The Cognitive Dissonance of Getting Rich & Imagining a Better “American Dream”

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I recently wrote an article reflecting on the fact that an awareness of the systems you exist within can empower you to make even savvier individual decisions for yourself. But sometimes, when you’re carving out a safe, secure, full life under capitalism, the thing that’s better for you makes things worse for others. So it leads me to this question: How do we have a good relationship with money in an uncertain world, and how do we stay true to our ethical code while taking care of ourselves and our futures?

I wanted to invite two people I admire—feminist writer Caroline Burke and author, artist, and bookkeeper Paco de Leon—to talk about it more. 

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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

• Caro Burke’s TikTok on systems thinking

• The Money with Katie Show episode on the Hot Girl Hamster Wheel

• Dana Miranda’s Healthy Rich

• The Age of Acquiescence by Steve Fraser

• The Nordic Theory of Everything by Anu Partanen

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Paco:

I do think that to exist in modern society is to navigate constantly compromising what it means to be a good person. And I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I think that there’s an inherent tension in the idea of being good, and I think that’s where this whole frustration comes along, because if you’re a good person, then you wouldn’t maybe invest your money because investing is inherently exploitative. Or if you’re a good person, then you won’t invest your money. Because to invest your money means that you are basically accepting that runaway capitalism wins and that we need to have as many coins and screw Mother Earth. You can still be a good person and you can still invest. And I think understanding and really internalizing that those two things, right, the duality, those two things can be true at the same time. I think that’s the bigger challenge. The message that I would like for people to hear is that please, as you build wealth, please resist the desire to become corrupted.

Katie:

Welcome back to the Money with Katie Show, Rich People. I’m your host, Katie Gatti Tassin, and today’s episode is going to be a little more wide ranging and fluid than this show typically is.

So as a bit of a peek behind the production curtain, normally I research and I write the entirety of what you hear on this show with the exception of what our guests say in their interviews. I usually have a conclusion that I want you to take away from the very beginning of production. I like to plan from top to bottom exactly how a final cut is going to turn out because I’m a control freak. I don’t know, but today I am making a different stylistic choice that I think is a little bit more befitting of our topic, which is cognitive dissonance between the personal and the political in wealth accumulation and whether or not you’re thinking about the systems you exist within, particularly in your pursuit of the American dream.

And the reason that a more wide-ranging free flowing conversation feels necessary is because at my core, I am still trying to figure out how I feel about this. I will be the first person to Paul Revere the f*** out of your digital feeds once I have my grand unifying theory to share. But in the meantime, there were two individuals who I wanted to talk to about how they relate to this idea.

To put a finer point on it, when you have a vision for the world you want to live in and perhaps you have the political views to match, how do you reconcile the actions that you must take in the world you currently live in, particularly if your participation in taking those actions might actually further entrench the status quo.

Bernie Sanders comes to mind as a popular recipient of criticisms that use this line of logic. Bernie is an openly democratic socialist American politician, which for most of American history was about as popular as declaring that you hated puppies and apple pie.

But Bernie also happens at the age of 83 to have a net worth of about $3 million. Now this is a huge point of contention for his critics, and you’ll often hear people call him a hypocrite like, oh, how can you be a socialist? How can you believe in socialism you’re a millionaire? Setting aside the fact that if you are a 30 something listening to this right now and you have a $100,000 invested, you too are going to end up with $3 million by the time you’re 83 because of compounding.

But okay, here’s why this argument, which basically boils down to, so why not give away most of his assets live in government sponsored housing and live off snap benefits If you hate wealth so much, which is a verbatim quote that I read on a subreddit that was shit-talking Bernie, is precisely because he doesn’t yet live in a world where what he is advocating for is feasible. That’s what he’s fighting for.

I know enough to see why this logic is flawed. It’s like saying, oh, you think there should be a safety net under this tightrope? Well then why don’t you unclip your harness and jump off of it because that doesn’t magically make it safety net appear.

You get the picture right. That is obviously a politically charged example that I’m sure is going to earn me some choice emails. But these types of trade-offs areas in our financial lives where our beliefs run headlong into our incentives are everywhere in personal finance.

I invited my friend and writer Caroline Burke, known as Caro Claire Burke on TikTok to join me for a conversation about how she thinks about system-wide issues that might cause us to act out of accordance with our own values and preferences because she is a shrewd and articulate observer of these dynamics. So we’re going to talk to her first, then we’ll hear from Paco de Leon, author of Finance for the People people and owner of a bookkeeping agency called the Hell Yeah Group for creative entrepreneurs whose stated goals are to grapple directly with these paradoxes in her work right after a quick break.

Caro.

Caro:

Katie, thank you so much for having me. It’s such a pleasure. I am a longtime listener, first time caller, so I’m so happy to be here.

Katie:

What is your interpretation of how we know each other?

Caro:

So my memory of events is that I was working and actually doing podcast editing work for a women’s financial company, and I found you almost as a competitive audit. And I remember that at the time you had maybe 1500 followers and you were in the phase where you were doing a lot of your whiteboarding where it was like Charlie in It’s Always Sunny connecting all the threads. And I was like, this girl’s going to do something special. And I was such a fan. And then fast forward two years, I started doing more cultural commentary online and people were tagging me in your reel and I was like, oh my God, she’s going to go into the inbox and see all of the times that I have messaged her about her stuff and you were very graceful about it and then we were off to the races.

Katie:

That’s so funny. One of the things that jumped out at me, because I think anyone that’s listened to this show or maybe consumed my work for a long time has probably noticed that it has shifted from whiteboard brass tacks. The infamous whiteboard is behind me as we speak, but just getting into the numbers and the granular strategies of it all to more of a cultural commentary or maybe those things with cultural commentary layered on because I have just personally found those things to be more intriguing as I’ve learned more and as money became my full-time job and I had more time to go deeper. And so what jumped out at me when I was doing my little deep dive on your TikTok account was something you had posted about systems thinking and you were responding to a comment or will play the clip.

Caro clip:

What is the point of understanding systems? Does that mean that you have a victim mindset if you start to believe that not everything is in your control and is there a way to engage with systems and understand that certain things are out of your control while also having a certain type of autonomy? So I’ll say this first and foremost, the greatest victory of late stage capitalist third wave feminist rhetoric is the idea that we have weaponized the word victim, which I assume people means that being aware of systems means that all people are suddenly going to say, I’m not going to do anything because I’m aware of systems now and I’m a victim. That’s not the point of systems thinking and I would argue much more likely to feel victimized I think. And you are much more likely to exist in a sort of victimized mindset of feeling kind of useless if you don’t realize that all these systems are taking place around you if you try for a few years to overcome certain really difficult obstacles and it doesn’t work and you don’t understand why and you think that that’s solely your fault. In my personal life, I have felt much more self-agency and much more autonomy when I have been aware of the systems that exist around me. I would also add that the only way that you can start to navigate this world with any real level of success is if you are aware of the systems. If you are aware of the maze, then you start to learn how to walk through it. If you can’t see the bushes of the maze and you just keep banging up against them, you’re never going to get out.

