00:01:19.160She wanders the streets of cities and small towns and stays in touch with old friends.
00:01:22.860And yeah, she's probably also a wife and a mother. But beyond that, she's so fucking fabulous. So0.99
00:01:31.860fabulous. I love my rich old lady self so much. Today we're going to talk about how to build that
00:01:39.180life. How to build a life for your rich old lady self. Hey, Amanda, how you doing? Hi, Joe. It's1.00
00:01:52.020so good to be here. Oh my god, it's so it's so good to have you here just chatting, chatting on
00:01:57.440a Friday talking about one of my favorite subjects, money, and how how to how to make it how to how
00:02:03.640to build it and how to be an old lady with a lot of it. Yeah, money, money do make the world go
00:02:11.360round, doesn't it? It does. It does. And you know, I will say that in in middle age, I've gotten a
00:02:19.020lot more comfortable with talking about money, mostly because what I've realized is that as a
00:02:26.480woman, sadly, I mean, it's not that money can buy happiness. It can buy a lot of comfort. But for
00:02:33.660women, it truly does give us freedom and it gives us independence. And that's why we have to talk1.00
00:02:38.720about it more. I couldn't agree more. And in fact, this is the work that I've been doing for
00:02:44.000the last about decade plus is creating what I believe are really safe spaces for women to come0.98
00:02:52.240and talk about money because women are sick of being condescended to about their spending.1.00
00:02:58.840They realize that it's it's the tool to their freedom. They don't want to relinquish their1.00
00:03:04.580power. And so, yeah, education is a great first place to start.
00:03:09.400Well, and I think culturally that women have been cast in kind of a negative role when it comes to money. And you talk about this a lot. You know, when it comes to the media, there's just a lot of gendered language and gendered personalities around how money is spent, right?
00:03:30.800That, you know, women are always talked about as overspending or like using their husband's credit cards. Talk to me a little bit about that.1.00
00:03:39.400Sure. So there's so many tropes, the gold digger trope, the women be shop and narrative. And well, first of all, it's it's all very, very untrue. What the studies show is that women are not excessive spenders. They are not spending more than men. And in fact, men tend to spend more. They splurge more. They have more credit card debt, even though they earn more.
00:04:08.260But this women be shopping narrative, it persists. And that's because it serves a purpose, which is making women feel as though they are bad at money, which then keeps men in charge.1.00
00:04:23.960And it's, you know, it's not just in the workplace or on the payrolls, it's also at the kitchen table, right? Women are led to believe that men are inherently better at money than them. And so they are willing to then relinquish that duty because it just feels, I mean, it feels like the right thing to do.0.77
00:04:44.140First of all, it feels rational. And then it probably also just feels like a small mercy, especially because women are already doing so much unpaid work in the home that the ability to share some responsibility, even if it's an important one, it feels like a great relief.0.63
00:05:05.480exactly exactly i mean when we've been set up to believe oh we're messy with money or we're just
00:05:13.320not as good at this as men are and we're doing so many other things it can be a relief to be like
00:05:19.840you know what just have the men take it off our plates but i mean clearly clearly that that has
00:05:25.760not been working for a lot of women and you've been doing this work for so long why did you
00:05:32.720decide to write this book, which has the greatest title of all time, How to Be a Rich Old Lady. And0.57
00:05:38.040the cover is beautiful, too. I mean, it just reminds me of a caftan, which is, I mean, my dream
00:05:43.960life is being a rich old lady wearing a caftan, living in a house with all my girlfriends. So
00:05:48.560thank you. Thank you for this. Precisely. And thank you for sharing your rich old lady vision.
00:05:54.000Yeah, it's it was really it was a fun. It was a fun but difficult process to name this book.
00:06:02.720At first, I didn't really want the book to be gendered because I wanted to make sure that everybody knows that this is information for them, but I do predominantly speak to women, and I ultimately couldn't resist this title, How to Be a Rich Old Lady.
00:06:18.820But something that the title also doesn't capture is that the book itself is, it is really fun. And I ask you to use your rich old lady as your avatar for financial security and financial independence, right? We're not learning about Roth IRAs and compound interest for the sake of learning about Roth IRAs and compound interest. We're doing it for you.
