On “Dangerous” Financial Advice, Downsizing, and Dying with Zero

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

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s…our first newly revamped Rich Girl Roundup of 2025, in which we’re taking you on a scenic guided tour of the chatter spurred from our most recent episodes: our most contentious episode to date, the one that generated moving revelations from listeners, and our two-part series that ended up being less polarizing than we expected.

We also discuss how to jerry-rig your Wealth Planner to project a “Die with Zero”-style drawdown, by popular demand, as well as the potential for a book club or community.

• (00:00) Introduction to the new Rich Girl Roundup format

• (03:59) General feedback we’ve heard recently

• (12:55) Feedback on the “You Don’t Need a Budget” episode

• (28:27) Amending your Wealth Planner to “Die with Zero”

• (34:45) Two moving emails from a listener, several years apart

• (41:19) Feedback on the “What’s Next for Money with Katie” episode and downsizing

• (47:29) The possibility of a Money with Katie book club or community

• (50:37) Feedback on the GLP-1 weight loss drugs series

RICH GIRL NATION IS HERE. GRAB YOUR COPY.

THE 2025 MONEY WITH KATIE WEALTH PLANNER IS LIVE—GET YOURS NOW.

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 our Chief Content Officer and additional fact checking comes from Scott Wilson.

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Mentioned in the Episode

• Episodes we’re discussing feedback from: “Why This Finance Expert Says You Don’t Need a Budget,” “What’s Next for the Money with Katie Show,” and our two-part series on GLP-1 weight loss drugs

• Essay: “What Do the Wall Street Journal Commenters Actually Want?”

• 2022 episode with Nick Hanauer: “Are Rich People Better Than You?”

• 2023 post from Jessica DeFino from The Review of Beauty

• Join the Money with Katie newsletter!

Subscribe to the Money with Katie newsletter

Transcript

Katie:

Welcome back to our first 2025 Rich Girl Roundup of the Money with Katie Show, new and improved. I’m Katie Gatti Tassin, and every couple of weeks, few weeks we’ll see my executive producer, Henah, and I are going to discuss all the feedback questions and maybe new considerations that we’ve heard from you about the last batch of our episodes.

Part of what I hope this new format is going to allow us to do is discuss more of your thoughts and questions at the same time. So where the old format centered around a single person’s question that we would then discuss and hoped would be representative or interesting for others. This gives us a chance to hear from a lot of you at once.

Henah:

I’m very excited about this new format and for the three people who wrote in and said, what happens to Henah? I’m back, baby.

So I feel like we could start by reviewing what we covered in the last couple of weeks. So hit me with the first episode, which I think was maybe our most contentious episode of all time.

Katie:

Yeah, shockingly, I was like, damn, y’all love your budgets. Okay, so the first episode that we’re going to be reviewing feedback for today is the one that we did with Dana Miranda. So why one financial expert—who does have the certified educator and personal finance certification through FINRA. So when I say expert, she’s more expert than I am by certification. Okay. Why, she says, hey, you don’t need a budget. This was definitely the episode in this roundup that we’re probably going to spend the most time on because it’s the one that generated the widest range of feedback and frankly the strongest reactions, which was really interesting.

We are also going to talk about the episode that we did the following week, which was What’s Next for the Money with Katie Show. That one was one part housekeeping, one part behind the scenes philosophical journey, and maybe two parts vibes.

And then finally we are going to talk about the two part series that we did on weight loss drugs and what they mean for the economy and basically why women are incentivized to try to be thin.

Henah:

I feel like this set of episodes came with more reactions than I ever expected. And so I’m curious for you, when you were pulling all of these together, what did you think the conversation was going to end up being?

Katie:

Well, one thing I learned is that I am a terrible judge at predicting what is going to stir people up and piss someone off. The episodes that I always think are going to freak people out the most are the ones that end up generating just mostly positive or interesting dialogue. And then the ones that I think are just going to pass by is like, oh, this will be an easy one type week. Those are the ones that end up nuking our inbox.

So I don’t know what that says about me. I thought the Ozempic episodes were going to ruin my life, frankly, because everyone that I talked to about it was like, oh, be careful. Everyone has an opinion about this and half of the people listening are going to be furious with you. And that wasn’t really the case. What did you think?

Henah:

I wasn’t surprised by the amount of pushback we got on the budgeting episode, but I was surprised at the level of vitriol that people had about it, where it was like, this is the worst take I’ve ever heard. I’m like, there are a lot of bad takes in the world. I wouldn’t call this the worst one.

Katie:

For sure. Okay, so we’re going to kick off today though with a few episode agnostic emails that we’ve received in the last couple of weeks. So Henah, read this one for me from Emma.

Henah:

She wrote, “In one of your episodes, Katie said she doesn’t want to feel hopeless. I feel the same way, but I do feel like the ignorance is bliss thing is true. The more I’ve learned, the less blissful I feel, but at least I’m realistic. Now I know I’m probably never going to be a billionaire and someone else will always have more than me. I’ve stopped applauding people who work off hours and on the weekends for their job that pays them $75,000 with no equity or ownership. My company can fire me tomorrow for no reason. When I want a promotion, I basically have to do the new job without any extra payer title for six months just to prove I want it badly enough and can do it. Housing costs have skyrocketed because companies want to make more profit. Capitalism has taught the world that “success” is exploiting people for profits. System sucks plain and simple, and even though this all sounds super negative and it kind of is, I want to thank you for the wake up call. I’d rather know what I’m up against than live in some fantasy. At least now I can focus on finding happiness outside of this broken system instead of pretending it works for me.”

And this reminds me so much of when people are like, how is anyone surprised that the smartest people in the world are also the most depressed? Once you’re the most aware, it’s really hard to—

Katie:

Ohh, the most depressed.

Henah:

Yeah.

Katie:

It’s like, oh, it’s almost like knowing about the bad things in the world makes you less happy. Yeah, imagine that.

I mean, I definitely relate to the Ignorance’s bliss sentiment. I also wrote about that feeling in a recent essay and how sometimes I miss being an empty vessel for libertarian meritocracy. So I’m like, yeah, it honestly was a lot more fun when I thought the world was super fair and if I worked hard I would become a billionaire.

And I do think it’s interesting how expanding that purview has also helped me to feel more autonomous and more agentic and more like, oh yeah, I understand the world that I live in and how to navigate it realistically. So another one that’s kind of in the same vein, this next one came from Chandler. This was in response to an essay that I wrote called What Do The Wall Street Journal Commenters actually Want? So if you haven’t read it, we’ll put it in the show notes. But yeah, it was one of those things that I pretty much just wrote sheerly for my own enjoyment because I was scrolling the comment section on that site one day and I was like, why are these people so fricking angry all the time? And then I went down a rabbit hole, I learned who their demographic is, which is people with an average net worth of $3 million who fricking ride for capitalism. And it just struck me as ironic that—

Henah:

It is called the Wall Street Journal…

Katie:

Right. It’s like all the winners in the current system seem to hate everything about it. And so Chandler wrote this:

Henah:

“I started reading in 2022 and really enjoyed your writing and content back then, but over these last couple years, it’s just gotten better and more mature, for lack of a better word, says the 31-year-old to the 30-year-old. You and I differ on several things politically and socially, but I so enjoy your perspective and how you aren’t afraid to do the work of testing assumptions, presenting both sides of an issue, et cetera. You have changed my mind on several issues and made me consider viewpoints different than mine on a regular basis.”

Katie:

Hell yeah.

Henah:

Is this just to gas you up? Why am I reading this?

Katie:

There’s a point, I promise.

Henah:

I’ll get back to the quote in a second, but I do really how many people email us on a weekly basis to say, I differ from you in these ways, but I still really value your viewpoint.

Katie: Oh, that’s good. That’s good. I do like that. Although sometimes people are like and also fuck you. Yeah, but also—

Henah:

Also you’re wrong.

Katie:

I disagree with everything you think and also fuck you. And I’m like, alright, cool. Yeah.

