Rich Girl Roundup: The Bachelorette Industrial Complex is Ruining My Life

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Bachelorette parties have morphed into weekend-long celebrations, potentially costing upwards of several thousands dollars a pop. And when you’re in your 20s and 30s, you might find yourself heading to multiple bachelorettes and weddings a year—so what’s an aspiring #RichGirl to do? And how did it culturally become A Thing?

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Katie:

Welcome back, rich girls and boys to the Rich Girl Roundup weekly discussion of The Money with Katie Show. As always, I’m your host, Katie Gatti Tassin, and every Monday morning my executive producer Henah and I use this segment to talk through listener questions, interesting money stories in the news, and more casual financial topics. Here’s a quick message from our sponsors before we get into it.

This week’s upcoming main episode is about private equity, what it is, who’s in the PE industry, and if it’s actually responsible for what’s going on with the hashtag economy today, because we love scathing hot takes. Right? Okay. Onto the roundup. Henah. How are we doing today?

Henah:

Good. We’re talking about the Bachelorette and Wedding Industrial Complex.

Katie:

Oh, my favorite.

Henah:

Your favorite topic. This week’s question is something that we get asked every time we put out a call for questions, and so we’ve touched on Katie’s frustrations with bachelorette parties before. I’m sure we’re going to hear more today. We’ve covered the exorbitant price of weddings, but we also wanted to talk about the overall cost of being eight guests at weddings and cultural nuances and a new business model that we’ve seen pop up. That might mean that you are paying for the wedding. So is there anywhere you want to start, Katie?

Katie:

Well, deep sigh. I guess I should make my disclaimer that I always feel like this crotchety hater when I talk about this topic. I feel like everyone that hears me say this stuff is like, oh, well, guess who doesn’t have any friends? Someone sounds bitter, but I really wish that I could loosen up and just be like, oh my God, it’s so fun. Just let people live. But I have been on the receiving end of way too many emails from readers and listeners who are literally panicking. I’m 25, all my friends are getting married, all of them expect me to travel to Miami or Austin or Nashville for their bachelorette party and pay my own way. I literally cannot afford this. What do I do?

And then because you just spent the last however many years of your life spending $800 a pop on penis straws and those little self-pedaled drinking wagons through Nashville, you then enforce the same expectations on your friends when it’s your turn because you’re like, well, I did it for all of you, so maybe we should call this episode, “Hurt people hurt people.” But it just strikes me as an entirely unsustainable, we cannot keep this bachelorette arms race going. It is just—we can’t do it.

Henah:

It’s true. I agree. I was talking to a friend yesterday who their bachelorette was, it was between two nights in New York or a week in Croatia, and I was I’m I am not seeing the, I’m sorry, I…

Katie:

Croatia. Are we the fucking Roys?

Henah:

You want to hear the kicker? The wedding is also not in the country.

Katie:

Oh my God.

Henah:

Yeah. The wedding is not in the country. So I take your Miami and Nashville pedaling wagon and I raise you a Croatia week.

Katie:

Eastern Europe. Oh my God. Is Croatia in eastern Europe? Is that wrong?

Henah:

Yes. No, it’s in Eastern Europe.

Katie:

Thank God. Okay. Thomas has me playing this new game called Global because my geography is so pathetic.

Henah:

Didn’t you think Spain was in South America?

Katie:

Until I was 13. That private school education really whipped my ass into shape, let me tell you.

Henah:

Okay. Well, me and Thomas can team up on this game because clearly, yeah, Croatia is to the right of Italy. Great country driven through it, driven through it.

Katie:

Okay, so all right, we’ll get the bus train back on the tracks here on…

Henah:

The Nashville tracks. Okay. Yes, I hear you. What I’ve tried to do at this point is be like, I can’t make that weekend or I don’t know everybody else in this group well enough to join, but what if I take you out together and we do something special together on this side? And I feel like that’s, that’s a nice way of being like, I’m not shelling out $600, but I will do something for you.