00:06:41.680And so we need to keep a face on this process because it does get technical. There is not avoiding having to learn this new language, this language of money, which let's be totally honest, so much of this system is completely made up. And so we are all having to learn it. And so I just encourage us to remember who we're doing it for. For you, it's the caftan.
00:07:09.560It's always the caftan. It's always a piece of clothing that only touches you on the shoulders.
00:07:15.000Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And like, what do I say in the book? Right. Like my ritual lady is
00:07:21.980going to have her life alert button wired to the pina colada machine and at the front of the conga1.00
00:07:29.200line twice daily. OK, that's who we're we're not doing it for index funds. Right. We're doing it
00:07:36.520for that person. And so I liked the positive framing of working towards something for this
00:07:45.500person who is very important. It's just a future version of ourselves. But what the title doesn't
00:07:52.500capture is that what I am is also quite systems critical. And by that, I mean, I understand that
00:08:01.340women are having to adapt and learn from within a hostile structure. And so I always want my1.00
00:08:09.600readers and students to know that I am on their team. I see their struggles, but I also honor
00:08:14.940their intelligence. Something that's really important to me in my work is that I believe
00:08:20.340in my readers and my students' ability to understand this stuff. They just need somebody
00:08:26.400that's going to speak in their language and, again, honor those struggles.
00:08:33.400Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And the other thing that I like about the title
00:08:37.480is how to be a rich old lady. It's for you. I mean, it feels as though you're doing something1.00
00:08:44.420for yourself as opposed to all of the other people around you, all of the other humans and
00:08:50.980maybe non-humans that you are caregiving for. So you're going to be a rich old lady for you.
00:08:56.100and possibly for others as well. But it's it feels like giving permission to take care1.00
00:09:02.400of yourself, which I just do not think we get enough messaging around as women.
00:09:08.240I'm so glad that you caught that. I'm not sure that that anybody that I've spoken with about1.00
00:09:14.680the book has caught that in particular. But something I always say, if you're one of my
00:09:19.360students, you've heard me say this, but I'm here for the moms. And we can certainly talk about how
00:09:26.200to get your children set up for success. But I'm not willing to have that conversation until we
00:09:32.860make sure that you are set up for success. Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And I do not think
00:09:39.420that it is at all selfish for a woman to think about setting herself up for success before
00:09:46.340setting everyone else up for success, but we've been taught for so long that that is a selfish
00:09:53.520thing, that we should be constantly giving for all others. Well, and it's probably a little bit
00:10:00.020glib to even imply that these two things are separate, right? Setting oneself up for success
00:10:07.560and setting the children or the other dependents up for success because, well, some of the0.97
00:10:16.780hardest cases I see is women in the sandwich generation, which I'm guessing a lot of folks0.88
00:10:24.340who are listening to this podcast are members of the sandwich generation, which means that
00:10:28.520they are caring for both children and for parents.
00:10:33.800Anybody who is in this position knows how difficult it is to financially care for one's parents. And so if what you want is to set your children up for success, one of the best gifts you can give them is to not become financially dependent on them later in life. It's truly one of the greatest gifts.
00:10:51.680And then, of course, you building your own financial security, not just now, but into your future, it creates a stability for your children to flourish as well. So it's really actually, it's quite win-win in this way.
00:11:06.840Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So let's back up a little bit. I want to hear about your background and how you even came to this world of personal finance and then why you decided to write this book in the first place.
00:11:19.900Sure. So I graduated in 2007 with degrees in economics and communications.
00:11:36.640I'm going to message Penn, like immediately when I get off this, be like, look, I used it for something.
00:11:41.600I did it. Maybe at some point I can stop having those nightmares about finals week and not showing up with a calculator.
00:11:48.440oh my god at 40 years old i had one the other night i had one the other night and they're
00:11:53.900it's just they're terrifying because they feel so real this dream that i've never been to class
00:11:59.960and it's finals week and i have no idea what's going to happen and everyone else has a plan for
00:12:04.120their future and i'm screwed i i even have the dreams where i'm like wait did i actually earn
00:12:10.000my degrees like was i even there i mean was i there yeah to be fair i was doing a lot of drinking
00:12:15.280at that time. Totally. Same thing. Yeah. But no, I have double checked and I do have the degrees.
