A Big Announcement, the Realities of Burnout & Semi-Retirement, and Buying Gold

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

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About This Episode

In today’s episode of Rich Girl Roundup:

• 👀 A little more about the changes coming at the end of the year
• 🏖️ Whether mini retirements or “semi-retirements” are unrealistic (and talking through a few remaining tactical questions)
• 🔥 Some burnout-reduction tips we’ve been experimenting with
• 📍 Thoughts on shifting asset allocation away from US dominance without jeopardizing 4% rule “eligibility”
• 🥇 What to make of the increasingly popular advice to buy gold

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

• Subscribe to the Money with Katie weekly newsletter
• Yield & Spread: https://www.yieldandspread.org/the-fi-lanthropy-pledge

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Transcript

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Welcome back to another Money with Katie Show. I am, of course, Katie Gatti Tassin, and in every few episodes, my executive producer Henah and I sit down to discuss listener questions, follow-up thoughts, and other material that just doesn’t make the cut for its own full length episode. So Henah, where would you like to start today?

Henah Velez:

Hi Katie. Let’s start with the announcement that went out this morning in the newsletter. It’s a pretty big announcement.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yes. So if you are a newsletter subscriber, you already know this, but at the end of this year, I am bringing Money with Katie back to its humble, independent roots, and I am buying the brand back from Morning Brew. So this is a pretty momentous occasion for me, partly because it gives me the ability to step back and just think a little bit more critically about what I want to spend my time working on moving forward. I think I have a tendency to just do everything which exists in constant tension with my other tendency to not be able to half-ass stuff.

So this creates kind of a negative end result of me constantly putting myself in situations where I feel spread thin and then complaining incessantly about it. And so I’m going to stop doing that and I realized I needed to kind of take a step back and prioritize. And doing that requires some space.

So the primary implication of this, the primary change is that I will be taking a hiatus from The Money with Katie Show beginning in January, 2026. So our final episode of this three-year long never-ending season will air on December 31^st very fittingly. I will have more to say about this decision as the year comes to an end and maybe in that actual episode.

But for now, if you are a listener of this show and you want to continue to hear from me every Wednesday beyond the end of the year, I am still going to send out my weekly email until the robots replace us all. So if you aren’t yet a subscriber, we will put a signup link in the show notes for that.

Henah Velez:

Yeah, it feels like the end of an era. I know we’re going to have a much larger conversation, but I will say I think people know that this show has changed our lives in so many ways, and particularly for me, and I’m beyond grateful for the experience. But because I too am unable to half-ass stuff, I think it’s been increasingly clear, at least to Katie, me, and even Nick, that we’ve been burning the candle at both ends for a while, and that really culminated with both of us being sick and or feeling unwell for the majority of this year. So I’m glad we’re choosing to take an indefinite hiatus on our own terms.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

That’s right. So more to come on that; I have more to say, but for now, just wanted to give everybody the heads up that that change is coming. And like I said, subscribe to the newsletter if you are not already and you would like to continue to hear me every week on Wednesdays. So why don’t we talk about our first episode?

Henah Velez:

To kick off our first episode from this batch—Your Workplace is Instrumental for a Better Future. Here’s How with Eric Blanc—a funny comment from Chelsea M. who said, “This felt like Newsies erasure. Not one mention?” To which I responded, I don’t think Katie is a musical girly, and people were laughing at that, whereas I, on the other hand, torture my husband weekly by belting out Hamilton and Rent and Wicked…

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah. Well, I mean I have subjected all of you to my excellent singing from time to time. So why don’t you all just be thankful that I’m not singing show tunes? Okay.

And then we heard from a listener named Bingus who wrote, and I actually cannot believe that this is real. They said, “This and Ben Shapiro are my favorite podcasts. I like how you both make keen observations about the erosion of our social fabric with your emphasis on workers building empathy and cooperation through organic social exposure and his emphasis on building community more generally through churchgoing. One question I have given the recent period of sustained difficulty in the tech job market is whether you or Professor Blanc see a path forward for white collar workers, specifically those in tech.”

I’m at a loss for words. This is the sort of comment where I’m like, wow, there really are some people out there who have such a specific sensibility that they can listen to people with completely different outlooks on the world and still get value from both of them. And I think that that was just kind of blew my mind a little bit.

But anyway, on this question, great timing. So I am working on an essay about this subject at the time of this recording that will be, I guess by the time you hear this, it’ll be out in today’s newsletter when this episode goes live that is attempting to understand the role of AI in the hiring slowdown and then more broadly the role that it is playing in our economy right now and in the story of our economy right now.

So to give some background, one piece that initially influenced me was from Derek Thompson that included some interesting jobs data, which found that since data collection began in 2002, there’s never been a larger disparity between equity prices, so the stock market performance and job openings. Now, Derek argued that it was actually the interest rate hikes in 2022 that are creating a little bit of a weaker job market and that the timing of the inception of ChatGPT and other LLMs is more of a coincidence.

The other piece that inspired me was a video from Hank Green, which walked through some of the circular financing oddities between OpenAI, Nvidia and these other AI adjacent companies where when you look at how they’re all putting money into each other, it’s sort of giving mortgage backed securities. Those companies though their share prices have accounted for something like 75% of market growth since 2022, which is just astounding.

So when it comes to white collar workers like those in tech, and honestly like the economy at large, it feels like AI and what is going to come of it is very central to this conversation. And one thing that I want to emphasize is, and I think Eric would agree that the principles of worker power apply no matter your wage. So in the short term, I think the interest rate cuts that are assumed to be coming today, October 29th, we’ll see if that happens, will probably spark or contribute to a little bit of an uptick in hiring. But in the long term, I think the principles of worker ownership and solidarity are going to be critical for moving through whatever changes AI brings so that workers actually have a voice in how this stuff is implemented and used.

You probably heard Eric talk about this a little bit in the episode, but there are groups of employees at companies like Google who are beginning to informally organize with one another. So I think the seeds for those changes are there.

Henah Velez:

Yeah, I don’t know if you saw that video that Grace Blakeley shared or she made the other day that was just like these seven companies are funding the economy, but they’re all just funding each other. But my friend actually is going through a round of layoffs primarily due to AI, and they were able to start a union and fight for severance. So they were able to go from two weeks to seven weeks of pay.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Wow.

Henah Velez:

I was just really in awe of how they’re doing it. It was particularly good timing with Eric joining the show. Then we had Spyke who shared, “A very insightful and informative episode. I can remember anti-union propaganda since I first started working at 17, my local grocery store made you watch hours of videos about ‘if someone comes up to you with a pamphlet, run’ or ‘’how it’s your duty to the company to stay away.’ I was super young and didn’t understand any of it, but now I reflect thanks to this episode and realize how gross that is. So many places I worked at, even at my current job will try to shame you for sharing what you make.”

And then Spyke followed up with they added to another comment. “I also wanted to add that I work in a factory alongside union workers. I work in the office, but I admire that they have the power to speak up for fair wages. Last year we received no raises or bonuses yet our company has been doing well this year. The union has been working hard on better contracts. I only know this because I hear my boss complain about it or see signs. I also wish this conversation touched upon union dues, which is something I often hear the floor workers worry about.”

So Spyke’s comment reminded me a lot of that media that we see in our upbringing and how influential it can be. And you kind of dissected this earlier in our previous episode about culture influencing policy and vice versa. But the earliest memory that I have around unions was in an episode of Sister, Sister where the local grocery store strikes and the main characters were understanding what it meant to be in solidarity as a worker or what it meant to be a scab. And so Katie, I would love to know, do you have a first memory around unions?

Katie Gatti Tassin:

I did watch Sister, Sister, but I have no recollection of that episode whatsoever.