Katie:

That’s really sweet. I think the other side of this is important to highlight too, which is that this is probably a pretty temporary phase of life and it feels really intense when you’re in it because you’re probably getting invited to a lot of weddings in, I don’t know, a 36 or 48 month span of time, and you’re probably not earning very much when that’s happening, so it feels really compacted and compressed, but because it is temporary, there is an argument to be made that it’s worth making the maybe less financially ideal decision because the memories are going to be really valuable later in life and you’re not always going to have the opportunity to do these types of things.

Henah:

We call them what, memory dividends, right? I love, I’ve never regretted spending money on travel or going to join a friend for something, but it’s like are you in a position where it’s not going to horribly harm you? Then great. I think you should go for it when you’re interested and you’re excited; it’s something that brings you joy and you think that it’s worthwhile. But if you’re in a position where you’re going to potentially have some money issues and you’re just feeling FOMO, that’s when I would revisit, is it worth going?

Katie:

I will say that maybe the line I would draw is that if you’re going into debt in order to finance this type of stuff, that is probably where I’d say, ehhh. I don’t think if it’s something where your cashflow can cover it and to your point you’re in, you’re fine. You’re maybe just going to save a little bit less for a month or two in order to swing it and you would like to go.

I mean, you’re only in your late twenties once or your early thirties, what have you, and so if there is an opportunity to do something that you’re really interested in and you’re not feeling resentful of it, I think the key here actually is the resentment. Are you feeling resentful of the invitation when you are being asked to do these things? Are you excited? And it’s like, oh my gosh, yes, I can’t wait. This is going to be amazing. Or is it like, ugh, how am I going to pay for this? Those feelings are assigned to me that it’s probably not worth spending the money and going.

Henah:

Yeah, agreed. I think you make that joke with me a lot where you’re like, another trip Henah, and I’m like, there’s only so long that I can do these trips before I have to reallocate those funds to something else, so I’m going to do it. And it’s like I can get by on doing that right now.

Katie:

I will say that as a personal finance writer, it is a very…

Henah:

Oh, expert, you mean?

Katie:

Oh, expert. No, as a personal, we’ll say, let’s tone it down a little…as someone who thinks about money a lot, I will say that this predominant narrative that is playing out in the zeitgeist right now. For example, I just did a radio show last night that was live that had people calling in—every single person that called in, the cost of living is so high, it’s just so hard to make ends meet because the cost of living is so high, which is true. And so we have this cost of living crisis playing out in much of the country, young people saying, I can’t afford anything. I am struggling to survive. I can’t even save for my future. And at the same time, that being the backdrop against which the My Super Sweet 16 arms race is playing out is just so dissonant for me that I’m like, talk about read the room. That’s where I think about these things. As the bachelorette party morphing into the bachelorette vacation, we are now talking about a fundamentally different thing and going on multiple destination trips every single year that are themed that have wardrobe requirements. That is a solidly upper class experience, that is rich people shit. And if you’re a rich person and your friends are rich and you want to do rich people shit together, by all means, but most 27 year olds are not rich, and this is not really a realistic or reasonable expectation.

Henah:

I feel like it started with those custom boxes that you’d get to ask your bridesmaids, you know what I’m talking about? And then it morphed into the here’s our three day itinerary that we got printed and yeah, it’s fun, but is it $2,000 or $3,000 of fun? There’s the FOMO that’s like if I don’t go one, it looks bad, and two, I’m going to miss out on all the inside jokes and the experience and the blah, blah, blah.

Katie:

Totally. Well, you also brought up group dynamics

Because you said, am I going to spend the money and take a week of PTO to go to Croatia with people? I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know, but it’s not on the top of my list. It’s just it wouldn’t be, and I think that there is a difference here.