00:12:23.180And so after leaving college, I did what you do when you have degrees in economics and
00:12:28.840communications. And I got a job in finance and I was specifically working in investment management.
00:12:33.700And my first year working was the year of our Lord 2008, which if anybody lived through 2008
00:12:43.300or was specifically working through 2008, what you remember is that was a great financial crisis.
00:12:50.880It was the second largest stock market drop after the Great Depression, and I was working in the
00:12:57.740stock market. And so it was a very wild time. I was working just in an associate role at first,
00:13:04.400but then after the market crash, I ultimately got poached to work in a client-facing department.0.99
00:13:11.480Basically, one of the managers from this department, they're called investment counselors, came down to me and he was like, hey, we notice you've been talking shit to your coworkers all day. Why don't you come upstairs and talk shit to our clients?0.99
00:13:26.680And so they thrust me into this department of like mostly middle-aged men. I was a 24 or 250.99
00:13:32.940year old woman at the time. And the learning curve was steep. I basically had to nearly
00:13:39.960immediately get on the phones with our high net worth clients, you know, answering questions
00:13:44.580about the markets, keeping them apprised of portfolio strategy. You know, given the time
00:13:49.700that this was all happening, I was also, you know, letting old rich men scream at me about their
00:13:56.080money because the stock market had lost, you know, the U.S. stock market in particular had lost 55%
00:14:03.320of its value during that time period. So, you know, if you had $10 million invested, now all
00:14:09.120of a sudden it's looking closer to $5 million. And so it was a very, very harrowing time. And
00:14:18.200And it was also an experience for which I experienced what I would call multiple radicalizations.
00:14:27.880You know, my first was just kind of looking around and being like, OK, so my feelings about money are very much developing.
00:14:36.080But what I can see is that the size of a person's investment portfolio directly correlates to the quality of their retired life.
00:14:44.800And the people who have these big life-sustaining portfolios, they are all men, not to mention every single one of my co-workers is men.
00:15:05.220And so that was my first inkling that like maybe something was wrong, but I was just so in it that I spent another really four years doing this role as an investment counselor. But, you know, for me, I actually, I mean, it was a great job. I learned a lot. I'm so happy that I had the experience, but I also hated it.
00:15:28.600it was a total spiritual mismatch, right? Somebody probably should have like put me in a theater
00:15:33.440program or something, but here I was working in finance. And so I saved up all my money so I could
00:15:38.620quit. And, and I thought, walk away from finance forever. But this, this, but this obnoxious little
00:15:45.400idea just kept eating away at the back of my school, which was, you are so packed full of
00:15:50.500all of this incredibly valuable information. You've been helping your girlfriends with this
00:15:56.040stuff, maybe you need to do something. And so I did end up doubling back and starting my own
00:16:01.640business. And it's gone through many iterations. I, you know, I started a blog, a very unsuccessful
00:16:06.200blog, added social media, added, added workshops and courses, which is, is, is primary to my
00:16:12.980business right now. I, I, I have found that people really seem to succeed with this like
00:16:18.800live teaching where we can get together and, and experience learning together. It kind of feels
00:16:24.460like these, you know, whisper networks of yore where we're sharing resources and ideas and
00:16:30.600education. And now the next natural step is writing a book about everything I know and
00:16:38.300everything I've learned, not just from working in finance, but I've had tens of thousands of
00:16:43.380students. I've answered thousands and thousands of questions from mostly women about their money1.00
00:16:48.920in their lives. And so I wanted to craft a resource around this information that is
00:16:55.820as valuable to the reader as possible. I love that. I love everything about that. I want to
00:17:04.020take a quick break and then talk about some of the things that are in this book, what people
00:17:09.740can expect, and the way that you're breaking it all down into easy steps that people can actually
00:17:18.460use and do because I know that this can get really overwhelming for people.
00:17:30.980Okay, we are back. You offer 10-minute missions for your readers. What are those and why 10
00:17:41.080minutes? Is it to make it accessible? Is it to make it digestible? Exactly. I think one of
00:17:48.440my superpowers as a teacher is that I also don't inherently like finance. And I know a lot about
00:17:58.260finance, but I wrote this book for the mothers and the lovers and the weirdos and the artists and
00:18:04.420people who understand that money is important because there are just material realities to
00:18:11.120being alive in this world and people who want to use money as a tool to build a beautiful life.
