

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Well, I’m going to caveat everything that I’m about to say with as we all know that I am partially and I regularly have tax bills that end up being like $40,000 or more every April. So probably not the right person to be answering this question.

But my initial thought was when I was reading this, I was like, okay, what is it that’s bothering you about the situation? I actually couldn’t tell based on the way it was phrased, whether or not they’re upset because they end up getting a refund or they end up owing money. I think they’re annoyed because they end up owing money based on like, oh, we’re making more in the second half of the year and the withholding is wrong, but I can’t quite square how not paying any taxes in the first half of the year would be beneficial in this case.

I don’t know that that would end up helping the fact that you’re owing too much the next year because then you’re just having to make up more ground. I think what they’re saying is, well, if I take all my income in the first half of the year and then forego the rest in the back half, then I’ll have more money upfront to invest in whatnot.

But I’m kind of look at it a different way, which is I think a lot of people like the feeling of getting a tax refund. We know that there’s research that tax refunds are the primary way that the average American is even able to save an emergency fund because it acts like a forced savings device for them. But I kind of share the perspective that I think he’s getting at here, which is like, I want to hold onto my money longer. How do I make sure that I’m, because of opportunity costs and the time value of money, I’d rather have it upfront and invest it. That’s kind of why I don’t take pains to adjust my withholding. And I’m okay with owing more in April because then I get it throughout the entire year. I can invest, I can do other things with it, pursue other opportunities, and then use future income to pay that bill when the time comes. So I think that it does sound like a pretty in the weeds, tiny violin concern, like a pretty good problem to have.

But you mentioned this has been driving you crazy. You mentioned that it sucks up a lot of your time and energy. It sounds like your time and energy are quite valuable financially. My inclination is like I would just outsource this. If it’s bothering you that much, I would probably just talk to a CPA and hire a CPA for a few hours. Talk to ’em about your concerns and pay them for a personalized solution here.

Henah Velez:

So moving on to Leah K., they said, “I’m a recent follower to the podcast and enjoy the discussion. So far I haven’t done a deep dive into podcast episodes and I’m looking for specific content for women trying to plan for retirement while navigating the newborn toddler era. I’m currently the lower income earner in my marriage, and while my husband and I agree, it’s better for everyone that I continue working, I know of other mothers that quit the workforce entirely to care for their babies. I wonder about them and how retirement will work out in the long-term for them. For myself, one of the draws of returning after my maternity leave was continuing to contribute to my 401k and getting my employer match. What do stay-at-home moms do? Do they end up having to rely on their partner’s income through their entire life and retirement? What happens if they end up getting divorced in their forties or fifties?

“I ask because while I am the lower income earner, my retirement savings are currently almost double what my partners are. That’s not saying much. I’m only at $50k at 35. He hasn’t contributed anything to his 401(k) because his employer contributes to it. And I think he only recently realized he can make personal contributions. He’s getting a new job that has higher employer contributions and a pension. So that’s nice, but I worry he doesn’t see the value in investing in his own future, not just relying on his employers to do it for him.”

Leah, before I continue, may I recommend the audio book version if you have your hands busy with little ones of Rich Girl Nation?

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah, I mean that feels like there’s two threads there. Wanting your partner to want to invest in their future in the same way that you are, but also I kind of want to spend my time on the question about what do stay at home parents do, and am I correct to assume that if you’re just relying on other person’s income and all their retirement savings, is that what’s happening here?

And yes, the situation that you described, that is what happens and it does primarily impact women. We know that women are statistically more likely to become full-time caretakers to leave paid work to become full-time unpaid caretakers for family members. But that said, I think for the purposes of what I want to say, I want to actually strip gender out of it for a moment. I think the emotion of the stay at home mom conversation can sometimes cloud what is ultimately a pretty simple economic reality, which is that it costs money to live when two people who are independently earning and saving money consolidate their effort and one person earns and saves for the both of them, the other person in that arrangement is dependent on that person with the money.

And if those two people never separate, great, all is well. If they do, the person who did not have the access to money of their own must now find money of their own again. And if it’s been decades since you’ve done that, that can be a pretty harrowing experience. Your earning potential is likely not going to be as high as the person who has just spent all of that time working. And on some level it kind of comes down to the fact that two sources of income are more stable than one income is a single point of failure. And in financial planning, typically you want to avoid or mitigate single points of failure. That is a consideration that a planner would tell you to have. Now obviously, saving and investing aggressively is a really good way to mitigate a single point of failure, but I think when you just look at it from the sheer economic standpoint, it’s pretty hard to get around I think.

Henah Velez:

And then on the topic of how to get him to understand how to invest and save for the future, I think we actually have another reader email that will address that. So we’ll come back to it. But in the meantime, Sean had reached out. We didn’t get a chance to feature him last time, so I wanted to include his question and request for clarification here. So there’s a couple questions that he included. Katie, I’m going to read the first one.

