‘Rich Girl Nation’ AMA: Answering Your Burning Questions About My First Book

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In honor of Rich Girl Nation‘s release, today’s episode has a Q&A featuring your questions about:

• The finances of writing a book with a publisher—like advance payments, proposals, and negotiating

• ✍ The process—how long it takes, lessons learned, and the surprising prevalence of ghost writers

• The subject matter of Rich Girl Nation—what’s in it, who it’s for, and why it’s different from other books in the genre

• We wrap with an exclusive audiobook excerpt from Chapter 4, “I Thee Wed (and Spend Thy Bread)”

RICH GIRL NATION IS HERE. GRAB YOUR COPY.

THE 2025 MONEY WITH KATIE WEALTH PLANNER IS LIVE—GET YOURS NOW.

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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Katie:

Henah sets up a cameo where it’s like, she’ll send you a video telling you what she actually thinks.

Henah:

It’s actually my secret side hustle. I’ll show you.

Katie:

Yeah, and then you can offer it to people on Cameo.

Henah: That’ll be $25. When I get on my cameo money, I’m out.

Katie:

Welcome to The Money with Katie Show. I’m Katie Gatti Tassin, and Rich Girl Nation, my debut book, is finally out in the world. So today we are going to do a fun little ask me anything using some questions that you all submitted on Instagram that I’ve grouped into three categories. I have: the finances of writing a book—I should have known that y’all were going to be asking a lot about that—the writing process and then the subject matter itself. And then in the second half of this episode, I actually have an excerpt from my audiobook recording that I’m going to play for you so you can get a little taste of what to expect.

So to answer your questions, my executive producer Henah is joining me today. So Henah, let’s start with the money questions because this is Money with Katie after all.

Henah:

Hi Katie. I’m excited to dive in. One fun fact before we get into it is I remember literally being on a call when your book offer came in two years ago, and then I remember us being in a group chat actively maybe even on FaceTime with one of your best friends, McCall, when the full advance total came in. Am I remembering that correctly?

Katie:

Yeah, I think I remember sending that group text message. Yes.

Henah:

Well, it feels like a lifetime ago, and I’ve also had a front row seat to this work that you’ve been building for the past two years in this book specifically. So I’m thrilled that it’s out in the world today. That said, it is your debut book. So we’ll start with the most obvious question that came in by far. How does getting paid as a first time author or in general work?

Katie:

So this is a whole ‘nother world, publishing. I knew nothing about this when I started this process. So yeah, it is actually kind of interesting how it works, but it depends on the type of publisher that you work with. So if you work with a traditional publisher like one of the big five: Penguin Random House, Harper Collins, Simon and Schuster, McMillan, and Hachette, the chances are that they are going to pay you a book advance that’s based on how successful they think your book will be.

But the thing to remember about the advance is that it is exactly that. It’s an advanced payment of money. They’re paying you upfront, but then in order for you to make additional money on that book, you have to sell enough copies to earn out the advance. And I don’t know what the statistics are, but I don’t think it’s super common in many cases to earn out in advance. I’m pretty sure the way that these publishers invest in books is like they’ll pay advances for a ton of titles and then two or three of them will be what end up selling enough copies to cover the rest and then the rest are losses. I think people assume that the advance is in addition to money you make on every copy, but it’s like you get paid upfront for a bunch of copies and then if you don’t sell that many copies, you don’t make any more money on it.

Henah:

So my understanding then is that let’s say that you got an advance of $100,000, that is not usually paid all at one time, correct?

Katie:

Yeah, and I’m not a hundred percent sure if this is how it works for everybody, but my understanding of it from my own situation and from other folks I know that have done this is that they’ll pay you the advance in four installments.

So you get the first chunk when you actually sign the contract and agree to write the book. And then you get another chunk of it when you hand in the manuscript, which can sometimes be like, I don’t know, a year or more later. I think mine was 18 months from the time that I was actually delivering the manuscript, the final manuscript turning in versions of it over and over. But then the final manuscript and then you get another chunk when the book actually publishes, which can be six months after you turn it in. And then you get the final installment a whole year after the book publishes. I received my first payment in July 2023, and I’ll get my last one in June 2026. So there’s a three year window for me that I’ll be getting the chunks.

But they’re not, you can negotiate how they split it up. I’m pretty sure my agent negotiated getting the most upfront and then from there it kind of went down.

Henah:

They’re not equal payments, they can be kind of divvied up.

Katie:

No, I don’t think they have to be. I’ve only done this once, so not an expert, but from my understanding, you can change that.

Henah:

How many copies do you need to sell for the book to be profitable for you?

Katie:

So this is a really good question and I had to ask my agent for more information about this. I actually didn’t know if you sell a hardcover that’s worth more than selling an audio book. So the version of the book that someone buys impacts how much money goes toward the advance that you’ve already been paid. So I guess technically it’s profitable for me already, already been paid the advance, but in order for it to be profitable for the publisher and for me to earn any money beyond what I’ve already been paid to write it, I think I would have to sell between 50,000 and 100,000 copies. That’s a lot of books. I don’t know if I can do that, that’d be really cool. But my hope is that, and this is kind of what I’m hanging my hat on, is I think the book is really good. And so I think that once it’s out in the world and people start talking, I hope to sell many copies for many years to come. And so I don’t think that I’m going to sell a hundred thousand copies in a year, but my hope is that eventually it’ll sell that many. We’ll see, everyone might hate it and this might come back to bite me.

Henah:

Hey, there are books people buy just to hate-read them. So that could also work in your favor.

Katie:

That’s true. Rich Dad, Poor Dad, shout out.

Henah:

When you get your advance—I’m using advance and earnings interchangeably—I think that’s a correct way to phrase it, but when you hear what that number is, did you negotiate that number for the book or were they just like, nope, this is what you get?

Katie:

Yeah, yeah, we did. So my agent negotiated on my behalf. I think we ended up negotiating up around 10% from what they originally offered, but we offered the book on exclusive to an imprint at Penguin Random House, so we can kind of talk about how that works. But had they offered us an amount that we didn’t feel was sufficient, we could have taken the book to auction and so you can put it up for auction and publishers can bid on it, which is I think pretty normal. But we ended up feeling really good about the publisher and the editor that we’d been talking to and we thought the offer was really strong, so we ended up going with that.

Henah:

And do you say that because you felt like, oh, PRH is one of the big fives, this is kind of as validating or as legitimate as it can get?

Katie:

Yes, that was definitely, I think I wanted to publish with a big publisher for my first book for sure.

Henah:

Well, so you recently announced that you are less than one year from FI based on your numbers today, I guess I would be curious, would you rather have waited until you hit FI to do the book and you would’ve accepted less or did you feel like it was at the right time?

Katie:

That’s a good question. That’s a really good question.

Henah:

Conversely, maybe you couldn’t have hit FI without the advance. I don’t know.

Katie:

It definitely helped and part of the reason that I’m within the year now is because one of those bigger chunks is going to come in. So that’s going to push us over the edge actually, which is kind of symbolic and fun.

I’m glad that I did it when I did it because I think that this was a book that I really needed to write. I really wanted to have a book like this out in the world that taught people what to do with their money. And I’m glad that it exists now because I really would love to be able to continue to write books and have that be a bigger part of my life and time commitment, take other things off the plate and be able to do even more writing than I have been. And it’s nice now to know that with that cushion of financial independence, that the money side of it doesn’t have to matter as much. I don’t have to justify the time of the project as much anymore because now there’s less pressure on it to make money. Whereas three years ago when I was working on the proposal, I was just in a completely different position.

Henah:

Alright, well let’s get right to it. How much money will you make on the book? Was it the most popular question to come in.

Katie:

I love how bold people are, like, okay, well how much did you make? So I am strategically withholding this information—sorry to disappoint—on the off chance that another publisher wants to buy a book from me, hears this someday because it is in my best interest when I sell my next one that the buyer of the next one does not know how much the publisher paid for the first one. So let them be a lesson, Rich Girls, that information is leverage.

Henah:

Well, I know how much you made off the book, so if anybody wants to sweeten the pot with me, I’ll give away the information for $5 whole dollars.

Katie:

Henah is like ,for $5, I will—

Henah:

Venmo me 10 bucks and I’ll tell you. It’s funny, when my husband and I first got engaged, my dad would just be like, so how much do you think you spend on the ring? And I’d be like, it doesn’t matter. And he’s like, no, just give me a ballpark. And I was like, it’s so nosy. It’s between one and a hundred thousand. And then a couple years ago I was like, you know what dad, it’s Father’s Day. It’s between one and $25,000.