00:18:17.400but who are not interested in sitting at their computer all day, you know, pouring over financial
00:18:24.160statements for companies for which they may consider investing. And so that is very much
00:18:28.860a guiding principle of the work that I do. And luckily, there are really great, easy,
00:18:34.700successful ways to get up and running that do not require constant fretting or monitoring.
00:18:42.420You know, a big part of my book focuses on investing. That's, in my opinion, a real hole in the market, especially for women. There's like a lot of resources that focus on saving and budgeting and cutting costs. And that is fine and good to a degree.0.63
00:19:01.400But I also want to invite women into this bigger conversation about building actual power. Like, I don't want us cutting coupons until the end of our lives. Like, what can we do to talk about going from surviving to thriving? And so that's a big focus of the book.1.00
00:19:21.660But even then, there are really successful ways to have the whole thing automated.
00:19:28.520And so in the book, what I've done is I've broken it down, first of all, into lots of
00:23:34.220yourself with male breadwinning can feel like the most rational path to security. And then,
00:23:41.360you know, this is maybe getting a little bit in too deep, I'm not sure, but I do see that the
00:23:45.960next step in stabilizing this arrangement, right, to one's own self, but then also publicly,
00:23:52.800is unfortunately often alignment with the hierarchies that sustain it, including male
00:23:59.280supremacy and white supremacy and so on. But again, the economics major in me doesn't necessarily
00:24:07.440blame individual women. But what does feel sinister is especially when folks, women with1.00
00:24:18.120very large platforms encourage economic dependence without an honest discussion of what economic1.00
00:24:29.420dependence means. Because what I do see in my courses, especially with older women who have0.97
00:24:37.820never been involved in the family's finances, is they'll get hit with a surprise divorce in their0.98
00:24:43.560fifties or sixties or seventies, and they don't even know where the money is. And it is, it is
00:24:50.000really, really difficult. And I cannot express to you just how much of a panic this puts women in
00:24:58.100because they understand that they are nearing the end of what is their, their working career and0.97
00:25:04.780their ability to earn their own money. And they have no idea where their money is. And so, you
00:25:10.900You know, any influencer that is peddling this like soft life narrative, it does it does make me itch a little bit.
00:25:17.480I saw this great quote from Catherine Edwards, who's a really fabulous economist.
00:25:24.200And, you know, the plea that she was making to to trad wives is to understand that for like current stable ground, it counts for very little in this economy.
00:25:34.080And security is a matter of our backup much more than our current status.0.94
00:25:40.900exactly exactly and i don't i never blame individual women i blame the culture around0.89
00:25:48.920tradwifery around traditional marriage i blame the culture around money i mean my own mother
00:25:55.000never paid any attention to our finances she did work outside the home but she just let my father0.99
00:26:01.100make every decision and after he passed away she realized he'd taken a second mortgage on the house
00:26:05.520and she had no equity. And it's such a common story, a sadly common story. And I've talked to
00:26:13.080so many former trad wives who were like, you know, I thought that everything was going to be perfect
00:26:19.200for the rest of our lives, but then he left me and he left me with nothing and I have no job
00:26:22.780experience. And so I do blame the culture, like we talked about in the beginning of, you know,
00:26:29.820telling women they don't have to worry about money because they're not as good at it. And0.99
00:26:33.480books like yours and speaking out about this and how important it is for women to grasp these
00:26:40.040concepts themselves and to take charge of investing. I think it's just it's going to
00:26:44.840change the game for generations of women going forward. Oh, I'm so happy that you think that.1.00
00:26:51.360And thank you for saying that. Education, I view as a real survival tool under our current
00:27:01.900political, cultural, economic systems. I do think that if we, you know, the greatest thing that we
00:27:09.600could have, my wildest dream, like if we don't want women to have to rely on men or partners
00:27:15.280for money is we have to get serious about creating genuine systems of support in this country.