They said, “My wife and I both read Rich Girl Nation, and we have a question. There’s a bit of a disconnect in the chapters discussing a) how women disproportionately struggle financially after divorce and b) prenups. The former is targeted seemingly at women who otherwise would not be the breadwinner of the household and highlights what are critically important issues to address. However, if we’re considering the target audience of the book is mostly women, which makes sense.”

“The latter chapter must be targeted at a largely different category of women who enter into a marriage with significant assets of their own. I say must because as my wife put it, advocating for prenups is in many ways advocating for ensuring that all of the bad things from the previous chapter that happened to mostly women after divorce continue to happen because they overwhelmingly protect the husband’s assets if he was the higher earner going into marriage. Sure, there are variations of how prenups are written, but the majority still seem to be I had this and that before marriage and I’m keeping it, it’s not super relevant to us either way, but it left my wife feeling like Katie was in many ways highlighting a huge problem, but then recommending a vehicle that perpetuates that problem. Maybe there’s such a thing as a postnup that would address how to economically value one partner, either partner taking on the brunt of household management, but there just seem to be a hole in between. Here are all the problems for women and here’s how to avoid them if you’re the less earning, more household managing spouse.”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yes. So I’m happy that he brought this up. I want to explicitly connect these dots here if that was not clear in the book or if they’re feeling contradictory in some way.

But I think the best way to do this is to actually kind of give you a little behind the scenes. So this is how that chapter about prenups ended up in the book with that much of a focus. My original pitch to the publisher had chapter four covering two big expensive life milestones. It was about having a wedding and buying a home. But part of the research that I was doing, bigger picture involved interviewing CFPs and attorneys about the biggest money issues that women face. So I wanted to talk to people, especially those with the Certified Divorce Financial Analyst certification. I wanted to talk to people that were working one-on-one with folks about what are the trends, what are the themes?

And every single one of them highlighted that the financial ramifications of a divorce are almost always the most damaging thing that happens to women in midlife and divorce is a relatively common experience. So it became clear to me throughout that process, okay, it’s marriage itself. It’s not the wedding, it’s not the potential home purchase, it’s the legal implications of combining assets and debt and how those things are paid for that left much larger aftershocks than real estate or wedding planning.

So sure, in popular culture, prenups are traditionally thought of as a weapon that rich men use to shield themselves from gold digging younger women. You kind of hear Sean alluding to this of like, oh, these are to protect the men, so why are you recommending somebody get one? But prenups are just a legal contract. They’re going to serve whatever interests you put in them that is critical.

And I think it’s also worth stating explicitly or clarifying here, even absent a prenup, you are almost certainly going to continue to be legally entitled to retain whatever you came into the marriage with. So I think Sean had referenced, oh, you have a man who maybe had a lot more income and assets before the marriage, and then maybe a woman who does not have much in the way of assets. Okay, well, if they’re getting a prenup, then that means it’s going to protect all of his stuff regardless of the prenup. That separate property is still considered separate property. So the chances are that if you split up, you are both still going to get back what was originally yours, assuming you still have it, and assuming that you can prove that it was yours to begin with, it’s only income and property that’s acquired after the date of marriage that’s considered to belong to both of you and then would therefore be up for splitting.

So prenups can help solidify and ring finch those separate property assets. They do. We do talk about that in the book of if you want to mitigate the chances that that is going to end up becoming complicated later, you can open separate property trusts and such. In some ways though, we are not really concerned about the assets before marriage and we’re not even all that concerned about the assets acquired during marriage. I’ll come back to that.

The thing that prenups do that directly addresses the specific problem that women run into, and the main focus of the prenups in this book is that they create income protection for stay-at-home parents. They allow you before you legally marry somebody to outline the terms of what will happen someday. If one of you does forego paid labor for decades to do the necessary but unpaid labor of managing a household and family, most Americans do not have adequate savings to live on.

So even if you got half of everything in a divorce at age 50, chances are if your financial situation looks anything like the average Americans, it’s not that you are never going to have to work again. You are still going to need income and finding income again when you’ve been out of the labor force since you were 35 years old, is going to take time. And what I heard over and over and over again in those conversations that I had while I was writing is that, yeah, you’re probably going to get a couple months. You’re probably going to get spousal support that amounts to a lot less than you’re used to spending for maybe if you’re lucky up to six months. And then after that, you are going to be on your own completely expected to provide for yourself. That can put people in positions, particularly women where knowing this, they stay in marriages, they do not want to be in anymore because they accurately perceive that they would be financially screwed if they left.

And so prenups offer the opportunity to specify with a little more creativity what would happen if we were to split up. And Kim Davis is one person I talked about this. She was like, you can do things where it’s like for every five years you’re out of the workforce, you get one year of income. There are endless terms that you can specify for what would happen that will give you more comfort and will give you more options if for some reason that marriage does not work out.