Katie:

You’re just going to slowly shorten the window for him.

Henah:

And he’ll never know. So a really sweet question that came in. Are there any plans to donate any proceeds to an animal shelter in honor of your silent co-author, Beans? RIP Beans.

Katie:

That’s such a sweet question. Rest in peace, Beandog. Yes. Beans was a critical part of the writing process. And by that I mean when I finally was reaching the kind of structural edit phase, which oh my gosh, I mean we do structural edits on essays all the time that are 2,000 or 3,000 words. But when you’re talking about a document that’s 70,000 words, the structural edits, I literally had to print it out. I think I paid $100 at Staples to get it printed because I needed to physically lay it out in front of me on the ground.

Henah:

I remember seeing it on the ground and Beans is laying on them.

Katie:

And Beans would lay on it. And I was like, okay, well this is not helping. So I don’t have plans to donate proceeds of this book, that literal money, partially because I’m already splitting the revenue with my agent who gets 15% and then Morning Brew, my employer also gets a cut. So of the total that I on paper made from this, it’s probably, I don’t know, it’s a lot less than that.

But my new podcast, Diabolical Lies, we have committed to redistributing 33% of our revenue, which is exciting. And so we are already on track to donate or we like to use the word redistribute. It feels less like philanthropy and a little bit more like Democratic socialist. So we are already on track to redistribute $100,000 this year of our revenue that show to causes that we care about. So I do feel really excited about and grateful for that.

Henah:

I’m really glad that you’re doing something like that, you’re donating 33%. In the nonprofit world, we say donating, but Katie’s using the word redistributing. And I was like, I wonder what she sees of that subtle nuance. And it’s funny that you were like, I use this word because it sounds a little bit more like—

Katie:

Look, I think that the word philanthropy, and I think this is a very valid critique, which is it kind of can be used as reputation washing for rich people to be like, oh, I’m giving my money away and I’m so generous. And I think that there’s something about redistribution that just makes it sound like you’re returning money to people that should have had it in the first place. So to me, that’s kind of why I prefer that.

But dude, it’s so hard to give money away. It’s crazy. I was telling you about this. There’s this one organization that—I guess we are trying to do a mix of long-term help where we’re giving to causes that are trying to really change things down the road as opposed to just lessening pain and suffering now. And so we’re doing a mix of, okay, mutual aid that’s going to be distributed immediately and make a change today. Versus like, oh, we’re playing the long game with this donation and the goal is that this money will be used to make more lasting changes.

One of our recipients was Run for Something who ,they basically train people how to run for office at the local level. And three days after we made the contribution, there was this article that came out that was like Bernie Sanders was working with them to help train people. And I was like, okay. In my head, we paid for that. That was us. I was like, I am now two degrees of separation from Bernie.

But there’s this other organization that’s doing amazing work and I’ve emailed them multiple times to be like, I would like to wire you $15,000. Where can I send it? And it’s just crickets. And I’m like, it’s crazy how overburdened these places are that you can be like, I’m trying to send you tens of thousands of dollars and it’s actually hard to get ahold of someone.

Henah:

I was in nonprofit for many years, so I totally understand. I did the fundraising, I did the development, but if someone was like, “Hey, I want to give you 15,000.” I would be on the phone within 30 seconds.

Katie:

Same day. Henah’s like, lemme text you that routing number, babe.

Henah:

Literally I’d be like, thanks so much. Here you go.

Katie:

We’re still trying to get some money to them. It’s been a great experience and as cliche as it is, just rewarding to feel like, okay, I’m not just talking about the things that I care about. I’m actually putting some money behind them. So that’s fun.

Henah:

Well, sometimes people will message me and they’ll be like, Hey, was this guest really as good as they see am? Or hey, what do you really think about working with Katie?

Katie:

Oh god. Venmo me $10 and I’ll tell you.

Henah:

For that, it’s 20 bucks, you are my employer.

Katie:

Henah sets up a Cameo where it’s like, she’ll send you a video telling you what she actually thinks.

Henah:

It’s actually my secret side hustle. But Katie, I think we’ve grown a lot together in our own ways over the last three years, but I’m even three years in, I feel like I’m still so proud to work with someone who puts their money where their mouth is and they’re not just talking. This is actually stuff that you do behind the scenes. And I’ve said this before on the show, but you will never admit to it. So I’m going to say it again. Katie is actually as good a person and as generous a person as she seems online.

Katie:

Oh my God, thank you. That’s so nice. Well, Henah is on payroll so just bear that in mind everybody.

Henah:

Not for long, when I get all my Cameo money, I’m out. We’ll get to the rest of your questions after a quick break.

So Katie, let’s transition to the writing process. So how did you find your literary agent?

Katie:

I hear that this works differently for everybody. I wasn’t seeking a book deal when this happened. So I think had I been actively looking for one, I probably would’ve approached this differently.

I actually do have some advice for anyone who does want to do this that I actually heard the other day, perfect timing, but the person who ended up becoming my agent had emailed me being like, hey, I really like your work. I think you’re a great writer. Are you interested in writing a book? And I was like, not right now, but at some point I would love to. Thanks for reaching out. And she was like, oh cool. Well why don’t we just get together for half an hour and I can tell you all about how this process works in case you ever want to do it.

And we really just clicked and I felt like she understood what I was trying to do and what my work was about and I was impressed with the knowledge she already had about the work that I had been doing in my writing. And so we ended up deciding to work together because of that. But because I didn’t know anything about this world, I don’t know if anyone remembers the interview we did with Max Marshall on the show a couple of years ago about the book Among the Bros.  It was about the fraternity crime scandal. He went to high school with my husband, and so he’s like a friend of ours and when his book came out with Harper Collins, I was like, damn, this is really impressive. So it was kind of nice. I could ask him like, oh, it’s 15% is that standard? And he could tell me, yeah, that’s pretty standard. Most agents will take 15%. So it’s good to know that that’s how that works. I will say that it was really important.

She was such a valuable resource when I was writing the proposal, we should talk about what goes into a book proposal. I had no idea how to do it and there is kind of an art and science to it, so that was great. And then she obviously does the negotiating for you and kind of runs point on that. It was a unique experience. I’ve always been the one to negotiate my own deals. I don’t have an agent for anything else. And so it was nice to have that extra person in your corner besides just your attorney who can be looking around corners for you.

And the advice that I heard the other day that was really good, which if anyone is interested in writing a book someday, this was on an episode with Jessica DeFino, who has also been a guest on the show before who was talking about when she wanted to write a book as a freelance journalist before she had the audience that she has now. She said that there was a certain type of book that she knew she wanted to write. And so what she did was she looked up comps of that book and basically like, okay, these are books that are similar to the book that I want to write. And she went into the acknowledgements and she made a list of all the agents that were thanked in those books and then did outreach to all those agents and other agents they worked with kind of assuming, okay, if they’ve published this book, they are going to be interested in the book that I’m working on too. So I thought that was just really, really just really strategic.

Henah:

That’s very resourceful of her. When you say that your agent gets 15%, that is 15% of the advance or is that 15% of the advance and anything else that you sell? Is it 15% of only what you sell? What does that mean?

Katie:

It is everything. So she gets 15% of every advance payment. She’ll get 15% of royalties. You get paid to do the audio book as well. You make extra money if you record your own audiobook. So—

Henah:

Wow, I didn’t know that 15% of that.

Katie: So it’s not like anything I sell in the future she would if I ever did a deal that she for some reason was not a part of, it’s not like it would be automatic, but I have now signed a contract with her as representation.

Henah:

For this specific book.

Katie:

Yeah.

Henah:

Gotcha. Okay. So you had mentioned a proposal, which is kind of a bigger to do than maybe you thought it was. How did you write it and were you approached by Penguin Random House to make one?

Katie:

The editor at Penguin Random House who ended up buying and working on Rich Girl Nation with me reached out to me in fall 2022 and basically said, I’ve seen your work. If you’re ever interested in writing a book, let us know. And like I said, I was, but obviously have a full-time job writing Money with Katie. And also if you remember Henah, in 2022, we were doing way more than we are now.

Henah:

We were doing two episodes a week, an essay a week, and the newsletter. We were doing daily social.