Henah:

Okay, so the rest of the comment said, “I think this article is my favorite piece you’ve ever written. I grew up with older parents who espoused the Wall Street Journal commenter mindset you reported on, it’s refreshing and insightful to read what you wrote. Keep up the good work, your perspective and voice are important.”

Katie:

Yeah. So funny enough, the bureau chief of the personal finance branch of Wall Street Journal emailed me after the fact and I was like, oh, I’m about to get my subscription taken away. They’re going to be like, yeah, access revoked. But he was like, I love it. LOL. I was laughing on the train. I was like, oh good.

But this feedback, this was an example of writer crack, which is when someone says, hey, I actually disagree with your political views or your views on this or that, but you have changed my mind on this other thing and I like your perspective anyway, or I like your writing anyway. It is the equivalent of when you are in high school and you want the bad boys’ attention and he’s only good for you. It’s like, okay, cool. The hard to get, the hard to get.

And then the worst is the opposite, which is what we got a ton of this month, which is like, I usually love everything you do and I’m your biggest fan, but I hated this. It’s like, oh, okay, well I’m going to quit my job. So cya.

Henah:

We did get more of that than I am used to this past round. But there was something interesting that I messaged you about that happened in the newsletter recently, and I find it really telling, I guess, how much people still really want the tactical stuff.

Katie:

Well, which is interesting too, like the editorial challenge there is like, well, we have 200 episodes and a thousand blog posts of the tactical stuff, so at what point do we just start recycling it and posting it again? I don’t know.

This link in the newsletter that we shared, it was a Google doc and I included it kind of on a whim. It was something that I had written for a family friend who had just received a tax-free gift from a parent and it was around $30,000. So they wanted to start investing, and I was like, oh, okay, cool. Let me just lay out the groundwork for you. If you’re brand new to this, here’s kind of the X, Y, Z of what you need to know.

So it was very casual, but I just took it out of the email. I sent them and threw it in a Google Doc and then changed the identifying information. But it basically lays out where to invest, what to invest in, how you might think about your various options if you suddenly have found yourself sitting on a large pile of cash. And I tried to preemptively answer some of the questions I figured they would have based on what I typically hear, and it ended up being the most clicked link in the newsletter for, I don’t know, Henah, you tell me.

Henah:

Thousands. Thousands of clicks. I also found it interesting because the Google Doc was very, if I remember correctly, very stream of consciousness, like you were just talking to a friend. And so I think for some people it is free financial advice. So I was really surprised by how many more clicks it got, but it didn’t surprise me that people love to see it.

Katie:

Somebody was like, hey, this grammar is wrong. I was like, okay, well, it didn’t go through a copy editor. Sorry. It’s just an email that I sent to somebody. The possessive plural is incorrect. I was like, okay, thanks for the heads up.

Henah:

One time I wrote an email to my honors thesis advisor and I was like, oh, me and Katie’s blah, blah, blah is attached. And he was like, respectfully, never say that again. It should be Katie’s and my blah, blah, blah. I was like, okay and now I’ve remembered that for the rest of my life.

However, I will say despite how many people clicked on it, nobody emailed us about it. Weird besides the person who said, your grammar is incorrect but…weird.

Katie:

Weird. We will get right back to it after a quick break.

Henah:

So let’s start with the feedback about the episode on budget culture with Dana Miranda.

Katie:

Yes. So producing this made me feel like I was telling the gifted class of students, hey guys, it’s okay if you don’t do your homework perfectly every time and you all can relax a little bit. And everyone was like, how fucking dare you? How dare you? But I get it. So I’m thinking let’s just do a little bit of ping pong here. Henah, you can start. The feedback was so varied.

Henah:

Okay, let’s popcorn this. So Jessica Hardwicke wrote, “This was a fantastic episode, I’m going to grab Dana’s book. What I find so interesting is how the comments here as in the comments on the Spotify episode itself mere, the comments made about challenges to diet culture, which she’s alluding to the other episodes that we just did control individualism, maintaining that status quo, et cetera. Thanks for the great ep.”

Katie:

Ooh, that’s a really good point.

Henah:

Yeah.

Katie:

I love that. Okay, cool. Yeah, someone else said, “Oh, this is a writer in search of an idea and she just came up with a bad one. Of course, if you’re living in poverty, you have to budget. Anyway, there are a couple neat things she talks about, but a hard pass on 95%.”

Henah:

The word “drivel” is in that one, which is kind of crazy.

Katie:

We’ve heard the word drivel multiple times. What is this? 18th century? Oh, the drivel.

Henah:

Okay, guys, Natania wrote, “I have not stopped thinking about the interview with Dana Miranda this week in particular pushing back on the idea that being debt-free is the best for everyone. My first instinct was a pearl-clutching gasp, but Dana articulated well how everyone’s circumstances are different and compounded with living in a society, at least here in the US that is expensive and offers little support for individuals and we should stop viewing debt in particular credit card debt as a personal moral failing.”

And I also remember when we were listening to when the interview was actually happening, when she said that, I also had a pearl-clutching moment where I was like, what do you mean that Jennifer Lawrence, the Hot Ones interview. I appreciated that Natania was thinking about this with the same level of nuance that we were trying to bring.

Katie:

Yeah, here’s someone who felt the opposite way though their username is a word that doesn’t look like a name. So I’m sorry this is going to be anonymous: “I usually love this podcast, but this one was a definite miss for me. Rename your emergency fund comfort fund and blow it on a couch? Rack up credit card debt, and don’t worry about interest? Totally agree that there are systemic issues, but screwing yourself financially, it doesn’t seem like the best way to handle it.”

Henah:

What I want to say is actually what the next person wrote, which came from Sam, who said, “I feel like a lot of people are missing the point here. This isn’t saying spend your money, who cares? It’s saying if you’ve been able to build savings, good financial habits, maybe it’s time to think a little bit differently about how you budget and spend. This did challenge my current relationship with money, which is something I’m looking to do in 2025 anyway.”

Katie:

This one came from Callie. She said, “Interesting takes with an understandable thought process. But in practice a lot of this rhetoric is really dangerous, insinuating that emergency funds should be spent on comforts, leads to having to turn to credit when emergency does happen, perpetuating a cycle of poverty through high interest rates. Though the speaker seems unbothered to be giving up excess amounts of money in their lifetime to interest, this is not a moral issue. The math just doesn’t add up.”

Henah:

I’m noting a word that I’m seeing a lot in a lot of these. So then we had pushback from someone named Amy who she was pushing back on other comments. She said, “The folks dismissing the episode outright miss the message. The message is not, do not be aware of your finances. It’s the research on budgeting doesn’t show it’s having the impact we thought it would. It’s not, don’t have money set aside. It’s don’t make yourself miserable by refusing to use it. It’s not, don’t pay off debt. It’s educate yourself on loan terms and all options for repayment or not and how that will impact you. Nuance.”

Katie:

Yeah. Alright. Michelle says, this is the kind that’s like a dagger to my soul. Just so everyone’s aware. I’m shriveling in shame as I read this: “Huge fan of the show, but this episode was really disappointing.” When your parents are like, I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.

Henah:

I’m just disappointed.

Katie:

Although I will say as an aside, I stand by the fact that I think this was an interesting conversation. So when I say I feel shameful, it’s just because I have internalized the idea that I want to be a good girl that makes everybody happy.

Michelle says, “The idea that you don’t need a budget and you can just trust yourself as ridiculous advice for millions of Americans who are drowning in credit card debt and not in any way groundbreaking for people who are actually able to save. Emphasizing that you don’t have a moral obligation to pay back more than the minimum payment to your student loan and that bankruptcy is a fine option, is not good financial advice and is bonkers to be hearing on Money with Katie.”

Henah:

I guess lastly, from the enthusiastic side of the camp, we have David who said, “I really enjoyed your latest podcast with Dana. I’ve always been too casual with my relationship with money, which my wife hates. However, at 66 we’re in a pretty good position and I was intrigued by your thought to develop a less intense budgeting tool. I’m all in for that,” which we did get a couple requests for. And similarly, Alison wrote, “I’m so grateful for the last three years of wealth planners and I would love to quote graduate to a paired down version that helps me truly trust myself. Thanks for such thought provoking conversations.”

