On Moving to Make More Money, the Government’s PE Playbook, & Henah Buying a House

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In this week’s Rich Girl Roundup, my executive producer Henah and I talk through a variety platter of feedback, questions, and reflections—from being “in” but not “of” a certain group, to whether you’d make different career choices if you knew you’d be working long beyond “retirement age,” to the idea that American politicians are hamstrung by their constituents. Plus, we answer some show-agnostic audience-related questions.

RICH GIRL NATION IS HERE. GRAB YOUR COPY.

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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

• Our three most recent episodes: “A Masterclass on Connecting Status, Power, & the Economy with Tressie McMillan Cottom,” “Ray Dalio on What the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ Means for America’s Deficit,” and “How This ‘Financial Ethicist’ Plans for the Future of Retirement”

• Subscribe to the Money with Katie newsletter

• The Aesthetic Justice Manifesto

• Matt Desmond’s piece on connecting capitalism in America to its history of slavery (New York Times)

• The Money with Katie Show episode on disability insurance

• The Money with Katie Show Rich Girl Roundup on navigating the workplace with a chronic illness

• Blog post on Building Your Philanthropic Plan

Transcript

Katie:

Welcome back to another Rich Girl Roundup on The Money with Katie Show. I am, of course, Katie and every few episodes, my executive producer Henah and I discuss your feedback, your questions, your thoughts, your considerations. We’re going to do a little chit chat. Henah, where do you want to start today?

Henah:

I’m going to call this segment “heartwarming housekeeping”. Try saying that five times fast. It’s a couple of show-agnostic notes and emails we received, and I also compiled some kind of open-ended questions to discuss at the end of the show that aren’t related to the episodes, but that have come in the last few weeks if you want to stay tuned for that. If you’re like, I don’t really care about the episode, but I want to hear some other questions, we got those for you too.

So first shout out is going to go to Ben P. because I am nothing if not a sucker for love. So Ben wrote in that he met someone who’s super smart. He said she was super cute and he said, I spent her first date and the entire time we’ve been talking since about how much I love The Money with Katie Show, newsletter, et cetera, which how cute is that? And basically he reached out to see if we could do an episode on certain topics that she was interested in. And spoiler, we actually had already covered the topic.

Katie:

This is romance, people.

Henah:

And so since he promised he’d sent in an email, I want this person to know that he did follow through.

Katie:

Oh my gosh. He was like, yeah, it’d be great for ya boy if he could get this podcaster to do his bidding for his girl. So no pressure, but that is amazing, Ben. Thank you. That’s so funny. Just so everyone’s on the same page, this is the type of evangelization of The Money with Katie Show that I want. If you are not out on these first dates, talkin’ that talk, we need to have a talk.

Henah:

Well, I’m going to do a hard rate pivot, so I’m sorry, but this next piece is about spam emails.

Katie:

Oh, thank you. Yes.

Henah:

Famously unsexy.

Katie:

Yeah. I will never, ever email you and talk about crypto or trading or ask you for money or ask you to invest with me. Please mark those as spam block those senders, and I’m really sorry that that’s happening. I am kind of at a loss for what to do about it, honestly.

Henah:

So speaking of emails, I did want to shout out our newsletter and why you should definitely be subscribed if you’re not already, because first I think we ran the numbers, Katie, and correct me if I’m wrong, but do we have maybe the biggest newsletter on personal finance for women out there—is that right?

Katie:

I think we do. The way that I figured this out was I essentially looked at, because there are other personal finance for women like brands that are bigger than ours, and so I just went and kind of scoped out the newsletters that run with all those brands, and I do think that if their numbers are accurate that we have the biggest one, which is bananas…but it could be bigger, so subscribe.

Henah:

Well, I was going to say if you miss us in those bye weeks and you’re like, gosh, I really need more of Katie and Henah, Katie, you write an essay every other week and I wanted to share this email that came in from Vince. It may not be your most recent essay, but one of them that was titled “That Funny Feeling”.

Katie:

Yep.

Henah:

He starts with a quote that you wrote that said, “Like any good American, I apply consumption like a bomb over the spiritual burns I sustain from witnessing the fires we keep lighting whether in Tehran or Los Angeles,” and then he goes on to say what a sentence that is some writing and I love it. Katie is one of the best writers and thought provokers of our times. Halfway through her book and enjoying every minute of it. I’m a 66-year-old white male, your target demo—

Katie:

This is my target demographic, everyone.

Henah:

Everyone, and I could not agree more with what Katie is saying and doing. I recommend money with Katie to all that. I know. Thank you, Katie. Please keep it up. And to that I say, Vince, I appreciate that you emailed us, but could you please publicize that on all of your community?

Katie:

Are you going on any dates lately, Vince? That email made my month, so thank you so much for sending it. And yes, we send out a new essay every two weeks. I spend many, many, many hours writing those essays, and so if you are interested in reading them, I do think that it is some of the best stuff that we put out there. So he and I will throw a link to subscribe in the show notes.

Henah:

And then kind of going off of that, we received an email from someone named Emily, so I wanted to send a special thank you to her. She wrote, “I just signed up for a newsletter not long ago and I just want to say an awkward, oh my God, thank you. I love you. Thank you. It’s amazing and helpful and my new favorite thing to read. I’m a small business owner, but I have always secretly felt like an idiot about money and the economy and also how business and finance can possibly at all align with my personal philosophies, which are decidedly socialist and environmentalist. And that’s just a relief to read analyses and hear conversations that are cogent, insightful and also principled.”

Katie:

Oh damn, this makes me very, very happy. Yes. I think something that I’ve been thinking about a lot with respect to the role that the newsletter plays because I subscribe to a lot of newsletters. I know how it feels when you open your inbox and you have 60 things. I think a lot about what makes me gravitate to the people whose work I always read every time they send something, I am going to sit down and read it.

And I think that there’s a respect for time, but there’s also a sense of the people that can sense signal in the noise. There is so much information constantly being blasted at us, and I think it can be so hard to know what’s worth paying attention to, what’s not worth your time, and ultimately just how you make sense of all of it. And that’s really the role that I try to make sure the newsletter plays every single week.

I spend so much time reading and thinking about the things that I am putting in there, and I have a note in my notes app on my phone where I just collect things all week long and then call it down to the very best and try to figure out how it all connects. Yeah, so I really hope that that comes through when we get emails like this. I feel like it does, but yeah, I think that’s important and I hope that y’all feel like I respect your time because I know that you are constantly being bombarded with information.

Henah:
And that’s why all these episodes are an hour and a half long.

Katie:

Literally, I’m like, I’m so concise. Brevity is my gift. Anyway, 90 minutes from now, we’re going to get to your questions. Listen, let me say this. So when Caro and I record Diabolical Lies, we record for usually like three hours and then the cut that makes the final feed is usually between an hour and a half and two hours. So there’s a lot that gets removed before it goes out, and that is how I think about the artistic process. I’m like, yeah, you’re a yapper, but it’s also concise like you are keeping it tight. But I do think that there is such thing as long form content that is also concise. This what we’re doing right now is not it for the record, this is chitchat bullshit, but it is a thing.

Henah:

We’re going to get to the chitchat bullshit note in a second as well. But before we do, I wanted to get to this note from Rich Girl Lauren. So a few years ago we had shared her story with her permission about a divorce that she went through and how she went from essentially a negative net worth to a very positive one, and I remember the audience finding it really inspiring at the time, and I wanted to share an update here because I think the job market feels really disheartening and I think that this note is really encouraging and might be something that, I don’t know, kind of puts some pep back into the job search if you’re looking. So they said, “I was laid off in April with no notice and no severance, but luckily I’ve been listening to Money with Katie for a good long while and had my six-month emergency fund ready and waiting for exactly this scenario.

“Instead of spending the last few months stressed out or taking the first thing that came along, I was able to really explore my options and eventually landed two competing offers on the same day. I used negotiation tactics you’ve talked about on the show to secure a great job making more than I’ve ever made in my life, and I’m actually excited about this new chapter instead of panicked about the missed income. Ironically, my net worth actually went up during my fun employment thanks to my investments another W for compound interest, baby.

“This job search was brutal compared to anything I’ve experienced in the past. I applied to nearly 200 jobs, went through dozens of interviews, had sure things fall through due to NIH funding being pulled and was ghosted more times than I can count, but knowing that I had my debt completely paid off and my emergency fund ready to deploy gave me unbelievable peace of mind during this time. I was able to focus on what I know I’m worth and it someone else agreed just writing to say a genuine thank you for the work you’re doing, whether it’s tactical content or having more of the systemic context for why this job search was decidedly whack. I really appreciate your voice.”

Katie:

Let’s go Lauren. Wow. I can feel the assuredness and confidence and just sturdiness in that message and it makes me so freaking happy, especially because to your point, this was a person who we originally, we highlighted her story because she was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt following a divorce and I think may have had a million dollar net worth like 12 years later. She really worked at it and completely turned it around.

And man, it just is so great to hear that. I think on the note of negotiation advice, we have done a couple episodes about this. I will say chapter two of Rich Girl Nation is completely devoted to this exact concept and everything that I would tell somebody if I were sitting down and holding their hands across the table and going, okay, here’s everything you need to know. Here’s everything I’ve learned about how to get more money out of a corporation or out of a deal that you are doing. So check out chapter two if you are interested.

Henah:

I did notice that my own negotiation was not involved, which was, I told Katie, whoever cares less wins, which is something she had shared on the show and that wasn’t in the book, Katie, don’t think I didn’t notice.

Katie:

I should have included that story. I really should have.

Henah:

Oh, it’s all right. There’s always the next book. Speaking of tactical content, can we tease the new website?

Katie:

We sure freaking can. So we go to sneak peek of our new website that’s going live in a few weeks and it is so beautiful, stunning, and so functional. I’m so excited for you to see it. The team that has been working on it, they just killed it.

I think that finding our actionable and tactical content is going to be a true breeze moving forward. That was really the impetus for this was if we have so many pieces of information, both episodes and blog posts that are going to teach people what they need to know, how do we make that really easy to find? And so something that I’m really excited about is the way that the new site is organized. You can essentially go down three different paths, the spending and saving path, which is kind of like your more personal finance, beginner friendly material that’s going to get your feet wet.

Then you have the investing path that’s like, okay, I’m ready to really learn about tax advantaged investing. I’m ready to start building wealth and the financial independence path, which is like I’ve been learning the basics for years. I’m ready to start thinking more about the psychology of money and some of these questions that are going to become a little bit more esoteric as your immediate needs are met and you are on the path, but you’re maybe not as motivated as you once were. Or maybe you’re starting to feel like, okay, can I take my foot off the gas a little bit? Like that sort of stuff.

So we’ve really organized it in a way that you can self-select for the path that makes sense for you, and then all of the content in that section of the site is going to be tailor made for that priority.

Henah:

Yeah. Would you call it aesthetically pleasing?

Katie:

I would say it’s aesthetically pleasing.

Henah:

Well, we got a few emails about pronunciation that I personally just had to include.

Katie:

Great. Love that for me.

Henah:

The first one came from Lacey P, and her subject line was “aesthetically, hegemony, et cetera,” and it said, “I had to laugh about the bit in the ‘ask me anything’ about pronouncing words wrong. As a fellow child born and raised in the south, I can definitely relate. I’m 35, my brother is 32. We both have advanced degrees, and yet we regularly have to correct each other or look up pronunciations because we’ve never heard them spoken. Only read. We’re doing great, sweetie.”

Katie:

Love you, Lacey. Thank you.

Henah:

“Also, just wanted to say I met up with some friends I had not seen in years recently, and we all bonded over the fact that your podcast and website, (hey), is giving us the financial education and confidence we needed. Thanks for doing the good work. Can’t wait to read your book.”

Katie:

Well, I can’t wait for you to see that new aesthetically pleasing website, Lacey. It is going to blow your fucking mind.

Henah:

Sounds like hubris if you ask me, Katie.

Katie:

Damnit. Okay. In the same vein, Dustin, shout out. Dustin came through with a grammatical suggestion. I learned something from a fellow word nerd. He wrote, “One of the things that I appreciate about your work is that you are clearly whip smart and very well spoken most of the time.” I love that he was like, I’m not going to let you have that all the way. “Having said that though, could you please stop using the word incentivize? That is a verb that was obviously derived from the noun incentive, which was already derived from a previously existing and perfectly worthy verb, incent, what a great verb. Incent. Try using incent in place of incentivize and I think you’ll appreciate how it will make you sound even more intelligent. Saving two whole syllables each time along the way. And don’t get me started on incentivization or incentivization lies. Those derivatives really make me want to hurl.”