So I already just know someone has Gmail pulled up on their phone right now and is like, listen, but my bachelorette party was, I’m sure it was. Here’s the thing. Is this a group of best friends who are all BFFs with one another too? To me, asking that group of people to spend the money to do something big together is different than if you’re the type of person where all the people you’re inviting are just individuals that you are close with who may not actually know one another, which for the record is how my friend group is. I have individual friends. I don’t have a friend group.

Same, and so I would think that if you’re just taking all the people in your life that matter to you and pushing them together like dolls and going “now kith” and we’re going to go to Cancun for a week together and you need to pay for it. In my mind, that’s less reasonable to ask people to spend thousands of dollars on that.

Henah:

I feel so bad because my friends would always make fun of my laugh for sounding like a car that won’t star, and now I literally cannot stop laughing. This microphone picks up everything. Now kith.

Katie:

Now kith. It’s so true though.

Henah:

No, it’s true.

Katie:

Again, I want to make this clear. I am not attacking individual people who are now in a situation in their friend group where this is the dynamic and are sitting there feeling attacked. The chances are this is a cultural thing in your friend group that has now become capital A, capital T, A Thing. That’s fine, but I want to say this, for the people that are on the receiving end of these invitations who are like, I just upped my 401(k) contribution. I can’t go to Maui or if I can go to Maui, if I do have a week of PTO and money to go to Maui, I want to do it with my boyfriend or my group of friends, not for this person’s bachelorette party, and now I feel awkward and a bad friend because I don’t want to prioritize this as the first thing.

I understand wanting to have a cohesive gathering. I think if we’re pulling out color swatches for wardrobes, we may have gone too far for a casual, a midday tea.

Henah:

I did have to go to a midday tea bridal shower, but we all had to buy a hat like those the big hats. You know what I’m talking about?

Katie:

Oh my gosh, yeah. Maybe I really am just so out of it. I find all of this stuff so out there,

Henah:

I think some of it can be fun. I love a good theme, but I don’t feel like everything needs to be $500.

Katie:

If you’re a rich person who wants to do rich people shit with your friends, that is your prerogative,

Henah:

But they also have to be rich.

Katie:

And I think that is the shortcoming. I did see this Reddit post that I thought was interesting on the Reddit Unpopular Opinion. It says, “Bachelorette parties are getting out of hand, and this was a year ago, so if we are exponentially getting more absurd every season says that is the expectation of the bride for me to take several days off, pay thousands of dollars to fly somewhere and stay in a nice Airbnb, go out to eat most of the weekend. They started as just one night, then slowly morphed into entire weekends, and this morning I was asked to join a bachelorette party that slated for Wednesday to Sunday. My PTO is sacred. I don’t want to spend it all to hang out with a group of people I’ve mostly never met. Cut this shit out. It is ridiculous.” She goes, “I’m fine with bachelorette parties. I just believe there’s a way to have them without asking your friends to spend thousands of dollars on you. At the very least, be mindful of people’s budgets and they certainly should not last more than three days.”

Henah:

Okay, I agree on the three day thing because as an introvert, the last thing I want to do is spend 5, 6, 7 days with 12 girls I don’t know.

Katie:

For real. Let’s see if there’s any good comments. This person says, “I actually just feel this way about destination weddings more so than bachelor, bachelorette parties a weekend vacay with…”

Henah:

What a segue.

Katie:

Yeah. “A weekend vacay with the girlies is one thing, but expecting all your family and friends to drop everything and fly to Jamaica or wherever to watch an hour long ceremony is insane rich person behavior.”

Henah:

Yeah. Okay. I want to talk about this. I want to discuss this. This is crazy to me, and I say this as someone who also had a non-local wedding, so same if there’s the hypocrisy here, tell me, but I’ve been hearing about this.

Katie:

It’s like the headline, two area women who both had destination weddings talk shit about destination weddings on podcast. Please continue.