Katie:

Alright, and then closing us out with one more from the missed the mark camp is Celia. Celia says, “What I usually really appreciate about Katie’s show is the way she can question the most ingrained parts of our culture while keeping it realistic. This episode really rubbed me the wrong way. I agree that many people’s relationship with money is messed up and culture has contributed. This is not the answer, not paying off your credit card debt in the name of reducing stress that’s just ignorant and has the potential to set many people up for failure.”

Okay, so one thing that jumped out at me when I was reading and synthesizing the perspectives of all these critiques was the word dangerous kept coming up. And you hear it too with the idea that someone is going to be set up for failure. The rhetoric is dangerous, people are going to be hurt by this and that the perspective in general was dangerous. Is that what you meant, Henah, when you said you were picking up on a word that kept coming up?

Henah:

Yeah.

Katie:

What those folks might have meant by that is that the system itself is so dangerous that if you are not on your guard against it, bad things are going to happen to you. If you are not protecting yourself, you are in danger. And you sort of heard me address that with her in the conversation. There was a point at which I had said, well, hey, but we live in such an unnatural environment where the ease with which we can be parted from our money is so relevant to the concept of self-trust. How does someone learn to trust themselves when they’re spending two hours a day on social media being algorithmically targeted for things that are calibrated to their unique interests to purchase? There is such a tremendous amount of temptation and debt is so available, credit is so available, that how do we trust ourselves in that context?

But part of what her ideas made me think about was, is there not value in recognizing that it’s just a little bit bizarre that we all accept that our financial system is something that we need to guard ourselves against? I definitely identify with the perspective that we heard in this feedback that hey, it’s important to be realistic and by the way someone noted that’s kind of my whole thing and that there is value in these more radical ideas because they, as Dana had said, denaturalize the systems that we are talking about.

Henah:

And I think to your point, and we’ve talked about this on the show, these are all things that are relatively recent. They are not things that were mandated from 2000 years ago.

And so I personally, while I was not of the wow, I no longer need a budget camp, I was a little bit more like maybe I don’t need to track every dollar on Copilot every minute of the day. And I thought her argument for learning to trust yourself more with something that I wanted to believe in more. I understand where people are coming from, but I think the nuance that you guys were trying to reach was more the point of the episode than saying, “Throw out the budget. You don’t need it.”

Katie:

Totally. Well, and it’s funny too because I think something that I’ve noticed in somebody said I’m 66, I’ve always been pretty laissez-faire with money. My wife hates it, but we’re in a really good position is—I did notice someone that I know personally that listened to it who is in her sixties was like, oh my god, I could not stand that episode. You need a budget to get by. You need a budget to do these things. And this person still budgets really, really intensely, but this individual also has millions of dollars and has way more than they need now. And so there is also that kind of friction point where I go, yes, but would you have needed to be as on top of your money as you were that vigilance and that control ended up giving you far, far more than you ever needed? So was it really necessary to get what you needed?

Henah:

And where does it stem from scarcity mindset or fear rather than trusting yourself that you’ll be fine. So yeah, I think that is really interesting.

Katie:

And so in my mind there are a lot of direct ties between Dana’s philosophy and what maybe the tenant rights movement is trying to do. So tenants who are going on rent strikes together is technically a form of refusing to pay a debt that you agreed to pay your rent every month in order to organize for better treatment. That is an actual action that you and other tenants can take together. And I think by neutralizing these financial institutions and taking the morality out of it, you can start to think bigger about ways in which you can go, wait a second, this rule was made up by a billionaire who owns a fucking bank. This isn’t ordained.

And so I just think imagination is very important for building a better world and part of imagination is questioning our assumptions. And that’s really what I was hoping the episode would do is my position now that you shouldn’t pay off your credit card debt. Frankly, no, it’s not where I landed with it. But I know the listeners of this show, I know most of you are struggling with the opposite, which is spending your money without feeling guilty about it. So I made an editorial choice, okay?

Henah:

So your position didn’t really change on certain things. Was there anything that it did change for you?

Katie:

Yes. I would say the main takeaways that I had that kept coming back for me after talking to her and thinking about it for a couple of weeks was I really should not be tracking my finances at the level of detail that I am anymore. It’s not a good use of my time. And so I am now trying to think about what would it look like to have a paired back version of what’s going out on a monthly basis that doesn’t come down to me category by category. Ooh, this streaming budget went up by $7. That’s silly. That made me think a little bit differently.

It also made me think differently about the moments in which I splurge and how I think about weighing opportunity, costs of spending. So rather than trying to ask the numbers to tell me what to do, really consulting my own gut first and being like, is this something that genuinely feels worthwhile to me? Am I willing to move some other things around or sacrifice in other ways to make this work or not? And so I think that it’s just that initial gut check that I’m starting to tap into more as opposed to just immediately consulting a spreadsheet and being like, what will be the impact of this in seven years from now?

Henah:

Can I share a related story to that?

Katie:

Sure.

Henah:

So I was just in India on a family trip and we were in Jaipur. We went to a rug making facility, and I don’t know if you remember Katie, when we had that interview with Ramit, he said, there’s so many people who are going to buy a rug off Wayfair for $200 or $300, whatever, but if you make good money and investing in quality goes as something that’s important to you, you should be paying more for handmade work. And so we got brought into this factory, we’re seeing how the rugs are made. I’m meeting the people who are literally making the rugs. I’m not saying I endorsed the caste system, I’m just saying that simply in this community they were part of the lowest caste. So getting them work was probably not very well paying work, but it was more work than he had. And the tour guide was kind of saying, they’re mostly illiterate, they just need the money, blah, blah, blah.

And so I’m on this tour and I’m like, I don’t really need a rug. I’m not that interested in one. But I was like, I do need a runner. My old runner is pretty beat up and we sit down and they’re telling us the costume rubies. So like it’s 85,000 rupees. And in my mind I’m like, that sounds huge. Realistically, it’s about a thousand dollars. And we ended up buying a rug for a thousand dollars and a year ago I would’ve been like, Henah, are you out of your fricking mind? You didn’t need a rug first of all. Second of all, why would you pay a thousand dollars? But I started thinking this is a silk hand-knotted rug that could not be made by a machine. This is a dying craft within the community that I come from. I am here with my family a trip that I’ll probably never do again. And I just kept thinking it is my moral responsibility to invest in the things that I want to see. And for all of my talk about not wanting to be on Amazon, I was like, a thousand dollars will kind of derail my budget for this month, but it is valuable enough to me that it feels worth spending on. And so I think that that’s kind of the thing that I trusted my gut. I didn’t even open my finance app. I didn’t open copilot to be like, How

Katie:

How under budget am I?

Henah:

Much do I have left for the month? Yeah, so that was really big for me.

Katie:

I also think that there’s an element of that that just occurred to me, which is you are abstaining from shopping on Amazon. You probably aren’t tracking money that isn’t being spent, but I bet you spend a lot less because you don’t have an Amazon Prime membership. Amazon Prime does enable a lot of spending that would otherwise not be happening.

So it’s kind of interesting to think about it in that way of that one decision did sort of put you in more of a financial position where you are, even though you weren’t thinking about it at the time, is reallocating it. That’s money that went to a crafts person in India instead of to Jeff Bezos in a certain way.

Henah:

And my mom was like, well, you can’t think that the person who’s weaving this is going to get a hundred dollars of this. I said, no, they’re probably going to get a couple bucks, but it is way more in line with my value system than buying a rug off Wayfair for $600 and knowing that it was made in a machine or whatever. And my dad, he was joking. He was like, well, if it’s made in a machine, it’s made perfectly right every time. But handmade, there’s room for flaws.

Katie:

It’s very engineer mindset.