Henah:

The Money with Katie Show where you’re going to get your financial, cultural and etymological education simultaneously.

Katie:

Listen to you. So academic. Incent. Alright, from now on, incent is—we’re not using the word incentivize anymore.

Henah:

Going to be hard.

Katie:

Next, we heard from Katherine who essentially said she used to really like the style of the Rich Girl Roundup, like the Q&A of listener questions. Now they kind of feel like a Sparknotes of the month’s episodes. She wrote, “I love how previously it seems like the Rich Girl Roundups featured more casual questions that were less suitable for guests like bachelorette horror stories or dating red flags or lifestyle creep that were more discussion based and had the vibe of two friends chatting. But since consolidating into one episode of Rich Girl Roundup a month, it’s a lot of feedback In rehashing previous episodes.”

She goes on to say that she would love to see more content on tactical personal finance topics like gift giving or splitting rent, sharing our point of views, and she closes with, “I still love the pod, but the AMA for the book was much more in that old style and made me nostalgic for it.”

So this circles back to my original points about basically being concise. This might be a personal hangup of mine, but there are so many podcasts that I have listened to over the years where it feels like it really over indexes on the chatty casual conversation. And so that is something that I think I have consciously tried to avoid. I have never personally been drawn to that type of show, but I do hear you, Katherine, on it feeling like a rehash. And that’s definitely not the intent, but I think we just received so much interesting feedback, so much pushback, additional questions, interesting considerations from listeners, people sharing stories of this is how this topic actually influenced me or this is how I saw this happening in my workplace, or I feel like we’ve heard from a lot of federal employees that have been let go and then rehired.

I think it always felt weird to me that the show was somewhat of a one-way street where there was never really that opportunity to have the dialogue about these topics. We would put out our point of view or post the interview and then we’d get a deluge of people wanting to add to it or push back on certain things and it would just be like it would kind of, okay, then we move on.

But on that note though, we did hear from Nancy, Nancy S who said, “I noticed Henah recently became a homeowner. Congrats. Given Katie has always sided with rent in her personal rent versus buy debate, I am curious about Henah’s journey and how she squares that with the personal finance education she has received as a member of the MWK team.”

Henah:

The one and only member.

Katie:

As the member. “I know you’ve been talking about having healthy debate, et cetera, so I thought this might be a good opportunity to do so. Note I also totally understand if he’s not up for this conversation, wants to maintain privacy or a boundary. I just know that homeownership like the loans associated costs, et cetera, can be a big financial iceberg that your listeners might be reckoning with.”

So Henah, I am so happy that Nancy gave us this opening. I am dying to hear how it’s been. We haven’t really, we talked about it before you bought the house. We talked about the numbers and okay, here’s what you’re thinking and here’s where it might feel tight.

Henah:

I knew this question would come one day. It was just a matter of when. The biggest thing that I wanted to start with is when we’ve always run the numbers, it’s very much a financial decision and people who have listened to the show for a long time know this. It is not a financial decision for me as much. It is a personal one. And so I’ve been very transparent. I’ve always wanted a house. I’ve actually written about this in essays for other verticals outside of Money with Katie for several years.

And when it came down to the numbers, I remember looking with Katie and I think maybe it was like a $40,000 or $50,000 difference over its lifespan where renting was going to make more sense. And to me, I wanted to understand what was enough, not just going for the biggest house, but it also felt like understanding what was enough was that turning a huge profit or feeling like it was the best financial decision was not the priority for me this time around in the sense that I had kind of established the budgetary best practices for other things in my life where I knew I was on the right path with all of those. And then I felt like, okay, I can buy this house.

And also just we live in a high cost of living area we always have. And so I knew that the numbers would probably always skew in the renting direction, but I just knew that I personally really cared about decorating my own home and building things that are my own, and I can talk about that. But yeah, that’s kind of the high level of how I got here.

Katie:

Has it more or less—I feel like when we talked about it, I kind of analogized it too when I bought my car and I was like, do I need this vehicle? No, but I want it and I can afford it, so I’m going to buy it. Even though buying a German luxury car is pretty straightforwardly a stupid financial decision, not that buying a house is the same way, definitely is more likely to appreciate than a car.

But I think when we talked about it, the only thing that I cared about was just making sure that, and I knew you had run the numbers, and you were going in eyes wide open. I was like, yeah, things are probably going to feel tight if this happens or that happens. And as long as that’s your priority and it means enough to you and matters enough to you to be the first priority, then I think you’re fine.

I think you’re going in with eyes wide open and that I think is always the thing that I’ve tried to stress on the show is the iceberg nature of owning a home and just wanting anyone who is doing that to really understand what they’re getting themselves into and that they want to sign up for that. And I think you really did. I knew that you really wanted it and that any challenges that you came up against financial or otherwise, we’re going to still pale in comparison to the benefit that you would have from realizing that lifelong dream. But I am curious now that you’re a couple months in, have you paid a mortgage payment yet?

Henah:

We put the down payment down and then now we’ve paid two full mortgage payments since.

Katie:

And how does it compare to what you expected kind of across the board? I’m curious.

Henah:

I won’t sugarcoat it. It does feel tight. If you had listened to the show, and we talked about this, maybe it was almost two years ago now, my husband and I had been saving about $2,500 a month for several years. And so we had had this healthy buffer of savings that we were putting towards this downpayment.

Katie:

This was $2,500 a month specifically for the house. This wasn’t inclusive—this was in addition to what you were saving for retirement.

Henah:

Yes. So we were both maxing out our 401(K)s. We were both saving a combined $2,500 for the house, and we had saved up six figures by the time we bought the house. And I was so proud of that. I was like, we don’t have any family money that’s helping us. We did this on our own.

Katie:

Yeah it’s fucking amazing.

Henah:

Even with that, I wish that we had set aside more, and I’m not saying that because I think we moved in and there was some $10,000 emergency fund thing we needed to tap, but more that when you move in, yeah, you want to be prepared for those, but you also have to furnish the house, which is a whole other cost in and of itself.

When we originally got the numbers from our lender, she had said, I think your taxes will end up being this, but there’s a chance it could be this much higher number and it was about $400 extra on your monthly cost. And I remember thinking, well, you’re telling me you’re 90% sure I’m not going to pay the higher cost. If we had to, I think we could do it and hopefully we can refinance and whatever. Turns out when it came down to it, we did have to pay the extremely high cost.

So to me it came down to two things. One, not banking on interest rates coming down, and ours is 6.49%. I made peace with it because I remembered that historically that’s pretty average. And I also didn’t want to get caught up in the recency bias of my friends locking in 2.75% because they also can never move. They are stuck in a different type of dilemma.

And the other thing was that because our costs went up about a thousand dollars, we didn’t have as much room to be saving and having a huge buffer in our budget was key for this. So I know you’ve talked about this, and I think Ramit has also talked about this. When you buy a house and they say 30% should be like [the percentage of] your pay: Do not look at your gross pay. Please look at your lease. Look at your net pay.

Katie:

Yes.

Henah:

And because of that, because my husband and I maxed out our 401(K)s, we saved $2,500, blah, blah, blah, we were able to kind of eat that cost without it affecting our lives too much. But it does feel tighter when you have less to spend and you’re still trying to furnish your home. You’re still trying to do other things.

And so there was that, but then I also kind of was like, okay, but if it came down to it, could Jovanni pause some of his 401(K) contributions because he also gets a pension? And I realized that’s a scenario that not a lot of people have. And so I realized how lucky we are for that, but it just gave me a little bit more peace of mind. I had thought through, okay, if one of us lost our jobs, how would we afford this? If one of us had to pause our 401(K) so we can eat the cost of this, or if we decided to have kids and now we have to pay for that, how would we do that? So I thought that I had nailed it all down to a T, and yet there was still things that I was like, wait, that feels way tighter than I originally expected it to be.

Katie:

Interesting. Well, I really appreciate the honesty. I think that’s really, that’s important. And I honestly don’t think that these are conversations that people typically get to be privy to.

And I know that anyone who listens to this show, and I can affirm this, how anal you are about your spreadsheets, every single aspect of your life is spreadsheeted down. So I saw the spreadsheets. I’m like, listen, if even Henah girl was surprised by some of these costs, y’all going to be surprised by the costs. This is going to happen to everybody.

Henah:

That’s what I’ve tried to tell people is I feel like I am the most on top of it person and I still had a hard time. So it’s just all of these steps that you don’t know until you are in the home and when you’re buying a home, you only have a week or so before due diligence is over and you can back out. But when we learned all of these numbers, we were already way past that. So to back out then would’ve been losing 10% of whatever our down payment was.

Katie:

Something that’s coming up for me here is you were in a pretty radically responsible position to be doing this. You did have six figures of cash savings that you were ready to deploy. Your save rate was really healthy. You’re both maxing out retirement accounts. You all really do have the cushion. If you’re looking at you compared to the average person who is buying a home, you are far and away more insulated from things going wrong. Plus you have savings and investments apart from the money that you spend on the down payment where if one of you did lose income for a little while, you could use savings to pay the mortgage.

I’m saying that because I don’t want to overstate the precarity. You are very secure and you made this choice in I think the most responsible way possible weighing all your priorities, but it’s still just, I think as someone that is considering doing it someday, again, nice to keep these things in mind because it is such an emotional decision.

We just had a very high housing expense in California. Our rent was over $5,000 a month. We lived in a very big home. It was great for what it was, but I am definitely, I felt ready, I think with just, I wanted to feel a little bit more freedom with the decisions that I’m making over the next decade of my life. And I was like, I just need a lower cost of living again. I can’t have $6,000 worth of fixed expenses hanging over my head every month and freely make decisions about my career. And that was the position that we were in.

And now in our apartment, we’re down to a thousand square feet again, but it’s like $3,400 a month. Our utility bill is like $50. If anyone remembers our PG&E bills that were almost a thousand dollars a month to cool that house down. Water is included. Our entire housing expense is now under $3,500 again. And that I think at this phase in my life is the kind of freedom that I needed to be able to make decisions with the priorities that I had.

Henah:

Essentially, because my husband and I are trying to figure out a family, and we knew that my husband’s job comes with a pension and it feels very secure, and I really wanted a house that that was why we did it, but it’s not lost on me that now I have this mortgage that’s always in the back of my mind that’s like, well, yeah, I got to make decisions that don’t reduce my income because I need it because we are spread a little bit more thin.

Someone who follows me from the show had asked me like, oh, what’s the thing you love most since owning a home? And I think this is equally important to shine a light on is not just the hard parts, but I got to build my dream library. We took this room that used to be someone else’s nursery. It had this shiplap on the wall and this floral wallpaper, whatever. We spent the whole summer tearing all that down, putting custom IKEA bookshelves that we had built ourselves. We’ve painted it ourselves. I feel a lot of pride in bringing that room together

Katie:

Handy girl.

Henah:

I’m Bobette the Builder. But we’re also, like I said, working with the designer who’s helping to make the visual things that I really care about come to life. This backyard that we have for Rosie, she has never rolled in grass in years. The first thing she did when she came back here was rolled in the grass. I do think that for me, the tradeoff of having a space that’s fully my own is worth it. But I think my husband will tell you that I’m much more stressed financially being like, can we go up to this nice place for dinner than we were before? And that’s was something I’m willing to do, but hopefully it doesn’t feel like that every month.

Katie:

Totally.

Henah:

As the house gets more furnished and as we get used to paying this new amount of money, et cetera.

Katie:

I think a lot of people are going to feel very seen and very validated by that. So thank you for sharing that.

Henah:

Oh yeah, happy to.

Katie:

Okay, we are going to dive into some episode specific conversation right after a quick break.

Alright. Welcome back far and away. The episode that we heard the most about this batch and maybe ever actually was our episode with Tressie McMillan Cottom. It surpassed all my expectations. I think it beat every download record we’d ever set, Henah. Is that correct?

Henah:

It sure did. A handful of you, Vanessa, Erin, Flfalonious said you listened to it multiple times. So that also helped. I do think it’s one of those conversations that’s worth relisting to many times. So something that I really love to see in this round of feedback was so many people discovering Tressie or discovering the show because of Tressie.

Katie:

You know what was so, so crazy too, is I was so nervous to talk to her. She’s just one of my idols.

Henah:

I know.