Katie:

You were responding to a commenter about seeing that individual agency within a collective movement is crucial to systemic change. How do you find a solution without making it a personal issue? And I was so excited when I saw that you were going to tackle this because for me, this is a huge, maybe the biggest unifying question that haunts me as a creator of individual solutions content. And I would love to have a conversation with you about your perspective, both what you shared in the video and just if you can elaborate even more.

Caro:

Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been thinking about these topics kind of along in parallel as you have, and I think that something that I have been paying attention to, particularly through my conversation about trad wives is that it’s really hard to get people to talk about the really unsexy topics that are the most important ones. So the ideas of how systems work, how they impact us, how they can impact where you view yourself as having decisions and where you don’t view yourself as having decisions, let alone where you choose to exert your autonomy of what decisions you want to focus on, where you want to put your time and energy. And what I noticed through the tradwife conversation is that people are much more comfortable having those conversations through pop culture topics. And so that is something that I’ve tried to do more often. And so I tried to use examples in that conversation of we talk all the time when we’re talking about trad wives, about how it’s so easy to make a home cooked meal.

We bring it down to that topic of are you jealous that this woman is making a home cooked meal and you’re not? And that is an example of an individual level conversation of you can make all these choices. You have everything in your power to cook for your family. If you don’t, that’s your problem. Don’t be jealous of someone who is showing it and sharing it online. And I think that what’s so important about these systems level conversations is that that’s not even close to the truth and that it kneecaps us in terms of having the conversations that we want to have. And in terms of empowering people to know when they can make decisions. So for example, if a woman is living in a food desert in the middle of the country and she isn’t allowed to take sick days and she gets off at 6:00 PM every night, she actually doesn’t necessarily have the same tools that another woman has in order to make that home cooked meal at night.

And so I think that when you become aware of these systems, then you get to start deciding when you’re going to exert your energy, your agency, your financial capital towards the outcome that will most serve you. So maybe you say, okay, you know what? It’s actually going to bend me over backwards to cook a meal five times a week. And the thing that would be better for my family would be to take care of my mental health. And so instead, we are going to eat three mediumly healthy meals a week and I’m going to put effort in and my husband’s going to put effort in or whatever for two meals a week, and I’m going to understand the exchange that I am making here and I’m going to be okay with it and it’s going to help me sleep at night. So I think that that’s an example of using both individual level and systems level to be able to basically game the system in the best way for you.

Katie:

Yeah, it was something that at the time, your explanation of how actually an awareness of systems level issues and taking your purview up a level beyond what you are capable of just in your individual day-to-day life actually empowers you more and enables your choices more than it inhibits them. I think there was something that you said about, oh, you’re enabling a victim mentality. And I think that that’s kind of where these conversations often devolve to, I would say in bad faith, really it’s not when we’re trying to talk about them in an open-minded way, but like, oh, if you acknowledge that these shortcomings are real, or you acknowledge that the woman in the food desert in the middle of the country who can’t take sick days and gets off at 6:00 PM if you acknowledge where she is actually disadvantaged, you are basically counting her out or saying that she doesn’t have that individual agency.

And so I thought that that acknowledgement of no, actually this awareness is going to empower you to make better choices and to understand where you are maybe swimming upstream, I thought that was really powerful.

The example that came to mind for me just because of what I was researching and reading about at the time was this group of tenants in, I want to say it was Minneapolis who basically had this landlord who was taking advantage of the fact that some of them were undocumented. And so he was price gouging, he was raising rent pretty aggressively every year. He wasn’t making improvements to the building. There were a lot of issues that had been documented over time like pest infestations and leaks and things that were just, he was negligent in getting around to fixing them. But because the people in the building, any one individual was actually quite poor, they didn’t really have much money, more than 50% of their income was going to rent. They didn’t really have any leverage to push back.

And so typically in the personal finance space, we would look at a situation where maybe someone isn’t making very much money and we would say, well, you need to go find a way to make more money or you need to move somewhere cheaper. We often focus very surgically on this little lane of maneuverability that the individual has rather than taking the wider view and going, oh, well, if I actually have an awareness of how the power dynamic that I am in as an individual versus this landlord that owns this building functions and an awareness that actually the other people in this building are kind of in the same boat now I can make broader choices that involve getting other people involved and I can actually be empowered to take collective action. And in this specific example, these tenants basically banded together and they went on a rent strike and they said, none of us are going to pay you rent.

It kind of emphasizes that if you are really only narrowly looking at your financial situation as what you can control in your own life, you are definitionally limiting the impact that you are able to have. So because one person versus the landlord is, well, we know who’s going to win in that standoff, but when the entire building isn’t paying rent, now that’s the landlord’s problem. That’s no longer the tenant’s problem. And it worked.

They brought a lawsuit about the negligence and they want to settlement that enabled them to buy their building from him, and now they cooperatively own it. It’s communally owned between them and they no longer are affected by price gouging or rent increases. So it’s in my mind, I love those stories that kind of show the victories of the creative solution and what can happen when people think bigger than just their own what’s going on under their own roof.

Caro:

And just to add to that, I mean first of all, that’s such a utopia and I remember when that story came out and it’s such an amazing story, but to add to that, I think something that I think about all the time is how profitable it is for people to encourage anyone to exist within the victim mindset. There is a reason why so many influencers who sell supplements or who sell fitness routines use that because it really taps into this idea that if you just get this one thing, you’ll feel better. And this idea of really existing in a constantly reactive position, which makes you very vulnerable, and I think that by contrast, when you’re looking a little bit in a more aerial view, it really takes a lot of the guilt and the shame out of it because you’re aware of what is and isn’t out of your control.

And it’s amazing how my relationship to shopping has changed, my relationship to skincare has changed because all of a sudden I’m thinking about all these things through certain systems and I think that people can often end up viewing this as like, oh, you’re the guy with a tinfoil hat on your head, and it’s like I think that that’s a very American mindset that we have right now for understandable reasons, but I think just really viewing everything as a series of forces that are morally neutral, you don’t have to them as evil or malevolent, you just have to understand them as these are all the different types of forces that are exerting themselves upon me. You talk all the time about should I buy a house? That’s such a great example of what is real and what is actually beneficial for a specific person, and what is this mantra that we share with one another again and again, that you have to buy a house. You have to buy a house. And so yeah, it’s fascinating and I think that one of the reasons why I harp on this again and again is because I really feel like it’s learning a second language. Once you learn it for one topic, you can apply it to any topic and it is so empowering.