Henah:

But I was like, that’s exactly why I want it is I want to know that a human made this. There might be a flaw, there might be a catch, but it’s fine.

Katie:

Hell yeah.

Henah:

We did get some rapid fire comments. Do you mind if I read them because they’re very funny to me.

Katie:

Go for it.

Henah:

Okay, first rapid fire comment: “Good to know the ozone is repaired.” LOL love. Second, they wrote, “Well, this was interesting.” And the third one is my favorite, which is, “This is cultural Marxist dribble. Unsubscribed.”

Katie:

Listen, if I don’t get called a Marxist at least once a month by someone who doesn’t know what Marxism is, I am doing something wrong. Also the misspelling of drivel as dribble.

Henah:

Yeah.

Katie:

Amazing. Just cherry on top.

Okay. This was one piece of feedback that introduced a question. So I think that episode, the question that kind of came out of that then for listeners that found it interesting was basically I enjoyed hearing a different perspective. And as I filled out my 2025 planner, I had the questions as mentioned in the closing comments, which is, what if I don’t want to leave hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars behind?

Is there a way to manipulate the planner to allocate these dollars and or just adjust my years to fi accordingly, even just to be more conservative? And then Chris wrote a related question. They said in one of your late 2024 episodes, you mentioned an upcoming more tactical episode topic that piqued my interest, and I’m paraphrasing here. The topic was for people who want to go beyond the 4% rule, who do not want to leave a bunch of money behind and basically actually want to “die with zero.” So I figured it might be a good time to just talk quickly about how to amend your Wealth Planner financial independence tab for a Die with Zero strategy. What do you think?

Henah:

Yeah, I think at least once a week someone emails us and they’re like, have you read Die With Zero? Katie would love it.

Katie:

I think it’s a fascinating perspective. So when we developed the financial independence tab that was designed to help you conservatively plan for financial independence, I wanted someone who uses that tab to basically be shown yearly numbers and projections that would, we’ll say, overestimate the difficulty. I want you to see something that you’re then going to be pleasantly surprised when it’s going way faster. So can you sit there and put in assumptions of crazy returns and negative inflation? Sure, you could. But if you just keep all the parameters as intended, you are going to see a number that is hopefully going to very much overstate the amount of time that you have defy and hopefully understate the amount of money that you’re going to have. That’s what it’s designed to do.

So this workaround should help you get around that intention and should help you amend the planner such that it will basically do the opposite. So if you’re okay with depleting your portfolio over time, if you want it to be drawn down slowly, I think the best way to model that out would be to go to the area where you can select your retirement year and effectively choose one that occurs before it says you are financially independent.

So for example, maybe it says you’re going to be FI in 2035, so then you might set the retirement year and you’re going to have to play around with this, but you might set the retirement year to 2030 instead or 2035. And so that’s the year when the planner is going to zero out your income and is going to zero out your long-term contributions to investments. And it’s instead going to begin withdrawing your annual expenses from that invested balance. And what you should see happen in column N, the long-term invested end of year column, you would start to see that going downward or it might just grow more slowly. That’s another potential outcome. And so obviously your assumptions about your personal inflation rate, how your spending is going to increase over time, your average rate of return, all of that is going to have an enormous impact on whether you die with the same amount that you started with or if you hit zero at some point. But I do think that this is the best approach to try to modify that timeline and you’re just going to ignore the band at the top that’s going to now say, oh, over 40 years until you’re FI, because that is based on the old assumptions.

Henah:

Well, what I like about this too is you can make a copy. So you could say, this is my normal timeline, but you can make a copy that says, but if I play around with this, what will that look like? So I’m going to try this for myself when we’re done.

Katie:

I tried it too, and what I was surprised to find is that I had to quit way before FI in order for my investments to actually zero out. What happened really was that they just grew a lot more slowly. If I actually wait until I am FI and then keep my spending increasing at 3% per year, it was projecting even with a 7% annual return before inflation, it was projecting insane numbers 40 years from now, tens of millions of dollars. So I was like, ooh, I could probably knock off right now and be cool. So that’s good to know, right? If I get too tired of the abuse I’m taking in the comments, I can just dip.

Henah:

Wait, now I’m playing around with it. Mine says, wow, even if I retire in 10 years, I would still have $3 million by the time I’m 70. Wow, okay. Right, word.

Katie:

So in concluse, maybe you don’t need a budget. I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding. I would never, I would—we will get back to it right after a quick break.

So after that episode, this is my big picture kind of capstone moment. I got a message from a rich guy that I’m going to call Dave,

And I used to email Dave a lot in 2022. This is someone who reached out to me at the time and originally introduced me to the work of Nick Hanauer. So longtime listeners will remember our episode from 2023 with Nick Hanauer. He is a billionaire who basically says, this economy is broken. I should not be a billionaire. And so now he is devoting all of his work and time to activism around wealth inequality and basically getting the government to do something about it. And the episode was called “Are Rich People Better Than You?” Now, that episode came to be because of Dave and because of my correspondence with him. So I want you to read Henah for me if you can, a snippet of our conversation back then and what he had written to me back then. This is what I had heard from him.

Henah:

Okay, so he said, “What should my goals be once I’ve met all my goals, I was really fortunate to get a big honkin’ raise this year. I’m now maxing out my 401k, Roth IRA, and HSA and doing some taxable robo-investing. My after-tax income in this case, meaning after all payroll deductions is broken up as follows, 50% towards current spending so living expenses fund stuff, and there is enough for fun stuff. 30% for short-term deferred spending, so vacations, holidays, transportation. This also includes 15% debt pay down, which allows me to pay 193% of my minimum payment, which will get me debt free in five years, which I do because I’m neurotic about it. And 20% long-term deferred spending. So Roth and taxable investing, the emergency fund is there, the moving fund, the wedding fund, the house fund, all set. I’ve basically spent the last three years hustled my freaking butt off and I finally feel like I did it. I pulled myself out of the hole and found a clumpy plateau. So the question is, what’s the next goal to work towards when you’ve finally gotten financially comfortable?”

Katie:

Okay, so that was three years ago. Henah. I’m curious, A, does that resonate with you personally? And B, does this sound similar to the type of stuff that we hear a lot, which is basically, hey, I did it, or hey, I’m at cruising altitude, what should I try to do next?

Henah:

Yeah, it was looking in a mirror, I feel attacked.

Katie:

She’s like, maybe I should have bought two rugs.

Okay, now, Dave and I did not talk much after that. That was kind of the end of our correspondence. I want to include a message that he sent me earlier this month because when I was going back to produce the What’s Next for the Money with Katie Show episode, I was going back in my starred emails and in my threads with people like him, listeners that I had built a connection with that had sent me interesting things, or changed my view on something. I read an excerpt from a woman named Mandy in the episode. So basically the Mandys and the Daves are like the people that have shaped my perspective that listened to this show.

And I had read our messages back before I produced that episode, but had not heard from him in years. And then days later, he reaches out to me again out of the blue. Super strange. This is what he sent me after he listened to the You Don’t Need a Budget episode. He said, “I’ve been on a bit of a roller coaster since we last spoke in 2022, financially, spiritually. So money first, I negotiated a raise, I got a side job, I started an online business. I sold the online business. I got a bigger raise, I moved across the country, I bought a house, I got a dog. I started another online business, and then I had an existential crisis in my personal life…

“I lost family. The hardest was my mom. Then my dad got sick. I learned my parents had been hiding an enormous amount of debt. I lost two close friends. I started drinking again. My partner and I started fighting. Then I lost the side job. Then I nearly lost the main job. I nearly lost my house. I went to jail, I went to rehab, Trump won. Then I went back to rehab. I spent so much time and put so much energy into constructing this fortress of material security only to find it was built on sand.