Katie:

And she was so warm, and I think a lot of people picked up on that. They were like, oh, you sounded really comfortable, or she sounded very kind and I was like, she was from the jump. I don’t know, I guess I think I might’ve told her the day before. Just so you know, I’m nervous to talk to you. I was trying to put it out there because someone told me sometimes that can make you feel to just name it and be like, hey, I’m nervous right now, versus trying to hide it or act composed. And she definitely went out of her way. It’s just rare to meet someone who is as intelligent as she is, but is also as personable and has such high emotional intelligence. Sometimes you kind of lose one if you get the other. And she has very high IQ and EQ, and so it just was like, whoa. It’s crazy to be in the presence of somebody like that.

So we also heard from Natasha who said, “Thank you for finding the dopest guests and continuing to create a show that helps me validate my lived experiences and understand our very complicated world just a little bit better.” And then PyneHanley said, “Wow, this conversation is so powerful. I learned so much as I’m new to this podcast. I came because of Tressie McMillan Cottom, but I’ll be staying because of you, Katie. So happy to discover your corner of the finance universe.” So thanks for being here.

Henah:

Yeah, welcome, Tressie fans. What amazing company to be in. So the main note, the vast majority of feedback I’d say was about how masterfully Tressie connected these dots between status, power, the economy, gender, race, class, and so on in a way that people said they could no longer unsee. So Jared said, “I feel like there were a bunch of dots in my brain that she just drew the lines to and understanding how they connect. I’m not in the middle of some of these systems, but hopefully I cannot impact them in a negative way going forward. Thanks!”

Katie:

Jared’s like “Harm reduction.” Melissa D said, “Maybe my favorite podcast episode of all time. I love Trey’s work, and listening to y’all weave in and out of so many topics was a big, beautiful buffet of knowledge shared with everyone I know.” Okay, I’m glad you felt that way. I felt like I warned you all. I said I’m going into this selfishly, there are a lot of things that this woman has talked about over the years that I want to ask her about. I have no themes, no unifying themes, just vibes. And we’re going to hope that it all coalesces in a way that feels even a little bit comprehensible.

Henah:

Yeah, MGK shared, “I find Tressie’s articulation around power status, the economy, and beauty standards for women, a nearly perfect analysis of these complex but interwoven topics.” And then Britney S., who’s a frequent listener of the show. So hey, Britney, added, “Dr. Cottom is vocalizing almost every intrusive thought I’ve ever had about economics, politics, and beauty. Thank you for introducing her to me.” And to me, there’s something so powerful in someone else articulating what you felt and couldn’t put into words yourself, which I think echoes Tressie’s own points about power and language too.

Katie:

Dude, I love describing it as intrusive thoughts. That’s so real. Sarah H definitely gave me the little injection to the ego with this one. She said, “This is a conversation that our entire country would benefit from listening to. Thank you for this incredible dialogue.”

Henah:

And then LattaLuv shared, “One of the best podcast episodes I’ve ever listened to. I mean, I’ll follow Tressie wherever she speaks, but this conversation was fun. Everyone needs to hear and integrate into their understanding.” Who is cutting onions in here?

Katie:

Let’s go. Okay. Hannah M., not to be confused with Henah V., said “There have been so many amazing episodes this year, but I think this one may objectively be the best one. Not just because I personally enjoyed it, but because it really summarizes so much of what has been on the table in recent episodes. And because it asks and answers some of the most important questions in our society right now. Email will be forthcoming as I have way more than I can fit in one comment.”

Henah:

Where’s that email, Hannah? No, I’m just kidding. She actually sent another email yesterday that I’m going to include, but—

Katie:

Oh, nice.

Henah:

It’s going to come into a different episode. But finally, we heard from quite a few men too who found this conversation insightful. This person’s username is the default one, but they said, “Great episode. Really love the different topics and perspectives brought on this show as a man. The discussion around beauty and the societal quote, norm for beauty was really interesting and great preferences that are so built into the environment. I hadn’t really ever stopped to question where preferences for a type of quote beauty come from honestly.”

Katie:

I love that. I love that. Oh man. So I’m reading Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism right now. Are you familiar with that book?

Henah:

No, because I just finished All Fours by Miranda July.

Katie:

You talk about a chitchat bullshit. We can really get into it with that one.

Henah:

I had some strong thoughts. Anyway, no, I have not.

Katie:

Okay. So one of the things that he talks about that so many young people have mental illness is a function of capitalism. And that capitalism is inherently dysfunctional. The cost of it appearing to work is very high. The fact that there is, he kind of describes it as this collective delusion that it’s working that everyone kind of buys into. And one of the things that he talks about it in the concept of capitalist realism is this idea that the only real threat to the system is work that reveals that system as somehow inconsistent or untenable.

And so when I read that, I was like, oh, it’s kind of like those moments where you see through the matrix and see how absurd something is or recognize like, wait, that’s not working. And I kind of feel like in this comment where they’re talking about, I had never stopped to question where these preferences come from as one of those moments where you step back from the matrix for a second and you’re like, whoa, my preferences are not my own.

Henah:

The mirror shattering from How I Met Your Mother. I don’t know if you remember.

Katie:

Yes, I don’t think she said it in this episode, but one of her most famous quotes is, “I like what I like is always a capitalist lie.” And I think Jessica DeFino quoted it in our Hot Girl Hamster Wheel episode.

So this is actually funny because we did get a little bit of pushback on this point as it relates to men. This comment came from DDP said “True, but it misses the component of beauty and desirability for a man. Men do all kinds of things to be more attractive to women like hair transplants in the Dominican Republic and Turkey, et cetera. And the physical component is a huge factor as well. The whole thing was under a feminist perspective and they missed an opportunity there.”

I’ll say I do get that, because the marketplace does not discriminate in the sense that it will manufacture insecurities in everybody, but I still don’t think it’s comparable. I still think the scale that women face this challenge on is financially just completely on a different playing field. Such a big part of my Hot Girl Hamster Wheel philosophy comes down to the fact that all of this stuff must be repeated constantly. This is not a one and done. You don’t get highlights once you don’t get your nails done once. This is something that you have to re-up on every couple of weeks for your entire life, all of which costs time and money.

Henah:

Not to bring us back to the trauma of the GLP-1 episodes, but also that is a thing where men don’t have the same scale of detriment where they have extra weight, but women are incentivized, oops, incented—

Katie:

Ohhh, Dustin. Where you at, Dustin?

Henah:

Incented to continue to take a GLP-1 so that they can remain thin.

Katie:

Yeah, I can’t remember the exact numbers. Weight stigma does impact everybody. Everybody. I think in the studies they’ve done, it’s like if you have a BMI over 35, they see a drop off in wages. It does impact everyone, but it’s like two or three times as bad for women. It is much worse. The weight stigma is much worse for women. So the broader point of, well, men also deal with manufactured insecurities that they have to pay to fix. Yes, that is true.

Henah:

I think if anyone’s interested in connecting the dots further, a listener named Mal chimed in with a recommendation. They said, “I recommend reading the Design Studio for Social Intervention’s aesthetic, Aesthetic Justice Manifesto. They said it connects so much to the conversation on beauty, perceived power and actual power around collective liberation.”

Katie:

Fuck yeah. Yeah, dude. Not to rehash an entirely different conversation, but the empowerment language is super slippery. It’s super slippery that we’re always discussing it in those terms.

Henah:

Embodiment over empowerment.

Katie:

Hey, Diabolical Lies listener over here.

Henah:

She comped me a subscription. So yeah.

Katie:

It only took like six months. You were like, so you going to let me listen to that or?

So we took a look at this and the Manifesto includes eight statements that range from our right to move shall not be enclosed, and our senses shall not be colonized. And they say, fighting for the right to experience life across all of our senses as a fight for a life worth living. So if you’re interested in learning more, we’re going to link that PDF in the show notes on Mal’s recommendation.

Henah:

The other call out that Tressie made that seemed to resonate the most was around being in something but not of something I don’t think that you had really planned to ask her this question about, or even bringing up the conversation about you growing up in Kentucky and then going to the south for college and joining a sorority. So I just thought it was so interesting that that was a thing that resonated so much with people.

But Theresa said, “Wow, to be in it, but not of It describes so much of my life as I’ve moved through different spaces when moving through different social classes. I love it when someone articulates what I’ve been feeling since forever, but could never put the right words to it.” So there’s that power of language again.

Katie:

It is interesting. I’ve always felt like an observer of upper class culture, even as a kid when I was in private school, Catholic school, where a lot of my peers, their families were wealthier than mine. And I remember going to some of their houses for the first time and being like, dude, this house has, there are sections to this house and picking up on it very early status symbols, I dunno, it’s always really fascinated me. I don’t know why.

Henah:

For me it was when homes had cleaning ladies. Every house on my block would have someone come clean their home and we never could afford it. And even though we lived in the same size house at the same model home as everybody else, I was like, oh, they all have that and we don’t.

Katie:

I think I’ve always been very hyper-aware of class, even as a kid, even when I didn’t have language for it, I think I could feel it and notice it. And I think that, now as an adult, it is still something that fascinates me.

Henah:

I’m imagining you having a five-year-old’s birthday party where five-year-olds have weird themes to their birthdays, like plumbers or whatever. I’m imagining you being like, Karl Marx.

Katie:

My theme is investment banking. Come to my birthday party. The theme is Goldman Sachs.

I think what’s interesting now is being in a position financially where I can afford to be in some of those upper class places, but still you have that feeling of in it, but not of it. I still feel like when I go, if I stay in a very nice hotel, I’m kind of side eyeing some of the other people there and I’m like, bitch, you’re also staying in this hotel. But that’s not the type, that’s not how I was raised. It’s new to me as an adult to be in those types of spaces. And so there’s a little bit of a weird, I still operate in those spaces a little bit, feeling out of place and a little bit like anthropological. I’m like, interestingly, look at this family.

Henah:

Well, that’s funny that you feel that way because then when you and I are in the same room, I’m like, oh, she’s on a whole different echelon than me. I look at your outfits and I’m like, oh my God. She just gets it.

Katie:

Oh my God. Really? Tucks hair behind the ear. Thank you.

Henah:

Oh, okay. At my expense.

Katie:

Wait, what do you mean though? I’m so curious what you mean by that.

Henah:

I’m thinking of the day that you wore that pink power suit and I was like, dude, I would never have the guts to wear that pink power suit. And I felt like it came so easy to you and it doesn’t come from a confidence thing. I think it’s just the same way that you feel out of it in terms of class. I think I feel out of it in terms of beauty and appearance. Because I also am, I was only one of five Indian kids in my grade, and then when I went to college, I had reverse culture shock where everyone was Indian and I felt out of place. I wasn’t Indian.

Katie:

You’re like, I’m not Indian enough.

Henah:

I wasn’t Indian enough. Literally people would be like, you’re not very good at being Indian. You don’t watch Bollywood. You don’t know any of these words.

Katie:

Damn dude, what a switch up.

Henah:

And then now I’m a midsize person. So it just feels like I’ve always had these things around beauty that I see you take in so easily. At least from my perspective, it looks like it’s so easy for you. And so I also feel that way of I’m in the room, but I feel like I shouldn’t be here. I think what I’m getting at is that there’s always a thing that you are meant to feel insecure about, and it just depends on what your lived experience is to decide what that is for you.

Katie:

Well, I really appreciated Tressie’s articulation of how that can also be a gift. I had never seen it that way before. I had never seen the in it, not of it as an observational gift of like, oh, you can speak to the way that these things feel, or you can clock this in a way that if you were of it, you would not be able to. And so I definitely that put a different perspective on it for me. Like, oh, maybe it’s not a bad thing that that’s just how my brain works when I’m in those types of places. Maybe this is a good thing.

This is from listener Magali N., “As a longtime Black woman listener of your show. Love it here. I may have to replay this episode every night as my bedtime story. Love the analyses, questions, et cetera. I’m an African immigrant to the us been here since I was five, now 25. And recently especially, I’ve had to confront exactly that liminal space, Tressie mentioned of being in groups and not of them, and the observations possible there. It’s given me lots of perspective, landed me in uncomfortable conversations, and I remain grateful.” I love that. I think, yeah, man, you got to read Thick, Magali. If you haven’t read Thick, you got to go read Thick. Someone named T. on Spotify also agreed, “This is everything, being inside and outside at the same time.”

Henah:

When she said it, both you and I just fell into sheer silence. We both were like, oh, that’s so good.

So another talking point that seemed to strike a chord was around this connection between race, gender, and class towards the end of the interview. And so Erica B. said, “Ah, this was so good, such an enlightening conversation. And I really appreciated how you two seamlessly connected and moved between such seemingly separated topics. And I loved Katie’s question about the brain mapping of race, class, and gender. So interesting and something I haven’t had a framework for asking before.”