Henah Velez:

I think it was season one.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Okay. I have no memory of this. I don’t actually remember seeing unions represented at all in media that I watched, so maybe I was just clocked out. But I will say I think it’s interesting once you get involved in organizing spaces to see how messy the democratic process a truly democratic organization can be.

It is not a silver bullet. That is for sure. And that was something that I really I wanted to get across in the episode that I’m not saying that this is some panacea that you’re going to join a union and all your problems are going to be solved, but that’s just kind of the first step toward building actual leverage in the fight for something better.

So on Sunday, I went to support the Starbucks workers up in Fort Collins and they were doing a practice picket at one of the most popular stores in town that gets a lot of people driving by. So sidebar, Starbucks workers going to be striking in waves this fall. Don’t be a scab, don’t cross the picket line.

And there were some workers who were at this practice picket, but it was actually mostly community members. It was community members, it was other unions. There were some people from city council that were there. There was somebody who’s running for Attorney General of Colorado who’s a labor rights attorney. And because the union busting has gotten so egregious, workers were scared to join. Basically the district manager was sitting inside the store and just watching all of this unfold and kind of watching the workers as sort of an intimidation tactic of like, you better not go out there. And the spouse of one of the workers who was inside on their shift said that they had staffed up double the workers that day because they were so worried about people walking out and not having enough people to basically work.

So when you talk about that cultural shift and the importance of organizing becoming something that people see as worth doing and supporting and engaging in and understand how it really is the only meaningful way forward right now. A hundred percent, absolutely.

We also heard from our favorite boomer complimentary who said this, this is Bill S.: “I enjoyed the episode with Eric Blanc. The idea of worker to worker connection to build momentum toward organization could be huge. I live in coal country and have seen the direct impact unions can have on people’s lives, both good and bad, but mostly good. One of the greatest things organization brings is a sense of community of being in something together. On the note of community, I would recommend that you interview Mel Dorman, the author of Banking on Your Neighbor. Mel’s book is a great roadmap for building a real estate business while building community. At the same time, she works outside the typical real estate finance industry and keeps the money in her community that would otherwise go to the big banks. But of the most interesting things she has done is to serialize her book in a podcast form for free. Anyone can listen to her ideas on building wealth and community for absolutely nothing. I would love to see a collection of authors and speakers who have usable methods to help people elevate their existence, follow her example, and give those who need it most of the opportunity to learn what to do to help build something that will lift themselves up their families and their communities. True socialism in the best sense of the word. As always, thanks for the effort you put into your work. You and Henah really have created something great.”

Thanks Bill. Love you.

Henah Velez:

Thanks, Bill. I was literally going to say love you, Bill. I would also recommend Libby with your local library card. I think that’s a really great way to support your local library. I know at least a couple different libraries across the nation will also let you join their Libby network even if you’re not a local resident. But the majority of the books I read every year, which is probably more than 30, are from the Libby app. So another good way to get that kind of value for free.

And then our final comment on this episode came from Vanessa S. who said, “The red scare stuff has been so deeply embedded into all us minds. It’s the mini cult. A lot of people are almost unknowingly a part of.” Katie. I know your reaction…

Katie Gatti Tassin:

I’m champing at the bit. Let me tell you about my reaction. The mini cults. Yeah, no, but I think the fact that Vanessa said many people are unknowingly a part of this, they have bought into this rhetoric without even realizing or recognizing it as ideology as such. So like I said, culture eats strategy for breakfast or whatever.

And one woman who was leaving the Starbucks drive through yesterday during the picket stopped, rolled down her window and shouted like—matcha in hand—why don’t you try owning a company? Then you’d understand.

I’m like, well first of all, I got news for you come January one. I’m like, all right, first of all, sorry I can’t hear you with the boot in your mouth, but unless she is secretly Lauren Sanchez in Karen drag, I cannot understand this point of view. I cannot emphasize enough just how much cultural brainwashing is required to cause somebody to identify more with the interests of a multi-billion dollar multinational corporation than of the people who live down the street from you and pour your coffee.

But we start imbibing that ethos I think from a very, very young age. And I am really interested in what causes people to eventually unlearn and reject those ideas from themselves. They’re very convenient beliefs. You have to make people think that their interests are more aligned with the CEO of Starbucks who earns $96 million than with their neighbors because that is where widespread support and acceptance of the status quo comes from. If you can make regular upper middle class people who maybe have a couple million dollars in the bank, believe that when we’re talking about wealth inequality, we’re talking about them, that’s a really, really effective means of keeping a lid on that dissatisfaction with the status quo.

We will get right back to this rich girl roundup after a quick break.

Okay, welcome back. We are moving on now discussing the episode that brought in the most feedback by far: How You Can Enjoy a Mini Retirement Every Two Years without Risking Your Career with Jillian Johnsrud. So I would say there were essentially two camps in the reception of this episode. One praising the idea of meaningful time off throughout your career and feeling inspired by this and then the other can’t pushing back on the elements of how realistic this really is. So to double down and prove to all of you that it’s realistic, I’m quitting my job. So there.

Henah Velez:

Okay, you are so unserious.

I understand both sides of where the critiques and pushback was coming from. So let’s start with the critiques. We have the BlackPen93 who wrote, “Great episode. As always, this feels really out of touch for me, but I’m just not at that level yet. Some people live check to check and ‘just budgeting for it’ doesn’t always pan out, but I guess that’s just life, right?”

And similarly, Laura W. chimed in and said, “The concept is interesting but not possible for most people. As someone with three weeks’ vacation and two more at Christmas, it is in my contract that I cannot take all five together. Most of your points don’t apply to entry or mid-level employees. There are so much of a rose tinted glasses view and her examples. It’s beyond out of touch the example of employee replacement costs for a CFO, but it’s cheap to replace the mid-level and below employees also who would only spend that little during their break.”

And so I just want to put PTO aside for a moment, but there are two notes that I’d add here on spending and this idea of just budgeting for it and the first being that Jillian’s able to pull this off because, I think she spoke to this in the episode, she keeps her costs relatively low throughout the year. So it’s definitely a trade-off you have to be willing to make and in my opinion, it feels more like a lifestyle choice than a one-off decision that you would try. And I think that’s an important distinction.

And then the other note around who spends that little during their break, I often travel like 10+ times a year and I am not spending a thousand dollars every single time I travel. So while I do think it takes intention and strategies to be mindful of costs, it is actually absolutely possible to do what Jillian recommended. And I also think if you’re taking an extended break every two years, you don’t feel the need to ball out every single time. Then how you might if you’re only taking a nice two week vacation once a year. I think she was talking about Paris like $5,000 or $8,000 or a major trip every decade. So just wanted to throw that out there.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah, I mean when I read that she lives in what, 1500 square feet with five kids, I was like, oh, you really value being able to take time off. That is a serious prioritization that you have made in your life because there are always going to be cost benefit analysis and trade-offs when you’re figuring out how to structure your life and design that for yourself. And so that kind of drove home to me like, oh, she is definitely sacrificing in other areas to make this possible. So I completely understand that it could feel out of touch, but I do like how you described it as a more wide ranging lifestyle shift as opposed to just a one-off thing.

We also got another comment around this feeling out of touch from songmay and they added, “What about people with important roles at work that cannot afford to take a month off lol. A month in tech is a lot of falling behind.” And then Sammy responded to them and said, “Well, they did address that directly though.”

So yes, this is something Jillian directly addresses in the book called Retire Often that I wanted to talk to her about in the episode. I get that I understand that pushback and I also think that she had a pretty compelling explanation for why the month off if you are very critical to your organization, why you actually have more leverage than you might think. And I think that was kind of the other split. It’s people who are entry or mid-level and feel like they would actually be easily replaced and so they don’t have a ton of leverage to negotiate something like this and makes them feel cautious about trying to take a sabbatical and then those who feel so critical to their org that they don’t think that it’s would ever be realistic to get a month off.