Katie:

I think the housing is actually a really interesting example because it highlights the the shared cultural scripts that we all partake in and the way in which you kind of internalize these scripts as your own. There’s a really amazing essay by this woman named Laura Kipnis, and it’s actually about motherhood and it’s about the maternal instinct, and she talks about how I think the quote is something like, I don’t doubt that an invented instinct can feel very real, but basically if you internalize something, it can be hard to differentiate between what are my actual desires and what is the result of, to your point, the forces that are being exerted upon me that I am reacting to. But the housing is interesting because to me, kind of the quintessential example in the push pull relationship between how am I going to individually exert a positive force on the systems that I exist within and where am I going to maybe defy what I know is better for the whole because it’s better for me?

Caro:

Yes.

Katie:

Landlords, rental property investing is a huge thing in the personal finance world. It is universally hailed as one of the best ways to increase your individual wealth accumulation that you should own property and you should rent it out to someone else and profit from it. If we’re looking at that a politically or if we are not assigning any sort of moral code to that choice, it’s like, yes, it is an asset class. Technically yes, that is something you can do and yes, it will make you richer, but if you are also someone who believes that housing should not be a commodity that’s used to build wealth and that instead shelter is a human, maybe the actions that you are taking to personally get ahead are in some ways further entrenching a system that is not working in this country. And so the game theory comes up of like, well, what do I do?

I still have to live in this imperfect system? Should I make choices that are going to disadvantage me to avoid putting myself in that ethical conundrum where maybe I don’t think that that’s really the right thing to do, but I feel like I have to do it. That I think is kind of the cognitive dissonance that I’m broadly referencing when I talk about the idea that the individual choices that you might feel compelled to make or that are best for you are simultaneously making the very system that is exerting pressure on you and making you feel as though you have to do it in the first place worse.

Caro:

Yes, a hundred percent. It’s something I think that you and I have spoken about this as we’ve been having a little conversations over the months, but something that is truly my Roman empire right now is that there are, at any given moment, two worlds and there is the world that you want to live in, and then there is the world that you live in at the moment and every decision that you make moves you towards one of those worlds and they’re in constant conflict with one another like wealth building. The more wealth you build for yourself, for your children, the more you might be in conflict with the idea of a more equitable society.

I think about this with Botox. I think about Botox all the time. I’m at an age where a lot of friends are debating it and struggling over it, and it is a reality that there is so much friction for women as they get older. And so if you want to get anti-aging procedures or even use anti-aging makeup that will make your life better, studies show that you’ll make more money, you’ll feel more at ease in the world, but you will also in doing so be exerting 5% more pressure on the woman who walks down the road and sees someone else having gotten that procedure.

I don’t think that this type of thinking has to drive you crazy. I think for me, what it does is allow me to make decisions throughout the day that are just about energy and okay, what is something I can do right now for now I can live with not getting Botox. That’s like my little act of rebellion, but I am also saving money and investing. And so there is this world of recognizing that your politics can never truly perfectly align with your choices, but the more that you’re thinking about all these different forces, the more that you start to see connections.

And also I think you and I have had this experience, the more you start to meet like-minded individuals. So I never would’ve guessed in a thousand years that me sharing an eight minute TikTok video would reach anyone, let alone would reach a certain group of people. So it’s been really interesting to see that these conversations can actually reach people, and so they open you up to learning from more people and then in doing so you get more information. And so it’s like this cycle that’s super positive where now I know about Jessica DeFino who talks about beauty and I listened to you talk about finance and you feel much less crazy and you feel at ease with the idea of I can’t control everything, but I can actually control much more than I thought.

Katie:

And I think you’re right, there is some power in this recognition that other people might be grappling with and these same inconsistencies because it does feel as though that awareness gets us a step closer to actually doing something about it. Awareness alone is not enough, but it is this, it’s insufficient on its own, but it is a necessary ingredient. And there is a newer finance writer who I’ve been enjoying named Dana Miranda. She writes for a Substack called Healthy Rich, and she is another person in the personal finance space who I feel like is tackling some of this more in a more head-on way and is more willing I think, to call out the elephant in the room. So for example, she wrote in a post at some point at the end of last year that not addressing the way politics interacts with personal finance is a stance in itself. It’s a stance that looks only at an individual’s impact on their finances and willfully ignores the impact of the systems and policies laid in place by politicians and impacted by political opinions and goals. And she basically writes about this desire to feign neutrality in the personal finance space and how a lot of the content feels very apolitical, but basically it is very easy to be apolitical when everything about the status quo is personally enriching and benefiting you. It is a choice that you really only have if you are in that position

Caro:

A hundred percent. Oh my God, this makes me think of, I feel like there are certain moments where when you go down this path, you think of as your little radicalization moments. And one of them for me was realizing I came across someone who is basically saying silence is an endorsement of the status quo. There is no apolitical act, there’s no apolitical day, there’s no apolitical person. You are either speaking out in the desire to see something else or you are endorsing the status quo. I think the way people talk about the s and p 500, it’s always going to go up and it’s this thing that’s existed for hundreds and hundreds of years when in reality we are talking about a financial system that is so fresh by any other perspective. I’m in the Netherlands right now and I’m looking at a building that’s a thousand years old and the s and p 500 is 80, I think 90 years old.

Katie:

It’s like maybe a hundred. Yeah.

Caro:

Yeah. It’s crazy.

Katie:

And I think that to your point about the freshness, it’s also just very precarious. Yes. I saw a comment from her name’s Sami. She’s the founder of Betches, the media brand Betches, but she commented the other day on something that I had written about this kind of line go up mentality and how infinite growth is the goal because then that makes people richer and they can buy more stuff and buying more stuff is important, it’s going to make it bigger, which makes people richer. And it’s all just very circuitous. And it’s like, yeah, but what’s the point? What is the end goal here to this never ending consumption and growth? Something that she had said that really stuck with me was like, yeah, but it’s because a lot of these gains are only gains on paper that don’t actually represent new value being created.

So they are enriching the people that already own the capital but don’t represent any new real value creation. And I think that that’s a really, I don’t know, salient and kind of terrifying point about the broader financial ecosystem that we exist within. And these, I don’t know, the set of assumptions that we’re making that are guiding the choices that we’re making and what safety really looks like. And to your point about how new it is that line historical returns are not a guarantee of future returns. We say that, but it’s almost with a wink. It’s like, yeah, but we know it’s still going to go up. And it’s like, but is it though, is the entire premise on which we are kind of building our financial lives and the foundations on which we’re structuring everything from work to our family arrangements, how we’re spending our time where we’re investing the money, the sacrifices that we’re making, if that undergirding assumption is wrong, then that kind of puts all of it into question.