Katie:

CHughes916 said something similar; she said, “As a Black woman, the last question in response blew my mind. The Black woman unwillingly sustained America’s initial growth as a capitalist nation through slavery.” Matt Desmond wrote this piece that essentially argues that the strange and defining characteristics of American capitalism are all downstream of the fact that the country’s initial growth was 250 years of slavery. We’ll link it in the show notes. It’s a really good piece. He lays out this argument that I was like, well, I’ve never thought about it that way before.

Henah:

When I was putting my library together, my copy of Thick just coincidentally went next to my copy of Evicted. And it’s like, oh, bangers next to each other.

Katie:

Bangers only. That’s the book club motto, baby, bangers only.

Henah:

We did have a follow up here that I do want to address. So it came from Caitlyn B. They said, “I love Tressie and devoured this episode. I also loved your question about who the final boss was of race, class, and gender. But Tressie’s answer kind of lost me. I think a simpler way to communicate the answer is just hierarchy. Since Tressie says language is so important. That’s the common thread in all of them. In race, it’s white people over Black people. In gender, it’s men over women. And in class, it’s capital over working. But this urge to dominate over other people is fundamental human nature, both ancient and universal. This also explains why, as you mentioned, many of the oppressions we worry about predate the emergence of capitalism 400 years ago. I would say the opposite of hierarchy is relationship because true relationship can’t exist when one party dominates over the other.” So what do you think, Katie?

Katie:

I hadn’t thought about it in terms of hierarchy, and I think that that’s really interesting. So I’ve been thinking about hierarchy a ton lately, which I know sounds really freaking weird.

Henah:

As one does.

Katie:

As one does. I’ve just been meditating on hierarchy and the impulse to dominate my relentless impulse to dominate.

Henah:

Just on these podcast charts, baby.

Katie:

You know what? Watch out, Dave.

So we did an episode for Diabolical Lies about so-called cultural conservatism. And I was really fascinated by this because I kept seeing articles like, ooh, conservatives are winning young women. Or like, ooh, culture is becoming more conservative, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, what does that mean? How do we define cultural conservatism and what type of identity type is attracted to this? And what I realized is that there really is kind of a fundamental difference in, I don’t know if it’s a personality type, I don’t know if it’s an orientation to the idea of hierarchy, but I do think that for some people, hierarchy is a good thing. They’re attracted to the idea of hierarchy typically because you see yourself on the top of one in some way, whether it’s because you think you’re better than other people because of class, race or gender, whatever final boss you want to choose there. And I think that in that episode, we were really, I wanted to dig into it with perspective to gender specifically of why would a woman be attracted to this? And dependent, if you go up or down the class stratum, what makes a lower class woman at the top of that hierarchy versus the upper class women? What additional qualities or characteristics would make somebody feel like they were better than others?

And I do think that it’s kind of important to openly contend with the fact that if you like hierarchy, if you see them as good and natural and worth preserving or worth conserving an appeal to a more egalitarian or equal society is not going to be persuasive to you because you don’t think that equality is a good thing. You like hierarchies, you think that society should have them. You think that we should be structured that way. And that was just something that I don’t know, I’m going to keep noodling on that. I think that there’s more to that, but I really like that Caitlin brought that up in the context of that question. I think that it really does come down to all of it does map back to domination and all of it maps back to this idea of superiority and feeling superior and what makes you feel superior.

Henah:

I’m thinking though of how you guys market Diabolical Lies and you’re like, if you’re someone with good taste, and I’m like, so there’s a superiority there with taste.

Katie:

I know. I think that there is intellectual superiority is totally part of that is do you think you’re better than other people because you’re smarter.

Henah:

And she said, and that is okay.

Katie:

I don’t think that it’s okay, but I will say that it is the type that I find the most personally persuasive and compelling. I think anti-intellectualism in this country is a huge problem, but I also, I think that is an appeal that does work on me well.

Henah:

Smartness is relative. There’s the critical thinking as it relates to smartness and then street smartness. There’s different types I guess, which is why I think that in and of itself is such a specific thing I want to tease apart.

Katie:

I definitely feel like there are certain thinkers and people who are doing interesting work, who are writing interesting things, who are synthesizing the world around them, that is a level of intellect or a type of intellect that I am personally very drawn to that in a way that I can’t really explain.

Henah:

Relates back to me on why you say you don’t like chatty casual podcasts. You’re like, I’m not drawn to that.

Katie:

Yes.

Henah:

And that’s why I think that’s so funny because I like some chatty casual podcasts, but I like having meat to a podcast.

Katie:

We are having a chatty casual podcast right now. We are being chatty casual podcasters. So if you guys hate it, blame Katherine.

Henah:

Think this is about things that matter. I guess I would just ask, don’t you get tired of using your brain all the time?

Katie:

Oh, fuck yeah. Yeah, it sucks. You know what? I will say this. I think a big breakthrough that I personally had in the last 12 months was that I felt like I put a lot of pressure on myself with the things that I put out there, because I’m asking every single thing that I create to affirm that I’m smart. And so if it doesn’t, I’m like, oh, I’m dumb. And this is, again, I don’t know if this is an only child thing, if this is an all-girl private school thing. I don’t know where I picked up on this idea that if you are not smart, you are not valuable.

But I do think that part of my approach to the arts that I put out into the world, be it written or audio format, I feel a high level of pressure to produce things that reflect back to me that I am saying something worthwhile.

Henah:

Do you feel that way about things that aren’t external to you or public facing?

Katie:

Oh, good question. I don’t think so.

Henah:

When you write in your own journal, do you read that back and be like, oh, I have to feel like I’m smart when I say this?

Katie:

Good question and no.

Henah:

Interesting.

Katie:

It’s only public facing. I do think that there is something fucked up that happens to your brain when you put yourself out there for a lot of people for public consumption. I do think that it changes the way you think a little bit.

Henah:

Oh, for sure.

Katie:

And I think that it is a challenge of existing online. I’ve thought about this a lot if I want to have a long career on the internet, as someone who publicly presents opinions, I really cannot engage with comments and emails. That is why I do not open my DMs. I rarely read comments or I will make sure I’m in a very fortified mental state before I do. I don’t do it on a day where I have to be creative. It’s why Henah reads all the emails first. It’s why Henah reads all the reviews first because it is just bad for my creative process if I am constantly hearing why a hundred people don’t like what I’m doing,

Henah:

There is something so specific to being in a public facing role that people just don’t know until they’re in it. And I probably deal with 1000000th of what you’ve dealt with over the years, and even that one person, which I know you know who I’m talking about, still made my life a living hell.

Katie:

Name names. Name and shame.

Henah:

But this person made my life a living hell for several months and really made me feel like she had picked the things I was most insecure about and knew that they were the things I was most insecure about and then used it against me. It breaks you open and not in a fun like, oh, I can rebuild and be a better person way, but in like a—

Katie:

No. Sometimes it just sucks. Sometimes it’s just negative and that’s why Henah reads it all first. There are just some things that I never need to see and it’s not going to make me a better writer. It’s not going to make me a more critical thinker. It’s just going to make me second guess myself, and I just don’t think that you’re meant to have that much feedback all the time. I don’t think it’s natural.

Henah:

We would get emails, especially in the beginning when you and I first started this, we would get emails that would call us c***s.

Katie:

Oh my God,

Henah:

And to me that didn’t bother me because that was so impersonal.

Katie:

Totally. Totally. I would way prefer that over the targeted personal things for sure.

Henah:

Yeah, and that’s why I’m like, you just don’t realize that until you’re in it. Yeah, just wow. Fascinating. Okay, I do want to talk about pushback for this episode because there were a few comments that came in.

Katie:

Oh yeah, so this was a small thing, but I’m going to correct it. I had compared the Denver DSA chapter to the one in Charlottesville in the episode where I essentially insinuated like, well, Charlottesville doesn’t have a very active chapter. That’s wrong. And DJ told me so regarding the comment that the DSA chapter in Charlottesville isn’t too active, they say, “At the Unite the Right Rally in August, 2017, the few hundred protestors who mostly traveled to the area for the event were met with thousands of local counter protestors standing up for our city, including Heather Heyer who died for this cause. And the local DSA is pretty active. cville dsa.com/events. “So you guys and Kate emailed and said, “One small bone to pick. Charlottesville does have a strong DSA chapter.” So Virginia folks, are keeping me honest out here. You heard it here first. My example was bad. Go join DSA Charlottesville if you live in Virginia.

Henah:

We also heard from SamLinnet who wrote, “I appreciate her frustration about Bernie and AOC not going to the South, but they did go to a lot of red states. They came to Idaho where they maxed out a venue in a notoriously red Christian nationalist state. No dems or progressives have been here since Obama’s primary. It was inspiring. They’d come to a place so hostile to their policies, and I’m seeing more grassroots organizing in this state than I ever have in Idaho. They’re inspiring grassroots organizing.” And I guess for me that would be an ideal outcome of the whole tour, which was that was Tressie’s point; just like, what was the point? And so I think something like this is a great downstream effect of them having been there.

Katie:

Yeah. I loved this comment from Adam too who said, “While there are undoubtedly some sexist Bernie supporters, many leftists such as Krystal Ball and Brianna Joy Gray have persuasively argued that the derogatory concept of Bernie Bros writ large was a fabrication of the Clinton campaign, which was out flanked on economic issues and unable to fight back except through a manufactured culture war establishment. Democrats are trying the same thing as we speak with Zohran Mamdani this time with supposed antisemitism. I think it’s imperative to foreground how the powers that be cynically wield righteous social principles purely to stymie economic reform.”

Personally, I think that is so smart and I’m really happy that you brought that up, Adam, because it is a more insidious and hard to spot approach or strategy. Since we mentioned culture war. I want to read this comment from Spyke. “What a brilliant episode that yes, as Tressie says is hardly ever talked about the class war in which the working class is fulfilled by cheap goods, instant gratification and distractions, culture, war to keep us pacified rather than call out the billionaires and institutions that actually harm us all. I love how passionately Tressie spoke and appreciated the insights on topics. I don’t even really feel like I understand the deficit and how the knowledge is often kept from us.”

Henah:

Well, I also think in addition to cheap goods and distractions, if your life is intentionally made harder and harder, we simply do not have the time or the bandwidth to pay attention, then those in power can continue to do what they want, because they know that you won’t have even the bandwidth to know about it, but the bandwidth to do something about it. And I think the current administration relies on that feeling of overwhelm a lot.

Katie:

Muscle velocity.

Henah:

To put as much out there. So you just give up before you can even process or react. And so the key in my opinion is to commit to one area where you can stay engaged in act. But yeah, what do you think?

Katie:

Yeah, I think my biggest takeaway from that part of the conversation was actually slightly different. That normal people shouldn’t have to understand those things. And to take it a step further, the fact that we feel hungry to understand them is probably evidence that something broadly has stopped working or has broken down. The fact that we are aware and worried about and looking for information about these types of topics is evidence that those things have stopped working as they should. They’re no longer functioning properly, and I thought that that was kind of interesting. It was like it’s less about, oh, we need more access to this information and more about we should live in a world where you don’t need that information to feel as though you can navigate.

Henah:

I don’t know. I feel like that kind of goes against what you would normally say, which is that knowing how the world works is imperative to navigating it. So why all of a sudden this is the line at which we are saying for you to have to know this stuff is actually too much. You know what I’m saying?

Katie:

No, totally. I think there’s a little bit of chicken or egg happening here in the world that we live in right now. You do need to know how these things work because you have to protect yourself from them. But that very fact, the very fact that you need that information to me is proof that things have broken down. It’s kind of like I want everyone to have personal financial information. I think financial fluency is critically important for survival. However, the fact that it is critically important for survival is evidence that our system is fucked up because you shouldn’t need that level of information just to not get screwed over by X, Y, Z credit card company or mortgage lender, that there is such a level of predation and lack of responsibility in the leadership of this country that normal people are like, what the fuck are we going to do about the deficit? The fact that you’re even stressed out about that is proof that our leadership is messing up. You should never have to worry about that.