So theoretically, I suppose Sean could be saying that, well, hey, if you’re encouraging people to get a prenup, the breadwinner might be able to say, well, I’m going to include terms that say I get 90% of everything. I earned all the money throughout the marriage. Obviously that’s not beneficial, but prenups have to be enforceable in order to mean anything. And judges have a fair bit of leeway in looking at the terms. And if they deem that something shocks the conscience that nobody in their right mind would’ve agreed to, the judge can throw the prenup out and be like, this is not enforceable. So the chances that some super rich person is going to be able to totally screw somebody that they marry in a prenup and that will end up being enforceable later in court. The impression that I was given by the lawyers I spoke with was that that doesn’t really happen.

Henah Velez:

Well, there are some prenups that we’ve talked about on the show where someone’s like, “Well, you have to gift an IRA for me for every year that I’m not working because there’s only a cap that for every year I don’t use it, I’m losing it.” So for the years you’re together, if someone says, well, I want to stay married, but I don’t want to do this, do they go up and say, okay, well legally you have to because this is what you signed or do you have to threaten to divorce and then it comes into play? Do you know what I’m saying?

Katie Gatti Tassin:

I don’t know how it works if what you are putting in the prenup are rules that people must follow in order to stay married. My interpretation is more that it is a legal document that says what happens if you do not stay married? Does that make sense?

Henah Velez:

Yeah. I mean, I’m thinking aloud because also there’s this married ladies group on Facebook and someone wrote recently, “Those of you that bought a house with your husband, how did you each contribute to the down payment? And I asked because my husband has debt and some savings, but not too much. Whereas I have three properties and enough savings to retire now if I wanted to. He has a better paying job though and it’ll likely get better going forward, and I’m confused how to do this with such a big investment with him. And they were like, we could buy now if we waited, I would just be contributing more or wait longer. And then we could both pitch in similarly.”

And I was like, just a gentle reminder that it doesn’t really matter who pays what you’re married… it depends how long you’ve been together and when those debts were incurred. So a bunch of people were like, yeah, this is the answer. So I just find that when I’m thinking about marriage and the conditions that you get married in and the personal financial circumstances you’re in when you get married, how do those play out when you still want to be in the marriage?

Katie Gatti Tassin:

In that particular instance, it doesn’t matter when they buy the house, it belongs to both of them, especially if it’s income that they’re using that she has earned since the date of marriage.

Henah Velez:

Since they got married.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah, I think the key takeaway on the prenup thing is that you need to, I am providing you with the information that will hopefully help convince you to get one and will hopefully open up your frame of reference for what these documents can be used for. But you do need to talk to and work with an attorney. You both need your own legal representation that are licensed in your state.

I am not an attorney. The attorneys that I spoke with told me that this is not a document that you want to set up online with a DIY legal service because enforceability is key. And if both people did not have their own legal representation when the document was created, and if there is not a perception of fairness or if there are terms included that are not legally enforced, well the whole thing can get thrown out. So you really want to cross your Ts and dot your Is here.

But I wanted to talk about this on the show and answer this question on the show because I wanted to take that opportunity to say the perception of prenups in pop culture and what this legal document can actually be used to do. There is a mismatch there. And working with a lawyer in your state and outlining your situation to them and getting their feedback can be invaluable.

Henah Velez:

And it’s better to do upfront than years of headaches down the line. So highly recommend. And then we heard from Rich Gal Molly about maybe the opposite of this is giving your money away, which we love to see. So they said, “Hi, Katie and Henah and whoever else it may concern, I would love a podcast episode delving into giving money away in a tax advantaged way while basic universal services provided by the government is obviously most ideal, we’re not there. So for us money nerds, it would be great to optimize how to give money away. There’s so many financially independent savers who struggle to spend their money as they keep accumulating. While Ramit Sethi’s work is awesome in helping people live their richer lives, I think there’s a certain sect of people that just cannot be overly spendy on themselves no matter how hard they try for environmental reasons as more consuming equals more waste, even travel leaves a carbon footprint, or they’re just so good at making money and saving, they continue to accumulate more than they would want to spend and are dying with a ton of money or wanting to give it all away once you die, which isn’t really as generous as doing it while you’re alive.

“One way to get these optimizers on board with giving more money away would be to gamify it, which I know people love or getting people to think it’s cool. I think there are so many influencers now and personal finance gurus, but are any of them focusing on giving money as a big part of the financial plan? It’s always just a footnote. And of course this is for people who are already stable themselves. I remember learning about donor-advised funds, but that’s about it. And I am a Diabolical Lies subscriber and hearing about your giving money woes a little bit with double taxation was interesting as well. I think the subject should be covered more than just in one episode because it’s financial, it’s psychological, it brings good into this rough world. But one episode would be a great start. And finding the right charities that spend the most on what you want them to with every dollar you donate is a great topic. Or donating tax deductible charities versus something like mutual aid. Another topic to cover there. Thanks for considering.”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah, I guess two quick thoughts, but then Henah, I want to hear what you think. I know you’re more well versed in this nonprofit world. First, yes, to give away income, you really only benefit tax wise once you’re giving in excess of the standard deduction so that you can itemize the deductions, itemize the donations. Fortunately when I brought up the Diabolical Lies double taxation thing, that was before we knew whether or not we would be giving away enough to exceed the standard deduction and we will be. So we’re going to be able to deduct all of it. But otherwise, yeah, you end up paying taxes on the money you donate is basically the long and short of it.