Caro:

It totally does. And I’m smiling right now because I’m realizing that I feel an urge to say something, which is, it ends with the colonization of Mars. All of this ends up, and people, whenever I say that, people look at me like I’m crazy and I’m like, ah, ah, it’s actually happening right now.

And when you remember that the people who are controlling these financial levers are actively trying to move to Mars, you have much more of an awareness of what’s taking place in terms of where your capital is and how abstract it is and how much it is controlled by people who are not concerned about the outcomes for people who invest in their stock. And so I mean a bigger conversation for another time, but it is amazing how often my instinct in these conversations is to be like, let’s not forget about Mars here. They’re actively building spaceships to take the next human race to Mars.

Katie:

I think that was the first time that we had ever met.

Caro:

It was the first time we ever spoke.

Katie:

It was probably 30 minutes into the conversation, but I remember sitting at my kitchen table and you going, do people not realize that they’re literally doing it right in front of us? They’re planning for the planet to be imminently uninhabitable. They are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on bunkers. Do we think they’re taking us with them? They’re not taking us with them.

Caro:

They’re not taking us with them. And these are not people who mess around with their money. And so if Mark Zuckerberg is spending a billion dollars on a bunker, that’s the canary in the financial coal mine.

Katie:

We’ll get right back to it after a quick break.

There’s a book that I’ve purchased it, I haven’t fully read it yet, but the premise intrigued me because I think it gets at this broader question of how much we are playing along in order to feel as though we are personally benefiting in some small way, even if we can see that they are disproportionately benefiting far more, it’s called the Age of Acquiescence, the Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power.

It’s written by a labor historian, and he’s basically chronically, I’m sure you’ve heard this saying of like, oh, we’re in a second gilded age. The inequality of today actually surpasses the inequality of the first gilded age in that by and large Americans have really no concept of just how unequal it is. I believe the last survey they did in the mid 2010 showed that when you survey Americans about what they think the state of wealth inequality is in this country, the inequality that they describe is actually more in line with the inequality in I think Norway and that America is something, I mean it’s orders of magnitudes worse, but this labor historian writes about how in the first gilded age, which was the years basically between the end of the Civil War and then the market crash of 1929, that there was this broad resistance, the labor force, they were fighting for substantially higher wages, they won better working conditions, they got the eight hour workday, which today is so standard, but at the time, that was a huge coup and it kind of highlights the fact that these things are not just given to us, have to fight for them.

There are always these forces that are going to be intention with one another between labor and capital. And if you’re not fighting for these things, you are not going to get them. But he talks about how populist rhetoric was the language of the nation, which is ironic because we are seeing that come back, but in a very different way. The anger and the vitriol is directed at a completely different group now where we pointed at each other versus looking up and being like, wait a second. But he basically talks about how many at the forefront of this resistance, they wanted to protect their old way of life. They could remember the time when there were artisans and homesteaders, and the idea of selling your labor in time for money was totally foreign. So they could actually remember the economic system before what we have now.

They knew a system that was not exploitative, and so they were capable of imagining a better future and fighting for it. But today, nobody alive today remembers anything before capitalism or what we have now. And so he kind of positions it broadly as like this is just a failure of imagination. We are only ever able to imagine these slight improvements on what we have now. And radical overhauls seems so impossible because we haven’t really experienced something that is radically different. And I think that that’s partially why looking to other countries and the way other countries are run can be so expansive and was such a huge part of my path to radicalization for talking about these moments. It was going to places like Scandinavia and being like, wait a second, you guys get childcare, healthcare, higher education and elder care for free or very heavily subsidized, that’s even a thing.

They don’t tell you that when you’re growing up in the United States, you’re just told that you live in the best country on earth. And so yeah, it’s fascinating. And he basically just talks about how the democratization of mass stock ownership, while we feel like it’s a good thing because we’re getting independently wealthier, it’s actually a bad thing because it’s kind of like this anesthetic to broader change. We are like, oh, but things are good enough. Why would we fight for something better? Why would we fight for more? Because the crumbs that we’re getting are sufficient.

Caro:

Oh my God. I mean the eight hour stat you just threw in there is going to blow my mind forever.

But two quick things in response to what you’re saying. Number one, what you’re talking about with a failure of imagination is something I think about constantly. I am a writer and I have been so fascinated with how much dystopic fiction and television we have seen recently. We are obsessed with dystopia and we have a very hard time engaging with utopia. I would encourage people to try to think about the last piece of art they consumed that was in any way utopic versus dystopic. And I think that’s something I think about. I was in conversation with someone the other day about the idea of there being better maternity leave policies in the US in 15 years. That was the timeline. And she thought that it was beyond unbelievable, not even worth conversation.

And it was a really upsetting moment for me to be like, wow, we have lost the ability to envision an even incrementally better future. And I say that because the example I used was women no longer breastfeeding in closets at work. That was the kind of loose sort of creative visual I gave. And this woman who was a mother was like, fat chance never going to happen.

And I connect that. My husband is very Norwegian, he has family in Norway, and so we visit their family who live on a small island in Norway every two years. He has cousins who are his age around their early thirties. And I grew up always being under the impression that everyone wanted to move to America. Everyone wants to come here. And when I speak to these people who are young parents, they look at me with the fear of God in their eyes and they ask how it’s going in America.

And they talk about, one of them was a woman who has two young babies, and she was like, so how does anyone have children in America? I heard that you don’t have any help. Yeah, actually none of my friends are having babies. It’s a huge crisis. It’s really interesting to them because the things that they know about America are, number one, we make way more money and they’re fascinated by that. They always want to know our salaries. Number two, there are guns everywhere. And number three, we don’t have any childcare policy. And it was incredibly eye-opening to speak to these people and to see how much they didn’t envy me.

And that was a moment of what you’re talking about with this imagination. I think America is such a place of magical thinking from the very origin of our country. It’s been about this magical thinking for better and for worse, imagining a better world, but also denying the realities of the current world. And I have experienced that so much in terms of deconstructing so many types of magical thinking, again, from a morally neutral perspective.

Katie:

Deconstructing the magical thinking. I mean, it gets at that broader American exceptionalism narrative. And I do think that what was both upsetting and liberating when I started to realize these things, it started with reading the Nordic theory of everything, which is what sent me physically to go to Scandinavia. I’d be like, I must see if these places really exist.