Katie:

We had what, 14 pieces of social content a week? Do you remember that? It was literally two posts a day every single day. It was crazy. We were both working insane hours. I was working like 80 hours a week. I can’t believe we ever did that. Don’t recommend. But I was like, I obviously had very little time, but I want to make sure that there will be something in the business that’s going to have to get put on the back burner. If I do this, I’m going to have to find time to write it and that’s time that’s not going to be spent on the business in another way.

Henah:

Way. Did you feel like if you didn’t say yes at that time, that it was like the moment has passed, it’ll never happen again? Did you feel pressure that that was—

Katie:

Honestly, yeah, a little bit. I think at that point I was like, I don’t know how much longer this career is going to last for me. So you got to—

Henah:

My 15 minutes of fame are closing in.

Katie:

Strike when the iron is hot. Yeah, literally. But ultimately I do think that when you really want to do something, you’re going to find ways to justify it. Frankly, I really wanted to write a book, so I was like, I’m going to find a way to make this happen. So I still had to then get an agent sign with Kate, my agent, and then submit the book proposal. And the book proposal was a very, very involved process, so she helped me shape it. She gave me examples, kind of explained the proposals, a marketing document, that’s really what this is, and I went back and looked at mine, it was 60 pages. It included a summary and a purpose of the book concept, why this book should exist. It includes an author bio about you. It has to include data about the existing audience for your work, and you basically have to prove—

Henah:

I remember collecting that data for you to be like, okay, how many on Instagram, how many on TikTok, how many on whatever, whatever. I remember it being a very thorough deep dive.

Katie:

The newsletter. How many people are opening this newsletter? Do you think that actually the people read your work, how many people go to your website and then any marketing and publicity information about connections you have in the space? Who would support it? Do you know any journalists who are going to be willing to cover this? Do you have other friends that are in a similar have audiences as well that will talk about it to their audiences because they want to see that you can sell books basically. They’re not going to publish something if they don’t think that you can sell it.

I think it depends a little bit on the publisher and the imprint and the size of the deal, but the publisher will either roll out the red carpet for you and really, really help with marketing or you’re basically on your own. And so I feel like I’ve been really lucky. I have felt like they’ve really rolled out the red carpet and done so much to promote it. It’s still a lot in your court, so they really want to see that you have connections and that people who will also help spread the word and then a list of comparable titles. So you basically have to be like, these are the five books that are similar to what I’m trying to write, but here’s how mine’s different and special and unique from these. And then you write an annotated table of contents where you basically lay out exactly what you want this book to be and then a couple hundred words about what each chapter is going to cover and then sample chapters.

So I had written, I think the Hot Girl Hamster Wheel chapter, the very first chapter in the book, and then I want to say chapter six, a first draft of both of those went into the proposal and the idea is you’re kind of proving that you know how to write and that you’re serious about it. I think my understanding is that if I were to go back to the same publisher and try to sell them another book, my proposal would probably just be annotated table of contents because everything else they’ve already seen—

Henah:

Even if your audience has grown substantially or they would just pull new numbers and be like, well, she’s already set?

Katie:

Probably pull new numbers. But talking to my agent about that, she was like, oh, well they know you can write now. They just want to see what are your ideas. What else would you want to say?

Henah:

You had written at some point that you had had a chapter about rent versus buy, I guess that was in your annotated table of contents and ended up getting cut. So it’s not like this document that’s hard and fast, it’s just kind of that you have an idea, right?

Katie:

Yeah, exactly. The beginning of the end of book honestly stayed pretty true to form the original intention, but that section in the middle, there was originally one chapter was supposed to be rent versus buy, marriage, and kids. And then as we started writing it, we were like, this is way too much for one chapter. So originally rent versus buy, marriage and kids all became their own, and then we ended up pulling rent versus buy, and just focusing on marriage and kids. So yeah, there is a lot that will change, but in general I would say it stayed more or less with the overarching original vision.

Henah:

Gotcha. Okay. So you said that your editor who approached you is the one that you ended up working on the book with and is that usually how it goes? Are you usually assigned to someone else if a publisher approaches, is that something that you’re happy worked out this way? Tell me about that.

Henah:

I guess I never thought about how the editing process would work. I thought that the person that came to you and said, oh, we are interested in your work and think that we kind of the person that ends up bringing it to their pitch meeting and being like, here’s this person and here’s the book they want to write and I think we should buy it. I didn’t realize meant that that was the same person who was literally going to edit the book and help structure it over the next 18 months. I figured these would be different individuals. Someone who works in sales or outreach would be somebody different than the one who’s actually doing the editing, but it’s the same and I guess in retrospect kind of makes sense because the person that wants to, the person that sees the potential, it would make sense that they would then be the one that works on it. In retrospect, it was so nice that it was the same person the entire time because they were the one that was kind of on check-in calls where I would turn in chapters, we’d meet and talk about them. They were the one being like, oh, I really think we need to hone this angle. Oh, I really think this chapter needs to go and you should replace it with something else.

Henah:

How often were you guys in disagreement about something that should stay or should go or is that something that generally you were kind of always on the same page about?

Katie:

There were multiple times where she would bring something up that I hadn’t thought about and maybe initially be like, oh, I don’t know about that. But then after giving it time would be like, no, she was totally right. I think her instincts were really good as far as shaping structure, how the book should flow and those decisions or things that I kind of imagined doing completely alone. In the beginning, I didn’t realize that I’d have that much input from someone else, and now knowing what I do about how good writing happens, it’s editors are so necessary worth their weight in gold. Actually, I also learned through this process that a lot of people have ghost writers.

Henah:

Ooh, give me the tea.

Katie:

Most people have ghost writers, which is crazy to me. They would tell me, oh, do you want us to introduce you to this person who wrote so and so’s book? And I’d be like, what? That they didn’t write their own? This is my theory. I think a lot of prominent people with an online presence are using books like marketing material or promotional tools for their business, and I feel like I’m the opposite where I’m trying to use my online presence and my business to parlay into book deals because I actually want to be a writer. So I think I have the opposite goal here.

Henah:

I think one of the things that got pointed out in some of the interviews you were doing where I got to be a fly on the wall and listen is that people, and I also thought this would say repeatedly, hey, this book sounds like the way you talk. And when I read it, I did feel like, oh, I could totally hear Katie saying that in my ear. I’ve heard her say this before. And so I think that to me is an obvious sign of you wrote the book, but maybe some ghost writers are really good where you can’t tell that apart, but—

Katie:

Oh, thank you.

Henah:

For me, it seems so exceedingly clearer that you specifically wrote this.

Katie:

Thank you, I appreciate that. The hardest thing about it was that I have really been working on improving my writing, trying to become a better writer over the last 18 months, and so hiring outside editors, working with people who almost are operating in more of a writing coach capacity, and the way that I did that was I found a writer who I really liked and reached out to her and said, who’s your editor? Who’s editing you? I really like your voice. I like the clarity of your work. I want someone to help me with mine that can really spend the time on every piece and almost go through edits with me every week where we sit down for an hour and talk through all the changes and they’ll be like, oh, I’m noticing that you tend to do this.

I learned recently that I tend to hedge a lot. I caveat my writing and I think that it’s because I’m so used to getting so much feedback from people that I feel like I have to caveat around every case and kind of soften every point because I know that there will be, people are like, well, that’s not technically true if you consider blah blah, blah, so I think I have to get better about disclaiming. But things like that where they’re like, oh, your writing would be stronger if you made points a little more authoritatively and didn’t soften everything that you’re saying. It was hard because I feel like I’ve improved so much since I wrote this manuscript that I’m like, man, my writing so much better now than it was when I wrote this book. And so I’m like, it’s okay. You can write more. I’ve heard other people say that if you’re actively trying to improve, then you will look back on the first one and be like, oh, I hate it.

Henah:

To me it’s a very clear time capsule of the time where we were tackling a lot of this tactical stuff and the stories and anecdotes and language we were using around that time. And where you are now is obviously a little bit different, but that’s for book two, which we’re putting out there.

Okay, next question that came up was someone wrote, love the way your brain works and want to hear any and all aha moments, mindset, process.

Katie:

Thank you. Well, I think the main thing I realized is that I do want to write more, and when I write more, I’m going to pare back on the other work that I’m doing and have fewer plates spinning at the same time. I think that’s the biggest thing.