Henah:

Our listenership is going to go down the tube here. Okay. I’m hearing about this new business model where you subsidize the cost of your friend’s weddings. So let’s say that you and Thomas are getting married and you don’t have—again—and you don’t have a super big budget. So what I’m seeing is that you and Thomas book a quote, “destination wedding” at a hotel in Cancun or Jamaica or the like, and the hotel will offer a minimum for guests of a hundred rooms. For example, let’s say.

Katie:

Are we talking sandals?

Henah:

Maybe, partially, yes. $400 a night minimum for three minimum nights, so I don’t know, $120,000.

So if you fill all of those rooms, then you as the couple, the bride and groom get three to four days of free events with food and beverage, so you don’t have to pay anything. So it’s all on your guests to pay their share, share to make, to make your wedding free. And okay, I googled this to be like, is this a real thing or is it just something that’s happening in my sphere of people? But no, if you Google it, you can find a lot of articles that are like X resorts that offer free destination wedding packages and you basically just have to fill a minimum block of rooms. But my friends, they have to go for four night minimum at $680 a night, and if you add in a child, your room can only fit four people. So let’s say it’s like you and two kids and then you have a third kid. The third kid has to be put in another room and you have to pay an additional fee for them. So I’m like, what?

Katie:

I would feel so icky about that.

Henah:

That’s what I thought.

Katie:

Especially if you’re not being upfront about it, that feels like this takes it to another level. If I’m spending $50k to throw a party and asking you to spend $500 to come, that to me is, okay, if you want to spend the money to come, you’re also going to attend a party that I’m spending a lot of money on. It feels like a different thing entirely when your presence is what’s paying for the event,

Henah:

Right? That’s what’s subsidizing your event. So there are three parts of the problem to me. One is that you as the guest are paying more to go than you would’ve if you just booked it on your own so that they can effectively pay less. Why wouldn’t they try to get you a hotel room block discount? That’s what usually happens. I think that’s what we did for our wedding. Two, you’re still expected to give a gift on top of going, and then three, are you saying the quiet part out loud that are you being transparent that they’re now subsidizing your wedding?

Katie:

Okay. I’m trying to give people the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you’re not asking for gifts and you’re looking at it as a more cost-effective way for everybody. You come, you’re going to pay slightly more than you would’ve just come anyway, but rather than sending me a gift, your presence is what’s going to make this event able to happen and you’re not expected to give me a, okay, well, alright. Maybe it’s kind of the same thing. If you were going to give them a gift that was expensive anyway, but to me it kind is the same vibe of like, Hey, do you want to come over for dinner tonight? Can you order a pickup and bring the food over?

Henah:

Can you come over and I’ll Venmo you the $5 for pizza? No, that’s exactly what I’m saying.

If someone wants to come, that’s great, but then mandating what the minimum nights are mandating, this is the hard number and there’s no discount, we actually are paying more. That’s where I’m like, this feels really icky. Maybe not give a gift, but you’re still mandated to spend what, $2,500 for hotel rooms, not to mention the flights to get there…

Katie:

Yeah. There’s even a socioeconomic thing that brings up for me just as a curiosity, which is that typically families and friend groups are operating, I don’t want to overgeneralize, but typically you tend to be friends with and your family tends to be people that are somewhat in the same socioeconomic stratum as you are.

There’s a bit of a mismatch there for me of so your friends and family are wealthy enough to drop $2,500 on attending your wedding, but you are not in a position to pay to host the wedding. That mismatch or imbalance to me is a little strange because I would think that if it’s no big for everyone coming to your wedding to pay that much money to be there, and people can swing that no problem, and it’s a totally reasonable request of them. My assumption is that you’re also probably in a position where you have the money to afford to throw the wedding. Again, probably an overgeneralization, but it does tend to be socioeconomically, people in families and friend groups tend to kind of be on similar footing.