One thing that jumped out at me from the defensiveness that I felt when I first heard about this concept and I think saw echoed in some of these responses is that it does feel quite American frankly to be one month off. How fucking dare you? That is unreasonable. Even those of us who may identify in the abstract sense as anti-capitalist are offended by the idea of not working for a prolonged period of time. And so there are certainly legitimate financial and logistical barriers that need to be overcome, but for me it was actually my emotional aversion and discomfort with the idea that clued me into the fact that it might be interesting to explore it further and more than that, that by the time I finished her book, she had more or less convinced me that this was actually something that had the potential to be quite transformative and would be worth at least trying to work through some of those financial and logistical barriers. I think for people who want to retire early, especially the idea of getting in those practice runs actually makes a ton of sense. I think it’s extremely practical to test run your retirement before you go in with both feet.

Henah Velez:

Yeah, and I actually, I had in my own notes, ‘American culture?’ when I heard a lot of this stuff, so we can come back to that. But it is funny. For me, I actually did not even think at all about the I can’t not work for a month. I was like, no, I’m good to not work. How do I financially figure this out?

The other piece though I would say is it also sounds kind of like a mindset shift for someone when they have to consider an important role that they can’t afford to take time off of or being okay with falling behind in the world of AI for a bit. I think a lot of that is internal work you have to do to let go of the idea that you need to be caught up with everything that you can’t afford to take any time off.

But as I said to you Katie in the recording, I was like the idea of not having something else lined up after the break is what would stress me out the most to the point where I would actually be worried about not having income while I’m supposed to be enjoying my break. And I know Jillian gave some suggestions on how to network while you’re away and how to work with your current employer if it’s short term enough. But I think sometimes it’s a little bit hard to be like, everything’s going to work out fine, especially in this job market.

So that seemed to be echoed by Dani who said, “It’s a nice thought, but with the costs of mortgages and healthcare, I just don’t see this being realistic along with the fact that this great depression economy has driven me and many others to be job huggers. I would have a hell of a time getting another job as good as my current one if I left. It was a one-way door to get where I am and my career is very competitive.” One-way door is really interesting way to phrase that.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

So is job huggers. I hadn’t heard that phrase before. I love that she’s like this Great Depression ass economy. I’m like, that’s hysterical.

No, I completely hear that. I think that that is a really, really valid critique of this concept in our current economic environment. I guess what I would say is this is something where the job market is not always going to be like this. These things are cyclical and it could be interesting to think about the fact that, okay, this year and the way the job market is right now, no, I’m not pulling the ripcord, but there will be a time when the labor market is working in my favor where I feel more comfortable and more confident and there are more job openings again. And when that time comes, I want to have my strategy figured out, the thing that I’m going to say to get out of work, figure it out, and the money set aside and ready to be deployed.

So I think that this is something that you could theoretically begin planning for even if you know that it’s not going to happen imminently. So if you are planning to take time off short term from work and you are interested in the FMLA aspect of it all, we had a critique as well as a little tip here from Brittany S. who said, “The most likely route for most people to do this is taking FMLA. But it’s mentioned as just an afterthought here. Also, if you can do this starting in your twenties, how is it possible to build up enough professional capital where it would be more expensive to replace you by then? This form of the mini retirement idea never quite adds up to me and not just because we’re expected to be hiking in Spain or whatever, i.e., just another way to be productive” with a big smiley face, which I’m like, heard.

For me personally though every two years starting in your twenties I think was intended to be more of an example of how this could play out. I didn’t really feel the need for this though. I think until I entered my thirties, I feel like I turned 30 and all of a sudden my whole body changed. And I don’t know if that was in my head, but I think I felt less capable of just rebounding quickly—

Henah Velez:

In her thirties for less than a year.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

10 months. 10 months. I’m like guys, in my thirties, let me speak to you about my longstanding experience of being old. But I mean I don’t have children yet and I know that’s another major shift that people undergo. I don’t think that this is something that I probably feel like I needed to do in my twenties.

However, I think the reason or the approach in your twenties probably would be different. I was thinking about JL Collins and how he had been working for a couple years in his twenties and was like, I actually want to take time off to go travel. And he tried to quit his job. He was like, I’m just going to go travel and spend my savings and then come back and get another job. And they were like, wait, no, we’ll just let you have the time off and not pay you. And he was like, oh, dope.

So I think that when you have fewer risks in life and you have fewer dependencies to be concerned with, you might not have a mortgage in kids in your mid-twenties yet that your circumstances are different. So the way that you would approach this would be different. But for me personally, it’s only in this decade so far that I’ve been like, yeah, I think this might make sense for me.

We also heard from Sabrina S. who shared a suggestion, “Love this topic, hot tip. If you’re going for FMLA leave, don’t ask a Kaiser doctor for a note. They don’t really support it. They don’t have good mental health support. I would use an urgent care doctor instead. I would also be interested in longer career breaks or about career changes that are over six months, like taking one to three years off.” Okay, now I am not sure if there is an ideal doctor that you should ask, but if anyone has ever navigated burnout and then gotten a doctor’s note written for that and then kind of parlayed that into some FMLA situation, we would love to hear about that. So email us at moneywithkatie@morningbrew.com.

Henah Velez:

I love that we’re collectively trying to be like, how can we all get time off from burnout?

Katie Gatti Tassin:

How can you scheme time off? How can we get this going? I’m like, no guys, I’m going to make this realistic for you. We’re going to find a Money with Katie Rich Girl Nation doctor who’s writing these notes onto on demand $5. You can get your burnout FMLA note.

Henah Velez:

I would pay a lot of money to that doctor. They could charge more than that.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

That’s a free this idea, actually. Anyone feel free to run with that. It’s like the telehealth doctors that’ll write you the emotional support animal therapy scripts so you don’t have to pay a pet fee for your partner.

Henah Velez:

To your point, I feel like there were times in my twenties that I needed a break, but it was because I was in toxic jobs and I think that is valid.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Ooh, good point.

Henah Velez:

Yeah, that is something that if you need to get out, I mean more power to you and I hope that you’re able to separate yourself from that. But when I was in my twenties, I had a specific job that I really, really wanted out from and I was saving and saving and saving. It turned out I ended up getting laid off from the job. I had one major event at the end of the year that I planned and then the next day they laid me off; so toxic. But it ended up being this amazing summer because it was a summer that I got laid off. So I had severance and I was away from being in a toxic environment and I was stressed about, okay, what am I going to figure out next? Really stressed. But I also traveled. I saw people I cared about. I really took the entire summer to just chill and it was so rejuvenating.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Hell yeah.

Henah Velez:

So I think there is a case for it in your twenties or thirties. But yeah, your point about having fewer responsibilities and risks, I wasn’t living at home with my parents at that time. I was already living with my now husband, but rent was maybe a thousand dollars for me at the time, so it was a lot easier to pull that off than now where I have a mortgage and bigger responsibilities.