“Looking back, I still don’t fully believe all of this happened to me in just a couple of short years and that I freaking lived it. I finally had some time to slow down, and I spent a lot of it reflecting on the things that are really important to me in my life, love, family, community, connection. And I made a New Year’s resolution to prioritize those things, to appreciate the material things only to the extent that my needs are met, and then focus on gratitude and contentment. It felt pretty serendipitous that on my first road trip of the new year when looking for something to listen to, I saw your latest episode about You Don’t Need a Budget. I hadn’t listened to your podcast for quite some time, and I was pretty floored by the evolution of your perspective. I found myself especially struck by your spiritual curiosity in this new material. I guess it feels especially important for me to pursue a similar kind of growth.”

Henah:

That’s powerful.

Katie:

So powerful. It was just really, really striking to read that after the last time we talked, kind of being like, I did it. I have all this money, I have all these savings, I did it. I did it. And then to hear him reflect on like, oh, it was all kind of built on sand. Maybe constructing your entire life around those goals isn’t really what a meaningful life is made of. I thought the regrounding into family community connection and having that sort of spiritual awakening, I just found that very, very remarkable.

And part of what originally attracted me to the FIRE movement many years ago was that it felt like it was the financial equivalent of seeing through the matrix of society’s bullshit. And I think Dave’s story highlights how an emotional obsession with or attachment to personal finance can become sort of matrix of its own. You can kind of become trapped in that too. And so I’ve had my ups and downs with the philosophy personally, I think everyone knows that. But recently I really have found myself coming back to some of its original tenets that attracted me, which is freedom, it’s community, it’s interconnectedness, and it’s really being thoughtful about what you value.

And so on that note, in the reflecting on the last three years episode, I mentioned that we are downsizing and I wanted to share this email from Phil, if you wouldn’t mind reading:

Henah:

Yeah. He said, “I had to pause your latest episode and email you immediately after you said you were moving from your large house in the suburbs back into the city. I always thought the success in life was life in the suburbs with kids in a suburban public school, two cars, big house, big yard, and all the other cliche things that come with the suburbs. My wife and I moved to the suburbs in 2017. I thought I had finally made it. We lived in one of the wealthiest suburbs in Minnesota and were on our way to being successful. However, I began to realize that I was disconnected from family and friends. Five years later, we moved to Minneapolis and it was the best decision we’ve ever made. I live within walking distance from a coffee shop that is bustling with community engagement and award-winning bakery, our new super progressive church, top tier restaurants and a parkway for walking and biking. So many people scoff at our decision to move out of the safe suburbs into the scary city. So many people could not comprehend this decision, but at such a higher quality of life for me and my family last week when I heard my brother-in-law complaining about how they spent $600 a month on gas for their two SUVs, I could sit back and relax knowing that I might fill up my car once a month.”

Katie:

I just loved that. I love people making the right decisions for them.

Henah:

For themselves.

Katie:

Here was another from an anonymous commenter. They said, “Glad you gave a personal life update on your downsizing. My wife and I are around the same age as you, and we’re going through the exact same thing. It’s really reassuring to hear you two are also leaving your big house in the suburbs to downsize.”

And when I was reading these emails, it really just recreated that spark of how I felt when I first discovered financial independence. This thing of, wait, this isn’t just a great way to save money or a way to live a simpler life. This actually might make me happier. It might allow me to get off this feeling of being on a hamster wheel. But for me personally, that original spark and that feeling, I kind of got, I don’t want to say distracted from it, but I think I found that as I started to earn more money and as I became a high earner and I could suddenly afford all of these nice things for the first time, it was almost like I needed to tentatively get back on that hamster wheel just to test the waters and be like, yeah, let me buy a thousand dollars shoes. Let me buy a really nice car. Let me move into a four bedroom home and let me just make sure that I don’t want these things. Let me just make sure that this is not the recipe for lasting joy. I need to just check because I’m not fully convinced.

And it feels so relevant right now given all the hand-wringing in our society about loneliness and the loneliness epidemic. And it’s so notable that our infrastructure literally separates us from one another so that even the means by which we travel from one place to another happens separately. And that’s just not the case in places that are bikeable or walkable or countries that have robust public transit system. So I mean, honestly, unless you actively make the choice to live in an urban environment, you are going to find it more effortful to interact with other humans just through the course of your daily life.

And that’s absolutely not to say that that doesn’t happen in suburbs. We love our next door neighbors now we’ve made friends with other neighbors, and you can totally build community in the suburbs. So I’m not suggesting that it’s not possible just that if we’re looking at the infrastructure itself, the environment that Phil is describing in the switch that they made is just more conducive to it. It just removes the friction.

So I really enjoy hearing people that kind of go against the grain or maybe make financially anomalous decisions or where the people in their life are like, why are you doing that? Maybe you’re taking the year off to travel, you’re like quitting the fancy consulting job and you’re going on the sabbatical, and it just doesn’t quite make sense within how we’ve defined success and descendants in society, but it’s right for you. And I love stories like that.

Henah:

I think a little bit too about that with kids.

Katie:

For sure.

Henah:

I’m 33, I’m turning 34, and I think there’s this sort of like, well, if you’re not going to do it now, when’s this happening? And I’m like, why do I have to feel pressured into it just because that’s what other people’s timelines are. So I also really admire when people write in about that as well.

We did get a couple rapid fire comments about the episode that I think we’re just really, really kind. And I think obviously you started the pod back in 2021, and then I joined in 2022. So we’ve really been on this road together for almost three years. And so for people to write in and say, “I can’t believe I’ve been listening to you for about four years, I’ve definitely grown with you. I’ve legit bookmarked this specific show notes page for all of your canonical links for the episodes that stood out.” Just a lot of people who were saying really, really kind stuff about the evolution of the show.

Katie:

I always go back and forth. I’m like, how much do I include all of people’s just roasting the shit out of me? And how much do I read the litany of praise? It’s always a grab bag, but I don’t want to bore you with just nice stuff. The pieces of feedback that felt interesting to me were, Leah wrote, “As a woman in a similar age group in similar phase of her career, it’s encouraging to see others fully take their seat, welcome people to come and hang, but then not beg them to stay.” And I think that was in reference to the fact that I was like, yeah, I have a perspective, and if you don’t like it, that’s okay. But that’s the perspective.

Jacob said he appreciates that the debates are “thoughtful and good faith.” And that really means a lot to me because good faith is something that I do try to bring to the way that we explore a lot of these topics.

Someone else said, “The financial advice is great, but I really enjoy the deep dives on why certain systems are broken, the history of how we’ve gotten here, and complex financial decisions, which I appreciated.” And then finally, Jasmine said, “I’m looking forward to hearing from people with truly opposing but still relevant, challenging viewpoints.” And I was like, Ooh, Jasmine, I am happy to do that, but I will be sure not to bring on anyone who suggests that y’all don’t need to be tracking your stuff in a spreadsheet ever again. Listen, I’ve learned my lesson. I won’t do it again, guys.

And yeah, on that note, one other listener question that kind of came out of that episode, in the spirit of combating loneliness and isolation, have you considered creating a Mmoney with Katie Discord or Patreon? I know I would appreciate a space to chat with other finance obsessed, anti-capitalists who enjoy your show. The groups for other podcasts, which are usually on Facebook, tend to be either too apolitical, too full of mansplainers, or too focused on the, I want to be a landlord with a real estate empire type.

Henah:

We get this email at least once a week, I would say at this point.

Katie:

I think that this is related to the book club question, which effectively boils down to, hey, I want a space for other people who like the same things that I like and enjoy this type of material. I want the opportunity to talk to them too. And I have to say, I do feel like we are inevitably headed there. Henah and I have had an ongoing discussion about what that might look like, but I think the open questions are still, what would be the platform? What would be the purpose? How would we moderate it?

Those are still things that we’re thinking through and wanting to be really thoughtful about. But I will say that I’ve had a little bit of experience with this already. I have another podcast called Diabolical Lies, which is hosted on Substack, and it’s a fully subscriber supported show. I host it with my friend Caroline Burke, who has been a guest on this podcast before. And that has actually been super useful perspective for me because we do have a subscriber chat there and it is always going off about something. And so it’s been nice because it’s fully subscriber supported, so there are no sponsors. It’s just you pay for the premium version of it, you get access to this community. And there’s been some cool organizing honestly happening in the chat, people being like, hey, who wants to go to the DSA meeting with me in Los Angeles this week?