Henah:

No, I agree. But I do think that there’s maybe a cultural nuance and expectation, at least in my community of South Asian weddings because there are more events, there are more days that you need to do those events, and so it ends up being a higher cost. So that’s something that I’m also like maybe there’s some wiggle room there.

Katie:

Yeah, no, I’m sure. I think that the cultural piece of it is really interesting. If you ever seen that tweet that’s like the four wedding themes are Mumford and Sons, Money, Beach Vacation, and Gender.

Henah:

I’ll take a Mumford and Sons.

Katie:

I’m, where was mine? I think my wedding theme was outside. Basically it’s like…

Henah:

Indie, yeah.

Katie:

Boho, rustic. The bride is wearing a hat, she’s a hat girl. Or the theme is Money aka It’s flexing. It’s like, look how rich we are. I’ve been to a couple of those weddings where it was literally hosted in a building that was also a Bentley dealership. The wedding, that wedding theme was Money. It’s Beach Vacation, self-explanatory.

Henah:

Gotcha. Okay.

Katie:

Seashell paraphernalia abound, and then Gender, which I think what they’re trying to get at there is really playing up the hyper femininity, cupcake dress type vibe is what I’m getting.

Henah:

Oh, okay.

Katie:

I don’t know. That one’s the least clear to me. I’ll say that one is the least clear. Mumford and Sons, I’m like, you’re painting me a picture with one simple reference. I can picture the entire event.

Henah:

I’m going to say that you are closer to Money only because you talked about tax cuts in your vows and that…

Katie:

Interesting. That’s true.

Henah:

That screams financially savvy to me.

Katie:

Oh, well, thank you.

Henah:

So I’m part of a couple Facebook groups from when I was wedding planning back in the day, and I just didn’t leave, and I still see so many posts. This is particularly for South Asian weddings that are…

Katie:

Amazing.

Henah:

[They say], “I’m looking for a budget friendly wedding under $120,000,” and I’m like, huh? Budget friendly and $120,000 do not belong in the same sentence.

Katie:

Come again? Unless we’re talking about a starter home.

Henah:

Oh, correct. Then I’m signed up, but it feels a little read the room to me again. But I think part of this is, I don’t want to generalize across the whole culture, but at least in my culture or in my family’s environment, I feel like this is the cultural expectation that it has to be a big splash and that it’s further reinforced by norms of one upping each other to be like, oh, you had this kind of garba. We’re going to do this kind of garba, or you had this band. We’re going to have the band and the singer.

Henah:

I’m sure it’s across all cultures, but this..

Katie:

Okay, well, I was going to say white people weddings do this too. I went and had one year of weddings where one couple had a surprise dance troupe and we were all like, oh, this is sick. This is so cool. Surprise dance troupe. And then six months later we went to a different wedding where they had two surprise dance troupes.

Henah:

Oh, did they know each other?

Katie:

Yes. Yes. The first surprise dance troupe came out. We were like amazing. Another surprise dance troupe. And then the second one came out later in the thing and we were—

Henah:

Like, was this also like 2016? Why are so many dance troop?

Katie:

I mean, I’m not talking like Jabbawockeez. There weren’t masks involved, but when the second one came out, I was like, okay, well now I see what you’re doing here. This is clearly…

Henah:

They weren’t Indian, right? They weren’t South Asian? Okay. Those are very common to have multiple dance groups from your family, both sides.

Katie:

Oh, see, that’s very cool. No, I’ve never been to an Indian wedding before.

Henah:

Okay, I see the subtext here. I’ll get married again.

Katie:

Read the room.

Henah:

I feel like when you’re saying $120,000…

Katie:

That one as just so obvious that I was like, you’re kidding. I felt like I was on an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. When the second troop came out, I was like, no way. No fucking way. This is amazing.

Henah:

I’m sorry. It reminded me of when that was on TV on the Sopranos and Junior was like, it’s me. It’s me on the tv as Larry David. Okay. Do you have anything you want to add there?