00:27:20.700And I would imagine also a reimagining of the economic system where care work is appropriately
00:27:27.580valued. But for now, we're just going to, we're going to need a lot of women who are willing to1.00
00:27:33.180take the long view and invest in themselves and invest in their education, even if it's0.98
00:27:39.120temporarily painful, because ultimately it is going to be the best thing for ourselves
00:27:43.260and also our families. Yeah, I could not agree more. I really couldn't. Okay, let's take one
00:27:50.400more quick break. And when we get back, I want to dive into the world of financial influencing,
00:27:56.020because I do think that social media has become a quagmire of financial advice,
00:28:02.980some of it useful, 80% of it terrible.
00:28:05.640So let's get into that when we get back.
00:28:21.600I mean, they are crawling all over my social media feed,
00:28:24.480especially when I start following and sharing content that I think is legitimately good like0.99
00:28:30.840yours about finance then all of a sudden I'm getting served all of these bullshit0.85
00:28:35.800influencers I mean is this is this just getting bigger and bigger it's I mean there's just0.95
00:28:41.340endless opportunity for scamming in the world of financial services right like that here's how you
00:28:48.640make money quick scam is kind of like the original scam. And so it is everywhere and it is never
00:28:56.160going away. And so, yeah, within my my industry, financial influence, I wouldn't consider myself
00:29:03.080an influencer. I consider myself an educator. But it's. Yeah, it's it's it's getting it's only
00:29:11.260getting bigger. And, you know, on the one hand, a lot of influencers do really great work to get
00:29:18.240people interested in finance and started, there was always a need for more accessible financial
00:29:24.300education. And I do feel like there are some really great influencers who fulfill that need.
00:29:29.660But on the other hand, many of these people are grifters who are always going to prioritize their
00:29:38.160own paycheck over disseminating good advice. And I think maybe even an example would help. So,
00:29:46.160So, you know, for example, a finfluencer is always going to tell you to use the new venture-backed fintech trading platform over, you know, one of the boring traditional banks because only the former is going to pay influencers.
00:30:04.120And so a big example of this might be a company like SoFi.
00:30:10.360Now, whether SoFi is good or bad is actually kind of irrelevant to this conversation.
00:30:17.320The point here is that if your influencer is selling you a SoFi personal loan, it is
00:30:23.640not because they think you should take on that loan.
00:30:26.080It is because they are getting paid to say that.
00:30:28.540But the reason that this advertising is so effective and a bit insidious is, of course,
00:30:35.580because it doesn't feel like advertising.
00:30:37.020It feels like getting advice from a friend.
00:30:41.020Exactly. Exactly. And I do because there's no guardrails on social media.
00:30:45.720There's no one checking to say, hey, are you actually a financial expert or are you a grifter?
00:30:51.000I feel like this can sometimes get into dangerous territory.
00:30:57.280I mean, as somebody who comes from a background of finance, I see way more bad advice from people who have no background or formal training than I see good advice.
00:31:12.800And part of the reason for that is this tendency to oversimplify, especially when we're talking about investing, investing advice is really rampant because what you're trying to do is juice the algorithm, right?
00:31:27.060Like, so much of the financial advice we see has way more to do with what juices the algorithm than what it is that we actually need.
00:31:35.380So, you know, I'll give you another example of this.
00:31:38.120So for like a long time, what a lot of influencers would do was get on and say, just buy an S&P 500 index fund, which is a fund that holds the 500 largest stocks in the U.S. stock market.
00:31:54.180And so, hey, if you're somebody that has done that, it's OK. Like you've done really great over the last decade plus. And so no worries. But coming from a true finance background, you would never recommend that somebody only invest in the U.S. It is simply not diversified enough.
00:32:14.840You would always encourage people to diversify into the international stock market and then also potentially bonds and then also looking for additional ways to diversify.
00:32:24.120Right. Diversification is the name of the game in mitigating risk, which I think most people really do want to do.
00:32:31.500Right. The idea of diversification is to have all these different options, all these different bubbling pots of money that we can pull from knowing that we cannot predict the future.
00:32:41.440But of course, a nuanced take is never going to do well in the algorithm. Another example is, right, there's a lot of conversation right now about ethical investing. And it is really popular to be like, oh, yeah, you can totally ethically invest. All you have to do is swap this fund for this fund. And now you are, voila, ethical.
