
A few weeks ago, I watched The Substance through my hands. During particularly bloody scenes, I would study Thomas’s face as he grimaced, attempting to judge when it was safe to look at the screen again. The film—which interprets the violence of body modification and our cultural obsession with youth through a campy lens—hits a […]

As a pathologically ambitious college junior a few months into my first real internship, a generous, well-regarded full-time employee on my team pulled me aside after my #grindset and I handed in an assignment early. You’re doing a great job, she whispered, but I’m going to let you in on something: Don’t work so fast. […]

House-hunting in any US city will cause one simple question to bulldoze all the others: How can so many people afford to buy these houses? If you typically feel pretty good about your financial progress and you’d like to not feel good about it, there’s no activity I recommend more. Last weekend, my husband and […]


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 […]

I’ve been creating content about money, the economy, and the state of work on and off for five years, and I’ve sensed a definitive shift in sentiment over the last 18 months. I see it most in the changing responses to Money with Katie video content online; purely tactical pieces that used to elicit little […]

In January 2021, search volume for the term “should I invest in Bitcoin” hit its highest peak, and remained a popular search term through early summer. Bitcoin—and cryptocurrency more generally—was everywhere you looked, infiltrating even the most staid of personal finance domains online (yours truly’s included, as I wrote my first and only cryptocurrency explainer […]

Imagine with me, for a moment, that the year is 1953. The Great Depression and most of the horrors of World War II are behind us, and you’re ready to build wealth. Your home cost $7,000, and you’re diligently paying off your $50/month mortgage and, I don’t know, attending sock hops regularly? The 401(k) won’t […]


The first documented mention of the term “starter home” was nearly a century ago in 1926, which described it as “for the man and wife who wants [sic] a home with comfort, but small expense.” What do you think, man or wife? Interested in a little comfort with a small expense? Can I interest you […]

I know what you’re thinking: Madam, you’d better not tell me I’ve been wasting away hours of my life reading and consuming your opinions for you to tell me that it was all bollocks. (Yes, in this hypothetical, you’re British.) But if you exist in the physical realm, you’ve probably noticed something: We don’t live […]

Let me ask you a question: Do you consider yourself wealthy? Whether you do or you don’t, what’s your justification for your answer? If I had to guess, it has something to do with comparison to people in a similar situation to you, as opposed to any hard-and-fast numbers: If you look around at your […]