Henah:

I wanted to ask personally, how did you actually go about writing it? I know sometimes during the work week you’d be like, okay, I’m going to be heads down for five hours writing this chapter. I’m going to work on it over the weekend, but what was your processor flow or how long did it take you to get into that, or how much did you write at a time? If you say you have five hours, were there days where it was like, man, I wrote four pages, or man I busted through 12 or 20 pages, stuff like that.

Katie:

The weird thing is that I feel like the first drafts were never hard. It was easy for me to get everything out on paper, but the editing is what took forever. I picked Wednesdays, and so there was a period of time there for probably three to six months of just writing, but then another year of editing where I would block a whole day on Wednesday because what I realized was it’s not something that you can do in just pockets of time. So if your week is full of meetings and calls and interviews and then you’re trying to carve out an hour here or an hour there, that just doesn’t work.

And so I would pick one day a week where I wouldn’t allow myself to schedule anything else or have any other work to do and just focus on the book on that day. And that worked pretty well. And then by the time the edits started coming back where you kind of get into this period of overlap where you’re sending new chapters to the publisher, but then they’re sending the previous ones back to you and you’re having to work through edits on the previous ones while you’re writing the next batch, that was where things became a little bit overwhelming. But I again, would just try to give myself the full day of, okay, the only thing I need to do today is work through the edits on this one chapter. That was pretty effective, I would say.

Henah:

Sometimes when we record interviews, I’ll listen to the interview and edit it down and then I’ll go back and I’ll listen to it again. Basically by the time it comes out, you and I have heard this about four times and I feel like my brain just doesn’t comprehend it after the third or fourth time. It’s just in one ear, out the other. And so I imagine—

Katie:

You’re too close to it. Yeah.

Henah:

I imagine with a book, when you’re doing that kind of repeatedly and with different pieces of content, are you able to read it with fresh eyes?

Katie:

Frankly, no. It’s really tough. If you’re reading the same thing over and over again, you become so close to it that my editor Megan would make tweaks or changes and be like, I think this makes more sense. And I’d be like, I can’t even fathom changing that. I’m so used to it being this way.

What was really cool though, and I talked about this a little bit with Toby and Neil and Morning Brew Daily—

Henah:

With the audio book, right?

Katie:

Yes. Reading the audio book and recording, that was the first time that I had revisited it after the six months that I had turned it in and it was kind of reading a brand new book. I was like, oh, oh, this does make sense. Wow, I’m really glad we structured it this way. Even if in the moment I was like, I don’t know if this makes sense. I just feel so close to the material now that it’s hard to back up and get that big picture view when you’re editing a chapter for literally the eighth time. It was so much editing.

Henah:

I remember you saying I wasn’t even sure if the book was good anymore. And then when I went back to do the audio book, how many ever months later, you were like, oh, thank God this book is good.

Katie:

I was so relieved. I was so freaking relieved. I was like, oh, good. It’s good. Okay, we’re fine.

Henah:

The next question, and I have some feelings about the topic, but did you use AI to write any portions or thoughts on authors using AI, of which I have many.

Katie:

Wait, okay. I want to hear your answer first. What are your thoughts?

Henah:

I try not to be as blanketed as I hate AI, but I get very frustrated when people use AI for very basic things that can then take away someone’s income, like their labor and their work. And so to me, an author using AI, unless it’s to condense data or something really complicated and something simple stuff like that I could maybe see a use case for, but knowing how environmentally unfriendly it is and also just the fact that it’s taking away work specifically for writers in creative spaces, that kind of thing. It really grinds my gears. But I was talking to a coworker today who was like, yeah, I use ChatGPT to make this thing sound more professional. And I was like, no, not good. And she was like, no, no. I use Ecosia as a search engine, which plants trees for everyone I destroy with AI. And I was like, doesn’t work like that.

Katie:

Dude. Can I be so honest though that my biggest fear is that people we’re going to forget how to think?

Henah:

Did you see the paper that just was like, oh, our summer reading lists, and it was a bunch of books that don’t exist?

Katie:

Yeah, my co-host of Diabolical Lies, Caro, had a thought about that that I thought was really interesting that she shared on TikTok, which was like, she’s like, listen, I used to work for these big media aggregators and make lists like this. And she was like, let me tell you, it wasn’t much better before she was like, if you tried to put something on a list that was not already a bestseller, they’d be like, nope. Because the whole point was that they wanted the affiliate income from the books, and so they wanted you to load those lists with books that people were already buying a lot of.

And so she was like, we have been trending toward this destination of essentially losing critical thinking style and taste pretty much since the beginning of the internet, and now it’s just rapidly accelerating. So the incentives are crazy.

But when it comes to writing, so I guess my feelings have evolved about this a little bit. I did not use AI to write it, but I did have it help me with the citations. I apologize if you’ve heard the Morning Brew Daily episode. I also talked about this there, but I’m going to repeat myself. I cited a lot of data in the book, and as I was writing over those 18 months, I would link my source in the moment the way that I do when I write an essay, just hyperlink something. But obviously you can’t hyperlink things in a book, so you have to go back and you have to make full end notes and citation lists. You have to do the MLA format thing, you’re in school again.

And doing that was relatively easy. I wasn’t using AI to make of this citation, but my biggest fear is that bitchy Goodreads review of somebody being like, well, on page whatever, she cited this study and on page 48 of the study she’s citing, there’s technically something that disproves the way that she’s representing the finding and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So my thing was like, okay, I’m going to be so airtight on this shit. I’m going to go back through every single source as I create the citation list in their house style and kind of use that as my process for making sure that I’m double checking the accuracy and the recency of all the sources. But as I sat down to do it, the first chapter of end notes and my process of going back and rereading the entire source, it took me six hours to do a single page of citations.

It was like 38 citations in six hours or something. It was awful. And so I realized I am not going to hit my deadline if I’m going to have to read—some of these reports are extremely long and I’m citing one thing. And so what I would do is I would use ChatGPT and send them the link to the paper and be like, my interpretation is this, can you confirm that this finding is true? Okay, did it bring up this? And kind of go back and forth and talk about it.

But the thing that kind of scares me about that and why I didn’t trust it as much as I ended up manually rechecking a lot of it later anyway, I was paranoid because there have been times where I will ask ChatGPT something about a source that I know is wrong. I know that it’s wrong, and it’ll be like, yes, it says that. And then I’ll be like, can you please cite the exact sentence and page where it says that? And then it’ll be like, oh, my apologies. It doesn’t say that. And I’m like, what the fuck? So it’s not as trustworthy as I think people think it is, but in general, using AI to write that idea just makes me sad. To me, the whole point of writing is to pressure test your ideas and to figure out what you really think. It’s a hard and fun process. And so I don’t really understand why use AI to write a book. If you don’t want to write the book, don’t write a book. What is the point? You are not going to outsource the fun part. That’s the part that matters.

And so the only thing that I will say that I’ve changed my tune on with AI when it comes to writing is I will always work with human editors. That is so important to me, but it is sometimes nice to send a final essay into ChatGPT and be like, poke holes in this. Take the opposite point of view and poke holes in this, or tell me where my tone is flagging or check this for redundant words or point out where my phrasing is weaker cliche for that sort of stuff. I have actually found it to be pretty useful where sometimes it’s a little too adulatory and you have to be like, don’t be nice, take out any praise and just be critical basically. It has actually been helpful for that sort of, I’ve used the same conversation for that. And it’s nice because it’ll be like, oh, you have a tendency to do this. And I’m like, wow, I’ve never thought about that before. And so I don’t think it’s a replacement for a human editor, but before I send something out to hundreds of thousands of people, it is kind of like a nice gut check. And I have found it helpful for that. That’s why I say I feel like I’ve changed my tune on it a little bit. I understand why people use it for editing. I think it can be helpful.

Henah:

I think a big piece of this for me is the trust that you mentioned. With the publication, not even having the list of books be real. It’s like, well, I don’t trust the ChatGPT is going to tell me the truth a hundred percent of the time or even know what the truth is. So I am with you on that. We are working on a big website project that we’ve talked about before on the show, and I’m like, that’s what I want ChatGPT to. I want ChatGPT to do the website’s work. That is a slog. But the creative process and using AI for that is where I’m like, well, what’s the point?

Katie:

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

Henah:

Let’s move on to the, I call it the most important part, the subject matter itself. So first question that came in is did you worry about sounding original and new in a crowded genre? And someone else asked, how is your book different from others in the genre?