Caro:

Your spiritual walkabout.

Katie:

My spiritual walkabout. I kind of had an identity crisis because I think especially growing up in a very Catholic conservative town, all of this is enmeshed. It’s all wrapped together. It’s the Christianity, it’s the patriotism. I remember literally thinking as a kid, like, wow, I’m so lucky that I just happened to be born into the best country, into the right religion.

Caro:

I was chosen.

Katie:

I was chosen. Yeah, and so it’s really interesting then as an adult where I remember having those thoughts as a kid and then not really revisiting them as an adult. It just kind of becomes part of the backtrack in your mind of your conception of the world around you. And then realizing as these things piece by piece kind of start to fall apart going, well, wait a second, who am I? Because I’ve always conceived of myself as this very type A driven individual who maybe these natural anxieties or tendencies are inherent to me.

But after going abroad, and I didn’t go abroad until my mid-twenties, I kind of didn’t question the extent to which all of those tendencies are just kind of my internalization of American ideals and American exceptionalism and this idea of what makes a person valuable and what one should spend their life striving toward, which generally speaking, if you’re an American woman, it’s being the best mother and the most careerist possible, having a lot of ambition in every element of your life and achieving and succeeding.

And that was something that I thought was inherent to me that then I went, oh, maybe that’s not actually me. Maybe that’s not coming from in here. That’s something that I have just learned and taken on as my own. And so it’s been a fascinating few years as I kind of grapple with that. But I mean, my husband is in the US military. He’s an Air Force JAG, but we were talking about it the other day. I said, I made some comment. I tend to make comments, particularly in the runup to this election of what are we doing? This country is falling apart and he hates when I say stuff like that. He was like, you can’t accept the defeat as a foregone conclusion here. And he’s like, I think most of your criticisms are valid and good and an exercise of your democratic rights because you’re trying to make this country better.

You want to see it improve. You want the future to be better. But he was like, but sometimes you say things that just sound like you’re just kind of accepting that we failed. And I think that’s interesting. I do think that we will listen to the Ra Klein show. I know you’re also a big fan of Ezra Klein, but the other day was talking about how that is a tendency of progressive thought or liberals more broadly is like we’re very good at calling out where things are bad or wrong, but we’re not as good at recognizing and celebrating when we are making positive changes and things are improving. And you do need both. You cannot solely focus on where things are falling short because I think without that counterweight, it can just become incredibly demoralizing and you can almost feel as though it’s not worth trying.

Caro:

Totally. And I think that that’s why I’ve become very obsessed with the notion of moral neutrality. I think I’m sure you’ve experienced this with engaging with financial literacy online. The first thing that anyone says when you make any criticism about America is, well, why don’t you go somewhere else? It’s like the oldest comment in the book, the idea of, well, you don’t like it here. Why don’t you go anywhere else and then see how you feel in XYZ?

And what’s so interesting to me is that to me gets at the heart of this mythos we’ve created about America as the American dream. And I think that we’ve elevated this concept of our democracy, which is better than all the other democracies to the point that we aren’t able to have conversations about it and just say, this is a country, any other country, and there are parts of it that are going really well, and there are parts of it that are not going well, but it’s actually nowhere near as exceptional and as mythologized as we want it to be.

And if we were to stop talking about it from this perspective as this golden city on a hill that either succeeded or failed, then we would be able to have really basic conversations of like, oh no, I don’t want to go somewhere else. I just don’t want to worry about being shot or, no, I would love to stay here. There are a lot of things that are amazing in America, but just the idea that we have been taught from the earliest age as children, this myth of this city, this future Roman empire, and our politicians repeat it. I think Biden said earlier this year that America is the greatest empire in history.

And when you think about that, when you think about what that is setting us up for, it’s setting us up to not be able to have conversation from any political perspective because you’re getting into this position of, well, do you like it or not?

Are you proud to be an American or not? And it’s like, well, that’s kind of irrelevant to what we’re talking about. We’re talking about an ongoing social experiment that requires political involvement at all times. But your husband is saying, and we’re saying it’s really hard to have conversations about what’s working and what’s not, because I think we’re really wrapped up in a way that I really think other countries are not wrapped up. We are really wrapped up with this idea of are you proud to be here or not? Are you buying in or not? Do you love the forefathers or not? And my hope is that I think the coming generations are very disabused of that in a really productive way.

Katie:

Yeah, there’s an interesting passage in Nordic theory of everything that really to use a charism, rewired my neural pathways forever, which was basically the American obsession with this concept of freedom and her confusion. What do you mean free to do? What? In what ways are you free that I am not free in Finland are free to be taken advantage of by your healthcare system free to pay more for everything you need.

I just thought it was so fascinating because again, it’s one of those things that you just are not taught to question and you’re not taught to ever peek under the hood or you’re not encouraged, at least to when we say we have the best democracy. What do we mean by that measured by what are we using to gauge that? But it’s been a fascinating few years for me personally as I start to unpack some of this.

Caro:

But something that I have seen is it is wild to me. The extent to which any video that I watch across any number of topics is one that is telling me to buy something. And when I think about the fact that the number one thing that empowers women is access to capital and the amount of spidey signals we are getting at all times to just flush any money that we have down the drain is baffling to me. And it is the hardest thing. It took me so long to move past my own addictions to that kind of stuff, and now I feel like a pretty healthy relationship to products. But it’s only because I now feel like I’m so certain that I want to spend my life doing things that matter to me and that in order to do that based off of the things I care about, I have to be hypervigilant.

And I think about that now where I’m like I to get a divorce over children, over childcare, and I refuse to be a full-time stay-at-home mom, which means that I have to be vigilant about making sure that we have money for childcare. And I think about that all the time when I think about the idea of buying a bag or buying the 10th Stanley Cup, and I see the ways in which women are just hit with a barrage of reasons to buy stuff.

And I have so much empathy because all of it is packaged and delivered in this idea of you are not a worthy human if you don’t have this stuff, this stuff will make your kitchen organized and this stuff will make your husband love you, and this stuff will make your children eat more. If you buy these supplements, they’ll eat all their dinner and if you buy this outfit, it’ll hide your pregnancy tummy.

And when I think about that, my sister has three children and when I look at her Instagram feed compared to mine, I’m like, this is insane and criminal, the extent to which the algorithm is telling her to buy stuff and telling her body isn’t okay and telling her, and it’s so different from mine and I don’t have children yet. And so it is like I think about it and talk about it all the time with my friends just to be like, Hey, if you’re getting these ads, let’s talk. Because before you spend all of your money and get stressed out and then put yourself in a position of disadvantage and your mental health is in the gutter, pause and let’s talk about it because this is where the system’s thinking gets into place. And you remember it’s an algorithm and you remember that everything wants you to buy something and that it’s not about you because it’s so easy for you to think it’s all about you.