My goal is to donate what’ll work out to at least 10% of my gross income this year. So I guess I’m tithing now. That’s really cool. That said, I think one thing that makes sense and might be worth looking into, and I know that you’re telling us to do an episode about it, not asking for a solution personally, but you can donate appreciated stock and that is more tax effective than donating cash. And so I think that that could be something that would be fun to look into as part of a how to episode. But also I think a broader philosophy to fold into what is the financial planning strategy that we recommend? Because obviously the whole strategy that I recommend is outlined in Rich Girl Nation, but there isn’t anything about, and here’s the percentage of your appreciated stock that you should be giving away.

Henah Velez:

Yeah. First I guess I want to talk about this idea about “finding the right charities that spend the most and what you want them to with every dollar you donate is a great topic.” So I want to just sidebar here for a second. I totally understood this idea that, okay, if I’m giving to this nonprofit, I want it to go to water in Kenya, I want it to go to girls’ education in India, I want it to go to whatever, and you’re going to check the box. It says, okay, make sure it goes to that. I understand the inclination to want to do that, but after years of fundraising and in development positions, let me tell you why it’s helpful, but can be a little bit harmful.

Because if there’s not enough money set aside to make the programs happen, it doesn’t really matter that you allocated your money to those children. So if you don’t have money that is given to support overhead costs or larger programmatic initiatives, it’s not going to be money that they can spend because they don’t have the resources to then disperse it on the ground. So I would just say at the end of the day, it is your prerogative on where you want to allocate the money that you give. If that’s an option in the dropdown and you’re welcome to do that, I would just recommend that you either pick area of greatest need and then the organization can decide what is the greatest need at that moment and act appropriately. Or you just be a little bit more open to like, okay, it may not go to this exact community at this exact moment, but it’s going to go to the larger mission of what they’re trying to do because they need dollars to make that happen.

And then as far as the donor-advised funds, we covered it briefly on the show I think, but we have a blog post on building your philanthropic plan that you and I wrote three summers ago now, Katie, that I’ll link to you in the show notes.

So what I’ll reiterate from that is I do feel uniquely qualified to talk about this, but my general theory is that if you want to make the most direct difference in your home-based community, you might want to seek out mutual aid. If you want to make donations to causes you specifically care about, I would highly recommend a recurring donation that’s the best for your financial plan. You can kind of plan for that throughout the year as well as the organization because they can sustainably plan for the future because you can say, oh my gosh, I’m going to give you $5,000. And they’re like, oh my gosh, that’s amazing. I appreciate that so much, but you may never be in a position to give it again. And then they have a $5,000 gap for the following year. S

o my opinion would be even if you could do $5, $10, $25, pick a cause and make it recurring. And then if you’re looking for bigger sums of money, you could talk to a CPA or CFP about donating appreciated stock and could do a donor advised fund. There’s also state planning that a lot of people will do, and then there’s also matching donations. So you could say, I’m Katie, I have $10,000 I want to give to the Sanibel Fund, but me and this organization are going to say, well, it’s a match so that we can encourage other people to give as well. So there’s different ways you can do it. I think the other big personal finance book out there that even addresses this at all maybe would be Die With Zero.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah, the giving piece of it.

Henah Velez:

Yeah.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

I think that the key thing that Molly is referencing here is how do we gamify this to make other people want to give? I understand Molly personally, obviously sounds like she’s very interested in giving money away redistribution, and she’s basically like, okay, the FI community has a lot of people with a lot of money and a lot of influencers who are talking about how to get more, but no one is really gamifying this aspect of the personal financial plan. And I hear that. I think that we’ve gotten this question more and more recently, and I think my feeling about it goes back to what I said before, which is in the same way that people choose percentages of income for savings targets, I think that choosing a percentage of income as a giving target makes sense too. To me, that is a very simple way to gamify, but there is no perfect answer here, and maybe we can keep thinking about it and what would be the interesting episode that we could do that basically thinks about how to gamify but also operationalize this.