Katie:

Yeah, definitely. It was really important to me that I didn’t just say the same thing as everyone else or recreate the wheel. That also just didn’t seem very interesting to me. I didn’t feel excited by the idea of just creating the same thing that someone else had already done. And this is a crowded genre. So my goal was really to write a book that combined systemic and cultural critique with rigorous personal finance advice, advanced personal finance advice. That was something that I had in the original pitch been there are so many good 101 books about this. I want to write the 501 book about this. I want this to be something that is accessible for anyone, but it’s going to take things further than many of the personal finance books that I’ve encountered.

And I also really felt like as the project sort of developed and I got even more into the research, I think I had a hunch that women were being impacted by money differently. And I knew enough to know that they were facing different challenges. But it was interesting that as I even went to put that idea on paper, it became all the more obvious to me, the ways in which those things were true. And so in that respect, it was kind of a learning process of writing it where as I was writing it, my point of view was sharpening a little bit. And ideally that’s what happens. That was really important to me that it was a level of detail that was robust, but also was taking that wider view.

And so some of my favorite feedback that I’ve gotten so far has come from some of the heavy hitters in the personal finance space. There’s this woman named Jean Chatzky who has a podcast called Her Money, and she’s been around for a long time. I went on her show to talk about the book and she was like, oh, I genuinely felt like it was original and different from what else is out there and I’m giving it to my daughter. This is a must read. And I was like, wow, that’s really affirming, frankly. And there was a couple other journalists who got advanced copies who said something similar who report in the personal finance world who were like, oh, this was really different. This felt new. And so I feel like we did that. I hope we did that. I hope you guys feel the same way.

Henah:

Someone asked, how accessible is the book? I pre-ordered it, but I’m nervous I won’t be familiar with the vernacular. And then someone else said, what level of financial literacy did you write for? And will I have to Google every few pages?

Katie:

So I define every term that I use. So the strategies are definitely more advanced, but we made sure to explain any jargon. So we’re not going to be relying on you to go look up words. If there is a financial term, we will definitely tell you what it means and how to think about it.

Henah:

I remember the first maybe three months I was working here, you’d write something and it’d be like, and then dollar cost averaging. And I’d be like, Katie, what does this mean? So I do feel like the book is very friendly to beginners and advanced readers alike. Someone asked, is it evergreen or more timely to the moment?

Katie:

It’s evergreen from the standpoint that the advice is sound for the long term, barring any extreme changes to our financial system. I think that this is a book that will be useful kind of indefinitely. But I do think it’s of the moment from the standpoint of being informed by the challenges that are unique to women in the US and in the West more broadly in the 21st century. So I kind of feel like it’s a good balance of the two.

But there was one line that when I wrote it, it was like, we’re talking about managing money as a couple, and I said something about having a stable federal government job. I used federal government job as the example of a stable long-term employment. And when we recorded that, that was written a year ago, guys, things have shifted, let me tell you. And so when we recorded the audio book, that was the only line that they basically said, we have to come up with something else because this is now the quintessential unstable job, which is just honestly a travesty.

Henah:

What did you change it to?

Katie:

I think we changed it to tenured professor or something like that, which, there’s seven of those left in America. But we were like, what’s a job that you can’t be laid off from easily crickets? And I’m like, and therein lies the problem everybody.

Henah:

So someone said, what are the topics that didn’t fit into this book? I already can’t wait for the sequel. Yes, speak it into existence. And then the other person wrote, what do you wish you included but didn’t? And what do you want your next book to be about?

Katie:

So that was something that my editors told me in one of our first meetings was like, remember, you can always write another one. Not everything you want to say has to go into this book.

Henah:

I can imagine you being like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but this is what—I’m guessing.

Katie:

Literally. There was one section of the book that I swear every single time we passed it back and forth, they were in the track changes cut. And I was like, Nope. Reject. I was like, it stays. So there were some things that I felt really strongly about. But anyway, the piece that I really fought to keep was a section in the beginning of chapter two about kind of my relationship to what I call girlbossitis and the fact that I have very complicated feelings about it. But the original version had a much, much longer grappling with the Girlboss era and they wanted to cut all of it. And I was like, no, no, no. We have to keep at least some of it. This is necessary. My readers probably feel the same way about this. They probably feel similarly conflicted about that time and what it means for hustle culture and earning more and how to think about these things moving forward and individual solutions versus collective action and whatever. I was like, we have to address this.

Henah:

It reminds me of the essay you did that was like, is it feminist to get rich? And I was like, oh, that’s a good question.

Katie:

No, it’s not. But it is a little complicated. So anyway, that was something that I wanted to keep, but most of, I think they were like, let’s just get to the advice. And I was like, no, no, trust me. We need to start here. So I really, really want my next book to be a book of essays. I love Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino, I love Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom who is actually going to be coming on the show very soon. Thanks to everybody who harassed her on Blue Sky until she said yes, love you.

I just read The White Album by Joan Didion. There’s an amazing book I read called Enemy Feminisms, which is kind of similar book of essays, by Sophie Lewis. So this book definitely skews more self-help from the standpoint of being full of practical advice. And now I kind of feel like I’ve given the practical advice I want to give. I feel like I have said my piece on the subject of personal finance, and it’s just like the mark I wanted to make. I’m ready to move on and publish a book of essays that’s like raising questions and not necessarily offering answers.

Henah:

Oh, bars. I actually was just laughing because I was thinking about how you were like, this book is evergreen for, it’s also of the moment in the 21st century for women in the US and I’m like, babes, nothing is going to be more timely of the moment than the next four years. So you might be like, I have new things I got to say.

Katie:

That’s true.

Henah:

On that note, why the seventies vibe for the book photo shoot was another popular question we got.

Katie:

Yes. So that was inspired by the Women’s Rights Movement of the 1970s, which is just a very inspiring time to me both politically and aesthetically. And by the way, when I was recording the audiobook, I learned that I say aesthetically wrong. I kept saying aesthetic, and they’re like, there’s an H. Add the H. It’s aesthetically, aesthetic.

Oh, and someone emailed me about this. Ara sent me a very kind email where she did the praise sandwich where it was like, nice thing, constructive feedback, nice thing. So thanks. She said, love your podcast. I have loved following your evolution from personal finance expert to social critic in the interest of furthering your reputation as a needed thought leader for our age. I wanted to note hegemony is pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable. I always say hegemony. Hegemony. Yeah.

Henah:

I noticed that. And then I was like, maybe I’m saying it wrong.

Katie:

Bitch, why didn’t you tell me?

Henah: I thought maybe I’m saying it wrong. You’re usually pretty good at knowing how you’re going to pronounce something.

Katie:

Well, then I went to Thomas and I was like, how do you say this? And he was hegemony. And I was like, okay, me too. But it’s hegemony. So sorry guys. For all the times I’ve ever said hegemony on this show like a freaking loser, it’s hegemony.

Henah:

Well, so you guys didn’t hear this, but she was asking a question in JL Collins, and she said, do you think it’s hubris, blah, blah, blah. She said it twice and I responded and I was like, hey, this was an SAT word for me in high school, so I know that it’s pronounced hubris. I think we should do a retake. And she was like, let me look this up. And then she was like, damn, it is hubris.

Katie:

Okay. But this is another thing. I’ve pretty much only no words and learn words by reading them. And so it’s like this is just kind of a thing where I feel like I make this, I actually mispronounce things a lot anyway, aesthetically. Aesthetically. It was an inspiring time for me.

So around the same time that I was vision boarding the cover, I watched Mrs. America on Hulu about Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative activists who basically rallied the housewives to fight against the Equal Rights Amendment. And in that show there’s Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm, their whole gang, trying to get the ERA passed. And I just completely fell in love with them and the spirit of the movement. And even though it was not ultimately successful, I still think that second wave feminism for all its faults really changed the world. And those women really fought for economic autonomy and to make discrimination on the basis of sex illegal for us to get the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. There is this just very iconic photo of Gloria Steinem sitting on the ground with her legs crossed, holding a sign that says “we shall overcome” from 1965. And that picture was on the vision board. It ended up being like, why in the photo shoot, which took seven or eight hours, I had some pictures sitting. The story behind the 1970s thing.

Henah:

Someone wanted to know how many cover concepts did you go through and how did you settle on the final one?