Katie:

I don’t. I am so scared for this episode to come out. I’m honestly terrified. Same. So maybe tell me a money story now.

Henah:

I’m going to tell you a money story. This is also a doozy. Someone put this on our Instagram when we asked for stories and then I emailed them to follow up. I was like, tell me more. And they said, “My dad has been investing in a company that’s going to hit it big in six months. He started saying that when I was in high school, and I am now 36 any day now, but really send help because we think it might be a Ponzi scheme.”

So I said, all right, well, I want to hear the details first. She starts off this email actually with, “Strap in kiddos. Around my 16th birthday, my dad gifted me stock warrants for a company he’d started investing in. He explained that I needed to keep the warrants in a safe place because in about six months this company was going to hit it big and I needed to be able to turn in the warrants to buy stocks of the company, which I’d then turn around and sell for capital B, capital P, Big Profits. Dad thinks, dad thinks the software this company is developing is revolutionary.”

Katie:

Sorry. That’s so good. Capital B, capital P, Big Profit.

Henah:

The way they type is so funny. There’s so many of these. Okay. “Dad thinks that the software this company is developing is revolutionary and will be something that multiple huge industries will want. It consolidates databases or something he expects when they go public. The stock price will fund not only his retirement, but his dream car, vacations, et cetera, who went on to explain that I’d likely need to take out a loan to buy the stocks, but would be able to pay it back right away with the profits I made from selling said stocks, I nodded and immediately forgot all about it. When I was in my twenties, I started getting really focused with money and saved up a ton of cash to buy a car all by myself. When I was about a thousand dollars away from hitting my savings goal, my dad suggested I take my savings and invest in this company in exchange for even more warrants because they were about to hit it big and within six to eight months I could buy myself an even nicer car. So by this point, my whole family is growing weary of this rhetoric, and I ignored his suggestion and M and my new car enjoyed many years together through my early professional years.”

Start a new paragraph. “Jesus, take the wheel. I’m 36 years old now. I am 36 years old now, and I just received a FedEx envelope with new warrants that replaced the old ones that I’ve now expired, see above where I am now 36, and this has been going on for 20 years. Each time I hear about this company, they’re about to hit it big in six months. And side note, if this is how time is measured in the investment world, I would like to transfer that model to dog years. My pup can live forever. Thank you very much. Anyway, I now work in cybersecurity at Southwest (heyo), and I’m planning to ask some engineers to review this company’s website to see what the F this company actually does, because my brother and I both worry that this is a Ponzi scheme because of how long it’s taken for this company to make any moves despite the optimistic timelines that have been shared.”

“My dad has been forking money over regularly to the founder of the company all these years and has provided updates about meetings that they’re talking with major buyers via phone calls from the founder. They chitchat often, but as far as I know, dad has never been invited to join one of these calls, visit the company’s headquarters, or seen any other real proof. At this point, my parents are into their seventies and I worry that they’ll be long gone by the time this company hits it big. Because of this ridiculousness, my brother and I are convinced that this company is not real and dad has wasted all of his money. My dad is a great guy, but he’s been chasing money forever. He’s a real estate developer and he thrives in the chaos of living on commission and other investments. So there you have it at first. My dad’s been taken for a fool this whole time, but hey, if it ends up being real, we will all end up in mega yachts in the next six months and I’ll happily eat my words and correct the record.”

Katie:

Oh boy. So if I’m understanding, this is the same company the entire time. I think at first I thought it was different. It was the same story over and over with a different company.

Henah:

No, same one.

Katie:

Oh goodness. So this has been going on for 20 years.

Henah:

And I got the name and I looked it up and it does look pretty sketchy, so really I’m hoping that they get some answers. Yeah, it’s very vague. The website is very vague with one landing page kind of thing. No real details.