Henah Velez:

I think there’s also a moral superiority thing of this where it’s tacky to be like, oh, I went ahead and I donated all this money, but I think there is a piece of it that culturally the narrative, because it’s not about giving back, it’s not something that people really talk about. And so I think there’s the sociological piece of this is can you talk about the philanthropic plans you’re making so that you can—not gamify it, but just make it more mainstream to talk about—so it’s on people’s radar in that way, but also, oh, well all of us are doing it, so why aren’t you doing it and you have this kind of money, or you’re in the same community as we are, we’re all doing this, why aren’t you? And not to shame them into doing it, but just to normalize it a little bit more.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Normalize it. Yeah, I hear you. Yeah, that makes sense. There’s value in talking about it, even if there isn’t specific answers, but still treating it as like, well, obviously we all do this. This is something people do.

Henah Velez:

And you don’t have to come at it from a, well, I give $500 a month, but it could just literally be like, oh yeah, it’s part of our budget and my Wealth Planner, I put it in every month. How are you guys organizing it?

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yes. Plus I think there are not for nothing, there are other ways that you can make a huge difference for people in your immediate community that do not involve having to give away thousands of dollars. Henah, I feel like you recently did something along these lines if you’re comfortable talking about it.

Henah Velez:

Sure. So my husband and I are in a mutual aid group, and we heard about someone who had been kicked out of their home for having what we’ll call—what their family thought—was an alternative lifestyle. And I just feel like since we bought a house and we have all of this space, I was like, okay, well why don’t we house them for a little while? So we met them and let them stay with us for a couple days when they wanted to come take showers or do laundry. We were like, yeah, sure, here you go.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

That’s amazing.

Henah Velez:

Thanks. I was talking to someone about this because they were like, don’t you feel unsafe? You don’t know who this person is? And I said, well, I’ve taken all those safety precautions I can just in general of having any sort of person in my home, I took a photo of their ID, God forbid something happened. My husband was here. So it wasn’t just me alone with this person, and this person was so lovely. They were so grateful. And to me, that’s what the idea of community is, and I’m much closer to being in a position like yours then to the Jeff Bezos/Bezi.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Well, you do have a pretty alternative lifestyle. If somebody was interested in doing something like this and someone was like, wait, how do you even get into a group? Or these types of requests are being made, how did you find your mutual aid group?

Henah Velez:

So I’m in a neighborhood Facebook group, and then there was someone in the neighborhood Facebook group that runs a mutual aid organization who is posting there and said, this person needs this thing, and so can someone help. So that’s how we got connected. We talked a little bit and I said, I don’t have $400, which is what this person needed for a hotel room for the week, but I had the space. Is that something that they’d be comfortable with? I don’t want to presume because maybe they just want their own space. They don’t want to be in someone else’s home. So I just threw that out there.

But we’ve tried to find them part-time work. We’re trying to connect them to other people. They’re trying to rebuild their life here, and I want to be a part of that as far as what I think my responsibility is for being a global citizen, but a local citizen of this community now.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

That’s so dope.

Henah Velez:

Oh, thanks.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

I feel like there are probably people listening to this who have maybe had the same thought. If you live in a four bedroom home and two of the bedrooms are you have a guest room that’s constantly empty. Yeah, that’s an amazing way to directly impact somebody’s life in your community. I think that’s so sick that you did that.

Henah Velez:

Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it. I think even if you have an extra bathroom and you can foster a dog, that’s something. And there’s room for everybody to do stuff at their own capacity.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

I have a friend who lives in Los Angeles and has become very interested in helping with the unhoused community there, and he is FI, so this individual does not work for money. He’s in his late thirties, had a very successful career in tech, has retired, and part of what he does with his time as he volunteers, but he also just gets to know the unhoused people in his community. Hell yeah, he said that he went to, he’ll go to a park where a lot of them will hang out and hangs out with them, brings food, talks to them.

And he said that one time he was there and someone else who could clearly tell that he was not unhoused based on how he was stressed. And the person made a comment to him as though, God, this park’s gone to shit or thought that he would respond positively to that. And he was like, dude, what are you talking about? That’s such a fucked up thing to say. And the person was taken aback.

But anyway, where I’m going with this is that this friend of mine lives in a very small place in LA, does not have extra rooms in his home, but has made friends in this community and has basically said, if you get kicked out of this park, you can hang out in my yard. You can hang out in my lawn. You can hang out at my house. And he said that one night his neighbors called the police on the guy that he had said, yeah, you can hang out in my yard. I don’t care. You can put your tent in my yard. It doesn’t matter to me.

His neighbors called the cops. The cops came and he saw the cop talking to the guy outside and he goes out, he’s like, hey, this is my property. What are you doing here, officer? And the officer was like, oh, well, we got a complaint and he said that he had talked to you and that you wanted this person gone. And he was like, actually, no, this is my friend. And I invited him here. And the cop was like, oh my gosh, okay, cool. But he was like, yeah, it’s pretty wild that even when I went out of my way to make it clear that this person was welcome in my space, that the neighbor was like, no, no, no, no, no, not about that.