00:33:05.240But it's, of course, not that simple, right? Shareholder capitalism is by nature not ethical. And so a discussion of ethicality certainly merits just a slightly more nuanced conversation that, again, doesn't do well on social media because what people want is, I mean, people want to be pandered to, right?
00:33:29.100People want to be told that the solutions are easy.
00:33:31.820And the good news is we can get you set up.
00:33:43.980I mean, I think so many things deserve more than a 60-second TikTok.
00:33:48.280But alas, that is where our attention spans seem to be going these days.0.53
00:33:53.540Well, and as a person who also has a phone addiction and a broken attention span, just the attention span of a squirrel, please do know that I wrote my book with all my fellow girlies with broken attention spans.
00:34:06.920And that's the idea is like, hey, let's do this in bite-sized chunks because it doesn't work, right?
00:34:12.120Like it's most of us don't have the ability to sit down and metabolize hours and hours of financial information at once.
00:34:19.360And so I do try to capitalize on what is working for people about social media, but bring it to just a more nuanced place.
00:34:28.860Exactly. Exactly. Which I love. I really do.
00:34:31.900So let's let's give people something bite sized to take away from this.0.99
00:34:36.200I mean, what is what is step one to becoming a rich old lady?
00:34:40.820To getting to my best caftan life, to getting to my life alert with a pina colada machine.
00:34:45.200Jetting to Italy with my significantly younger lover.
00:34:48.540Like I was telling somebody, I'm like, I'm not going to start dating until I'm like 70 because he needs to be 45 years younger than me.
00:34:58.860Yes. So, I mean, the first step for everybody is what I call in the book, building a financial foundation.
00:35:06.640And so we are investing in you and your future self, but it doesn't quite involve stocks and bonds and funds yet.
00:35:13.880That I would consider to be the next step.
00:35:17.080And so what we want to do is in order to build for future you, we want to make sure that present you is standing on staple ground. Luckily, there's a fairly agreed upon order of operations for most people who are just building their current financial foundation or another way to say that is financial security.
00:35:35.820And the three components are having an income that exceeds your expenses. And so a really beautiful thing anybody can do is light a candle, put on the musical stylings of your favorite diva, get a comfort snack and print out all of the statements from 2025 and figure out just how much money is coming in, how much money is going out and what is the difference between the two.
00:36:01.860because it is very hard and expensive to be alive right now.
00:36:06.280So if you are somebody that has more money going out
00:36:27.860In the book, I do outline strategies for both.
00:36:30.840both are good for different people and for different situations. And so working on what
00:36:36.860I call the gap. The gap is the difference between your income and your expenses. The gap is your
00:36:43.780most important financial tool, right? Because the gap is going to be what allows you to save
00:36:51.120or pay off debt or invest for your future. And so if you don't have a gap, that's where we start.
00:36:56.300And then once you do have a gap, so for example, if you've got money piling up in your checking account that you don't know what to do with, well, congratulations, you've got a gap. And so now we put that gap to work. And so the next two steps are creating an emergency fund. And so this is just money that you're going to keep in cash at an accessible bank account.
00:37:17.440I mean, I think I don't generally have to explain this to women. Women understand the value of cash and being able to operate from a position of power and not subservience, right? Cash is what gives us that. And so building out an emergency fund and then paying off high interest debt like credit cards.0.97
00:37:39.420So with high interest debt, you're just paying a really, really high rate of interest, and there's not really a way to invest that you can out-earn what you are bleeding out in, for example, credit card interest.
00:37:52.980And so if the goal is to build wealth, what we want to do is work on paying off those credit cards and other sources of high interest debt, hopefully eventually to zero.
00:38:03.220Now, I will say there's one small caveat here, which is that if you are so lucky as to have access to a company match with your retirement account through work.
00:38:18.960So, for example, if you contribute 6%, they contribute 6%. Then that example that I just gave, that was a 100% immediate return on your investment, which trumps even the 22% interest rate that you're paying on those credit cards. And so it's totally worth it.