Katie:

So this is this interesting last fall we actually chose a different cover and we had a different subtitle and it was all a little bit more smiley and fun and lighthearted. And then after the election, my publishing team emailed me and was like, listen, this might be a little too lighthearted for the historical moment. So we ended up wanting something with a little more gravitas and it ended up being kind of a last minute change, the picture that we ended up going with, but it was the one that all along I had liked best, so I was really happy that it was the one that we picked. It was the one that I had wanted. But you’re kind of having to work with the marketing team and the people who know how to sell books that are like, oh, this is a great shot for the cover, but we changed it kind of last minute.

Henah:

I personally love the book and I love that you’re just kind of sitting there, A quiet confidence is coming out of you. So I really love that cover and I’m kind of glad that it got changed. I would be curious what the old cover was if you ever—

Katie:

I’ll show you. Yeah, and then you can offer it to people on cameo.

Henah:

Oh, that’ll be $25 everybody. Someone asked what is Henah’s favorite part of the book? Oh my god, thanks. A lot of the content in there that’s tactical is stuff that we’ve already kind of covered so many times over the last couple of years. So to me it wasn’t so much that I was like, wow, talking about save rates got me going again. Although it did remind me though, 40% is what to shoot for.

But there were a couple stories in there that I’d actually never heard about you, Katie and I really loved the personal stories you were bringing in. I mean obviously you talked about Grandma Jean, you’ve talked about your tap dancing out of the boardroom of your time in corporate companies. You’ve talked about all that stuff, but there were still some things that I just didn’t know. I really liked the layering of your personal life with these larger practical lessons.

Someone who had asked a related question, if you’ve been following listening to you for years, will there be anything new? I think you’ll definitely walk away with a refresher of the most important things. And it’s a very distilled way to cover a lot of important things in the sense that, like you said, you could hand somebody this book and then be like, and that’s all you got to know. And also I think you’ll find out a lot more about Katie in the process. So if it’s something where getting to know Katie as a human is important to you, which I often find the parasocial relationship of it is very interesting. I do think you’ll like the book too.

Katie:

I was reflecting on that question and I was like, I mean if you have listened to every episode we’ve ever done and you’ve read everything I’ve ever written, you’re probably not going to be very surprised by the tactical information in this book. But some of the stuff that is in there is stuff that we really only have covered one time and sometimes years ago. I still think that even if you are a regular listener and reader, you’re not going to feel like it’s all just a repeat of everything you already have heard.

Henah:

I do think there are probably going to be things that I personally have read or listened to every single thing we’ve done. I don’t even know how many times at this point, but if you’re someone who’s just an avid listener, you’re definitely still going to find stuff that reengages you. Or it reminded me when you were talking at JL Collins and you were like, hey, I’d read your book five years ago. So I was looking for what had changed and you were like, that wasn’t in the book. And then it was like, but you were just in a different place.

I’m in such a different place now than when we covered a lot of the save rate stuff or the basic FI stuff or whatever. And so it is nice to kind of reapply those learnings. And I remember I was sitting at the pool next to my best friend reading the book and people are like, oh my God, it’s that book. And I was like, it’s my boss. Doesn’t it look great? But I was like, hey, what’s your save rate to my best friend? And she was like, well, I think it’s this, but I don’t know anymore. And I was like, you should recalculate it because remember, these are the timelines. So I think it is kind of fun to rerun against your own life from time to time too.

Katie:

Yeah, definitely. I think that it’s easy to get into a state of drift with some of this stuff if you haven’t checked it in a while. And that’s also something that I’m excited about for people that have been listening for a long time and have heard a lot of our tactical material just to kind of see how we’re approaching it now and to get it all in one concentrated place and not chronologically, but you’re kind of getting it in the most efficient order versus hearing one show about it in one month of one year and then technically something that’s related to it 10 months later.

So someone else had asked would the subject matter be relevant for anyone outside the US? Definitely the only chapter that’s entirely specific to the United States is chapter six because it’s about tax optimization and all the finer points of tax optimization. There’s also a planning for childcare expenses section that is not really going to matter to people whose countries are reasonable in subsidized that for them.

But the legal section two of the marriage chapters, your mileage will vary. It’s designed for people under the legal regime of the United States. 75^ to 80% of the material is going to be relevant even if you’re not American.

Henah:

A coworker actually messaged me today and was like, hey, I just wanted you to know that I actually used your and Katie’s advice for a prenup.

Katie:

Oh, hell yeah, let’s go.

Henah:

I was like, speaking of, you should read this book.

Katie:

I talked to so many lawyers for that chapter and for that section, it was wild. Lawyers are so funny, dude, mostly because the lawyers that I talked to were all New Yorkers, so they’re just like, “Judges aren’t kind about this. It’s a mess. It’s a mess.”

Henah:

For some reason when I think of lawyers, they have a Nathan Fielder approach in my head. They’re very awkward, but by the books, they know what they’re talking about. I don’t know why I think that, because some of my very good friends are lawyers and they’re not like that at all. Maybe it’s because Thomas is a lawyer and in my mind—

Katie:

Thomas is kind of Nathan Fielder-y.

Henah:

Okay. Someone wanted to know, and I think this is a very timely question. Given kind of your evolution over the last couple of years, how have any of your financial views changed since writing it, if at all?

Katie:

Oh my gosh. My perspective has evolved a ton. I feel like I started writing at a capitalist and finished writing at a socialist, so if that tells you anything about that, things have changed. But fortunately, none of it really affected the major takeaways. My personal beliefs and value system as a human being on earth don’t really impact the ideal way to allocate your 401(k), so that’s good.

One of the things that I ended up coming around to that was kind of interesting and a little bit full circle was a lot of what originally attracted me to financial independence was the rejection of consumerism and the rejection of the rat race basically. And then I feel like now I’ve kind of almost come back to that original place of seeing financial independence and really understanding it at a tactical mathematical level as that kind of responsible safe understanding of what is enough, recognizing that when you hit enough that you do have other responsibilities to the world around you and the people around you, and learning how to do this stuff for yourself is the first thing that you do, but that should not be the end.

You have a responsibility to pass this information on to help the other people in your life that you care about to have a positive impact on your community. Those are things that I just believe are true and that money enables you to do more fully. And that’s sort of like what we were talking about in that essay. Is it feminist to get rich? It’s like, well, no, it’s not feminist to be rich. There’s nothing inherently progressive about becoming very wealthy, but when you have wealth and autonomy, you actually can have a much easier time making a mark on the world. And I think it’s important to keep all of this in perspective that the point is not just to accumulate a bunch of money so you can, I don’t know, just fuck off and be rich.

Henah:

Buy Bitcoin.

Katie:

Yeah, it’s about money, but it’s really about life and how we support other people in it and build, I don’t know, stronger communities and relationships and how money can help you do that. That was probably biggest shift was shifting away from just a purely individualist approach and mindset to seeing the bigger picture.

Henah:

On that note, I think you had mentioned the Nick Magiulli piece where you kind of talk about wealth at different levels and I remember you saying, well, you may not be at your 4% number, but you might be maybe $10,000 every year is money that you’re basically making or whatever. And I remember thinking about that because I was really stressed about going over budget this month and I saw there was a mutual aid request for a single mom that needed something and at first I was like, damn, I’m just over budget. I can’t do it. And then I was like, you know what? Fuck that. Yes I can. This is not going to impact me because I have now unlocked this sort of security and I have a responsibility now with that security to go do something. And I think that that’s really a beautiful way to summarize how impactful the book can be for yourself but also for other people.

Katie:

Do you remember in the Pete interview where he was like, I don’t want to say it’s an ethical thing. I don’t want to make it sound like my ethics are better than someone. I think it’s totally okay actually for people to kind of be on the same page that we as humans owe one another. Something I feel completely comfortable stating that if you remember a couple of years ago, there was that piece that we did that was kind of on the popular side about we live in a society, we live in a society, you are part of a community, you are part of a society, things that are good for the community are going to be good for you too and vice versa. I’m definitely oversimplifying, but I do think that sometimes the hesitancy to make moral statements means that we actually aren’t talking about social, what our social values are.

And I’m like, if you have your mask on, you do have a responsibility to other human beings, especially right now and I’m, I’m going to hold myself to that standard. I think it’s a worthwhile standard to put out into the world and be like, yeah, if you become wealthy, I hope you’re making the world a better place.