Katie:

I think that that is the perfect place to close out. Mic has been dropped, cap monologue. That’s the new Money with Katie mission statement. Hold on, let me take a note so I can go put that in my book. Thank you so much for being here.

Caro:

Thank you. It’s so fun knowing you and it’s such a pleasure to engage with the Rich Girl audience.

Katie:

Caroline and I talked for about 30 more minutes about the tradwife movement, but we decided to pull it in the interest of length for this episode, so we’ll be releasing that as a bonus conversation during the show’s bi-week next Wednesday. So keep an eye out for that.

Alright, next I wanted to talk to someone else who exists in this world of finance, Paco De Leon, someone who is also openly grappling with the way some of these paradoxes make her feel. Paco, thank you for being here

So the reason that your work jumped out at me when I first found it is because you acknowledge a lot of the systemic factors that people are facing kind of head on in your mission statement and you meet people where they are right away. And one of the things that I noticed was that you had characterized some of the work that you’re doing and the questions that you’re wanting to grapple with as what it means to have a good relationship with money in an uncertain unequal world. And you mentioned this idea of economic dignity, and I would love for you to talk a little bit about what economic dignity means to you.

Paco:

Yeah, economic dignity is basically having certain baseline needs met. I just really believe that it’s something that humanity should be aiming for at this level of human progress. Now, America, blanket statement, America loves to claim that we’re the greatest country in the world and in some regards we are the best. The opportunity here is pretty hard to beat. It’s easy to start a business, it’s easy to have access to paying customers here in America. It’s pretty bonkers how rich everyone is and how willing people are to open up their wallets.

But we’re so behind in some other areas that will lead its citizens to having a more dignified existence. And I would say there are probably four areas that I’m really concerned with. Of course, affordable housing right off the bat is a huge area where if we had the legislation in place and the government investment to produce more units so that we can build more units, then that would ease pricing pressure and hopefully supply can at least try to meet the demand.

So right off the bat, having economic dignity is having affordable housing. Public transportation is another great one. I mean, if we built our cities around people and not cars, we would just all be feeling so much better. We would be less isolated. We would just be more in contact with one another. And I think we’d be able to find places where we can exist for free access to childcare is a huge one. We live in an environment where it’s beyond not fostering having kids here in America, I think I’m starting to feel like America is hostile to parents and child rearing.

So having the infrastructure and support system there would absolutely allow us to have more dignity and more economic dignity. And then the last pillar is healthcare. You can do everything financially. You can go to the right school, get the right job, pay off your student loans, invest live within your budget, but then you can be financially ruined if something outside of your control like an illness happens. And so that to me is not a dignified existence where you do everything and you play by the rules and something completely outside of your control. And as heartbreaking as cancer or some long-term illness would ruin your family financially.

Katie:

Clearly you’ve thought about this. You could call these the four pillars. It’s kind of how we shelter people and whether or not people have access to housing that they can afford. It’s how we’re structuring our communities and how they’re currently in most parts of the United States and forget what the statistic is, but I saw something absolutely bananas about how much of the average American metroplex is just roads and parking lots for cars, the childcare and to your point, a general stance of hostility to parents and then the healthcare. How are we caring for people’s human bodies? And in every case that you mentioned, I think it’s pretty obvious where maybe corporate interests or no, I kind of feel like across the board it’s just like corporate interests taking precedent over the human need.

Paco:

Yeah, it’s really a bummer when you take the time to zoom out and look at people trying to navigate these systems, people trying to hodgepodge things together. And I’m not saying that we should throw up our hands and not do anything and say, hey, it’s bad, so let’s just accept it for how it is. I think one of the ways that we can start to create change is to first understand what’s going on and to acknowledge how things are screwed up. So that’s where my work starts. It’s acknowledgement, understanding how did we even get some of these systems? What were the incentives behind it, like you mentioned corporate profit and how can we come together to figure out how to help ourselves individually, but are there ways that we can organize to make larger change?

Katie:

Yeah, I think just as some background for our listeners too who may be unfamiliar with all of your work, you are a writer and a podcaster and a musician, but you’re also, if I’m not mistaken, a bookkeeper. Right? Do you still have clients that you’re working with in that respect?

Paco:

Yeah. I run a bookkeeping agency and I’ve been running a bookkeeping agency for the last nine years. We have a book of about 60 something creative businesses that we manage the bookkeeping and accounting for. And having that as kind of the day job has allowed me to then explore the wonderful intense, unpredictable world of making content. And in a lot of ways I kind of see that as me giving back, even if there is a trickle of a revenue stream that happens from some of the things that I’ve done, like writing a book, producing a podcast, shipping an email newsletter every week. I know you know the hamster wheel that I’m talking about, but I just really feel compelled to share what I’ve learned. I feel like somebody lifted up the curtain and said, hey kid, here’s how the world works. And I just feel tremendously compelled to help people understand the world of money.

Katie:

When you say you feel like the curtain was lifted in your own life, was that a process that you underwent of your own volition or was there a mentor or some external force to you that kind of showed you the way? What was that process like for you of learning how the world works?

Paco:

There was definitely luck involved. I think geography is destiny. And I was born in southern California. LA was really not far away, so I moved to a big city as soon as I could. And right away when that happens, you’re going to have access to more things than you would. And so I ended up at a job, my very first job outside of college, my first real job was working in small business consulting and management, and we basically did bookkeeping and helped creative people run their businesses. I was inside of businesses, I was running the books. I was doing proforma financials, and so I was fielding calls from insurance companies and the franchise tax board of California. I was helping these people run their businesses. And then from there I pivoted and I got into financial planning and I had a mentor. I had a guy who was my boss who he just saw something in me that he wanted to foster.

And so right away he was bringing me into all these client meetings, understanding this is how negotiations happen, this is how business is done at this level of sophistication and wealth. Here’s how they do estate planning and think about risk. And I just took in everything I could. And at first I was excited that I got a seat at the table, but then what was happening parallel to that was I would go back to my community of creative people and I would think they need help too, but there’s not a chance they can afford this kind of help. And so the tension there, the question that I’ve been trying to answer through my work over the last nine years, is there a way to be able to give back to a community while not cutting off your nose in spite of your face, while also earning money and thriving economically?