00:38:38.760anybody who has an employer match in their retirement account, a great step is to make
00:38:44.620sure that you're capturing all of that match, even if you've got some debt. And so that's where I
00:38:50.500would start. The next step is to integrate more retirement investing. And that includes really
00:38:57.740understanding what it is that we're investing in. Like we talk about retirement accounts as if they
00:39:06.480are a retirement plan. I kind of hate when we call them retirement plans because that implies
00:39:12.720that like somebody's got a plan for you. When in reality, these are just bank accounts that are
00:39:17.860vessels for investing in the stock market. That's what they are. Your 401k is a bank account that
00:39:23.920holds investments in the stock market. And what that means is that we have to understand
00:39:29.900how to be a good investor, how to handle volatility, and how to protect ourselves
00:39:35.480from the finance industry because, like, what we are butting up against is a for-profit industry,
00:39:42.240the finance industry, that stays trifling through our pockets. And so we want to make sure that we
00:39:49.700are doing everything that we can to protect ourselves. So those, just a few starting places.
00:39:55.440Just a couple places. Just a couple entry points. Just a couple entry points.
00:39:58.700I want to end with one last question. You got asked on social media, and I think you answered
00:40:04.700this really brilliantly about, you know, how to use money as resistance if we should be divesting
00:40:11.120from things right now, you know, resisting against the government. How are you seeing
00:40:16.900what is happening right now and using money as resistance? Thank you for asking. So what my
00:40:27.080My understanding is I'm coming from the viewpoint of somebody that has a pretty deep understanding of the levers of power.
00:40:37.340I'm like a little bitty baby activist, and so I don't want to act as if I know everything, but what I do know is how money works.
00:40:47.300And one of the greatest things that we can be doing is withholding our spending.
00:40:52.580and spending, you know, so canceling our Amazon Prime, you know, not spending with companies that
00:41:03.720we know are currently, for example, colluding with ICE. So we know, for example, that Hilton
00:41:09.800Hotels currently are putting up ICE agents. And so not spending our money with Hilton.
00:41:16.120our money our spending is their profit center and so it is one of the most effective ways
00:41:24.160that we can hurt these corporations that are again now colluding with ice or or whatever it is that
00:41:30.120we're we're looking to punish a corporation for oftentimes what i get is folks that ask me if they
00:41:37.100should sell out of all of their stocks and then also a really popular one right now is um not
00:41:43.000paying your taxes. And, you know, I am somebody that believes that something very major needs to
00:41:52.100happen. We need a massive change. I really do believe that. And so I am not going to step on
00:42:00.520the toes of any movements that encourage people to not pay their taxes or to sell out of their
00:42:06.760stocks. That being said, what I believe is that it has to happen beyond social media. We need
00:42:15.000collective organizing, not only because we are more powerful when we are operating together,
00:42:21.280like the power is in the people, but also because we need systems of support. If somebody is not
00:42:27.600going to pay their taxes, they are putting themselves at great risk, right? This is actually
00:42:32.600not really even a question about money. This is about legal and political risk. And so what I
00:42:38.660want for you, if that is the path that you go, to have in person, in real life communities who are
00:42:44.920organizing with you and who can provide support to you. It is going to keep us safe and also make
00:42:50.520us more powerful. Same idea with any movements to sell our stocks. Now, of course, I'm the
00:42:56.700investing lady. I'm encouraging us to invest in these systems. And it's not necessarily because
00:43:02.660I believe that these systems are, you know, ethical. Like I'm pretty famous for being out
00:43:09.080here saying like, hey, no, I'm teaching you how to do this because I don't know what other option
00:43:14.520we have. And the compound returns provided by the stock market are really one of the only
00:43:19.820options available to us to be able to at some point untether from labor, right? Like that's
00:43:25.660kind of the goal of financial independence or retirement is to someday be able to step
00:43:30.940away from work. And, you know, especially considering the erosion of the social safety
00:43:37.900net, the doing away with private pensions or corporate pensions, it's all on us. And what I
00:43:45.480want is for, you know, women and perhaps in particular women of color and Black women to
00:43:51.720be able to use and understand these tools that they have been prevented from using since the
00:43:57.180dawn of time. And so I want us to be able to access these tools. But I also do think that we
00:44:03.480need a reimagining of this system. And and so I am game for a mass movement where we sell our
00:44:11.900stocks. But from what I understand about these mass movements is that, you know, unfortunately,
00:44:18.060with selling stocks, it's not the end of the story because we are not the only participants
00:44:23.580in the stock market, in markets. And so, for example, if we had a mass movement to sell all
00:44:30.460of our Amazon stock, what would happen is somebody else, some other rich guy or institution who may
00:44:38.640not share the same ethics as us, may look at Amazon, which if we all sell our stocks, presumably
00:44:44.380that would drop the price. Supply and demand is what dictates the price in the stock market. So
00:44:50.460if we all sell, that drops demand and that drops the price. And these other market participants
00:44:56.320are going to be looking at our Amazon stock being like, oh my God, what a great deal. I'm going to
00:45:00.000scoop up Amazon at a discount. And they are then earning the additional profit on that trade.