Henah:

I think that’s saying that it’s pretty trite, but you are who you surround yourself with, the five people you surround yourself with the most. I think that I am so proud that you are one of those five people just by proximity of working together, but also just that we—

Katie:

Same.

Henah:

You have taught me in some ways to be ambitious so that you can have autonomy with your money, but also remember what enough is and don’t just get excited that you have it. Even just talking about mutual aid networks, and I know you and I have both moved recently and we’ve both gotten much more involved in our communities and I think that that’s one of the biggest upsides when people say like, oh, do you like your new neighborhood? I’m like, I love it. It’s so tight knit and I love that people care and look out for one another, and I never got that feeling in our old neighborhood. It was great, but it was very transient. It was a lot of renters, which I was one. I’m not looking down upon that, but I think you having settled in Denver and joining some groups and me having—

Katie:

Henah buys a house is like, well, as a homeowner, as a homeowner guys, I’m just—

Henah:

No, I just feel like it is really nice to feel like I have a community that cares as opposed to you’re on your own. Someone wanted to know, do you recommend the book for Rich Guys and Non-binaries as well?

Katie:

Yeah, I mean, I think the challenges that I write about are really elevated to the forefront of the conversation because I find them to be those with, if we’re looking just at plain Jane statistics and data around cis women, this is the things that are probably going to confront them. The obstacles that are going to be statistically you’re going to be most likely to encounter. I think if you’ve been listening to this show for a while or reading this work or in the personal finance world for a long time, you probably know that the best practices really kind of are what they are, and investing advice is generally going to be pretty similar for everybody, depending on your age in some ways is a bigger determinant of how you’re going to invest than something like gender.

But I do feel like because most personal finance books have been written by men, there are things both subtle and overt that just kind of are missing from books that I felt like as I learned more about money, I was like, well, I mean, why aren’t we talking about marriage? Why aren’t we talking about caregiving? These are things that we know have a huge consequences for women, catastrophic ones in fact, and there’s no mention of it really. So I think that that was really important to me. And the first chapter, the Hot Girl Hamster Wheel chapter is really the only one that I would say if you’re not trapped in the prison of the gender binary as a woman like me, you might not find that one to be resonant at all. But even then, I still think the writing is interesting enough that you are going to enjoy it anyway. Even if you’re like, well, this doesn’t really apply to me. I’ve never had to deal with the gel manicure game.

Henah:

We have one last reader submitted question, which was, on a scale of one to financial independence, how afraid of someone finding a typo?

Katie:

Not at all afraid because it got copy edited a zillion times. So if there is a typo in this book, I will eat my hand live on air, I’ll go on Instagram live and eat my pinky.

Henah:

I’ve actually caught multiple typos in bestsellers, so I will hold your feet to the fire. My last question, you titled the book Rich Girl Nation. This is a moniker we’ve used for the community for several years now. How did you create the term Rich Girl Nation and how did you know that it was the right title for the book?

Katie:

Tough question because I wasn’t sure for a long time. The backstory happened when the audience was so small that I was like, the vast majority of people that follow me now probably have no fucking clue where Rich Girl came from, but whenever Hot Girl Summer was the popular song and I was in the midst of trying to stop getting eyelash extensions and I was like, no, no, no, it’s not going to be a hot girl summer, everybody. It’s going to be a rich girl summer. We’re going to have a rich girl summer. We’re going to save our money. We’re not going to spend our money on trying to be hot. That’s dumb. We’re going to save our money and try to get rich instead. So that’s where ritual came from and it just kind of stuck.

Henah:

Do you remember when you did the music video for WAP?

Katie:

How could I forget? Do you have any idea how long it took me to learn that dance? I am so uncoordinated. It took me an entire Saturday.

Henah:

People would text me and they’d be like, this is your boss? This is the woman you work for? I’d be like, yep, this is my corporate job, baby.

Katie:

Don’t you like how I wore that dumb ass little neckerchief as I’m like twerking in front of a net worth green screen? Oh my God.

Henah:

Those were the days. Those were the days.

Katie:

Yeah, that leaves a lot more wheels off than we are now. So Rich Girl Nation, the original title that I pitched was Rise of the Rich Girls. The community focus or this idea, this kind of underlying theme of the book. That was where in one of our brainstorms we were like, what about Rich Girl Nation? That kind of makes it feel like more of a communal effort and more of something we’re doing together. And there was still with the 1970s visual theme, we wanted there to kind of be some echoes of feeling like more of a movement in something that you’re doing with other people versus something that you’re just kind of doing as an isolated individual.

Henah:

I love that.

Katie:

Which I think will make more sense once you read the introduction and the conclusion. You might be like, how is personal finance something you do with other people? But I think once you read the way the book ends, it will make more sense.

Henah:

It’ll be full circle. Well, thank you so much for letting me ask you all these questions.

Katie:

Thank you so much for asking them, and thanks to everybody who submitted a question. Thank you so much for listening to this show and caring about this. There were some really sweet questions that I didn’t even include because they felt too navel gazing. Not that this wasn’t naval gazing, this wasn’t just been gazing at my navel the entire time, but really kind generous questions that y’all sent in. So thank you for supporting this work and for caring. Without you, this book would not be a reality, so can’t thank you enough.

If you want to order Rich Girl Nation, we will link it in the show notes page so you can get a copy. But without further ado, please enjoy this excerpt from the Rich Girl Nation audiobook. This is the beginning of chapter four, so a subject that I think is critical for women that I had really only ever seen addressed in this level of depth and one other finance book and one that’s kind of obscure. The chapter is called I Thee Wed and Spend Thy Bread. So for context, what you’re about to hear is about a quarter of the content covered in the chapter so you can kind of get a little bit of a flavor.

“As a little girl, I always told the adults who asked about my plans for the far off adult future that I’d probably wait until I was super old to get married, I’d say, like 25, but when I got married at 26, a whole year older than super old, in some ways I still felt like a teenage girl playing house while her parents were out of town. Legally speaking, I had no idea what I was doing. I knew I wanted to marry my husband Thomas, but I wasn’t confident about much else. Technically speaking, we got married twice, once in a courthouse in East Dallas next to a Denny’s, and again in a much more indulgent party at the Garden of the Gods resort in Colorado Springs. The former was less than a hundred dollars. We paid for our marriage license and a handful of close friends stood in the back of the courtroom and cheered, as we said I do through masks.

“The latter was $50,000, took nearly a full year of planning and was one of the more stressful experiences of my adult life. I didn’t have a bachelorette party, bridal shower or engagement photo shoot. We hosted 65 guests and didn’t have photo booths, memory books, party favors, transportation or live band. We tried to keep things relatively simple but still luxurious and at every turn of the planning process, I felt like I was failing a test as the woman in my heterosexual couple, it felt like an unspoken given within our families and social circles that it was my responsibility to spearhead this professional special event with delegated help from my husband. In retrospect, there were many things I would’ve done differently.

The night of, I realized I hadn’t even gotten my dress bustled. Why did nobody tell me I was supposed to do that? So I swam around the dance floor for my first dances, trailing a pool of lace and silk behind me. We were way too laissez-faire with the DJ who ended up playing hours of music that my older relatives were probably offended by. Though it did produce a video of my 80-year-old Grandma Jean fist bumping to the early 2000s club anthem, Ms. New Booty by Bubba Sparxxx, which might be worth $50,000 on its own.

“Mostly I regretted my approach. I was and remain so resentful of the process, the expense, the time commitment, that gendered labor of it all that I cut corners wherever possible and didn’t lean into the fun of the process. I realize now that I mostly just wanted nice pictures for posterity and we could have gotten those without having an actual wedding. I obliged what felt like tradition for its own sake, even though the extravagant modern wedding tradition I felt compelled to uphold is barely 40 years old. I found the ordeal to be mostly intense physical and emotional work masquerading as a good time.

“And while there were fun parts, like the food tasting, it’s not a process I reflect on fondly. My haphazard courthouse wedding on the other hand, remains an incredibly special memory. The total absence of pressure for the day to be faultless meant the laser focus of the experience was on marriage itself. I remember staring at Thomas with tunnel vision before the judge heart thumping so loudly. I was afraid everyone else could hear it. And crying earnestly moved by the ceremonial, but also legally binding words till death do us part. As attorney James Sexton said, marriage is the most legally significant thing you will do other than dying, and you don’t even get a pamphlet. It’s a lifelong legally binding contract with nothing to read before you sign.