But there was also a through line in the feedback we heard around parents specifically and around saving for kids generally being more burned out than most people who are not parents. So I wanted to share two separate perspectives that came in. The first came from Lauren B. She said, “I was really interested in this episode having recently read Jillian’s book. I was hoping the discussion might better address some of the reservations I still had after reading it. But unfortunately, I didn’t come out of this feeling any better about the prospect that I personally could pull this off. One on the financial piece, the save an extra 6.5% guidance really only addresses the scenario where you’re just taking off a month or two at a time and probably returning to your same employer. That is very different from setting aside enough savings to cover a much longer period with an uncertain timeline to return to work. How do you save for those longer mini retirements without completely derailing other higher savings goals, a house down payment, a child’s college fund, maybe even early retirement?”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Can I pop in here actually and answer that really quickly? I think that there was—I sort of wanted to address that with Jillian a little bit like how the math was working out and kind of the prioritization of this versus these other bigger goals and retirement itself. And I think the answer is that the timeline is just going to change. She’s offering up 6.5% to save up one month of expenses every two years. I think I might say, hey, if you are in a little bit of a different situation where you are looking to take more time, say six months, you would make that a similarly long-term goal as your other long-term goals. Now, I can’t tell you what to prioritize. I can’t tell you if you’d rather have a house or rather have a mini retirement. I think this is the source of trade-offs or maybe you’re buying a smaller house so that you can have many retirements versus the biggest house you can afford.

Maybe you are looking at ways to get college scholarships or you are going to pursue the student loan thing. Again, I don’t know what for you matters the most, but I think that this could just be something that you are planning for several years into the future. So for example, if I am 30 right now, I might decide to start putting the money away a little bit each month to have the option to take a full year off at some point between 35 and 40, I might think, okay, at some point in the next decade, I would like to start a family. I’m going to start saving right now. So that entire first year, I have no obligation to work if I don’t want to, just as an example.

Okay, you can go ahead and keep reading, but I think that it’s basically just extending that timeline.

Henah Velez:

And I would also say if you have universal basic income, this may not be a thing you have to worry about to the same extent as right now where we’re all on the hook for all of our goods and services.

So okay, going back to their comment, they said, “Second, I get that it’s important to assuage anxiety by highlighting the ways this could go better than expected, but the full-throated optimism is just too pat for me. It doesn’t acknowledge very real factors like ageism and sexism that affect one’s job’s, prospects or the realities of some industries versus others. I’m in my early forties, my spouse is in their early fifties and we have a middle schooler if our salaries and stock markets stay the course, we’re on track to reach our fine number right around when the kiddo graduates from college, which would be an on-time retirement for spouse early for me.”

“But I have worked a sedentary desks job 40 plus hours a week nonstop since shortly after my own graduation and over 20 years now. The only meaningful break, which puts break in quotations, scare quotes I’ve had was a 12 week maternity leave. The toll is catching up to me both physically and mentally. I’m severely burnt out. The avalanche is at my heels, but the spouse and I both work in the tech industry in the past few years. I’ve watched my company get sold to private equity, go through several rounds of layoffs and offshore positions to the extent they can get away with, and that was before the AI threat. I have already applied to dozens of jobs to try to find my way out with no luck so far. To make matters worse, we live in the DC area where the market is flooded with desperate former federal workers. Sure, taking the time off I desperately need could work out fine, but at the ages and points in our careers, we are now, the probability feels much higher that instead it could mean a significant and long lasting financial hit and that reality felt glossed over in this discussion.”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah, I get that. Honestly, this message pained me because there are so many familiar elements of this story. I know that this is one anecdote, but I was just going down the list being like, check private equity check, federal layoffs, check the job market being impacted by artificial intelligence, check cost of healthcare, check cost of children. It felt like this was one person who was basically saying all of these broader systemic factors that we have been talking about all year coalesced into this is the end result of that. And the line, “the avalanches at my heels” was just like, oh my gosh. I can feel the not desperation, but the kind of, I feel the—pressure. The pressure of like, oh my God, it feels like we’re hanging on by a thread here. And so letting go with the expectation that we’re going to be able to just jump right back in and be fine feels like a freaking huge gamble. That was sort of minimized in the way that we were discussing it.

I totally understand that those circumstances might make this feel and or be actually riskier than it would be worth, but it is that burnout piece that feels most poignant because once you are at that point, sometimes desperate measures become required. You kind of stop having a choice in the matter because you start shutting down. And that is, I mean, that’s why we talk about everything that we talk about on this show because it’s pretty unfortunate that even think about this person too.

This is someone who works in the tech sector and is on track for an early retirement themselves and they are not exempted from any of these pressures. So this is somebody that’s theoretically sort of won the game in the American economy and still is really up against it.

Okay, we have one more, Henah, that I think is worth sharing. So this one came from Emily G.: “Your recent episode about many retirement really resonated with me and I wanted to share a similar experience I’ve had with what I’m calling my extended semi-retirement. About a year ago, I found myself incredibly burnt out and unsure of where to go. In my career, nearly a decade in healthcare, a global pandemic and fighting against the for-profit corporate hospital machine had me feeling exhausted and disenchanted. When my husband and I learned we were expecting our first child, we agreed that full-time infant childcare was not the right fit for our family and were fortunate that we could afford for me to be a full-time caregiver instead. Of course, this left me grappling with the logistical and existential struggle that so many women face when considering leaving their careers to focus on child raising. Enter my semi-retirement solution. After baby arrived, I left my full-time position for a per diem hospital position with a minimum shift requirement of only two days per month.”

“This allows me to functionally be a stay at home mom during the week and pick up two weekend days a month where my husband can stay with our child and we don’t have to worry about the hassle and expense of childcare. This feels like the best of both worlds. I get to spend as much time as I want with my baby without having to commit to leaving the workforce completely or having the dreaded experience gap on my resume. I’ve been most surprised by how refreshed I feel when I do pick up shifts. Things that used to feel so stressful are now transparently unimportant and I’ve started to find the joy in my work again while being able to clock out and not worry about the corporate bullshit until I’m back a few weeks later. I know many women struggle with balancing work and family during their childbearing years, a topic. I’m so grateful your show covers and I hope more moms can see this as an option rather than to commit to an all or nothing setup. I recognize my situation is industry specific, but it has truly been the best decision I’ve made for both my family and my career. Huge fan of your work. Thanks for always presenting new perspectives and ideas.”

Henah Velez:

Yeah, I love that she seemed to find the balance that made the most sense for her without making a full concession on either side. And I think, this is key, without trying to optimize for the most money, but optimizing for the most happiness and long-term sustainability.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yep. Love it.

Henah Velez:

I know you have a really old post on that I think from 2020.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah, I do. It’s something that I’ve, can you all tell that this comes up in my work a lot because it’s something I personally struggle with? My instinctual position is whatever is going to be best for making the business bigger is obviously going to be the best thing. So I really have to work against my instinctual drive to want to do more, bigger, better all the time.

Henah Velez:

The hustle.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah, my girlbossitis, my chronic girlbossitis.

Henah Velez:

The grind never stops. Before shifting gears, we did hear from Ki who wanted to talk about kids specifically, and in some ways I think the overwhelm that they’re referring to is a big reason why a lot of people my age are choosing not to have children in general, but that’s a can of worms for another time. But she wrote, “I love the episode about mini retirements, but wish you had discussed how to manage it with kids a bit more, especially since your guest has five kids. I was wondering about how to manage kids’, logistics, timing, and how to plan with the whole family when only one parent could take a mini retirement. Also, what if your kids are a major contributor to burnout? I have three kids baby to first grade and a full-time job and it is a lot.”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah, I bet it’s a lot. Jesus.

Henah Velez:

Katie, did Jillian talk about this in the book at all?

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Not really, from what I can recall from a details or specific standpoint, but she definitely addresses the way that the semi-retirement functions like a chance to spend more time with your kids. But if they’re the reason you feel burnt out, maybe that’s not what you want.

Henah Velez:

If you’re like, get me away from these kids. It was funny when I was growing up and we had some family things going on, my mom would always be like, oh yeah, work is my safe haven; work is my refuge to step away from stuff.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah. Yes. I have some friends that say that too. People who have children that are like, I love having kids was made me so happy. It also made me like my work more. It was a chance to do something else.