Henah Velez:

Yeah, the nimby of it all, literally not in my backyard, I guess, for that person. When I was in college, we went to volunteer at an organization where we heard from people who had been formerly unhoused. And one of the things that the guy said that I will never forget was that the most hurtful thing was when people didn’t even look them in their eyes or say hello. They wouldn’t even speak up.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah. It’s like you’re subhuman to people.

Henah Velez:
Yeah, that to me just stuck with me so hard.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

To me, it’s even less about any of us could be that. It’s like there’s a level of just humanity that’s like even if that’s never you, that’s still a person.

Henah Velez:

Absolutely. And I feel really heartbroken that that’s the experience that a lot of people have day to day, who they’re dressed as if they’re invisible and they’re basically litter to other people and that those people feel entitled to say whether or not this person belongs in a public space or not.

And so anyway, I could talk about this for a long time, but I hope that people feel empowered to do something. One of the things that I’ve heard about in shelters a lot, because I used to volunteer at them is people always need socks. Like clean new socks. People always need toothpaste. Go make a bag. Go make little bags.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yes.

Henah Velez:

Spend a hundred bucks.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Have ’em in your car. Yeah.

Henah Velez:

Have ’em in your car. Or just go to a park and hand them out.

On the note of tithing, we actually have one more question from Sean that you had brought up, so I want to make sure we get to it. They said, “There was a discussion in a recent roundup about what it to be generous and how generosity and the ability to be generous may look and feel differently to different people. Katie, as she has done plenty of times in the past, alludes to her Catholic school upbringing as an ongoing influence, but also as in the past, it’s a bit of a quip and a joke, and then we move on.” Assuming they’re talking about the Catholic guilt, Puritan work ethic.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

There is nothing funny about Catholic guilt, not a joking, not a laughing matter.

Henah Velez:

So he goes out to say, “But there’s something there. The topic request is would you all be interested in doing an episode on how religion, particularly in an American context.”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yes.

Henah Velez:

“And even more particularly in an innate, which marginally different flavor of American evangelicalism impacts how people view and interact with money. I’ve been listening for two to three years, so I may have missed an early episode about this if it exists, but it just seems like a gap and an otherwise wide ranging net of topics set up been covered and what seemed to impact so many people, listeners and non-listeners, and how they view money. For example, Katie mentions the idea of generosity and Catholic guilt being drilled into her at an early age, but we’re all familiar with very many people high profile and low that would otherwise identify themselves with some sect of Christianity. Yet must have skipped the sections of the Bible on generosity. I’m a devout Catholic myself for non-Catholics. When I say devout, I mean that I am ‘we should feed the poor’ Catholic, not ‘a woman shouldn’t work outside the home’ Catholic. And I’m always very curious when I seem to share social views a lot closer to my non-Catholic and frankly non-religious friends than my Catholic and other Christian friends. There’s a whole deep dive there for the taking, and it seems like that would be aligned with the balance between the more thematic money topics and tactical ideas.”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

We did an episode in April, 2023, although I feel like there was another one. It was called “Save the Boss Babes, MLMs, Get Rich Quick Schemes, and the Prosperity Gospel.” And there is a deep dive in that episode about prosperity gospel in particular. Again, when I say we’ve been getting a lot of emails in this vein that are about giving back, generosity, spirituality, whatever. I did write an essay about this a couple months ago called “Incentives are Not Instructions.”

And for that piece, I spent some time digging into different religious traditions and how they think about generosity as a spiritual practice. I will say that I think capitalism and generosity are foundationally antithetical to one another. There are mainstream evangelical traditions that are a lot closer to capitalist ideology than Christian ideology. If you’re reading the Bible verse for verse whatever. But there were two specific faith traditions that I came across that I thought took interesting and novel approaches when I was wrestling with the relationship between frugality and a stewardship of resources.

So like a frugality that is coming from a place of wanting to make the world better and more just versus frugality that’s coming from a place of stinginess, a sense of self deprivation, et cetera. And so I wrote this. I said, “This is less a financial dilemma than a spiritual one, which might be why most worldviews that attempt to contend with it are religious. In Thai Buddhism, a belief in interconnectedness supports the sufficiency economy philosophy, which recognizes overindulgence as inevitably related to others suffering. Islam prescribes Zakat, a 2.5% annual wealth tax.” That was really interesting. Islam prescribing a wealth tax of two and a half percent, right?

“In Judeo-Christian traditions, the ancient practice of tithing a word that means 1/10th refers to giving away 10% of your income. While plenty of prosperity, gospel preachers and religious institutions have capitalized on this principle to furnish their private jet funds or commit strip mall fraud, the practice is partially intended to demonstrate that there is a difference between something being in your possession and being rightfully yours. This is anathema to the religion of capitalism, which assumes market forces always allocate resources according to who deserves them most.”

So that’s what I’ve put out in the past on this. But I do think that there’s a bigger, a financial dilemma than a spiritual one, but the opposite is true as well. It’s a spiritual dilemma that has financial implications, and I am getting the sense from the types of emails we’ve been getting that there’s hunger for that.