Henah:

Love that.

Katie:

It’s been a nice unintentional beta test for what might that look like for something for the Money with Katie community.

Henah:

I was laughing because my friend Rachael, she emailed us and she was like, Despicable Lies. And I was like, not quite the minions we’re thinking of, but—

Katie:

Despicable Lies is also a great podcast name, no, Diabolical Lies, where if you think the Money with Katie Show has cultural Marxist drivel, boy buckle the fuck up because Diabolical Lies will be your worst nightmare.

Henah:

It has been really, really interesting to see the growth of Diabolical Lies and also just the die hardness that community has for every episode that comes out, all of the, it’s fun bonuses that come out.

Katie:

Do you feel that way that it has shown you that there would be potential for something similar here?

Henah:

Oh, a hundred percent. And I think you and I have talked about this a lot, which is we both have things we want to say that we would love to say without worrying about conflict of interest. And I think there’s a lot of freedom in that. And also to build a community that is subscriber supported is something that is really important to me in the same way that supporting small businesses is important to me. Investing in your local communities is important to me.

Katie:

For sure. Alright, we last but not least, are going to talk about our two part series on GLP-1s. And so we’re going to switch it up this time. We’re going to start with the bad, shall we?

Dylan wrote, “This pod has really lost a step. The X phobic, Y phobic, Z phobic conversation has got to stop.” And to that, I would say, Dylan, this might not be the show for you, and I think that that’s okay, but it does remind me of when people will be like, not everything is based in racism and sexism. And it’s like, yeah, but a lot of stuff is though, more stuff than you would think…

Henah:

It’s giving the stop being a snowflake, and DEI, and anti-woke policy.

Katie:

I’m a DEI hire at my own company. Yeah, someone did have our back though. Someone else commented and it was like, no, Dylan’s wrong. I was like, yeah, let’s go.

And then Micah wrote, okay, here’s how, this is how I kind of want to get into the critique of it all. Somebody named Micah wrote, “I remain unconvinced that having a social stigma against obesity in the most obese country in the world is a bad thing.” And I just want to say sometimes I think that that same argument gets levied against a bunch of stuff, which is basically you need social stigmas to keep people in line. And my pushback is, well, clearly stigmatization isn’t doing anything to prevent it. If for some reason your goal in life were to reduce obesity in America, it does not appear that being mean to fat people is really doing the job you think it’s going to do. So it’s interesting to me that it’s like, Ooh, social stigma is useful. It’s like, is it though?

Henah:

I had a therapist once who I had talked about body image with and how I hated working out, and she was like, do you really think that hating yourself and doing things that you hate is going to get you the results you want? And I think that that’s kind of the same thing here, which is do you really think that you’re helping people by stigmatizing their weight?

And so relatedly, we got this three-star review, which said, I usually love Katie, but I did not enjoy the latest series on weight loss drugs. Her opinion seemed empty since she does not, and seemingly has never struggled with her weight or lived in a fat body. And she only spoke to people with negative opinions. So it seemed biased. I absolutely don’t want to say stick to your own lane because I do enjoy her commentary on poverty, housing inequity, et cetera, but this was not for me.

And to that, I would say that’s valid. That’s totally fine. We also knew that this topic was going to be sensitive for a lot of people, including myself. There were times where Katie had said, hey, if you don’t want to read the comments, this could set you off one way or another. Feel free, I will handle it. But I want to chime in and say that I actively live in a fat body, and I have always lived in a fat body despite having a very healthy lifestyle. And a lot of the work that we did on these two episodes, we tag-teamed together and Katie had said, I don’t know how much you want to verbally be on the episode. We can workshop this, stuff like that. And I said, I don’t feel the need to be in the episode, but she did really let me lead with some of my own perspectives on fatphobia that I’ve experienced in the world, GLP one research that I’ve seen.

So I do think that to their point about Katie has never struggled with her weight and lived in a fat body, there was actually an excerpt from the episode that we removed where Katie had talked about her own body image issues. And so while it may not be the same thing as I think that the underlying context of what we’re trying to say about the medicalization of being thin and how it all relates to women being incentivized to be thin, to have clear skin, to be as white-passing as possible, those are all still valid. And I would say that I’m really, really proud of those two episodes because there is no lack of GLP-1 coverage in the world. But I do think that we did something really interesting, which is looking at this from not just the pharma perspective, but the medicalization of things that is it really valid? Is this something that we need to be providing health outcomes for and “burdening the cost system” for? And in the weeks since that episode came out, there’s been actual new studies that are redefining obesity and not saying that BMI is the most important thing.

I guess what I’m trying to get at is this is a really evolving conversation, but it was really, really important to me that I speak up on this, and say that this was an episode idea that I had pitched. This was an episode idea that I had really wanted to talk about given my own experiences in the world and my own experiences working through fatphobia in a healthcare system, but also just as a human. It may not be for you and that is totally fine, and I think that that’s okay, but I’m still really proud of the work that we did on these two.

Katie:

Thanks, Henah. Yeah, I really appreciate you saying that. Something that I noticed when I was doing my part of the research for that series was there was a really good piece that I read that I thought was really good, and then I read a critique of it and the critique basically said this was a 10,000 word article about fatness that didn’t talk to a single fat person. And why don’t you ask a fat person how this feels? And basically talking about the experience of being fat in America in the west more broadly, this critique in this review is a hundred percent correct that I don’t know that struggle. I have not faced fat phobia before.

And so it was important to me that we both in the episode and outside of the episode in the background research, spoke with or learned from people that are doing this work of body liberation and are talking about their experiences. I was sad that we couldn’t get any of them on the show for interview. It just didn’t work out. There wasn’t the availability. So I actually really do appreciate this feedback and Henah, I appreciate your commentary on the role that you played and how your POV helped to shape the end product.

Henah:

Yeah, thank you. One of the things that I’ll leave listeners with before we get into more feedback is I actually had a doctor tell me once, well, if it’s just more calories in the out, of course you’re going to gain weight. You just need to decrease your calories. All calories are the same. And I remember looking at them like you were a doctor and you know that that is not true.

And I have PCOS, I have insulin resistance, that is not the same as someone else having a slice of cake and me having a slice of cake. So I just want to put it out there that I think projecting this fatphobia as my health concern or I care for your health is very backwards when you also don’t know the science of how things work. And especially in women’s bodies that have not even been studied for many years. I would just say to Micah or anybody who’s saying, I remain unconvinced that obesity is fine. I don’t think either of us are saying that we don’t care about health. I just don’t think that weight or anyone’s weight is any solid indication of anyone’s health without other factors.

Katie:

Even to extend that, it’s like not only, well, first of all, we know so much about the female body. I don’t know what you’re talking about. We are so up on women’s healthcare.

Not only is weight not a good indicator of somebody’s health, but somebody’s health shouldn’t determine how you treat them. You know what I mean? Even if it were—okay, so we’re mean to people who are unhealthy. That’s the other thing where I’m just kind like, what’s the end goal here? Why is being needlessly cruel to another person?

Henah:

It’s the moral  superiority of saying that I am not fat and you are. That is what’s really happening a lot of the time. But I don’t want to get too off the rails with it, but I just wanted to make sure that I kind of said my piece on this topic that I feel very strongly about.

Katie:

Thank you Henah.

Henah:

Val is someone who wrote in and said, “Really great episode. I enjoyed it even as a non-US citizen due to the systemic nature of this issue and the nuance it requires to navigate conversations. It’s mind blowing how often people including medical professionals project their fatphobia disguised as health concern,” which is what I had just said. There you go. There you go.