I value these pieces of feedback back to back because I think you have one side of the coin represented in the individual who was like, I wanted to embrace much more part-time work because I wanted to be more of a full-time caregiver. And then there are obviously people who view work as a bit of a respite. So I think that that will also impact how you think about these sorts of mini retirements or breaks and what you actually want out of them.

Henah Velez:

If you’re trying to yeet away your kids, this might not be the—or I don’t know, maybe it’s during the school year, so you get a break while they’re at school. Who knows.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Fellas. Love your children.

Henah Velez:

Is it gay to take a break?

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Okay, all that note this week on the Money with Katie show, we’re talking about sleepaway boarding school.

Henah Velez:

Listen, no shame to parents during what they have to do. I’ll put that out there on that note for those who feel a little stuck and they can’t fully walk away. We had a few comments that I wanted to bring up. So Jujuuuu02 said, “Okay, so as awesome as a mini retirement sounds, there are some of us who really can’t, our bosses are not willing to negotiate with us and would rather lose us than do so despite any expense. Our savings goals contradict long trips without constant cashflow either from salary or PTO. Some of us really are stuck here until true end of life retirement. So how can people like me still combat burnout?”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah, it’s a million dollar question, isn’t it? It’s like, okay, so despite the fact that we’re on this sinking ship, how can we swim a little more comfortably? So a couple things, and Henah, you’ve already touched on this. It might be worth reconsidering if the job that you have right now is the one that you would like to keep long-term and what might serve your life goals and your finances better. Because what I’m hearing is that this may not be an ideal situation if it’s like, well, my boss doesn’t give a fuck about me and would rather cut me loose than ever give a little. So again, this is not something that might be able to be changed immediately, but just planting that seed of like, okay, we’re going to start paving our path out of here. That could be something that you want to consider.

Also, what sorts of short-term breaks are available to you? So if we’re thinking about strategically mixing holidays with PTO, how can you piece together intentional pockets of reprieve? Henah, I think you’re really good at doing this. The other thing that I will say is—

Henah Velez:

Is it shade? Are you dragging me?

Katie Gatti Tassin:

No. No, no, no, no. I think you are really good at being strategic about how you use your PTO to maximize enjoyment and getting something out of it. So that is not shade. I also have one tip that’s probably going to feel really, really annoying, but fuck it. We ball.

So this year, as Henah alluded to, I think the weight of the last couple of years of my work life really started to catch up with me physically, and I kept pushing through it for a while before realizing that I actually needed to make some lifestyle changes. And I am planning on getting a little bit more into all of that in the final episode this year. But one thing that has had an outsized impact for my mental health and sense of just chronically feeling overwhelmed is turning off my phone when I’m not working and leaving it in another room.

Now I know that the advice to cut back on screen time is just so trite at this point, and it may feel overly romanticized, but sometimes I feel like we don’t romanticize being off the grid enough. Because what I’ve noticed was that even in my so-called downtime or the time that could theoretically be restorative to me, I was just pumping my body full of cortisol and adrenaline by scrolling for hours. And it’s just so obvious to me that this is a contributing factor to our collective sense of burnout, especially in a year that has seen a news cycle like this one where every time you wake up, the push notification is the Civil Rights Act is being dismantled and you’re like, great, cool. Time to go make a deck about customer acquisition.

So I think if you feel like you have too many mental browser tabs open at all time and you just can never close them and you’re just constantly running on empty, I think that is an experiment you can run on yourself that costs nothing to be like, alright, I’m doing a week of no phone. As much as you can manage to do that.

Henah Velez:

Can I add something here? Yeah, of course. I know that this is going to sound also trite coming from someone who literally writes about travel, but I have found that even three or four days away can make all of the difference. And I think that sometimes when you’re in your routine and you’re just in survival mode, you don’t really get the chance to get out of your own head.

And when you go somewhere else and you’re forced to put all that to the side and just be really present and try to figure out the situation, you’re in a new place. I find that that actually does so much for my brain and that’s kind of why I’ve written about it three or four times now is even three to four days can make a huge difference if it’s a staycation in your own city, if it’s staying at a friend’s place, if it’s couch surfing or couch swapping with someone else, I think it puts you in a new place where you don’t really have the choice to think about, oh, my medical bills are due. Oh, I have to make this appointment. Oh, I have to do this thing. They’re just so focused on being in a different place. So would also throw that out there.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah, I think you’re right. I think you’re onto something with the getting out of routine for me, and again, all of this is so personal, so some of this may resonate with you, and some of it may not. But when I feel the most spread thin, exhausted, just that chronic state of feeling kind of beaten down, it does feel like I’m looping the same thought patterns over and over again. And to your point, getting out of that or physically moving your body or your energy into a different state is sometimes the most realistic thing.

And to your point, it doesn’t have to be big. The theme of this episode was like, this is a big shift that can be completely transformative. And also I think there are many small shifts that can have outsized impacts on your mental health and outlook. And for me, kind of opting out of the phone more often has been really big. I’ve had to get better at discerning my own capacity for these sorts of things and recognizing when I’m slipping into that state. And for me it’s irritability. It’s like I have very little patience when I can feel my patience wearing really thin. That’s the signal to me of like, oh, you’re agitated by everything.

Henah Velez:

Yes.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Time to take a step back. You need to actually go do something to restore yourself right now.

Henah Velez:

No, I’m the exact same way. And not to be, again, the most basic B on earth. But I will say that I do think understanding your things like Enneagram, your personality type, your life path number, if you’re Sparkle Megan, whatever that is for you, I don’t know, you don’t have to believe me, but I really think that my big three, understanding my big three and my horoscope and also my own Enneagram has really, really helpful. And being like, these are the things that are actually going to feel restorative to you and because of your personality type, these other things that other people might do is not going to work for you at all. And I don’t want to put anybody in a bucket, but I do find for me personally that it does tend to be spot on.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

To me, that is also discernment. That’s knowing yourself and being in touch with your ups and downs and being able to be like, okay, this is what I need in this moment. But it has been something that has been kind of a critical lifeline for me this year in those moments where I’m like, oh God, I actually feel like incapable of continuing on.

Henah Velez:

I do think it’s also worth mentioning if you’re a woman and you have a cycle that is also really going to affect how your day-to-day goes. And I don’t think we talk about that enough.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah, I have somehow managed this year to map my anxiety spikes pretty routinely with that cycle. It’s like clockwork. And it does help honestly to know, oh, okay, I’m having actually, my brain is producing hormones that are making me feel this way, and so what can I do today to shift my state or work with that versus fighting against it?

Henah Velez:

And I think if you’re someone who has enough time off and you can do this, maybe it means taking every Friday off of that week of your life so that you just have extra time to yourself or you just don’t make any plans that week after work because you know that that’s the week you’re going to be most agitated. I do think that that’s something that can be, not to go like MAHA wellness, but I do think that’s something that can be really instrumental.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

I’ve heard that described as energy management as opposed to time management. So rather than thinking about that 24-hour cycle in a day being the same for you every single day, if you are somebody that has a cycle, a hormonal cycle that is give or take 28 days that you are going to feel different at different times in the month and that you might need to try to accommodate that in the way that you’re planning your workload and things of that nature. Some of that obviously is harder to manage depending on the type of job that you have.

But I think that adjusting your expectations according to the energy levels you anticipate having is a way to at least not double down on the disappointment or the frustration that you might feel if you’re in kind of a can’t even mood and then surprise, you can’t even, and it’s like, oh, now I’m beating myself up for feeling this way. So it’s kind of that meta commentary, I guess the meta emotions about the emotions.