00:45:07.400And so there are market participants who are willing to buy our Amazon stock, but there is
00:45:13.120nobody that's going to buy the Amazon Prime membership that we cancel. Stock prices are
00:45:20.160downstream of profit. And so if what we want is to truly thwart the profitability of corporations,
00:45:29.340then what we do is we have to actually hit them at their profit centers. And again, I'm for all
00:45:34.440movements, but I think that that is something really small that every single one of us can do.
00:45:38.980And maybe it's not Amazon, right? I know we got busy moms listening, but it can be something. We can all give up something. And I think it's going to require that all of us sacrifice a little bit of our convenience in order to build a better world for all.
00:45:53.280Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I do think it's important to talk about resisting without harming yourself as well. Because if we do just divest, if we check out of the stock market, if we do not pay taxes, again, all of these movements could be great en masse, but you're probably just hurting yourself in both the short and the long run and then weakening yourself going forwards so that you can't resist.
00:46:23.280Absolutely. And so what I always encourage us to do is, is look at the risk return tradeoffs. And that's like an essential investing lesson. But it's also something that we can apply to, to our resistance work. And so, you know, let me give you just like even a straightforward example in terms of our money, right?
00:46:43.500So what we know is that if we don't invest in our retirement accounts, in the stock market, then we are putting ourselves at severe risk of living in elder poverty.
00:46:55.320Now, if that is the risk that you are willing to take and you are doing it with eyes wide open, then I say, OK, that's fine.
00:47:03.620But the question is, is there a similar risk that you can take that's not going to have those same ramifications? Or is there a similar action you can take that is not going to have those same ramifications? So let me give you an example. You move all of your money from Chase Bank to a credit union. You are removing it from this traditional system.
00:47:24.660We know that the big banks are financing the worst of the worst in terms of fossil fuels projects, you know, regimes abroad that are known committing genocide, you know, whatever it may be, these banks, they bankroll it.
00:47:39.720And so by moving your money out of a big bank into a credit union, you are taking that action, but you're also not putting yourself at risk of living in elder poverty.
00:47:50.500And, you know, like we talked about for this whole conversation, it is about taking care of yourself so that you can take care of others.0.74
00:47:56.300A rich old lady is financially independent, but she is also strong and capable and able to resist.1.00
00:48:04.820Exactly. Exactly. And so, you know, one of my greatest motivations, even for understanding my money, is so that I can turn around and take the types of risks that I want to take as an activist.1.00
00:48:18.860I, you know, I am somebody that is, I am a front lines organizer. I have been arrested multiple times in, you know, with regard to my work with not only anti-ice, but also in support of a free Palestine. And these are risks that I feel like I can take because I have a real understanding of my money and my financial situation. And it provides for me a stable ground with which I can do much more effective work.
00:48:46.840It's also just what allows me to be recklessly generous, which to me is a core value for my rich old lady.
00:48:54.180It's something that makes me feel good and valuable in my own little way.
00:49:01.940So I've recently gotten into vision boarding.
00:49:05.260My girlfriends and I are about to have a vision boarding night, which we're very excited about.
00:49:09.760We decided it at our lady dinner last night.
00:49:12.140And I think a great idea, and I know you agree, is not just having a vision board for your year, but having your rich old lady vision board.
00:49:22.840Get your rich old lady vision board going.
00:49:25.740Start to imagine who she is, who is she going to be with, what is she wearing, and really start to—
00:49:35.140And it's the first step to really loving and prioritizing this version of the person that we will be in the future.
00:49:43.140And it does make navigating this financial stuff so much easier if we understand who we're working for.