Henah:

I hear you. I just think, I guess even if we were in an ideal system, I would still want everyone to understand how it works so that when things do go wrong, you are also able to recognize that because otherwise you’re still back in our situation currently. You know what I mean? So I want to close this episode with this very kind email from Kim JV who said, “I’ve been a long time listener and fan of yours. I cannot tell you what incredible journalistic talent this episode with Tressie put on display, even though you started the episode saying that you didn’t really have a topic because there were so many things you wanted to talk to her about. The narrative came together so well. I can’t even imagine trying to limit the topics down to what you did. She’s so brilliant in every single response she gave could have taken you in a different direction. And I especially appreciated your question about the hierarchy of race, class, and gender as she examined social issues. I did a lot of academic research on the relationship between power and language, and I think often about how that plays into sociology. If I had to boil everything I’d ever want to ask Tressie about down to one thing, it would be this question. Thank you for asking it and I really appreciated both responses. Of course, having Tressie on the show is going to be amazing, but I wanted to make sure you knew how much your framing, preparation, and interview style shaped how well that came out. Congratulations on yet another banger. I don’t know if podcasts can win awards akin to Pulitzer Prizes, but this episode deserves something.”

So how’s that for a compliment, Katie?

Katie:

Life is worth living. Kim, I wish I could kiss you. I wish I could give you a big smooch on your face.

Henah:

Consensually.

Katie:

Consensual smooch, of course.

And to everyone who ask us to bring Tressie back regularly—Angela, Adora, SwampWitch, shout out SwampWitch—to name a few of you. She knows the invitation is always open and she has actually been so gracious about sharing clips from the show. So I think she had fun and I think she probably would come back, especially if there was a more specific thing. Now that we’ve gotten seven years of her back catalog out of the way, we can just go deep on one thing. But okay, we will talk about your thoughts on our other two episodes after a quick break.

Welcome back. Alright, the second episode of the three that y’all had a lot of feelings about was our conversation with Ray Dalio, and I’ll be honest, I had a lot of feelings about this too. I don’t know how much we’re going to get into parts of the episode that got cut out of this one. Maybe that’s how we’ll keep these Rich Girl Roundups spicy is I’ll just tell you all the things that we eliminated from the original. But yeah, I had written in the newsletter that this was the richest person I had ever spoken to in my life. I don’t think Henah knew how Richie was until after she Googled it.

Henah:

It’s true. I googled it after the fact and the shock on my face when I discovered he was worth $14 billion. Wow. That took me for a ride. So by far the place we heard the most feedback on was taxes and raise mentioned that politicians have essentially made this promise to not raise taxes, but if you’re looking to reduce the deficit or shrink the budget, that means cuts have to come from other services. So where do you want to start, Katie?

Katie:

Yeah, I think I did push back on this in the moment. I was kind of like, well, which constituents are responsible for these respective pressures and who has more power here? I think we do have to look at this honestly. So BigRedDog21, big dawg, returned to say, “Really sad to see how social programs are attacked by MAGA/conservatives/Republicans for being too expensive when the money out results in more money put in years down the line, the programs overwhelmingly lower the poverty rate and like Grace said, you have to invest in yourself to help grow yourself.”

Henah:

And then Ally T. said, “Katie, this is an amazing episode per usual, but is over the top with Ray Dalio. I do have one comment on your who is outraged by Medicare Medicaid cuts, I noticed more outrage from middle/upper middle class idealists/social justice warriors who tend to be liberal. They don’t have too much to gain or lose in the bill based on socioeconomic status and certainly our contributors, but they’re concerned about the social welfare aspect.”

And then Gabby took a slightly different point of view and said, “Not a specialist here by any means, but I don’t think the problem with the government is that they aren’t taxing people enough, but more so the spending is mainly on things that aren’t for the people, but for billionaires companies helping fund campaigns and sectors of this country, like people, media, banks, et cetera, that have nothing to do with middle to lower class.” I don’t know. Can it be both?

Katie:

I think I come down somewhat on this same side as Gabby in a sense though I defer a little bit. I sort of alluded to this in the essay that I wrote the other week about this challenge, about this legislation that I am actually completely empathetic to truly fiscally conservative viewpoints. I don’t come down on the same side, I don’t land in the same place, but I understand where they’re coming from. I understand why people hold fiscally conservative views. To be clear, our current administration is not fiscally conservative. Nothing about Donald Trump’s administration is fiscally conservative.

So in that sense, just taxing more money out of people without actually reforming the underlying structures theoretically does just pump more money back into the private sector because so much of the waste in the public sector comes from privatization. If you just keep creating bigger and bigger contracts with defense contractors and then taxing people more money to pay for it, that’s not really an income problem as much as it is the underlying structure. But I would argue that what we are doing right now, the legislation that just passed is even worse than that because instead of taxing people more money to pay for it, we’re just borrowing the money that we are pumping into the private sector.

And so I view this as essentially the government using a private equity playbook. You load the business aka the country with debt, you extract what you can, you funnel the wealth upward and then you make it someone else’s problem to pay back down the road. So yeah, I see many, many parallels between this legislation and the critiques that we’ve made in the past of the PE model. So it’s not that I disagree with Gabby. I think I actually do agree with a lot of what she’s saying, but I would just extend that a little bit to say it doesn’t end there. It’s not just about, theoretically it would be better if we were just taxing people to pay for this. It’s still bad, but it would be better than borrowing the money to pay for it.

Henah:

Yeah, your parallel between that and PE is like genius in my opinion.

Katie:

Oh, thank you.

Henah:

Makes a lot of sense.

Katie:

So finally, we heard from a fellow Katie this time, Katie A whose message I wish we could include in full, but we’re going to focus on this first part. She says, “I always listen to Rich Girl Roundup.” Hey Katie, how’s it going, babe? “I didn’t envision myself ever writing an email like this, but I found myself pausing so many times during this episode that I felt compelled. I happened to listen to this right after the one with Tressie McMillan Cottom. So I was really struck by his framing of the political quote, demands of not raising taxes and not cutting benefits. Tressie said that we only have the language we’re given, and this is the political language that we have been given since the eighties. ‘Read my lips, no new taxes.’ But when you actually listen to what real people want as evidenced by the election of both Trump and Mamdani, most real people don’t speak in those two simple demands. They want a life that is livable no matter how it’s built. People only have the language they’ve been given, which for 40 years has been no new taxes or don’t cut benefits. Politicians who are able to break out of this dichotomy see success.”

Oh my God, that’s such a good point.

She says, “Who benefits when the debate is shaped by this dichotomy. I was really struck by his descriptions of conversations with politicians. His framing removed the agency of elected officials in a stunning way.” Amen. “He frames their actions as being undisciplined in giving the people what they want, but I think it’s obvious that the people aren’t getting anything that they want. Life is not getting more livable. He presented the elected officials he had spoken with as completely disempowered, being stuck in the status quo was described as a result of the pressure created by a population that will throw them out of office if they change things.

“Where have these politicians been for the last 10 years? The only thing that the quote population seems to agree on is that status quo needs to change, but who benefits? When we allow elected officials to claim that their hands are tied, there’s nothing they can do. If they don’t have the power in this system, then who does? It seems like a very convenient excuse for elected officials to use as cover to keep a system that directly benefits them and tractably in place. He said that we’re so caught up fighting with each other about every little thing that progress can’t be made, but who is this? We, I think research shows that social democratic policies are widely supported across parties when stripped of any party or ideological affiliation. But if we’re constantly told how divided we are, doesn’t that prevent us from coming together to actually fight for those policies and changes to the status quo? The claim that the quote constituents are absolutist and want to commitment brings patently absurd to me who forces politicians to make these campaign commitments. Other politicians along the same theme of these disempowered politicians who want to do the right thing but just can’t. He said that they’re unable to speak up about it because of the political environment, but who created that environment and who has the power to change it?”

Oh my God. Oh, sorry. I just need to have a moment. I’m blushing.

Henah:

I see that.

Katie:

“It was really jaw-dropping to hear this characterization of our political leaders as well-intentioned people who are simply powerless to do anything differently. Maybe they’re powerless if their top priority is reelection, but it isn’t because of the people or the broad constituents. It is because of a very electorally, powerful subset of constituents who benefit from the status quo.” Exactly. That was exactly the point I was trying to make to him of like, okay, so there’s certainly a powerful group pulling the strings here, and it’s not the one that’s saying, don’t cut my Medicaid. She says, “I realize how naive it is in 2025 to think about politicians being guided by public service. Even if that starts as their focus, how quickly it is that so many of them are captured by the economic power and the promise of more of that power bestowed upon them by the rich. The stock tips, the board sees the lobbying jobs to the extent that elected officials want to be reelected, I’d hazard a guess that it’s because it directly impacts their personal bottom line, whether in office or after retirement from public service. The personal incentives for people to run for and stay in office are completely adverse to the interests of the majority of the people in this country.”

Henah:

Is it weird to want two Katies for president and vice president?

Katie:

Mic drop. Another person I would like to smooch on the face. You honestly put it perfectly. I think you articulated a lot of my frustration with that portion of the conversation, and there is also an elephant in the room, if I’m being honest, of I’m asking a billionaire what his opinions are about these things. And so I don’t know. It’s a little bit asking the leopard whether the other leopards are going to eat our faces. I understand his prescription of like, you need to do this, you need to do this, you need to do this to avoid calamity. I think all of that probably stands up to scrutiny.

But yes, I don’t know if once you become a billionaire you can actually see these things clearly anymore. I don’t think that it’s actually humanly possible to have that much money and access and wealth and to have it for so long. He has been a billionaire for decades. So I don’t think that you are actually existing in the same world that everyone else is once you become that rich. So I’m like, I don’t even know how much grace should I give this person From that perspective of yeah, I mean you’re kind of by definition you are just very out of touch at that point.

Henah:

I guess I’m always wondering, does anybody tell him? Do people around him tell him that he’s not as grounded?

Katie:

Well, part of it too, if I’m trying to get inside his head, I think part of the calculation he might be making is that to confront those things squarely is to trigger the fight or flight response. I think that there’s a little bit of fluffing that’s going on where if he wants these people to take his advice, he kind of has to make them feel as though it’s not their fault. He doesn’t want them to become defensive. Ire kind of talked about this too, the political purity tests that we sometimes run of these hard line, you’re either forward or against it, whatever. When I talk to Dalio, I think someone that came across very clearly and part of what was cut from that interview was at one point when I was really pushing him on the tax thing. He was like, well, I can tell that you’re taking a side.

And I was like, yes, I am taking a side. I do have a side in this. I have a bias. I do feel a certain way about this. And I think that his approach is very much like we are speeding toward a cliff. So at this point, I don’t care whose side is right or wrong, I just care that we fix it. And so I have to persuade these people to fix it. And if I’m telling them that it’s their fault, they’re not going to fix it. So I don’t know. That would maybe be the read on the situation that I have. I do think he’s a very intelligent person, and so I would be shocked actually if he earnestly believed that the constituency that doesn’t want Medicaid to be cut is in any way as powerful in the system as the top one percenters who don’t want their taxes raised.

Henah:

For sure. But I also think if you have someone who’s a billionaire coming to talk to you and you’re a politician, you’re going to pay attention. You know what I mean? So it’s like the level of buy-in that someone already has from him because he’s a billionaire. How do you think he got invited into those rooms? To talk with politicians from both sides? So I think it’s one of those, I’m in the room, I got to not fuck it up now, and I got to maintain these relationships and get them to hear what I’m saying about we are careening towards this disaster we need to try to avert.

Another follow-up that we heard from the conversation was actually related to the last part of the conversation that you had where you were asking about China. So Keef wrote, “Absolutely loving the recent guests on this show, I’d really like to learn more about race perspective on the Chinese economy and where our American misconceptions lie. I have a feeling that the disinformation or secrecy of their inner workings fuel our American exceptionalism because we don’t explicitly know how far behind we are technologically, which is politically in their favor. Too many thoughts on this topic, too little characters to express them.”

And then Hannah m responded to Keef in the Spotify sub thread and said, “Agreed. As an American who was raised in China as a third culture kid, I have seen firsthand myself the disconnect between what each country knows about each other. But even with my fluency in both languages and living with a foot in both worlds so to speak, it can still be very hard to really get a complete picture of each system, much less to see that information communicated to the general public. Appreciated this conversation.”

Katie:

It is funny how bipartisan the conversation is around, well, we have to beat China, we have to compete with China. That is actually something that both sides very much agree on, and it is kind of funny that that has become an area where there’s very little questioning of that underlying principle.

So there was the point Ray made on education too, where Spyke had said, “I really agree with Ray’s statement about investing in education. I never understood why this country didn’t and still doesn’t take it more seriously When you have highly educated people, you have a society with unique skills and less ignorance. It always baffles me when free college is seen as this controversial thing, but also we do not provide our educators a safer, stable support system either. Heck, a lot of people don’t even think children should be fed in school.” And then Hannah M. came back and said, “Yes, this difference in prioritizing and funding education I think is a big part of how we have fallen behind China.”