Katie:

And I mean, you have a couple core beliefs that really stand out to me, and I think one of them that I would love to ask you about is this idea that being wealthy does not mean that you have to compromise your ethics and values. I think this is something that we subconsciously hold on to. Even yesterday I was talking with a friend who we both love this one creator of content, and this is a person who, for reasons of their ethical code and their values, decided that they did not want to work with sponsors on their show. They didn’t want to do ads, they didn’t want to sell their listeners’ attention to an advertiser. They wanted their listeners, those who felt moved and had the ability to do so to just pay to support $5 a month. And this friend and I both pay the $5 a month for this person’s work.

We think it’s amazing. And we found out recently that this person who’s been doing this for a long time is actually at the point that they are making over a million dollars a year in subscription revenue. And we had this interesting discussion about it because initially I think we were both kind of like, whoa, that’s not at all how we conceived of this individual. I think we both kind of thought of them as a starving artist or that trope because that’s how this person had in the past at a time when they really didn’t have the subscription revenue. That’s kind of how they presented themselves of, I don’t to be a sellout, I want to do this my way. I want to do this in a way that I can feel really good about and stand in. And we ended up just thinking like, wow, how cool that they were able to achieve such astronomical success, never having to compromise the things that they felt really strongly about.

And yeah, I just think that there is this sort of duality between wealth attainment and how we often in a capitalist society kind of equate wealth attainment with inherent goodness and competence, yet at the same time because of the economic system we exist within, there is also I think sometimes an assumption that if someone is really rich, they probably exploited someone else to become that way. And you will think about there is no ethical billionaire. That line of thinking of, that’s obviously an extreme example, but that in order to become really rich, you’re either a sellout or you had to have exploited someone along the way. And so I just think that your kind of line in the sand of being wealthy does not mean that you have to compromise your ethics. I would love to hear more about how you arrived at that component of your belief system and your stated mission.

Paco:

See, I’m going to have to push back here, Katie and say that we’re all a work in progress and sometimes our beliefs change in real time. And I don’t know that I’ve ever explicitly said that you don’t have to compromise your ethics and values to get wealthy. I might have, but I’ve changed my perspective. I do think I—

Katie:

I love this in real time. We’re getting an edit.

Paco:

I do think that to exist in modern society is to navigate constantly compromising what it means to be a good person. And I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I think that there’s an inherent tension in the idea of being good. And I think that’s where this whole frustration comes along because if you’re a good, then you wouldn’t maybe invest your money because investing is inherently exploitative. Or if you’re a good person, then you won’t invest your money. Because to invest your money means that you are basically accepting that runaway capitalism wins and that we need to have as many coins and screw mother Earth. You can still be a good person and you can still invest. And I think understanding and really internalizing that those two things, the duality, those two things can be true at the same time. I think that’s the bigger challenge.

The message that I would like for people to hear is that please, as you build wealth, please resist the desire to become corrupted. And I think you don’t know until you’re there. A good example is if you’re driving in a car and you hit somebody in your mind as you’re projecting this scenario in your mind’s eye, you’re not going to drive away, you’re going to stop. But until you’re in that situation, you don’t know what you’re going to do. And the same thing with building wealth. I think in our mind’s eye, we think we’re still going to be good and we will not be corrupted by this process of acquiring coins in an account. But I think you have to be very intentional about it. You have to recognize that there are forces that are very seductive, especially for people like you and I who we build teams and we build companies.

And then what is it we owe to these people who are the ones laboring to then create the asset that we end up owning? So I think it’s more important to think about all the ways in which that seduction is available and will be there down the road. And to do your best to offset it. You can’t be 100% ethical all the time, but if you can try to be helpful, try to be kind, try be generous, try to be less exploitative, less violent, and you’re not going to get it 100% of the time. But I think that’s more realistic than thinking you’ll never have to compromise.

Katie:

So the place that I pulled that kind of quote from now, I’m like, let me make sure I’m fact checking myself and not misrepresenting it was on our core beliefs section of the Hell Yeah Group website. And so I appreciate this acknowledgement of we’re all a work in progress. Our belief systems change over time. I think this show and the archive of this show running back to late 2021 is in some ways the fossil of that evolution. For me, I go back and listen to things that I said in the beginning of 2022 and I’m like, oh my gosh, I don’t believe that anymore. What the hell? But it’s things that you change your mind as you know more and you do better when you know more. And I think that that’s partially why conversations like these on personal finance platforms are really, really valuable because I think it makes people think about the decisions that they’re making and perhaps the downstream effects of them in a way that we are not ordinarily encouraged to really think twice about.

One such example that you just mentioned in your previous answer was investing is inherently exploitative that the act of investing is unethical. There is a, I’m like, not to quote the core beliefs again, but there is a part on the site that you probably would still agree with based on what you just said, which is investing is unethical, but it’s important to do it anyway. And I would love to know if you still feel that way, if that has shifted or if that is still how you feel. And if you can shed some light on what is this inherent exploitation that is happening? Is there a world wherein investment is a positive thing where investing and bestowing capital upon another person, entity, organization, what have you, where it could be a good thing, or I would love for us to kind of pull that apart a little bit?

Paco:

Yeah, I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because it’s been coming up a lot and I have been questioning, do I still staunchly believe this? And let me say for the record, one of my philosophies in life is strong opinions loosely held. So my mind can certainly be changed. I think that’s dunno good or bad, but unpacking whether or not investing is unethical and why you should do it anyways. I still believe that investing is inherently unethical because what it does is it prioritizes capital over labor. It says capital is more valuable than labor, which makes sense. We’re in a capitalist society. So—

Katie:

It’s in the name.

Paco:

Exactly. It’s in the name. So what’s happening when you invest, right? You’re buying a portion of ownership. So now you’re a shareholder. And as a shareholder what you get to do is you get to have the laborers who are creating the value, create value, thank you laborers. And they get a little piece, they get compensated for their labor, but the people who are up top, the shareholders, they’re the ones who get to extract all the extra additional value that the laborers have created. And why is this justified? It’s because we are risking our own money, our own capital, and we’re allowing that capital to flow into another organization that will allow it to grow. You need capital in order to grow. And so that logically checks out. I mean that makes sense and I feel like we could probably rationalize everything, but that system is, I mean it’s inherently extractive and that’s why it is unethical.

I think there are fairer ways that we can split that up as we grow the piece of the pie. I do think that the people who are helping grow the pie should be able to participate more. And there are people who are setting up organizations in that way. There are co-ops, employee owned type organizations, organizations that do allow employees to have a vested ownership over time or give them stock, things like that. So that is out there and that is wonderful, but that’s why I always say the actual mechanism for investing is unethical. And I don’t know if you can’t beat ’em, might as well join them or the mechanism is screwed up. That’s why we should do it. It’s more that to be a conscientious objector for the average American is more harmful to you than good for the world. I think because money is a megaphone, it’s going to amplify who you are, what you value. Money is also a proxy for power and it’s necessary. You need to be in a position where you’re not constantly worried about how you’re going to put bread in your mouth and where you’re going to lay your head on a pillow in order to actually create change in the world. And so that is why I believe that although it is unethical to invest for the average American, we ought to be investing.