Katie:

Val said hear, hear. Here was a thoughtful take that I appreciated from Jen. She said, “The ethics of pharma companies holding better developed drugs to maximize profits and extort money from patients, I feel is worse than companies compounding semaglutide patents were not meant for the drug companies to control the markets like they’re currently doing, nor were they to hold a drug with a patent for years from the market for financial gains while continuing to produce drugs that have known detrimental health side effects, many ethical issues.”

And then similarly, we heard from another gal who wrote and said, “I work at a local compounding pharmacy that provides both commercial and compounded products. It’s so hard to see so many that don’t recognize our value in the healthcare system. I definitely understand that the online ones popping up with doctors just approving scripts on generic semaglutide products with little to no patient discussion is disheartening and scary to see. It is an important discussion to have, and I’m always open to further learning.”
So I figured that we would hear from folks who work for compounding pharmacies or for some of these companies just by the nature of the size of those businesses and the size of our audience. So I was really glad to hear what they thought about this, and I never want to paint a picture that’s too black or white or binary in its thinking. I think villainizing a specific group in stories. This is very tempting narratively because the good versus bad prism is often how we interact with ideas like this. But this topic was so loaded and so layered that I really wanted to make sure that a listener walking away from it was not going to be like, oh, that’s the bad guy, or that’s the person to blame for this. So I reserve my villainization for private equity and health insurance alone. They are the fucking bad guys.

Henah:

Same here. Yeah. A different point that Adele wrote was, “I would love to know how pharmaceutical R&D budgets stack up next to marketing budgets: sales reps pestering doctors, relentless ad campaigns, funding misleading studies.” And that actually also reminds me of the Charles Pillar reporting that you mentioned from the ADA and how they came up with this pre-diabetes thing. When I listened to the episode, I was in India and it finally came out, and I’m listening to it on a car ride, I’m telling my husband, and I was like, yeah, did you know that pre-diabetes was not even a term until this marketing thing? And he was like, no. But it’s crazy how prevalent it is now. You just see billboards everywhere that are one out of three Americans is pre-diabetic. You don’t have to be. And it’s like it really does bring a lot of shame and promotional material of how to stop being pre-diabetic.

Katie:

Well, it was crazy too, the number he cited of the CDCs own data shows that the progression from pre-diabetes to diabetes is less than 2% per year. I was like, whoa, okay. That definitely seems disproportionate for how much, to your point, how much marketing airtime it gets and the proliferation of products and gadgets for trying to manage it. I just thought it was very notable that on the global scale, I think it was the World Health Organization that was like, yeah, we don’t actually recognize that. We are not convinced by the data that it’s a meaningful diagnosis, that it meaningfully needs that level of attention.

So on that question, we didn’t spend a ton of time looking into that of R&D versus marketing budgets. But you might recall in part one, we did ask Shannon if she had a sense for how much of the R&D money actually comes from public funds. So that was sort of a thread that we started to pull on. We didn’t really go too deep into it, but after the fact, after we got that feedback, I looked into it a little bit more, and it does look like it is somewhat hard to measure.

So I noticed by kind of going back through Google news results, that there was a flurry of headlines about this in the mid 2010s that was breaking down, oh, how much larger the advertising budgets are than the R&D budgets of these major pharma companies. But my understanding of that data is that it might be grouping too things into the sales, marketing, et cetera category and then being more narrow in its definition of research and development

 So I found one paper that seemed pretty agnostic in a science journal in 2008. It was like a policy forum, and it sounded like the spending is pretty neck and neck. And so I don’t know if it’s actually fair to say that they’re spending way more money on marketing than on R&D. However, the underlying sentiment being expressed here is that it’s really hard to assume that pharma companies are acting in good faith because Americans realize that they’re overpaying for drugs. They know they’re getting ripped off. And so there is this warranted skepticism when someone tries to defend why a drug needs to cost what it costs.

Henah:

Right. And on that note about cost though, there were people who wrote in who said, “The sad part is even with the cost accessibility issues and side effects, I am still feeling so desperate to not be fat anymore, that these drugs are still appealing.” And someone else wrote in and they said, “I take psych meds as a Band-Aid to meet societal standards and deficiencies in the psychology field. A class of them made me gain 40 pounds, and I’m okay with taking GLP-1 agonists to feel more comfortable in my body.” And so it kind of just speaks to this continued thing of you would rather pay or deal with other costs to make sure that you are not fat, but to Dr. Mara Gordon’s point, that means that you are relying on them forever to make sure that you don’t face that fatphobia.

Katie:

I think that that was kind of our big picture. The reason that you feel that way is because of fatphobia, because fat people are not treated well in society, and it’s like, okay, and so are we just going to accept that forever or are we going to do the work to try to deconstruct fatphobia and deconstruct these things that it’s basically like the policing of appearance, right? It’s really not that different from the aesthetic preferences that we have for, I don’t know, tall men or women that have perfect facial symmetry or whatever. Anyway, do you want to do rapid fire through the rest of those?

Henah:

Sure. Someone wrote, “The series was incredibly done. It gives me the Dream vibes,” which I think is probably one of the highest compliments you could ever give Katie.

Katie:

Yeah, and actually they’re back for season four now, which is fun.

Henah:

There you go. Someone wrote in, this was really meaningful to me. They said, “Thank you for these two episodes. I really appreciate the angles you approached this topic with, and it helped me make sense of so many thoughts around Ozempic, weight, health and capitalism. I’m a medical student and I will be taking Dr. Gordon’s approach with me, incredible work.” And so as she said kind of in the episode, it feels like we’re planting the seed. I know we can’t get through all of it in an hour episode, but I really loved that.

And someone else said, “I love the evolution of your podcast. The issues you cover are complex and you cover the important angles in a smart and pedagogical way. Thank you.” Which is very sweet.

I will say we got one comment that was fairly rude about one of the guests. If you have feedback, you can always email us privately. You don’t have to put mean feedback out there for the world to see, but also some of these critiques are about things that people cannot control. So I would just keep that in mind.

But someone said, “I used to love this podcast. I really don’t like its recent direction. It’s a lot of blame the system, don’t take accountability.”

Katie:

Everyone knows that’s my message is stop taking accountability for your life.

Henah:

I think that’s very funny because that’s what Katie stands for constantly.

Katie:

Fuck around and find out.

Henah:

They said they still plan to tune into the more practical episodes. So for the five we’re going to do this year, we will have one extra listener.

Katie:

For the three times we’re going to talk about budgeting. Kidding, kidding. Yeah. I mean, you know what? I think I get it. I get it. It’s fine. You came to the show for one thing, now it’s something else and you don’t like it. No hard feelings. Sure, the feedback was delivered respectfully. I don’t have a problem with that.

But I do think that in general, this is the type of binary thinking that I’m trying so hard to get us to move away from, which is like it’s either you are someone who’s willing to take radical responsibility and accountability and belief in individual power, or you’re just blaming the system and you’re not taking accountability. It’s like this is not an either or thing. And so I think the perception that talking about systems suddenly implies that I don’t believe in personal responsibility is kind of the crux of what I am trying to fight against and get people to think differently about, because honestly, I only want to make a show that’s fun for me to make because I don’t need to make it for the money anymore as we’ve accomplished, as we’ve already said, my FI timeline says you’re good. So kidding.

Henah:

I do need the money though, so please keep me employed. People please keep—

Katie:

I’m just kidding. Alright, so some general thoughts, some big picture thoughts to kind of close us out here about the GLP-1 series:

Something that I was thinking about a lot after the production wrapped for these is I think it can be very destabilizing to realize that large parts of your worldview that feel instinctual to you are actually learned preferences that you have internalized to the point that they just feel natural. I think it is telling—

Henah:

Your Type A-ness. Your “I want to be a good girl. I want people to think that I’m good.”

Katie:

Yeah, it’s like, bitch, that’s just Catholic school. That’s not yours. You can actually deconstruct that. It’s telling to me that one of the only indignant pieces of feedback was on the episode that had the interview with the physician. You have a medical professional being like, yes, having a BMI over 26 does not mean you are unhealthy, and Dylan’s like, nah, that can’t be right.