“If my wedding planning experience taught me anything, it’s that it’s freakishly easy to go into marriage unprepared from figuring out prenups to planning the wedding itself, to setting up your joint finances. You never hit a natural checkpoint where you’re urged to think about how you’ll protect yourself financially. This is especially relevant for women who are more likely than men to find themselves in poverty after a divorce. This is especially true of women with children. A married woman is also more likely than a married man to become an unpaid caretaker for her family members, thereby decreasing her marketability for paid labor in one of the cruelest twists of modern capitalism. We’ll go further into detail about how that phenomenon impacts women’s earning potential in lifetime access to resources in chapter five.

“But in the meantime, we should talk about what legally happens to your personhood when you walk down the aisle and sign that blessed contract with the state. Even if you’re already married, you can still play along. In this chapter, we’ll review all the ways women can take care of themselves financially if they choose to get married, regardless of how that relationship status changes. After all, women couldn’t even get a bank account without a man’s permission in the US until the 1970s. So these considerations are still relatively new. Historically speaking, we’ll discuss primary considerations before you say I do like which financial discussions to have with your beloved, and we’ll unpack things with fancy legal names, like separate trusts. We’ll also discuss more financial considerations for your wedding if you have yet to plan one. And finally, we’ll nail down a few things to keep in mind after you’re married, like what to do if the prenup ship has sailed, but you’re still interested in contractually defining your worst case scenario outcome and options for organizing your finances together. Before I do, what should you know before legally super gluing yourself to another person? We’ll cover everything from planning conversations to prenuptial agreements.

“But first, let’s take a quick look at how marriage has historically treated women to ground ourselves in some context. If you’re already wincing in anticipation, you are one step ahead. A very brief history of tying the knot. As with most major institutions in the world, there is a gendered financial history to marriage. Back in the day, think a few millennia ago, couples who tied the knot in places like ancient Greece and Rome were doing so in order to bind a woman to a man such that the man could be sure her children were his and he wasn’t hashtag providing for some other dude’s kids. He was of course still permitted to satisfy his sexual urges, however, and with whomever he pleased.

“As such, the betrothal ceremony metamorphosed the woman from her father’s property to her husband’s love that for us. Fast forward a few thousand years and a man’s superiority within the institution of marriage was codified legally in the early days of the United States in an idea known as curvature under which the woman’s identity was thought to be legally absorbed by her husband’s. This is where we get the practice of giving up your name. It symbolizes dissociating from your former identity as your own person. In this English common law practice, the husband was seen as the official public representative of two people. An American woman who married a non-American man actually lost her citizenship. It wasn’t until white women got the right to vote barely 100 years ago in 1920 that some women gained legal personhood transforming marriage into the union of two full citizens. Remember, at this point in history, the definition of two full citizens was incredibly narrow, meaning a white woman marrying a white man.

“Interracial marriage wouldn’t become legal throughout the US until nearly 50 years later in 1967 per loving versus Virginia, which said state laws banning interracial marriage were unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment and same sex marriage nearly 100 years later in 2015, also thanks to the 14th Amendment in Obergefell versus Hodges. But before the early 20th century, no woman had a legal right to own anything in her marriage. She didn’t have a right to hurt children. She didn’t even have a right to her own body horrifyingly. It wasn’t until 1999 that spousal rape became illegal everywhere in the US. Suffice it to say, marriage has not been kind to women historically. Thankfully, we live in the 21st century, so we have the right to vote and to full personhood under the law sort of, for now, stay frosty. This means the institution of marriage has modernized two, and now most of us choose to get married for love, fulfillment, and partnership, not to align our royal families and strengthen a dynasty.

“Still, we often don’t spend much time learning about how legal marriage changes our rights, and that means many modern women still experience the residue of this millennia old asymmetric power imbalance. If you’re considering getting married, the first necessary step is having open financial conversations with your partner. I know this is table stakes, but it’s my duty to include this, what you should know about your significant other’s finances before signing on the dotted line of your marriage certificate. Talking about money can be fraught territory because we all grow up in families that treat it differently. If you and your partner hail from wildly different socioeconomic or emotional backgrounds, it’s possible your respective levels of comfort with the topic will vary. But you’ve done the hard thing, found someone worth hitching your wagon too for life. So what do you need to know about their finances? And they yours before you super glue yourselves together.

“I’m no couples counselor, but I appreciate Ramit Sethi’s philosophy on couples’ finances. Start with building a joint vision around the type of life you’d like to live together. This is like a warmup for the harder hitting questions. So I’d recommend starting here, where do we want to live? What type of home do we want to live in? How often do we want to travel? And where do we want to go? How often do we want to work? And what types of careers are we interested in having? What kind of food do we want to eat? Do we care about nice cars, nice hotels, nice restaurants? What’s our ideal Saturday look like? If we’re having kids, what type of education do we want them to have? What hobbies are important to us? What do we value? I’ll also take this opportunity to point out that even if you aren’t getting married, these questions can yield important answers for you as an individual too.

“Depending on how long you’ve been together, you might have a good sense for a lot of the answers already, but it’s fun to dream. My husband and I did a lot of budget travel when we were dating and engaged, but as our careers picked up, steam and our responsibilities increased. Our trips became fewer and farther between. I work from home, so we spend more money on our house than on trips. We like to eat delicious food, but we primarily cook rather than go out to restaurants. Our favorite activities are watching new shows together, reading, exercising, and playing music. So our hobbies are not all that expensive, but we do like to drive fun cars and we want the option someday to hire a fleet of night nurses and nannies if we ever have kids together, you’re painting a poignant vision of your future that tees you up perfectly for the transition to the dollars and cents.

“Great, so that’s where we’re going. Now let’s talk about how we get there from where we are right now. Cue the throat clearing and index card shuffling. Some of these questions will feel like common sense, but depending on your age, whether either of you have been married before and how much life you’ve already lived, they might stir up some unpredictable answers. What outstanding debt do you hold? What loans are currently open in your name? And this can be a shame ridden topic. It’s important that anyone who holds debt in the relationship feels supported when discussing it. This debt is going to belong to both of you now. So you’re on the same team and the debt is your joint opponent. What’s your credit score range? Do you have any prior bankruptcy filings? I know I should have warned you. Things get hardcore quickly. Maybe ease into this one with a nice dinner date before interrogating your partner about their chapter seven filings. What sources of income do you rely on? Subtext? Are your parents or another rich family member secretly bankrolling your existence in a way that I should know about?

“It’s also good to make a mental note here of whose job is potentially more stable for future planning purposes. For example, the partner who works in the highly paid but volatile space of crypto platforming is probably more likely to lose their income than the partner who works a modest federal government job. Well, at least that was true when I wrote it. Maybe today, a better example of a modest secure job would be a tenured professor. What investments, retirement assets and properties do you hold in your name and will I have to tolerate Bitcoin manifestos every time it experiences a resurgence? Do you have any other financial obligations I should be aware of so we can plan for them? Think things like support of another family member or friend, spousal support or child support from a past relationship. Basically, let’s get it all out on the table. Yes, and of course you’ll show them yours too. There are probably even more financial conversations worth having at this point depending on your unique circumstances.

“But this is the minimum information you should gather before marching down to city hall and signing your name on a certificate that legally connects you to their stuff. It’s worth repeating. It’s critical that this discussion feels open, supported, and empathetic, which can take practice. If you didn’t grow up in a house where these discussions were modeled that way, you might be more financially savvy than your partner. Or maybe it’s the other way around. So talking about things like debt or a prior bankruptcy filing might feel akin to voluntarily stepping into unflattering fluorescent lighting and dropping trou. You’re on a team now. So these challenges and goals belong to both of you, and if for some reason you find it’s more advantageous to keep some things separate as a result, for example, filing separately on your taxes. So one spouse’s income doesn’t impact another spouse’s income-based student loan repayment. There are strategies you can employ once you know what you’re dealing with. More on those later. But first, let’s get to what we’ve all been waiting for, the prenup.”

That is all for this week. We will see you next week for—Henah will be back for a Rich Girl Roundup. You’ll get more Henah, everybody. Our show is a production of Morning Brew and is produced by Henah Velez and me, Katie Gatti Tassin, with our audio engineering and sound design from the incomparable, hegemonic Nick Torres. Devin Emery is President of Morning Brew content and additional fact checking comes from Scott Wilson.