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Over the long weekend, I was toying with a creative prompt: “What are you afraid to write?” Reflecting on the last dozen interviews I’d done for Rich Girl Nation, the answer took the form of a complicated love letter to the self-help genre that raised me. To personal finance, my first true love: Our love […]
For a recent story published by The Cut, Bindu Bansinath surveyed 102 of the publication’s readers about the most “frivolous thing” they’d taken on debt to buy. Most of the submissions tracked with what you might expect from readers of New York magazine’s fashion-forward women’s vertical—Chanel shoes, plastic surgery, Ozempic—but a few curious inclusions stood […]
Every once in a while, a series of mundane events accumulates to produce a moment of out-of-body, blistering clarity. “Clarity” is not a mental state I’ve experienced much recently, but on my last day in California, it arrived unannounced while I idled in a Safeway parking lot. Earlier that morning, I had been speaking with […]
International Women’s Day nearly escaped my awareness this year. As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one not in the spirit: About a week earlier, the “for women, by women” investing platform Ellevest announced it would be selling and transferring its roboadvisory accounts to Betterment this April. Ellevest explained in the fine print that […]
The explosion of financial updates out of Washington in the past week has been overwhelming, the “breaking news” equivalent of projectile vomit. (The zone was flooded, as it were.) It’s reminded me a little of the flashes of bottomless panic I felt in March 2020 when it was clear there was a fundamentally unknown quantity […]
In 2021, I earned more in a month than I had earned in all of 2018. I was 26. Given all the buzz about oligarchy this year, I’ve been reflecting on the psychological experience of sudden material abundance: Becoming wealthier made me realize how much easier life is when your access to money is practically […]
For the last four years, we’ve spent Thanksgiving with a few of my husband’s brothers and their families in a Colorado ski town (though the trip is far more “cheese boards” than “snowboards”). Every Black Friday after hanging out in the condo’s living room for two days, we venture out to the main village. There’s […]
When we first moved to California, our next-door neighbors—a very kind Gen X couple—knocked on our door and invited us over for dinner. In the following weeks, they’d pop over to check in, periodically lending a tool or an extra set of hands. One day while I was stuck in traffic coming back from San […]
I read an essay the other day from a guy who really, really hates the Financial Independence/Retire Early (FI/RE) movement. Jared, who writes the We’re Gonna Get Those Bastards newsletter, did not mince words: “This is the f***ing stupidest thing I have ever heard of in my life.” As a personal finance writer and semi-loyal […]
Last July, we moved into a new rental house, and despite our excitement about landing in NorCal, leaving Colorado was an exhausting move. By our first day in the new house, my nerves were fraying at the edges. And that’s when I heard it: Beep beep beep. Beeeeeeep, beeeeep, beeeeeep. Beep beep beep. My husband […]
I’ve written at length (both last week and at the end of 2022) about the realizations that helped me become financially savvy. But I’ve never shared the experience that occurred before those initial W-2 paychecks started coming. I faced a post-grad experience that will be familiar to most young people: Securing an internship after graduation—rather […]
The other night, my dog Georgia wouldn’t stop throwing up. Georgia, also known as Beans, and more recently known as Bad Luck Beans, has suffered a string of health issues so unfortunate that most vets shake their heads in pity as they work their way down her chart. Here’s the short version, if you can […]
My junior year of high school, my formerly sporadic, mild acne that had been contained through measures like consistent courses of antibiotics and hormonal contraceptives bloomed into a case so severe that my dermatologist took one look at the constellation of painful, purple lumps dotting my jawline and declared it was finally time for Accutane. […]
When I first began making the rounds on the amateur podcast circuit as “Money with Katie,” I heard the same question posed with almost comic repetition: “Why do you think women lack financial confidence?” Oh, gee, Eric, I don’t know—maybe because we’ve been told our entire lives that we’re bad at math and our male […]
“Even with men doing more parenting than before, the majority of women are still left facing the well-rehearsed motherhood-versus-career dichotomy. But it’s not a dichotomy; it’s a socially organized choice masquerading as a natural one.”—Laura Kipnis A few weeks ago, I betrayed my better judgment and found myself wandering innocently into the comments section of […]
For the last four years, we’ve spent Thanksgiving with a few of my husband’s brothers and their families in a Colorado ski town (though the trip is far more “cheese boards” than “snowboards”). Every Black Friday after hanging out in the condo’s living room for two days, we venture out to the main village. There’s […]
The other day, a friend asked me what I thought of the “money manifestation” courses she keeps seeing online. Maybe you’ve seen their ads, too: Relatable-feeling, straight-to-camera videos featuring people who promise to rid you of your “money blocks,” using scientific-sounding language and vague assurances about forthcoming abundance. This type of material usually triggers my […]
The other morning, I woke up with a strange impulse: I wanted to go to the mall. Work had been particularly intense for a couple of weeks, so wandering around a giant commercial space that smells like someone spritzed an Auntie Anne’s pretzel with Chanel No. 5 sounded like irresistible frivolity. This happens every few […]
Ever since that cursed Shein brand trip last summer in which American influencers toured the company’s Guangzhou factories and marveled aloud at how “not-sweaty” the workers were, the center of the Venn diagram between sustainability and personal finance came into full focus. For most people, financial health is contingent upon managing consumption habits—producing more income […]