Katie:

That was such a good answer. I’m going to break the fourth wall and just be like, I think that that was an amazing assessment. What it brings up for me is that slippery game theory, which you kind of are alluding to, which is, well, if I opt out, if I singly opt out, that doesn’t really do very much to improve the situation and yet it does disproportionately make my life in this system worse. And the path that usually sends me down is, yes, we need to invest because as of the current moment, it’s really the best option that we have. But does everyone continuing to do so just further entrench it as our only option in this episode? I think the broader thing I have been grappling with now and recently is how much of the problems that plague us are kind of this failure of imagination.

And to your point about, you mentioned co-ops, we were talking about what would happen if a community was designed around people and not vehicles. And it’s that ongoing joke about, oh, Americans love college, the only time they live in a walkable community surrounded by other people. But I do think that sometimes you almost have to follow the thread all the way to its logical conclusion, which is like, well, why is it important to build wealth? Why is it important to invest?

And it all typically leads back to some of those four pillars that you talked to about, which is like, well, if I don’t invest, I’ll never have a house. And if I don’t invest, what if I get bankrupt by a cancer diagnosis and if I don’t invest, how am I going to send my kids to college that costs $50,000 a year? And it’s like all of it is in service to these decisions that we have made as a society and economic system about what is required to live a dignified life.

And if we look at other models for doing those things, like the housing co-op is kind of the perfect example where if you have a community of people that is treating their shelter not as a means to build wealth and not as a way to financially enrich themselves, but simply as a place to live. Well now you aren’t exposed to an extractive landlord who might be raising your rent all the time. Now you aren’t really concerned about your property value and you’re no longer incentivized to go lobby down at city hall to block the development of more affordable housing. But these are all changes that are so I want to say foreign to the kind of foregone conclusions that we’ve made about how society is structured and what it requires to be successful in that society that it kind of feels like a lot of those things are going to have to come first because if we start with we’re not going to participate in the markets, but everything else is just going to stay the same, that doesn’t fix anything.

Paco:

Yeah, absolutely. We have a really interesting example that’s still unfolding right before our very eyes where folks are playing the money game and they’re participating in the market, but they’re doing it. So I don’t know if the word is tongue in cheek, but the level of DGAF that’s going into sticking it to the man, I don’t know if it gives me hope, it’s certainly entertaining where this is going with GameStop to watch all these people come together and play the same game and try to screw over the folks who have been screwing over the little guy. To me, I think that’s showing a level of understanding in I would say our generation of millennials and younger that didn’t exist before and a level of frankly organization. Yeah, thank you Reddit, that it is a tough question. The question of if we invest, does that further entrench us in investing as our only option? But you’re right, it’s hard to answer that question without first understanding what the underlying motivations are. Yeah, it’s like solving for this is not the answers we need. We need to find an upriver solution basically.

Katie:

I’ve never thought about the GameStop phenomenon as an example of almost like class solidarity and collective action. I feel like I mostly just kind of group all the meme, stock crypto, I kind of bucket all of it together. But it’s kind of fascinating to actually recast it in that light of could this be evidence that people are capable of banding together and really scaring the shit out of hedge funds? I don’t know. I think that’s a really interesting way to think about it.

The final kind of piece of your core beliefs that I wanted to ask you about pertains to something that I hear sometimes from critics or pushback that I’ll hear. The piece of the mission statement or the beliefs that I found interesting is finding your agency at any moment despite existing within an unequal economic system. So what that brought up for me is that sometimes I would say ever since I’ve really made the shift on my show to basically acknowledging systemic barriers, explicitly talking about them, trying to unpack what they mean, trying to unpack what we do about it, to what degree are they hemming a sin?

Like what is another guest, Samhita Mukhopadhyay came on the show and use the phrase margin of maneuverability, which we really liked, but what is your margin of maneuverability? And I think that sometimes the most common pushback to those types of conversations that I hear maybe from people who are accustomed to very brass tax, tactical, practical, personal financial advice is like this is enabling the victim mentality. Or that by constantly talking about these things, you are going to make people feel powerless or reinforce this idea that they do not have agency. I’m curious if you’ve ever seen that line of rhetoric, how you think about that kind of path of pushback and what it means in the work that you do to find your agency in any moment?

Paco:

I think it’s a very interesting time to be unpacking these ideas, agency versus victimhood, taking action versus accepting our circumstances, I suppose. And I published my book Finance for the People in 2022, and I wrote it in 2020. And at the time I thought that I was being radical for acknowledging systemic issues, for saying things like people are trapped in a loop of poor decision making because of external factors, and then they make bad decisions because stressed out. And so it looks like they’re acting outside of their best behavior, but we need to really look at things from all perspectives. And now fast forward to 2024, I’ll be scrolling Instagram and the level of snark, the level of throwing up my hands and saying, well, we’re screwed anyways. That kind of maladaptive response to the reality of the world has me questioning for sure what is my role here in pushing this idea that we should acknowledge the system.

So I kind of recognize that I have been one of the main contributors to this kind of thinking, to having this holistic perspective on how we are with our money, our relationship to money. And part of me questions, did I do a good thing? Because I am grappling with this idea of, I spoke to Amanda Clayman on my podcast and she was the one who said yes, people sometimes have a maladaptive response. And I was like, of course you’re a researcher and a therapist and that’s the term that you use. But yeah, it’s like the choice to do nothing is still a choice.

And I guess as I’m working through this in real time, Katie, I think agency is still important. As we saw during Covid, your decision to your individual actions do matter. Of course, the system that we live in and live under is always going to optimize for whatever that system is optimizing for. But to give up and say that in every moment you don’t have a choice. And whether that choice is to take a deep breath or smile at somebody to pull over and help somebody in need, there’s all these different ways that we can make individual choices within a larger system that do have impact. And yeah, I hope people will feel and recognize and see and internalize that sometimes the most radical thing is to be hopeful.

Katie:

Thank you so much for joining.

Paco:

Thank you for having me.

Katie:

That is all for this week. I will see you next week, same time, same place on the Money with Katie Show for a little bonus conversation with Caroline about tradwives.

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. Devon Emery is our chief content officer and additional fact checking comes from Kate Brandt. And hey, if you liked this episode and you want to leave us some feedback, shoot me an email at katie@moneywithkatie.com. I’d love to know what you think about the more conversational format.