Henah:

Who benefits when there’s ignorance? Who benefits when people aren’t educated?

I can only speak for my lived experience sort of in the way that Hannah was alluding to, but I think many South Asian first-gen people will resonate with this. That education was my number one priority my entire life until I graduated college, after which I then had 0.2 seconds to find a husband. But I have many memories of my brother having to go to Kumon every weekend which IYKYK. And the honor roll was the minimum for me. It was like, you don’t get to do any of these extracurriculars. You don’t get to date, you don’t get to do any of these things because education is so important. And I feel like you grew up with that emphasis too, Katie, but I don’t think that that’s the norm for everyone.

Katie:

No, I think that’s kind of the unique thing about the US is the role that education is going to play in your life and the level of access that you have to it is almost going to be a hundred percent downstream of your parents, whether they’re putting you in private school or public school, their involvement and their emphasis, I think that’s why the outcomes are so disparate. You can get an amazing education in the United States for sure, but I think it’s often treated like a personal pursuit and not really a public guarantee. And so even though everyone is guaranteed a public education up through grade 12, there is just not that investment in making sure that the quality is uniformly high. I mean, we talked about that with Jonathan Grimm a little bit too. I do think that a lot of the issues that we have stem from that core underfunding and that core undervaluing.

Henah:

There’s also the conversation on legacy schools. Where do your parents go to college is going to influence where they want you to go to college? And it’s a much bigger individualist conversation, like you said, than something that’s more guaranteed broadly.

Katie:

Did you know that homeschooling is not allowed in other countries?

Henah:

I did know that, but I think actually it was someone who emailed us in at one point to say that.

Katie:

Yeah, it’s banned or highly, highly restricted in most other places. It’s interesting that that is also, we are definitely seeing a resurgence of that right now too.

Henah:

Well, they’re also pulling public funding for PBS and things that are more educational programs because they want their “educational” programming to be what you, I use educational lightly here to be what you learn.

Katie:

PragerU for kids.

Henah:

In general, this episode sparked a lot of recommended reading and listening we’ll say in the comments. So for those who are interested and want to continue where you and Dalio left off, we’ll start with DDP who came back to say, “This is an unbelievable episode. I love the history and I love the nonpartisanship of it. There is another economist, Yaron Brook who describes this history at great length, but he dismisses inequality as something that capitalism produces and we have no solution for which hearkens back to the French Revolution for me.” So from my understanding, Yaron Brook is the head of the Ayn Rand Institute and he considers himself an objectivist.

Katie:

This is interesting. I mean, yeah, we’re definitely in agreement that inequality is just something that capitalism is going to produce that that comes down to all of Marxist theory really, which is like, yeah. And when that happens, eventually when it becomes untenable or unbearable enough, you will see a working class uprising. And obviously that never happened.

Henah:

Did you give the manifesto as your party favor at your fifth birthday, or?

Katie:

We’re going to be reading Das Kapital—gather round. I just finished Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani, and the final section of that book is really interesting because it kind of talks about the actual ways that you could start to pull back on some of its worst impulses.

Stephanie B. chimed in to say, “I would love to hear from Peter Turchin on this too. He studies political cycles in history and takes population warfare into account, which weren’t as prevalent in Ray’s interview.” That’s really interesting. So Peter Turchin is a Russian American scientist who wrote end times about societal collapse.

Henah:

Girl, I’m begging you to read a fiction book for your brand one of these days. Just something light, something doesn’t require thinking.

Katie:

She said, have you read All Fours?

Henah:

I cannot talk about that book. It made me so angry. As far as other guest recommendations, Jim said, “This was an awesome episode. Keep those interviews coming. I would love to hear you interview an Anthony Davies and James Harrigan from the Words and Numbers podcast. I’d also love a continued update on your rise and fall of capitalism conversation from the Diabolical Lies podcast.” Worlds colliding.

Katie:

Listen, I gave you all three hours. If that was all I had, that was my whole brain.

Henah:

I have a hot take. Okay. I have to say, I find it fascinating that all these recommendations are essentially of white men. And so if you’re looking for women economists who covered these different historical cycles, Carmen Reinhart comes to mind. She wrote “This Time is Different, Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.” And we also have an upcoming guest who used to head up the Sadie Collective, and that was an honor of Dr. Sadie TM Alexander, who’s one of the first black women economists. So I think that conversation will be illuminating, but I just think we also have to look at who we’re reading and listening to and learning from and making sure that there’s diversity in who those sources are. So I just wanted to throw that out there.

But to close this out here on this episode, there were two comments that seemed related, that essentially asked, what do we do next? So the first came from Travis L. who said, “Thanks for this episode and the work you do. I’ve been learning so much over the past six months. Like others said, it was nice to hear a nonpartisan solution discussed, make more people productive. But I wonder how we do that when there is a cultural and political divide. How do we communicate value and lifting up everyone and not just themselves or their own groups, which sometimes can be ignorance, but sometimes I think is understandable for people to focus on their own immediate needs.”

And then from Carolyn B., she wrote, “As much as I enjoy snarky commentary, I really appreciate conversations like this one where actionable suggestions are outlined. I would love for episodes to include something we plebes can do, even just a draft of a letter based on the recommendations in the episode that we can send to elected officials in the show notes. Keep up the great work.” Carolyn, I’m with you. But we are two people. We’re two people and we are tired

Katie:

If I’m understanding this correctly, as she liked that this episode had the actionable takeaways because Ray outlined the three-part, 3% solution. He was like, yeah, this is what’s so messed up. Here’s how we actually can start to fix this. And I totally get it.

I think one thing that I will say on the note of how do we bridge the cultural and political divide, I hate to ring the class solidarity bell, but I’m going to ring it. I think that that little kind of footnote in that comment of I understand that sometimes it’s ignorance, but sometimes people are just so focused on their own immediate needs that it doesn’t feel as though they can take that broader view. And I think that that sort of recognition that if you are working for money, unless you are living off of capital, you are a laborer. That is a spectrum. Yes, we are all fighting for the same thing. I think we maybe disagree about what the solutions are or maybe don’t even know what the solutions are yet. I think that I have been personally really interested in labor organizing recently. I think that even though unions have their shortcomings and there will be corruption in every organization.

And I was just talking to another listener who, a person who listens to Money with Katie and also listens to Diabolical Lies and always sends emails. Phil, Phil and I were chatting about this and he was like, part of the shortcomings of unions is that short of a general strike, short of everybody withholding labor together, it kind of is just going to shift the burden around to other parts of the working in middle classes because capital is so effective at deferring those costs and making sure that they are not bearing the brunt.

And so I understand that those are legitimate concerns and things to be aware of, but I can’t help but feel like a lot of this comes back down to localizing these issues and getting involved in your own community, whether that’s attending strikes, taking action with other people, making life fairer for other groups.

And what I have found in doing that has been I feel much less despondent about the state of the world because I am interacting with other people, not just going to protests and making my voice heard, but actually taking action that has a real impact on how much somebody is paid or whether their healthcare gets cut. That is so life affirming in a way that I just cannot even express.

I think Berna and Chelsea kind of emphasized to this in the episode that we did with them at the beginning of the year about you need to find a political home. It doesn’t have to be Republican party or the Democratic party, but you do need to find a political home where you are doing something in your community that reminds you that you are part of a broader coalition of people who want the same things that you do.

Every single time I go to something like this, I meet other people that are like, oh yeah, we do a mutual aid station every Friday night at this one location, come and bring food and clothes. And we basically just feed people and give people stuff that they need. And I think that there is so much of this type of work that is unglamorous and that is still immensely impactful and lays that groundwork to get people to the point where they’re even able to care about these things, especially as things like snap benefits continue to get cut, there is no substitute in the meantime for just leaving your house and showing up and being there when people are demonstrating power, whether that’s outside of workplace or what.

Henah:

A big part of it was, go offline, that was the whole thing. Please go outside and touch grass. So I do think that’s a big piece of it. I know you said there are two other things that you care a lot about that might be worth mentioning.

Katie:

That to me is just what I feel like in my day-to-day life I can actually impact. And the labor organizing is through DSA. They have a labor committee that I’ve joined, but there’s also, there are so many organizations that are similar to DSA that are doing similar work where they effectively just help with workers who would like to unionize and they help make a fairer economy. So that stuff exists.

But I think on the national level and what I would love to see happen in my lifetime and what I would like to continue fighting for in whatever capacity I can is ending the privatization of public goods, that is the source of so much of our economic strife in this country, and universal basic services. So those are related because obviously universal basic services would be publicly owned. I know they are moonshots considering our current situation, but if I could pick two things, if I had a magic wand putting public goods back in the public domain and universal basic services, I think they would go such a long way.

Henah:

So are you still against running for office yourself? Because I think you could win.

I also, when you were talking about how you found these networks, I’ve also learned about some networks only after joining other ones because they kind of keep them behind the paywall. They don’t want people to find out about them for good reason, which is like they don’t want the powers that be to come in and break this thing up. And so I would just say the more involved you get in your community, the more people are going to have resources you may not hear about elsewhere.

The other thing I just want to add on a local level is that I think voting can feel nihilistic at this point. And I know we’re going to contend with that a little bit in next week’s episode, so spoiler. But there’s a lot of local work being done that does impact you.

And so for example, there’s been this ongoing election for the Georgia Public Service Commission and the primary has been going on for a while and I could see because it’s just a primary why people are not paying much attention versus presidential election or gubernatorial, whatever. But the thing to me is that these are the folks who are determining what our electric and power bills will be, and that’s a very direct impact on your monthly budget. And so it was really interesting, one of the people who was running and ended up winning the primary, Hubbard, he timed his campaign texts to the exact day and time that you got your power bill. So you got your power bill in your email and you’re just like, oh, $300 in the middle of the summer, how annoying is that? And then he would text you to be like, hey, I’m running for office and if that number scares you, here’s blah, blah, blah.

And so I was really invigorated by that. But when we went to the voting booth both times we went at the end of the day with just an hour left of voting, we were only the first 100 or 200 voters at both sites. And so that was really disappointing and I ended up looking at the results and only 1% of Georgia’s 8 million registered voters ended up voting at all. And so I think in some ways in that sense, a very small number of people are again going to define the outcomes that will affect you, and if that bothers you, you should try to get involved and try to get more people locally engaged. So I don’t want to sleep on that. Those things do also go a long way, even if it feels nihilistic in the moment.

Katie:

Yeah, definitely.

Henah:

So moving on from this episode to the one we did with Jonathan Grimm. We’re actually recording this just a day or two after the episode has come out. So typically we try to wait a couple days, gather a bunch of feedback, et cetera, but just given the way the timing worked out on this one, we have pretty limited feedback here, but I wanted to start with this quick note that someone said, “I love this take on the future of work and retirement, sustainable, enjoyable careers are making a comeback.”

Katie:

And then Jani wrote, “On his point of corporations do not see the power they hold in enacting change. I think it comes down to greed. These corporations have the money to change their employees’ lives, but they choose to reward the executives and investors rather than the employees that make the business thrive and be profitable. It is the people over profits argument.” I think this is why we got into stakeholder versus shareholder capitalism. I was like all call it whatever you want, but shareholder like, yeah, this is incented the system, incent.

Henah:

Incent. I do think corporations very much understand the power they hold over people, so I think it would be ignorant to believe they don’t. But we did hear from Hannah M. who emailed in, I echoed that they had kind of mentioned this earlier in the episode, but what they shared echoes the exact family dynamic that I grew up in as well.

So I wanted to share this. It’s a little bit long, but it said, “I appreciated your mutual questions and at time pushback. First, I appreciated the questioning of retirement as we tend to think of it and the many pros of staying active and engaged in society even in later years. I think in our American context, encouraging people to continue working a job post-retirement age has its benefits, but I think an even more complete conversation would consider the variety of ways that people can stay active and engaged in society at that age while they’re working a paid job or not. So for example, many retirees work volunteer jobs that are fulfilling and benefit society, but that they would not have the time to do if they were working a paid job. I see this a lot in the context of local orgs like churches, parks, museum guides.

“But the biggest example that came to mind as I listened was the multi-generational family practices I grew up with in China and the way retirement works there. Long story short, the older generation usually are the main caregivers for their grandchildren while the children’s parents work sometimes living in the same house, sometimes nearby.”

Katie:

Interesting.