So to get back to the more logistical tactical side of things, to answer Luke A.’s question who asked, “Does she recommend using your paid time off for these many retirements?” I don’t think it has to be your paid time off, but theoretically I think it could be. I think Jillian’s advice focused more on using medical leave or unpaid leave if it’ll be longer than a few weeks. But I also think that the spirit of a lot of this advice was like, you are probably going to have to wheel and deal with whatever you have available to you. And if you are someone that does have a lot of PTO, that could theoretically be an option.

Henah Velez:

Agreed. And I think there’s also the realization that things can change. I noted in a few people’s comments that they said this felt out of touch for them or out of reach for them a few years ago when I think it’s worth noting. Things are fluid, things are dynamic, they can change at any time. And so Isabelle l. wrote in, “I agree with others that there are many people who aren’t in a situation where this is feasible. I was not in a space five years ago where I could remotely fathom anything like this, but this is still a valuable conversation to help show that it can be possible for many people with some hard work and planning. It’s important to normalize this concept and I hope everyone is able to experience at least a month off at some point, whether it’s travel, visiting family or self-reflection and hobbies at home.”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah, I think even if you don’t think that this is something that you would be able to do, I would still recommend as a thought exercise sitting down and being like, if I had six weeks off, how would I spend them and map it out as though it were happening? I don’t know. I think that when we start to make these things concrete, you kind of open the door to the serendipity or spontaneity or what, actually, maybe this is worth trying to work around these things that seem immovable. I would love for someone to try that and let us know how it makes them feel again, even if you don’t think that it’s something that’s going to be realistic right now.

Henah Velez:

Yeah. I think the way that our lives are mapped out for us of you go to school, you graduate, you marry someone, you buy a house, you settle down and you have a kid. Those things are all mapped out for us in some way, and you don’t have to follow that track obviously, but I think these other things that you can do for yourself that are very amorphous and a blob and don’t feel like they can ever be addressed, I think it’s important to be intentional about, well, do you really want to just spend 40 years working or are there meaningful breaks you can take that even if you’re just thought exercising them can be worthwhile.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

I think a lot of the feedback that we heard was like, well, yeah, I would love to take time off, but I don’t feel like I can feel like I’m trapped working for 40 years straight, and I understand that. So I definitely don’t want to minimize that. AMVU1234 echoed the sentiment that even if you can’t take chunks of time off, they said, “As some of these ideas may seem too hard to follow in some context. For example, informal economies. I like the premise of exercising and practicing for retirement. Personally, I think a good starting point is to plan rest on the weekends, put in a hard no to work activities and taking all of your vacation days every year. It does not have to be all of the days together.”

Henah Velez:

I love the idea of exercising and practicing for retirement and normalizing the idea of breaks.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Me too.

Henah Velez:

Because, like you said, we want to shift from that American work ethic to maybe a more European approach to work, just a thought. And then Bea felt the same saying, “As someone who finds a standard three weeks of annual vacation, personally offensive and sidebar same, they said, I really appreciate this episode for holding a mirror to our work centered culture and shining a light on prioritizing the experience capital over corporate capital” with the disco emoji.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Love that. I love that. Okay, finally, Jasmine said, “This is the nicest version of the Die with Zero philosophy I have ever heard, and practical too.” which I was like, you know what? Hell yeah. Hell yeah. I love when two big philosophies collide. We will get right back to your thoughts and then listener questions right after a quick break.

Welcome back to our final episode of this batch. Before we get into any miscellaneous questions that you sent in this episode was a conversation first aired on Kate Kennedy’s podcast, Be There in Five, and I reshared it last week in honor of Rich Girl Nation being named a top business book of 2025. So a few high level points to hit for this one, including a movie recommendation.

Henah Velez:

I think we need to pause because you were listed alongside Ray Dalio, Bill Gates, Morgan Hausel, so pretty impressive company to be surrounded by. Katie, I’m going to Gen Z clap for you.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Thank you. I didn’t know that that was a Gen Z clap, but I like it.

Henah Velez:

It is a Gen Z clap.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

The first finger and thumb.

Henah Velez:

Yes. The episode was titled “On Influencers, Beauty Culture, and Corporate Confidence with Kate Kennedy” and you at one point mentioned Jessica Defino, who we’ve had on the show before. We love her, to which Amy said, “I agree that Jessica Dino’s investigations into beauty are eye-opening.”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yes. And then Kelly G. recommended a movie saying, “You need to look up the Gen X classic film, She’s Out of Control,” which is a 1989 movie about a man’s daughter getting a makeover and how he gets overprotective of her after her glow up, which okay, that premise makes me a little nervous, but I will add it to the list if anyone has seen a comment and tell us what you think.

Henah Velez:

I can’t tell if it was like, you are going to be in a rage when you watch this movie or if you’re going to find it funny. So I laughed also at this comment that Elena wrote in that said, “I’ve never been called out so quickly in a podcast than the American Cheerleader Magazine arc.”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Literally, I remember, dude, the diet advice in those magazines for 12 year olds. Crazy. It would be like, here’s how to make sure you don’t snack, brush your teeth immediately after you eat dinner so you don’t eat anything after 7:00 PM or whatever. And I’m taking notes in my little pink glitter notebook like, okay, got it. I’m going to be a flyer.

Henah Velez:

I have been so sad about the return to skinnytok and the return to thinness. I’ve been so sad about it.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

My hot take is that it never left.

Henah Velez:

I am, well okay, we had this mirage though that it did, and I was really thrilled about it for a couple years, but here we are.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Okay. Speaking of, you guys, made your opinions known to me about the inclusion of an ad from a certain brand in this episode, particularly in the context of this episode, PringleYum said, “My jaw hit the floor a fantastic discussion regarding the hot girl hamster wheel followed by a Skims ad. I am struggling to reconcile you lamenting modern de beauty standards while also encouraging us to put money in the pockets of the woman most responsible for creating those unrealistic standards.” And then abrcadaver absolutely roasted me. They said, “It is very lightly giving Jia Airbnb vibes, which is a very niche reference that I guess you’ll understand if you read the newsletter or you care about what sort of sponcon people who write for the New Yorker are doing.

But you know what? Fair enough, fair enough. I get it. It’s a bad look for sure. Listen, one problematic thing you need to know about me is that I have been a Kardashian apologist since I was 10 years old, so I contain multitudes and I think we’re all allowed at least one, maybe two problematic emotional support billionaires. No, but on a serious note, I think the Kardashians, they are certainly emblematic of the unattainability of the female beauty standard, but they certainly did not invent that standard and they could go away tomorrow, and I don’t think much would change, though. I will say this feedback is interestingly timed because this Sunday’s episode of Diabolical Lies is an exploration of sort of this subject. I’d say it’s in the ballpark, just this double-sided coin of the no ethical consumption under capitalism thing and the idea of selling out. It’s just a topic that I think about a lot, particularly following the Jia Airbnb fiasco, the Riyadh Comedy Festival if y’all are up on that, Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album with 36 variants…

Henah Velez:

That a real number?

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah, 36. That’s correct. That’s the real number. That is real. Yeah.

Henah Velez:

You’re not, oh, okay.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

No, no, no. That is how many variants there are of that album. Okay, so fourth wall breaking here, being a person for whom the viability of her creative work depends to a large degree on corporate patronage. This is something that I think about a lot, and so we talked about it for two hours on Diabolical Lies this Sunday.

Henah Velez:

I’m excited to hear that episode.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah, it was fun. It was one where there weren’t really any sweeping conclusions at the end, and actually one of the listener questions kind of in a roundabout way gets at this same complexity, and so I’m excited to read that, but kick us off.