Henah Velez:

Yeah, I think also frankly, of your episodes on what is enough defining enough for your financial life, and I think that is a big piece of deciding what you can part ways with and how you do that. And you can do it in ways before you get to FI where maybe this spiritual piece is playing more of a role. But yeah, for sure. And then I wanted to close today with a note from MJ that we’ve condensed for time, and before we get into it, the note is around credit card perks, but interestingly today AmEx just rolled out its new platinum Perks. So I thought I would just briefly share with the class.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Give us the update. Should we still have this card or not?

Henah Velez:

The TLDR is the annual fee is going up to $895, so it is…quite steep.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Oh my God, $895. I wonder what churn rate they’re expecting. They have a whole department of people that are doing the cost benefit analysis of how many people are going to cancel the card if we do this versus how much revenue are we going to make from the ones that we keep.

Henah Velez:

For sure. I saw a little note that they said that it’s going to now provide over $3,500 in annual value, which I think is one of those things where, yeah, sure, that sounds nice, but you have to be very intentional about using it and using it at the right time, because a lot of the perks that they’re introducing are per quarter. They’ll say it’s $300, but you’re really getting $75 a quarter. So it’s just really important to kind of like—

Katie Gatti Tassin:

The Saks credit.

Henah Velez:

Yeah, yeah, exactlt.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

The $50 biannual Saks credit that they’ve had for years.

Henah Velez:

So the new credits, so to speak, are going to be $600 of hotel credit with increased value and expanded hotels, which sounds really nice. But again, remember this is going to be $300 semi-annually. They’re introducing a $400 Resy credit for people who dine at all the different restaurants that are registered with Resy, but it’s a hundred dollars a quarter. They’re expanding their entertainment credit, their digital entertainment credit to $300 a year. So $25 a month.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

That’ll be good for me. It’s really good.

Henah Velez:

I mean, I use that one note on the first two days of the month. Same. I know your ass will love this one. A $300 Lululemon credit, $75/quarter.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Let’s go. Align fam, where you at?

Henah Velez:

There’s also a $120 in Uber One credit and then $200 an Oura ring credit, which I thought was interesting.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Oh, interesting. See, I’m grandfathered in because I got the Oura ring in 2020, so I don’t have a subscription to the Oura Ring, but I guess would the $200 apply if you wanted to upgrade your ring?

Henah Velez:

I’m not sure. It just says enrollment required, so I guess we’ll see more to come.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Do you know when all this is supposed to, if you are already a Platinum member, when this will all happen, asking for a friend?

Henah Velez:

I think it’s today.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Oh, it’s actually—everything begins. Alright, well I got to take an hour…

Henah Velez:

Because I logged in and I got bunch of “enroll in this, enroll in that.”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Like, okay, oh, I’m like, I got to sit down for an hour and put some calendar reminders on.

Henah Velez:

But that’s what I’m saying. You can get a lot of value out of this card because it’s in addition to the $200 in Uber Cash, the $200 airline credit, the a hundred dollars Saks credit, the Equinox credit, the Walmart. So you can get a lot of value out of this card, but it does take a lot of intentionality to do that.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

For sure, and it’s kind of like you’ve got to already be. What I always tell people with these premium travel cards is this also depends on how you’re traveling. If you are someone that’s always staying in Airbnbs, this is probably not really helpful, a hundred dollars hotel credit every month, unless it counts for Airbnbs is not going to really move the needle. If you’re not someone that already shops at Lululemon, okay, great, a $300 credit’s nice, but if that’s not money you would’ve spent anyway, then you’re not really getting anything out of that.

Henah Velez:

My little hack is that I save those credits that I don’t really use for other people’s gifts around their birthdays or holidays.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Oh, that is really smart.

Henah Velez:

So Saks, I’ll just keep, and then around Christmas I’ll be like, okay, well I know that so-and-so really likes this candle and I can get it from there.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah, that’s a good idea.

Henah Velez:

But then Chase also came out with new benefits and I think in response to their own upgrade and price and then what AmEx rolled out, Chase also added new features to their reserve in addition to the ones they already announced when they heightened their annual fee. So the new price for the Chase Sapphire Reserve will be $795. So it is a little bit less than Amex’s.

But for Chase you’re going to get eight times the points for Chase Travel. Four times the point with any direct bookings. Now they’ve added $500 for what their—the essential collection of the fine hotels and resorts that Amex has—hey now have their own called The Edit. So they’re giving you $250 twice a year. You still get the $300 credit towards travel purchases, which is flexible for pretty much anything. And this is in addition to as well all of the other benefits that they offered. So they’re going to give you IHG Premium Elite status automatically just for having the card. They’re also adding $300 in statement credits for their Reserve exclusive tables when you go dining. So all of that to say there are a lot of new features being rolled out and it’s really up to you to decide if the annual fee is going to be offset by those things, but it does sound pretty sizable.  So I know your ass is sitting on amex.com like enrolling, enrolling, enrolling.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Like I said, I got to add new reminders for myself of when to spend things.