Henah:

“For example, my cousin in China had a baby earlier this year, and when her maternity leave ended, she went back to work and our in-laws come over every day and stay with the baby while she and her husband are at work. The grandparents are often the ones doing school pickup and drop off, and these grandparents are also often the ones cooking dinner or going grocery shopping and often other housework. In other words, one generation is going out and bringing home the paycheck while the older generation is doing the important care work of childcare and housework. This also eliminates the need for young parents to pay for childcare. In fact, paid childcare isn’t really a thing there.”

Katie:

Interesting.

Henah:

“An interesting note is that women in China get to retire five years earlier than men allowing them to be available for childcare in general. There tends to just be a lot more value on care work in a society like that. And the grandparents don’t have to worry financially because in addition to retirement pensions, their adult children help take care of them. And then she puts in parentheses in a way you can say, instead of paying outsiders for childcare and then the older generation paying outsiders for elderly care, more of the money stays in the family and individuals are more interdependent on extended family. Of course, there are those who still fall between the cracks, especially with my whole generation growing up as only children plus with increased western cultural influence. More elderly people are ending up in nursing homes and things like that.”

So this continues, but I just want to add a side note here. This was my entire life, so I grew up with my grandparents in my home, and so I’d never known about babysitters or nannies or early childhood care, and I didn’t even know that nursing homes were a thing until I started volunteering at some nursing homes in my area in my early tween years because that is just so unheard of in South Asian culture. Your grandparents just come live with you. My parents would go work, my grandparents are the ones taking care of me. And so that’s a bond that I think I would love for my future family to also have. And to their point, it alleviated a lot of this burden of having to find the cost for a lot of these things on both ends.

Katie:

I wonder if that’s demographically—I feel like that stops making sense when people start having children when they’re 35. As a 70-year-old grandparent going to be able to take care of a newborn the same way that eight 45-year-old grandparent would. I feel like that does make a lot more sense in a culture where people have children younger, and I think that maybe that’s the western influence too. If your parents are in their seventies by the time you have a newborn, does that still work?

Henah:

I think it does because I will be 34 in a couple weeks and my parents still intend for them to help when they’re in their seventies.

Katie:

But how old were your grandparents when they took care of you intending to help and actually being physically able to as you’re approaching 80 I think are different stories.

Henah:

They were in their sixties and seventies, so they were still quite old. I think there’s definitely a piece of, if you’re not physically able, obviously I think the housework is a little bit more complicated.

Katie:

I think that this is probably just my western upbringing rubbing up against this where I’m just like, I see the benefits, but I also am kind of trying to imagine myself as a 70-year-old woman being expected to care for an infant, and I’m like, oh my God, I don’t know if I would want that. Just to be completely honest, that does sound really hard.

Henah:

I don’t think it’s an expectation. I think that’s the difference, at least in my culture. I think that there’s partially yes, an expectation from the children who don’t want to have to pay for childcare, but I think a lot of parents want to do this. They want to be around for their grandchildren.

And I think there’s also a big difference in my grandma taking care of me in the middle of the night when I’m screaming. I think that’s different than, hey, when I come home from school, my grandma was taking care of me, and I think the burden still falls on the parents to do as much work as possible, but your grandparents are there to help raise you and to give you the childcare when you need it to help with some of the housework when you need it. For example, my grandma, she didn’t speak English. She couldn’t drive in this country, but she would help make dinner every night. So that was sort of the thing where it’s like my parents are still doing a lot of the house labor, but my grandma was able to help step in that way. So it’s a choose your own adventure type thing.

Katie:

Yeah, I can definitely see the benefits. I can definitely see why being in an extended family situation would be more supportive than a nuclear family household for sure. I also am just like, I don’t know. I’m trying to hold that at the same time as my deeply internalized self-determination western values where I’m like, oh, the individualism in me is rubbing up against this really hard.

Henah:

You’re like, I shouldn’t have to ask for help. It’s not a commitment that my family sees, as much as just like, we want to help. We want to be there for you. I see. And I think the other piece is there were times in my life that my parents had to work or had to miss milestones that I think they would enjoy being there for a grandchild that they’re able to be more present, which is kind of what Hannah goes on to say.

So she says, “I wanted to share this example as another way of approaching retirement, which addresses multiple aspects of the financial stress that many Americans find themselves in. I grew up in China as a third culture kid. Both of my parents were from the us so I’ve always been a US citizen, but I spent the first 19 years of my life in China, so I’m more or less in lube in both places.”

So they go on to say this idea of retirement providing the support for care work applies in other settings as well. So in your newsletter, you had shared an article on financial freedom versus financial independence, and that’s an idea that’s already been resonating with me. I’m 32 single, and I’m not anywhere near five, but I did reach enough financial freedom that I was able to quit my job last year to finish my final year of grad school, and since I ended up working part-time, et cetera, et cetera, basically they had enough FU money that they were able to spend their summer on things like unpaid weekly childcare for their nieces and nephews and volunteer work, and she was able to help without having to be able to afford childcare. And by being able to help, she was able to help her sister out and bond with the nieces and nephews while they’re young. And so that way it’s like I wouldn’t have had that time or the gift of that time otherwise had I been forced to work.

And then she closes by saying, “As a previous retail manager, I also personally observed how some of our most committed and most appreciated by customers, employees, were retirees who were working a minimum wage job, not because they needed the income, although for some it did help make ends meet, but because they wanted to be working and they found fulfillment in things like customer interactions. Confirming what Jonathan said on the podcast.”

Katie:

Yeah, I think the one thing that jumped out at me there earlier was that piece about yeah, and there are other ways to stay engaged. You can volunteer, you can be involved in your society, and I completely agree with that. I think that it’s important though to clarify that Jonathan’s point, I think is that part of the reason he is raising this as a potential that we should be working toward is that people are going to need the income that more and more Americans are going to need the income in retirement than have ever needed it before, since 1945, in our current retirement system.

Henah:

You know how to fix that? Universal basic services.

Katie:

Yeah. I think it is as much about emotional fulfillment and psychological stimulation as it is about the very practical need of more people are going to need money, and we need to start thinking about what a world would look like if you are building a career, not with the intention of saving as much as possible and then pulling the ripcord in your late fifties or early sixties, but how would you build your career differently if you knew you were going to work much longer than that? Would you choose different work? Probably. I think both of my parents would’ve made different choices had that been their reality. If they didn’t have pensions and my dad didn’t have his 401(K) if they needed to work, my dad did not like his job. By the end of his career. He was very uninterested, was not happy, and I think that it would’ve been a different situation. So to Jonathan’s point about we are currently planning for the future with the information of the past, that’s not actually probably going to work for most people.

I did appreciate the fact that we got to find some middle ground here. I do think that I tend maybe more toward utopian thinking and dreaming and that sort of what could the world be, but I also recognize his point about the practical reality of people needing income as these things change, and we probably should be gearing people differently or orienting them toward different paths and teaching them differently than we are about what your career is probably going to look like.

We have an email from Annie that I wanted to share because even though it’s not totally related to this, she’s talking about an episode that we did a while ago that it’s just on my mind and I’m like, I feel like we should just be reiterating that this is something that people should be listening to and be aware of from a financial planning standpoint. So this is Annie talking about disability insurance. “I love that your content gives my 22-year-old daughter and I something to talk about and bond over. I was a single mom when she was little, and we survived with the help of government subsidies that enabled me to become a nurse. It took me almost 20 years to get my BSN struggling along the way. I can’t credit myself for some bullshit. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps nonsense. I have a large family that helped along the way. Then I met my wife who brought stability and a zest for life into our home.”

Oh my God. I would die if someone described me that way. That’s so beautiful.

“Sadly, financial security was short-lived because I got injured. I had to take a job making almost half of what I made in the hospital. It was a hard transition because now we are basically house poor. I have weighed every option and budgeted to the max. Unfortunately, we are kind of stuck in this position for a few years until my youngest graduates from high school. It’s disheartening because this single family home in a safe neighborhood was a dream that my previous salary made effortless. I didn’t realize that when you get hurt, workman’s comp is a nightmare. My employer worked hard to make my situation worse. There was zero care that I was hurt. I was disposable like a bag of trash once I couldn’t provide the literal backbreaking care to patients, I will always prioritize financial safeguards like disability insurance going forward.

“When I lived in New Jersey, every working individual had short-term disability insurance. I realized this differs from workman’s comp automatically taken out of their pay. It was affordable, and people probably don’t realize the importance. That’s not the case here in Pennsylvania where I currently live here. You have to buy your policy at my job. It costs me about $70 a month to get this protection. I work in a city with coworkers who can’t afford that coverage. They’re one accident away from financial catastrophe. I would hate to see someone else in my position where for almost all of their life, they were broke AF, made it and then had it ripped away by an injury or accident.”

So two things. We did do an episode about disability insurance. I think everyone should listen to it. A lot of people, I think do get this through their employer, but worth knowing what your policy is. I was thinking about this a lot this week because obviously I have a fake job. I’m a podcaster. I work from home and I can take breaks whenever I need it. Sometimes I get migraine spells where it’s kind of episodic. It’ll happen every couple of months, but it is pretty debilitating where it’ll impair my vision. It impairs my cognitive ability. It obviously is painful and it makes me feel very disconnected from the world around me and reality itself, there’s this weird derealization effect that happens and it can last for days. And this week when that happened because of my situation and how fortunate I am to work the job that I do my fake job, I could basically just lay down whenever I needed to and close my eyes and take medicine and rest and I could not stop thinking about the fact that people who have that same problem or other chronic illnesses that are way more serious who have to work real jobs who don’t have paid sick time, it made me, it just really reinvigorated me that these things are worth fighting for everybody and kind of brought the reality that I talk about from an economic standpoint all the time.

It brought it home in a very emotional way where I felt very vulnerable and very unable to live my daily life and I just couldn’t stop thinking about how upset I am that not everybody has the ability to step away when they need to rest or has the financial security or the job stability or security to do what they need to do when they are hurt. And I had that experience and was like, yeah, this is so worth fighting for. Every single person should be able to take the break when they need it. It is beyond heartbreaking to me that so many people go to work every day sick or suffering in some way and don’t have any other option; that is inexcusable.

Henah:

So two things for me. One is that clearly I’ve talked about my own migraines on the show. We actually had an episode we did. It was a Rich Girl Roundup It was funny, it was not very successful at the time, but I think it was still worth doing about how to deal at work if you have chronic illness and what you can do to make it a more flexible workplace for yourself. So we can put that episode in the show notes as well in addition to the disability episode one.

But Katie, as you know, I got recently injured in a pretty serious way. I don’t really have use of my right hand right now as much as I would normally have it. Luckily it’s not my dominant hand, but I had to come to you in the morning routine and say, I have to be real that this is very painful and also basically unusable. It’s going to take a while. I’m just letting you know, but I’d like to keep working because it’s a good distraction.

Now, I had also looked into short-term disability because that is something that is offered here, but when I looked it up, it’s only 60% of my pay and to bring it back full circle to my house, I felt like okay, I would be stretched way too thin if I could only make 60% of my pay. And so even as someone who is also in a fake email job also is a pretty cushy emergency fund, has a very flexible job. It still was very, very difficult for me to even consider moving forward with short-term disability. I went to the doctor, I made sure that it wasn’t something I actually needed to do. I could still keep working. It was safe and good for my recovery to do that.

And it turns out it was. But it is something that I do think even if you have it, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a slam dunk to use it. I wish that not only that people had sick time off, that they also had short-term disability that paid their full benefits out for at least six weeks, 12 weeks, something like that. I know that that’s also sort of a pipe dream, but it feels worth mentioning. So yeah, I hear you on that. And as someone who has a chronic illness, I also think that it is very important that you find workplaces as much as you can or advocate for workplaces to be understanding and flexible. So that’s a great point.

Next, we had a question from Rebecca. They said, I came over to Money with Katie via Diabolical Lies and have been taking notes ever since.

Katie:

Dirty Little Liars squad.

Henah:

I have been reading and listening to your book and realized very quickly I make even less than initially thought I’m freshly 25 work and have a whole last master’s degree, but I live in Mississippi. I don’t even want to do the math to figure out my annual income because I make $11.20 an hour. It goes without saying I’m trying to leave the burden of a poor red state I watch on LinkedIn as jobs I technically qualify for could change my financial life with a boosting $60,000 annually. The thing that makes it so hard is simple. How do you make a big physical move for a better financial life when you can’t even afford to leave? I plan on opening an IRA with a singular $1 because this has stressed me out.