Henah Velez:

Okay, our first question comes from Andrea B. They said, “Katie, something I’ve never gotten clarity on when it comes to the 4%, or dare I say 5%, safe withdrawal rate, does it take into account reallocation over the years or does it assume you’re a hundred percent in the total US stock market the rest of your life? I don’t know.”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Okay. So the original portfolios that he tested had a range of holdings. It was between 50% and 75% US equities and 25% and 50% US bonds. So bear in mind though he did that in the nineties and has since recreated this portfolio using more diversified holdings. So I will take this opportunity to note that for as well as the US stock market has performed this year, international stocks are outperforming US stocks by the widest margin since 2009.

So the short answer is that yes, you absolutely can and should rebalance without disrupting your 4% rule eligibility as long as you are staying roughly in the bounds of the types of holdings that Bill Bengen tested. So think us large cap, mid cap, small cap global stocks that exclude the us, those types of index funds, government bonds, things of that nature.

I think the only thing to really be aware of when we’re talking about the 4% rule is that the types of holdings that are pretty confidently going to be excluded is anything where you’re holding large concentrations of individual stocks or alternative currencies because we don’t know, there’s not enough data to make an educated guess about what’s going to happen.

And so all of this is really based on you holding broad-based index funds, but the most conservative portfolio that he tested that worked was 50% bonds. I don’t think that that’s necessary personally. I know that there are charts out there that will show you what your bond versus equity allocation should be as you age. This is again, me personally, I probably will never get much past 35, 40% bonds, even in my most conservative, at least based on how the last 30 or 40 years of data have shaped up.

Henah Velez:

So another question from Jill. “I’ve been a fan for years, but this is my first time emailing. I read in Morning Brew’s screenshot attached that your boy Ray Dalio said we should all have 15% of our portfolios in gold. This came as big shock because I don’t feel like I’ve ever heard any advice from investment professionals around gold. I thought buying gold was for governments and preppers. So I’m curious, are you invested in gold, Katie, and how do you feel about that 15% ratio?”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yes. My close personal friend, Ray Dalio, my third emotional support billionaire, just kidding. I actually do disagree with this and take that for what it is because he’s a billionaire and I’m not. But gold is hot right now. It is true. It is hot right now, but I think it’s functioning as a bit of a speculative asset in a weird way because people are nervous about the US dollar given gestures and everything. I personally do not own any gold, and I do not have any plans to buy any. I am perfectly content buying my domestic and global equities and calling it a day.

Henah Velez:

I do think it’s funny how Indian families specifically buy a lot of gold as their ways that they celebrate different holidays, ways that they hold on to their value. I didn’t know about the gold as an alternative asset when I was growing up and when I was five years old, I didn’t think about gold as an alternative asset, but it is nice that my family, and unlike most South Asian families, invest in gold in that way, is just some sort of diversification if you want it.

And then we got a recommendation from Nicole B. who said, in response to Rich Girl Molly’s question about encouraging more people in the FI community to donate their wealth: “In the September 23rd episode, I wanted to bring to your attention the work that Rebecca Herbst is doing in recent years. She has focused her ‘financial independence, early retirement’ content towards what she calls the philanthropy pledge in partnership with the organization, Giving What We Can, an effective altruism organization dedicated to the goal of encouraging a percentage of income to the most effective charities work can be found at the website Yield & Spread.”

So we’ll put the link that she shares in the show notes, which also has a free philanthropy calculator worksheet that explores how taking a 10% pledge or donating at any amount impacts someone’s timeline. “Big fan of the podcast and really enjoyed hearing in the same episode about some of the ways Henah and Katie are donating are participating in mutual aid. It’s made me think about ways I can do more in my own community and love that talking about it normalizes this kind of mindset,” which was really the intent of us talking about it so openly. That’s something that you and I talked about offline, Katie and I do think right now with the government shutdown still happening as of this recording and the fact that SNAP benefits do not go out for November for I think the majority of states, it’s a really good time to practice some of that mutual aid if you are able. So I’ll just throw that out there.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah. Well, my intention in talking about it publicly was that so everyone knows how good of a person I am. But really that is amazing and I’m actually really happy that someone is already doing this. I figured something like this already existed, so thank you so much for that recommendation. I’ll also add that this is like if you already have a wealth planner and you use it for budgeting and you’re using that financial independence calculator, if you just go into the budget area and the donations and giving section, you can enter kind of example donation amounts, and it too will factor that into your FI timeline to be like, okay, how will that impact how long it takes me to reach FI? But it’ll also, and this is the important part, show you basically what you could afford to give in perpetuity as well as factoring it into your overall spending plan.

Okay. Now for a heartwarming note from Rich Girl Nation Book Club founder Jose C, “My female friends and I finished our Rich Girl Nation Book Club recently. All of them are now making improvements to the way they handled their finances. Many have shared how they sent the book to other friends who are now negotiating a prenup or getting involved in their family finances like never before. As the weeks passed and we read chapter after chapter, I listened to many interesting transformation testimonies. One friend who was a teacher started having conversations with her students about salary negotiation, improving their grant applications and how to do networking the right way. Two friends started the book club by letting their partners handle the finances and finished it by asking the partners to read the book with them and vowing to lead their family finances. From then on. Their partners were not doing a bad job, but I’m so happy to see they got the confidence to get involved from Reading Rich Girl Nation, one of the book club attendees asked for a coaching session to review her retirement accounts and investments.”

“She was doing okay with the default investment options, but with better tax planning, she’ll probably save an extra $5,000 a year at least. One friend already led the finances in her household and was a fire nerd. I was curious to see what she would get from the book. She gave wonderful explanations every time someone asked a question. She also asked rich questions regarding gender dynamics. Her questions sparked wonderful debates, which allowed all my other friends to chime in with stories and advice. Rich Girl Nation truly allowed us to talk about so many interesting topics, share new stories and bond like no other book club has. I feel like they all finished the book club feeling sisterhood at all-time highs, and they’re all empowered to pursue their own financial goals never before. For me, the experience was so much fun. It was like listening to Women Talk Money, but from my closest friends, my heart is full, and I just wanted to share that with you.”

Okay. Bar none. Yeah, the most beautiful thing I’ve read since the book came out. So thank you so much for that extremely generous note. Can you imagine if I just wrote that myself? It’s a real email, me and ChatGPT collaborating on how can I make my book sound so singular and important?

Henah Velez:

Well, it would be a choice to have you say, book club founder, which we don’t have an actual book club. I should be very clear, but that it’s a man for Rich Girl Nation.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah, I mean, he founded his own little Rich Girl Nation book club. He did with his friends.

Henah Velez:

Jose is great. Thank you so much. I think that’s really sweet and really a testament, I think, Katie, to the way that the book did not just approach the practical and tactical, but also larger implications in society.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah. Thank you.

Henah Velez:

Yeah. Yeah. I did that shit. Yeah.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Pretty good person over here with a pretty good book.

Henah Velez:

So we’re all why she obsessed with being a good person? That’s the real question.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Catholic guilt. Remember, we’ve been over this.

Henah Velez:

We had some questions about the advice in the book from Allie K. who said, “I’m a huge fan of your work. I discovered your blog sometime near it start when I was just beginning my own career post grad school, I was barely 30 at the time, excited to figure out what to do with my first real income, $60,000. What? I’m thrilled to find a resource that was smart but not bro-y” (classic Katie, smart, but not bro-y.) “Not long after that, I married a very high earner and my financial life changed dramatically. He makes more than me by more than an order of magnitude, and I’ve kind of struggled since we got married, both existentially and strategically to wrap my head around my new financial situation.