Henah Velez:

I just wanted to bring that up because MJ had brought up this conversation that we had and how it helped her. So I’m going to read what she wrote to close this out today. So they said, “I just wanted to say thank you for your ramblings about credit cards and the last episode of Rich Girl Roundup. Long story short, I signed up for our program that cost $650 and never received my course materials. There was a bunch of back and forth with their customer support and ultimately concluded with them not only refusing to refund me despite the fact that I had now missed out on all the classes, but they were pretty rude about it. But I remembered your voices in my ear yesterday talking about how you each liked a particular credit card because of how they resolved charge disputes.

“And then I remembered that I liked my Capital One card, which I used for this purchase because they’ve been accommodating over the years on a lot of different changes. So I just submitted a charge dispute to Capital One and I never would’ve thought about disputing that charge if it wasn’t for your discussion.

“I should also say thank you for giving me the tools and courage to make some changes to my finances that I really needed. I’ve been budgeting for years as the sole five financial manager for my family and I try to get my husband to help, but he’ll seriously talk about money maybe once a year. I have been pretty paralyzed, desperately trying to pay off debt. The recent episode you did with JL Collins changed everything for me. I took notes, read through your website, dug up old episodes, and then looked at my annual budget in a different way: percentages. You made me realize that I was underfunding my family’s lifestyle, which is actually keeping us in the cycle of debt. I was able to allocate more money towards our lifestyle, less towards debt, and then reallocate our debt with two balance transfers, which she kind of writes out how she did it. And so you’ve given me the confidence and tools to make these transfers and know that it’s the best move to get this debt paid off. Now I can use the debt avalanche method to make progress in addition to paying off the 0% balance in 18 months as a bonus when reevaluating our assets and debts.

“During my new budgeting, I realized that we could sell our house tomorrow and be a hundred percent debt free, but little fact gives me a lot more peace of mind about paying less monthly towards debt. I should be able to start investing beyond my retirement accounts and two or three years, and that’s really exciting within my marriage, having new, more fun talking points around money like this is how we can achieve our goals or get what we want has been really nice”—which reminds me a lot, sidebar, of what Ramit Sethi says about making your money conversations with each other more fun.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah. Money for couples.

Henah Velez:

And so she continues to say, “It is not all about the debt anymore. There is a complete picture that includes assets and potential for growth. Suze Orman should pay me damages for emotional distress or something. She’s the reason I 1) found Dave Ramsey and 2) cashed out my 401(k) to pay off debt. I have a pension too, so it is marginally less bad than for the average American.

“Thank you for showing me personal finance that actually works for our current economic reality and that I don’t have to sacrifice everything and be completely debt free and for letting me know that it isn’t too late to get started on the path to FI.”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

That is so lit. Oh my God. Lemme tell you what I love about that. I love that somebody listened to, first of all, I’m glad that someone liked the JL Collins episode. Second of all, I’m glad that that episode that is so ideal to me. You listen to an episode, it inspires you. You get some ideas and then you basically just dive deep into all the resources. You sit down, you flesh out the plan, and we did 5% of that. You did 95% of it. You should be thanking yourself. We just had one conversation. Katie’s like gold star for you, a plus student. She’s like, I’m going to do this and then did the avalanche method, and then I’m do this balance transfer, and then now we’re having this conversation about what the money’s going to do for us and I’m like, oh my God, that is the ideal outcome. It’s when I see stuff like this that I’m like, yes. I’m like, damn, that’s so amazing. That just makes me grateful to have a show that people listen to and run with in that way. I’m very, very, very impressed. And like I said, we did basically nothing. We gave you one conversation and then you ran a hundred miles with it. So well done.

Henah Velez:

It makes hearing all the times that we’re called c***s worth it. So thank you for sharing that, MJ, but I’m so happy and so proud of you. Yeah, that’s incredible. So good for you. And I hope that Capital One covers your dispute.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

I hope that it inspires somebody else. Whenever I hear stories like that, especially I remember when I was first getting started and didn’t know where to start, when I heard other stories of people, how they were implementing the information and just tackling it. That always made me feel more excited about the possibility to do the same thing. So I hope that if you’ve been on the fence, that maybe that also gave you the little push that you needed.

But that is all for this week’s edition of Rich Girl Roundup. Thank you as always for listening, for sharing your thoughts, for asking great questions, for running with the information. I feel like we covered a lot of really interesting ground today. So we will see all of you in two weeks for an interview with Eric Blanc.

Our show is a production of Morning Brew and is produced by Henah Velez and me, Katie Gatti Tassin, with our audio engineering and sound design from Nick Torres. Devin Emery is President of Morning Brew content and additional fact checking comes from Scott Wilson.