Katie:

First of all, I’m so sorry that I’ve stressed you out. I feel like I can feel the anxiety in this message and I completely understand. Typically I wanted to talk about this. I think a lot of people find themselves in this position and it’s partially why it’s so frustrating when people are like, just move. If you can’t afford to live there or if the job isn’t good, just go somewhere else. And moving is very expensive. Typically, the approach that I’ve seen worked the best here and please weigh in if you’re listening and you did this differently, is applying for jobs before you move either a job that begins remotely so you can earn and save more. So you basically express the intention to move within six months of starting the role if it’s in office or one that will offer you some sort of relocation stipend just to get you over that hump of those initial upstart costs. And so even if you are applying for jobs that are in different states or cities as you’re applying, you are indicating that willingness to relocate.

I do have a friend who I was thinking of when I was reading this question who was very desperate to get out of her hometown. She also had a master’s degree, had just finished, didn’t yet have employment, didn’t have a ton of money. She had just finished this program, but she moved across the country to a place where she thought job opportunities would be better without a new job lined up yet. And the way that she did it cheaply was essentially selling everything she owned. So she was basically just driving herself there in her vehicle and anything she could fit in her car. And then for several months she rented a room in someone else’s home for a while while she job hunted, but kept the expenses and the overhead very minimal, kind of recognizing that this isn’t going to be ideal, but this is just the bridge so I can actually be in the place where I want to interview in person for things. She is single, she is childless. So that was possible. Obviously that does make a huge difference, but for what it’s worth, she is thriving now. She found a great job. She’s making I don’t upwards of $90,000. She’s very happy she was able to move into her own apartment. So I kind of watched her pull that off. But I understand that usually the way that this works is you have to get the job first. You have to apply for something and then indicate that you will move once you get it. Henah, do you have different thoughts on this?

Henah:

I had two. One was that I don’t know how feasible a side hustle is, but it could be one of those things where a short-term side hustle is worth doing and you just sock away all the money that you can to kind of fund the move when you’re ready. I’m thinking of you were saying she’s single and childless. I would assume that this person was also able bodied didn’t have chronic illness to consider, but obviously if you need health insurance or you have ongoing medical needs, something to consider as well.

But the other piece that I guess it just makes me sad is they’re saying they want to move out of a poor red state, and I’m just like, there are also going to be all those people left behind and said, poor red state who are also being held at minimum wage. And so I would say also just to consider advocating for the state that you’re trying to leave to have better working conditions, to have better pay so that other people are not in the same scenario as you are.

Katie:

Yeah, it’s tough. I kind of feel two ways about that. Honestly. I think I’d feel differently. She’s like, oh, I make multiple six figures. I’m going to leave to a state that’s better. I don’t know how much you are in a position. You are also being screwed by this, right?

Henah:

Yeah.

Katie:

You have to go find a different state in order to even make ends meet or you have to leave and go get a different job to make ends meet. And I sometimes think about that argument with people saying they’re going to leave the United States of like, oh, this country is going to shit. I’m going to immigrate to,,,

Henah:

Canada.

Katie:

Canada or I’m going to move to Spain or whatever. And I feel like I used to make jokes like that and now I’m like, that type of jumping ship I think would feel pretty bad to me. Now again with that same concept that you just raised of think of all the people who cannot leave that place that you are moving on. So I totally understand conceptually where you’re coming from. And I also just want to acknowledge how hard this situation is and to be like, if you feel like you need to leave this state because you don’t have any upward mobility, I don’t want you to feel bad about the fact that you need to leave.

Henah:

I guess what I’m saying is I don’t want them to feel bad. I think they should still do what’s right for them. I guess I would just say in the future when you feel like you are more stable and that you have more bandwidth to think about it.

I hear this argument a lot in Georgia. We’re not from Georgia, we live here as transplants, but it’s a lot of like, oh, well, Georgia’s like a red purple state. Do you guys plan on staying there? Why would you want to stay there? And I’m like, there are lots of people here who have been basically, as Chelsea Fagan said, gerrymandered out of existence. And so I do think it’s worth considering there are lots of people who want the same things that you want, which is better pay, better working conditions, whatever, better healthcare, that’s where that’s coming for me. But yeah, for sure, I don’t think that this person should hold back on the things they want to do just to stay there.

Moving on. We had a question from Lindsay P. They said, “I’m really inspired by your episode about public funds turning into private profits. This issue feels so important and reasonable to fix. I’m reaching out because I’m trying to organize support in Minnesota to push for policies where taxpayers share profits when government money helps private businesses succeed. How can your show or audience help turn this idea into action?”

Katie:

So this kind of goes back to the episode that we did with Donald Cohen about the privatization of public goods. And so partially what I would love to turn your attention to if you are interested in doing something like this, is Donald Cohen’s organization, In the Public Interest. He’s not just an author. He actually has an organization that is working against the privatization of public goods. Obviously his focus is putting public goods back into the public domain. So it does sound a little bit different than what you’re describing, which is governments giving money to private businesses and then if those private businesses succeed, some of that money coming back to the public. But I don’t know if that’s maybe a bridge toward putting these things back in the public domain, but I’m like, Hey, why not go all the way? Why not—

Henah:

The classic Katie: Why not go, instead of the middle ground, why not go to the extreme?

Katie:

Why not go all the way? But no, I’m not familiar with how things are funded in Minnesota. I don’t know anything about that state legislature. So I feel kind of limited in my ability to comment specifically on that state. But to my knowledge, there’s a pretty robust, as far as state law goes, doesn’t Minnesota have pretty good social programs as it is? It feels like there’s openness to that. I just think that Minnesota is probably a place based on leadership that you could actually, maybe you wouldn’t even have to settle for a slice of the private profits. You might even be able to actually fight for more public goods.

Henah:

There’s that utopia you’re talking about. So the next question came from Nancy S., they said, “Given the redistribution model of Diabolical Lies, I’m curious about frameworks you use or listeners can use to understand how and how much they can contribute to mutual aid community support philanthropy as a contrast to the ‘wealth accumulation vs. spending down’ binary that can dominate personal finance.”

Katie:

Yeah, our model for Diabolical Lies is pretty simple. It’s just a three-way split. So we each keep a third and then give a third away. I tend to think that percentages are a pretty straightforward way to approach this. Just committing a certain percentage of your income to reinvestment in your community or whatever it is that you want to be spending that money on, and then that obviously inherently will scale with what you are earning. So it can be as much or as little as you want, but that has always felt straightforward to me.

Henah:

We did a blog post back in 2022 about building your philanthropic plan, and so I think we could probably dig it up, put it in the show notes if you’re curious. But that was one way that Katie and I had kind of collaborated on my background in the nonprofit space and Katie’s best financial practices to understand where do they meet in the middle and where can you plan on giving a little bit more. So I will, I’ll include that.

And the other thing I’ll add is for my husband and I, if you’re a listener to the show, that we have a fun fund that we use every month, which is just money that each of us gets to enjoy, no questions asked, et cetera. So we kind of have it where when we hit certain benchmarks of like, okay, I’m spending $250 this month, we make a gift of similar size. That doesn’t always scale very well when you’re spending more one month than another, but I think it’s a good way of holding ourselves accountable that for every single thing that you get to enjoy for money that you’re basically treating as a gift to yourself, we try to also gift it to someone else who might need it, and so that’s a different way that you might want to do it. But yeah, I really just love that you’re considering the question and asking the question in the first place. I think that’s great.

Katie:

I think Chelsea Fagan has talked about this a little bit. I think about it sometimes how much more generous you can become when you feel wealthy, and I think that that feeling is different for everybody and some people will never feel wealthy no matter how much money they have, which I think is partially why money psychology is such a powerful thing. The amount of money you have in your bank account is highly uncorrelated with how you feel about it. I think that that’s true to a point.

I also feel like as I have become wealthier and have become higher income, it has been way easier to be generous. It has become much more free that I feel like I can give away large amounts of money. And so I think that there’s a part of it too that not to be all squishy, touchy feely about it, but I do think that there is some part of this that I am tempted to say, if you are paying attention to your internal world and how you feel about money and you are kind of honing that discernment, I do think that you will start to realize when you are not being generous enough.

I think you’ll know if you are maybe holding back in a way that you wouldn’t have to be anymore. But again, it’s one of those things where I’m like, I’m hesitant to throw that out there because I think, oh, do a percentage is so much more straightforward advice. But I just have to say that in my own life it has been much more like I did reach a point where I started to just feel ridiculous that I was not giving away more money because I was like, this is dumb.

Henah:

The interesting thing to me though is that there’s always that common thing that people say, rich people are actually the stingiest people. And so to me, I think it’s interesting that you are very, very proactively the inverse of that or you are very cognizant of how lucky you are, how generous you can be.

Katie:

Catholic guilt, Babe, program 101. Just like I told Jonathan, I’m like, I don’t think I realized how much my Catholic school education just take the compliment really. No, this is my thing. All right, I’m going to throw this out here. Sometimes I will hear things in personal finance content where it’s like, it’s not bad to want to be rich. You have to get over that. You have to get over thinking money is bad. That sort of rhetoric, and I’m having a hard time thinking about specifically what it is, but kind of yes, this idea that it’s not bad to want to be rich and you have to want to be rich in order to be rich and it’s like deprogram, and I’m like, I don’t know that I agree with that. I actually think that there is maybe a healthy level of shame that one should feel if you are just ruthlessly accumulating more and not giving a shit about what that money could be doing for other people.

I think that sometimes in the attempt to get people over the hump with a money story that might be telling them that if they save money they are being greedy, it sometimes gets taken to these extremes that I am just personally kind of uncomfortable with because I’m like, again, I don’t know if it’s the Catholic school lessons, but I’m from a very, very young age. We were hearing stories about Jesus flipping the tables, and I’m like, yeah, I actually think that there is a certain level of wealth accumulation where if you’re not doing something with that, maybe you should feel a little bit weird about it.

Henah:

Oh, I a hundred percent agree. I just think that you are also in the minority of people who get wealthy and then are like, I need to give this away. I think you have done a lot of work on figuring out what is enough for you and then deciding, well, I actually don’t need all of this, and I’m so grateful that I have the ability to take it in, but I’m just going to send it right back out. I want to be mindful because I think that the inherent thought is to accumulate as much and hold onto it until you retire so that you know that you’re going to be okay versus I have as much as I need right now and I’m pretty sure I’ll be fine. If I give a hundred bucks away or whatever that number is for you.

Katie:

And that level of self-trust, I can always earn more. There will always be more coming too.

Henah:

Right. One of our listeners from the show emailed me about something I was doing on the side and they said, Henah, something I tell myself that I would want to extend to you is the universe does not budget. Ask for what you want and then multiply it. There is no reason to believe that you will just make $0 and never be able to find yourself at FI if you’re already on the way there. So I would just keep that in mind.

But I’m going to move on to the last comment. Brian emailed us about the Big Beautiful Bill, and he said, “In line with the inquisitive and explanatory thrust of your show, I have an urgent and specific financial topic request. The Big Beautiful Bill significantly decreases Medicaid and Medicare insurance for poor folks in this country. The immediate effect is obvious that millions will lose their health insurance. What is lost in all the reporting I have seen on this issue is that rural hospitals will also lose those customers and will subsequently close. Many rural hospitals have been near failure for years, and most of their customers losing insurance will push many facilities to close. And when facilities close, local residents lose their nursing janitorial, doctoral finance, et cetera, jobs at that facility, when those folks lose their jobs, the already beaten down role economy takes another blow, including all the spending those folks did at local businesses. Your show is a money show that often crosses paths with politics. When discussing how our US government affects people in their daily lives, I believe the logical second and third order effects of the cuts in this bill need to be prosecuted and explained purely as a public service. Even if it can’t be stopped, it needs to be understood.”

Katie:

Brian. I love the way you think, and I could not agree more, and that is why next week’s episode is an interview with the House Democratic Whip, Congresswoman Katherine Clark, to get into some of these second and third order effects. So I had the opportunity kind of last minute, the other week to talk to her for about half an hour when all this was going down, and I decided, you know what? I think we need to record this, and I think this needs to end up in the old feed. So thank you for that suggestion, Brian. We are going to do just that next week, and that is all for this edition of Rich Girl Roundup. Thank you as always for listening, for sharing your thoughts. And if you hated the chatty casual Rich Girl Roundup, like I said, blame Katherine.

Our show is a production of Morning Brew and is produced by Henah Velez and Katie Gatti Tassin with audio engineering and sound design from Nick Torres. Devin Emery is President of Morning Brew content and additional fact checking comes from Scott Wilson.