Katie:

That was a story we’re in the beginning I was like, ha ha. And by the end I was wincing, because I know the way that she set it up was so humorous and so I mean, who doesn’t have a relative like that that is convinced that they’re always on the precipice of their big break or they just found the next hit stock or they’re always, oh, I just got this amazing opportunity too good to be true, get rich quick scheme type stuff. Who doesn’t have a relative that talks like that? I do, and it’s really sad to me though because it sounds like actually her dad has been the victim of fraud.

Maybe I’m being cynical, but I do tend to agree with her that it sounds like he’s kind of been taken for a ride. I don’t get the impression that this is just a well-meaning truly just a business that’s been working really hard and he’s actually just giving the best updates he has. It sounds like he’s being lied to and his money is being stolen from him, which is really sad.

Henah:

I think the laughter on my end comes from the way that they wrote the email, but I agree with you that I think—

Katie:

For sure, hashtag big profits.

Henah:

But I just think that after 20 years you would have something more concrete. You would have some new product or some new service that you could share something about. So to not have anything and vague idea of what they’re doing. What did she say? Consolidates databases or something. I don’t know. Don’t you get investor reports?

Katie:

Yeah. I mean in a company, you should. Yeah, and I think that her note about thriving on chaos, I kind of clocked that too. The thing that is psychologically interesting to me about people who get swept up and get rich quick schemes is that it tends to happen over and over again over a long period of time. In this instance, it’s the same get rich quick scheme that has lasted 20 years, but it feels like a financial literacy helps that quite a bit.

I think there is a level of healthy skepticism that you gain when you become really financially literate or financially fluent that there’s no such thing as an investment that’s going to definitely guarantee crazy high returns, aka like Bernie Madoff situation, and he fooled really high level, powerful, rich people. So it’s not like, oh, only dumb people fall for this. It’s not that at all, but I do think financial literacy is useful as a barrier to this type of situation, but also if you’re constantly chasing get rich quick schemes and trying to take shortcuts, the time is passing anyway, and you are going to take just as long finding a successful get rich quick scheme that goes really fast is if you were just passively investing in the stock market and minding your own business and not putting the effort in. But I do think that there’s an interesting piece here of, I saw something the other day that was about why young people are more apt to get swept up in crypto and alt coins and all these kind of get rich quick things, and they basically just made the point that young people feel hopeless about the future. They feel like they have nothing to lose.

So it’s like, well, doing it the straight and narrow way isn’t going to work for me. I got to hit a home run. What do I have to lose? I’m just going to yolo all my money into this random thing I’ve never heard of because I have a better shot at that going to the moon than the status quo working for me. And I think that there is a little bit of that energy in situations often where maybe for this person, it sounds like they’re a real estate developer, maybe they really just do the chase. And so that’s not what this is.

But I think that you do kind of see that in these types of situations where someone is probably not in the best position, they’re probably feeling hopeless, they probably don’t have many prospects or might not realize that the straight and narrow way is accessible to them or could be. And so it’s like, well, what do I have to lose? I’m just going to shoot for the moon.

Henah:

Well, I think part of this too is, I mean, again, I don’t want to generalize, but I think men also have a hard time in a macho culture like the pride of being wrong. So they kind of keep up the shtick that it’s going to happen. You just commit to the bit so hard that you’re now in this position.

Katie:

The bit becomes your life. Schrodinger’s investment where you’re like, well, if I don’t admit failure, there’s still a chance it’ll work.

Henah:

Or even just that I can’t admit failure, it will make me look stupid. So instead I will double down.

Katie:

This is what, sunk cost. Yeah, you’ve already sunk so many years in time and money into this that you can’t turn back now.

Henah:

And the pride of it all, especially I think is a man, especially because men are supposed to be good with money. So when you’re not, it’s like…

Katie:

Womp womp. I’m going to call it for today. That is all for this Rich Girl Roundup. We’ll see you on Wednesday, and if you hate me now because of my takes about bachelorette parties, please email me one-on-one, and we’ll talk about it. Alright. That is all.