Throughout all of this change, I’ve truly valued your work and insights. I finished Rich Girl Nation yesterday and it raised many questions for me. There’s one cluster of questions in particular that I especially want to ask you about. I’m writing to you in part because I thought you might be able to direct me to helpful resources, but also I think addressing them might make for a very nice follow up book, and I hope you keep writing. The theme is basically, so you’re rich now and then most of your questions specifically got into donor advised funds, charitable giving and how it should change during your income earning years versus your retirement years and how much money you need to start a foundation.”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Okay. First of all, I’m so happy that we had that recommendation to share from Nicole for the philanthropy calculator. I would also add that something I’ve been thinking about a lot and don’t yet have answers for is how to think about this in a way that builds a world where charity is ultimately rendered obsolete. Because people will always need a helping hand, right? Things are always going to happen. You’re always going to need charity to function in some capacity, but I am really interested in how you can use money to build movements that lessen the need for charity. So for example, I’m just spitballing here. What would it look like for money to fund candidates for office who are then going to be beholden to fighting for universal basic services? What would it look like to put money to use in politics, but for positive change and not corporate kickbacks? What would it look like for philanthropy to support union drives and labor organizers? That is expensive. It is expensive to fund staff organizers for union drives who can then fight for fair treatment and fair wages and stronger labor law, and basically how do we use money to actually plug those holes in the social safety net once and for all versus catching people once they’ve already fallen through them.

So I don’t know if that makes sense, but I don’t know what the answers to those questions are, but it occurs to me that it would be interesting to explore methods of giving that address some of the root causes for why people end up needing that type of charity in the first place.

Henah Velez:

Yeah, I mean, I think as someone who worked at a 501(c)3 charity organizations for many years, I think there’s this, yeah, my utopia is that I don’t actually need to do this work anymore. And so I think that is something worth asking. It is interesting, Kerala, the region where my mom was born and is actually a socialist community, just announced that they fully eradicated extreme poverty. Which is really impressive, and I think something where I’m like, okay, well now there’s going to be organizations that do not need to do work for extreme poverty. Obviously it’s getting up to a livable wage, fair wages, et cetera.

But I think that is the dream and the goal for a lot of the people who are in this space. So she also had some more existential questions and thoughts that I wanted to read, so it’s a little long. But she said finally, there are ethical and existential questions, not about the acquisition of wealth per se, but about the use of it.

“I’m often bothered by our household income and how accessible good things are to us when they’re out of reach for so many, and if I’m being honest, I really don’t want anyone to eat me, but I struggled to determine exactly what to sacrifice in an effort to even things out. My husband and I have whole conversations about whether he should quit. Let’s downsize, pull the kids out of their pricey early childhood education situation and scrap together a living like everyone else, time and time again. We wonder who exactly would benefit from that. My husband is a surgeon and he’s excellent at what he does. None of his patients or future patients would benefit if he quit. For the first three years of parenting, we employed a nanny. We paid her significantly more money than I made, and when she had a baby, we covered a maternity leave longer than mine, and my husband’s unpaid parental leaves combined.

“She buoyed us during some of the hardest years of our lives with the extravagance, riddled me with guilt. I sometimes wondered whether I should fire her and go back to wanting to kill myself like most other postpartum women. But again, I can’t identify a compelling net benefit. Sure, I could have given away her salary to a charitable organization, but then our nanny would’ve been out of a really good job. I could have sent the kids to daycare for less and given away the remainder, but it also didn’t seem great to utilize the coveted infant spots of daycare when I could afford to leave them open for people who can’t afford a nanny. Or was I supposed to send my kids to daycare and help someone else pay for a nanny? I could do this sort of thing all day, and sometimes I do. Who benefits from rich people buying the cheap homes and putting expensive homes on the market, especially in a housing crisis?

“I worry both that I’m being ridiculous and fretting about this and that, but then our nanny would be out of a really good job is the 2025 version of what a slave owner would say. Obviously, I’m in therapy, but even so I’m the richest person I trust and I have nobody else to work out these things with. Times are tough for so many, but I cannot be the only person wondering what to do with excess. Are there resources you recommend for these sorts of questions and issues? I want to wrestle with the ethical existential issues productively, intelligently and sensitively, but I don’t think I’m doing a great job alone. Again, I really love the work you do. Thank you for relentlessly balancing a robust critique of our economic reality with concrete advice for operating within it, and congratulations on a job well done with your new book.”

Katie Gatti Tassin:

So what this highlights for me, I think first and foremost is that our present situation makes it very difficult for anyone to feel as though they are existing ethically. Now, obviously, you would rather exist unethically in a multimillion dollar house, so I’m not going to minimize that. The existential dilemmas of wealth are certainly preferable to the material dilemmas of not being wealthy. But I still think this just highlights the shortcomings of trying to individually navigate this stuff because knowing that other people are struggling while you are not is a life diminishing experience, and I think a lot of wealthy people end up just deadening themselves to that reality because the guilt feels very ugly and personal. But ultimately, I think for many that guilt is misplaced. So in this example in particular, your husband is highly paid because he is a medical professional with a skill that is in high demand.

So sure, we could talk about how well medical debt is crippling America and that he is profiting from an unjust healthcare system and et cetera. We definitely could do that. But as far as ways to earn a lot of money go, he’s not like employing an army of low wage serfs and then collecting their surplus value. He has a skill that someone’s willing to pay him a lot of money for. There really aren’t jobs that are completely exempted from that type of criticism. If you work for a corporation that is donating money to politicians who are stripping people of healthcare and nutrition support in exchange for keeping their corporate tax rate low, you too are benefiting from the blood money endemic to our society. So I guess the point is there are bad choices and there are better choices, but ultimately all of those choices are still constricted by forces that are usually outside of your individual control.

And so I’m not sure at the individual operating level what the correct first principles here are of maximize the best situation that you can get for yourself. I don’t know. I can’t answer that question, but that to me does not mean that we should throw up our hands and say, fuck it. I think what it does mean is that attempting to individually optimize every consumer choice we make and then feel guilty if we have managed to eke out a good living in this economy is actually a far less productive use of our time long-term than focusing on plugging into efforts that will make us more of a “we”, that will make us part of that, that is trying to expand the choices that are available to people.

Henah Velez:

This is something my best friend and I talk about a lot is I am very openly anti-Amazon, but if the only e-book reader available to me is the Kindle on my phone, then I have no choice but to, you know what I mean? It’s very hard to opt out, and so I do think what I’m saying is within the decisions that you can make for yourself rather than sitting here fighting against which one is better, I think sometimes at least forgiving, specifically giving something is better than sitting here and wrestling about which one you should give to.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

Yeah. This question very much struck me as like, this is a philosophy major. This is someone who has read a lot of philosophy and is like, actually, I mean, but I appreciated it because I think it does, but complicate some of the supposedly black and white moralizing that you’ll often hear about these types of decisions where she’s like, well, I can afford a nanny and I’m paying her really well, but would it be better if I fired her and gave that? It’s like you can kind of get in your head about these sorts of things. I think that’s very real.

Henah Velez:

Yeah.

Katie Gatti Tassin:

That sort of question or that experience is probably pretty aspirational. I don’t think many people can probably relate to those types of problems, but that doesn’t make them less real, and I think it does challenge us to think about, okay, and if we were to design a system that worked better, that didn’t put you in this weird dilemma of like, should I pay for the best thing I can afford or not? I think that would be preferable. It does not appear to me here in reading this question. There are easy, clear cut answers, though, of course. Tell me in the comments if you disagree. I’m really curious about this subject. It’s something I think about a lot.

Okay. That is all for this edition of Rich Girl Roundup. Thank you as always for listening and sharing your thoughts, sending in great, thoughtful questions. Appreciate you holding my feet to the fire when necessary, and we will see you next week.

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.