So these episodes were really challenging to produce without addressing the medical element at all. Originally we were like, this isn’t about medicine. This is about culture. This is about what our culture of thinness says, how women make less money if they’re not thin. But ultimately because the medicalization itself is part of what lends the policing of women’s bodies so much legitimacy. We just didn’t really see a way around it. We had to talk to a doctor.

I ended up rereading a 2023 interview transcript recently with Jessica DeFino, previous guest of the show who was talking about something very similar. It’s an issue that I see as being incredibly parallel with this one, which is the medicalization of aging and more specifically the appearance of aging natural skin, aging being pathologized. I think there is a similarity between the openness with which people discriminate against fat folks and older folks, which again lends this air of legitimacy to the idea that it is rational to try to be as thin and young as possible and to devote as much money and energy and time to the projects of being thin and young as you can because that’s how you can garner basic human dignity and respect. So here’s the quote from Jessica that felt relevant, if you want to give this a read Henah.

Henah:

Sure. She wrote, “And this ideology that aging is bad, that it is something to dread, has taken over the beauty industry completely. We see it in skincare marketing most prominently. Almost everything you buy targets one or two of all of those signs of aging. We see it in makeup marketing, even concealers that cover age spots and foundations that don’t settle into the wrinkle creases. We obviously see it in the marketing of cosmetic procedures and surgeries, neuromodulators like Botox, fillers, face lifts. These all ultimately target aging. We even see anti-aging rhetoric pop up in healthcare. So very often SPF will be marketed as a product that prevents both skin cancer and signs of aging. When these things are coupled together, by doctors even, it makes aging seem like it’s as deadly and devastating as cancer. Dermatology has absorbed this beauty standard into its idea of healthcare. In my research, I’ve come across many, many women who go to the dermatologist for an annual skin cancer screening and their doctor will suggest Botox out of nowhere. A dermatologist I follow on Instagram the other day made a post called “How to Not Look Old” and captioned tips to “prevent or reverse what we all dread.” This is not medical care. This is the medicalization of beauty standards.”

Katie:

Isn’t that good? That happened to one of my best friends recently. She was going to get a melanoma removed. She had skin cancer and they were taking it off of her, and they were like, while you’re here, you want a little touch up on your elevens? And she was like, what the fuck? This is a doctor’s office. Jessica DeFino, Sally Rooney, Tressie McMillan Cottom. These women’s essays never miss their ability to surgically deduce bullshit is absolutely uncanny. And honestly, this show is just kind of slowly becoming like we’re going to read Tressie articles on air. So thanks for that Tressie. Come on anytime.

Henah:

I think that a lot of how I’ve learned to feel about myself has shifted because of people like Jessica, because of people like Tressie, and I always feel like the more that all of us decide we don’t about looks, the better it is for everybody. And so I think often about that quote you said, where it’s, yeah, you can go ahead and make life better for yourself by wearing the mascara and doing this and doing that, but you’re going to make life 5% worse for the other woman who walk down the street behind you. And so I don’t know, I think that this GLP-1 series also just reflected a lot of that same conversation.

Katie:

Yeah, there was an article we shared in the newsletter, which, by the way, if you’re a listener and you’re not subscribed to the newsletter, we share a lot of this type of material, these links and thinkers in that newsletter. So we’ll make sure that that’s in the show notes for you.

But there was one recently that I shared after the Substance came out, and I was very preoccupied with this movie. I thought it was amazing. I think it was actually an interview with Jessica, but they were basically talking about when you start opting out of these things or, in Money with Katie parlance, you hop off the hot girl hamster wheel. What you will notice is that your life is going to improve in many ways that just might not include feeling great about what you look like, but that the key is that when you are investing in what you look like constantly, that is a never ending pursuit, and ultimately it is something that will never leave you feeling satisfied.

I had a very uncanny experience recently looking back at photos of myself from college when I was incredibly preoccupied with my appearance. It was basically all I cared about besides going to parties and making sure my GPA was good. And I’m looking at these photos and I’m like, oh my God, I used to be hot. Oh my, I don’t even recognize this girl, this 19-year-old. And I remember how I felt back then. I did not feel beautiful. I thought constantly about what I looked like, and it’s so crazy to look at it now 10 years later with this level of objectivity and just be like, you felt so unhappy with yourself. You were so insecure. The more that you focused on your appearance, the worse you felt. And so it’s just kind of like, yeah, what an empty pursuit. It didn’t give me the thing that I thought it was going to give me. So it’s ultimately a very expensive never ending pursuit of something that you will kind of never achieve.

Henah:

So you agree, you think you’re really pretty?

Katie:

Back then at 19? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. When you devote all of your time to trying to be pretty, you usually end up kind of pretty.

Henah:

Well, I wouldn’t know.

Katie:

You’ve never had an experience like that? You’ve never looked back at a version of yourself and been like, oh my God, I thought I hated myself back then. But looking at it now, it’s like, what was wrong with you?

Henah:

Totally. I had basically had an eating disorder where I was not eating and I kept losing weight and people kept being like, oh my God, you look amazing. My doctor was like, oh my God, you look amazing. And I’m like, if anybody, you’re like—

Katie:

I’m literally starving.

Henah:

Well, I was like, if literally anybody ran a test on me, they would see that I am not amazing. But I remember being like, but I can’t actually start eating again because that would undo the work I’ve done to get here. So this is just this never ending thing I have to do forever.

Katie:

And you probably didn’t feel like “oh my God, I am thin and I look so good.”

Henah:

I remember thinking I look good, but I remember also thinking, now I have to maintain this.

Katie:

Not good enough though, yeah.

Henah:

And I can’t ever regress. And then that was the point at which I ended up meeting my husband. He was like, you need to eat. So long story short, I think two years ago I was the heaviest I’d ever been, but I was also the happiest I had ever been because I had reached a point of neutrality of this is just my body. It’s not a vessel that I need to constantly criticize. It’s not this thing that I need to constantly modify. This is just one part of who I am. If my weight is the most interesting thing about me to you that says way more about you than it ever says about me. And for sure that’s a boring and sad, sad way to look at life, at least in my opinion.

And I know that that’s not the opinion of a lot of people. Sometimes I’ll go out to dinner with strangers and they’ll say stuff like, ugh, got to walk off that dessert that we just had. Or, I’m really trying to lose that holiday weight. And I feel sad for them. And that’s what this reminds me of is it is this thing that you are always constantly thinking about instead of just letting go. And as long as you are medically healthy by lab work and all of the other things that actually matter.

Katie:

It’s just a waste of the brain space. That’s the saddest thing.

Alright, well, I wanted to close with the message from someone I’m going to call Maddie. She wrote in, she said she was listening to it on a flight and it made her cry. She said, “I recently was diagnosed with POI, primary ovarian insufficiency, at age 37. Basically I’m in menopause. It probably started in my early twenties, but getting on birth control hid it from me. I only knew I had this after going off birth control, after being consistently on it for 20 years and my period vanished. If you’re unaware of the symptoms of POI or menopause in general, a big one is rapid weight gain. None of my clothes fit. I felt fat, I felt ugly, I felt gross. I worried my partner would leave me for someone as skinny and beautiful as I used to be. And So I binged weight loss podcasts, articles, books, apps, anything that could help. I even considered talking to my doctor about GLP-1s or even diuretics to get this extra weight off my body. Then I heard your episode. When you talked about the societal expectation of being hot and thin, and even if you’re body positive, it often does not extend to yourself. I saw me in those words. I never in my life would think another woman my size was fat or ugly or unworthy or unlovable, not in a million years. So why do I think this of myself?”

Henah:

That’s beautiful.

Katie:

Okay, I think that’s all for now, and we will see you next week. We’re going to talk about some of the biggest myths about working parents and making, being a working parent work financially. And I would add maybe energetically and logistically. We’re having a CFP come on to talk about it who specializes in this element of finance, so we’re looking forward to that.

Thanks for sitting down with us for this little recap episode. 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 our chief content officer, and additional fact checking comes from Scott Wilson.