Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - Money, Marriage, And The Myth of “Having it All — Ask Jo Anything

00:00:00.000 Hey y'all, Jo here, and you are listening to Under the Influence.

00:00:09.740 So today's episode is going to be a little bit of a grab bag, a little bit of an ask

00:00:14.600 me anything, and maybe even a little bit of a rant, if we get lucky.

00:00:21.180 I just got back from being on the road for two consecutive weekends.

00:00:26.060 so I'm a little bit behind in my interviewing and editing and I actually get asked so many of the

00:00:34.120 same questions all the time that I thought it would be fun for us just to sit here and shoot 0.99

00:00:39.440 the shit for a little bit. I was in LA last weekend for the LA Festival of Books which 0.99

00:00:47.340 was awesome. I mean like a hundred thousand people converge on the USC campus. All of him just

00:00:52.960 freaking love books and love authors and reading. And it's incredibly inspiring and fun and joyous.

00:01:00.300 And I did a really great panel talking about strong female leads in murdery books

00:01:06.780 with Melissa Abbott, who is just a thriller goddess, Sophie Strava and Marissa Cascino.

00:01:14.040 Sophie's book is Count My Lies, and it's being made into a TV series with Shailene Woodley

00:01:20.000 and Lindsay Lohan. And Marissa's book is Best Offer Wins about a woman who's a complete

00:01:26.640 sociopath who will do absolutely anything to get the house of her dreams. All of these women were 1.00

00:01:34.780 so smart. The panel was great. I brought Charlie to it because I think the best thing that you can 1.00

00:01:39.740 do for an eight-year-old boy is to bring him to feminist panels full of women. And he played

00:01:45.520 Minecraft in the back a lot, and then also cheered me on when he thought that I said something funny.

00:01:50.420 He would like fist pump and wave at me, which was incredibly sweet. We talked a lot about one of my

00:01:58.140 favorite subjects, which is women's rage and writing women's rage in books in ways that feels

00:02:07.060 productive and not just ranty. And I thought that was really interesting. It's something that I

00:02:13.360 definitely want to write more about going forward, think about, and talk about. So as I said, I

00:02:21.040 brought Charlie on this trip. And I have to tell y'all that a solo vacation with one child is just

00:02:29.440 the freaking best. And it doesn't hurt that this child is eight, an eight-year-old boy. And I just,

00:02:36.340 I love eight-year-old boys. They're so sweet and smart and interesting. But traveling with him

00:02:42.880 was like traveling with a really fun girlfriend. He's at an age where we can just ignore each other

00:02:50.420 in the best possible way. Like he'll be reading or drawing or Nintendo switching and I'll be

00:02:57.200 reading or messing around on my phone and we ignore each other. And then we come back to each

00:03:02.060 other and like say something funny and then go back to ignoring each other. It's just, it's the

00:03:06.820 best. And we had so much good one-on-one time that can be really hard when you have three kids

00:03:13.760 running around and all they want is all of your attention. So getting to spend this together time

00:03:20.840 and even the parts of the trip that weren't that fun or glamorous, right? Like the travel time

00:03:26.960 together, just being in an airport together, it was awesome. And so I took him along because

00:03:33.920 he got straight A's and I promised him that he could go to Universal Studios, which he's dying

00:03:40.220 to do because he is a Jurassic Park obsessive kid, right? And they have like a bunch of Jurassic

00:03:47.880 Park sets and a Jurassic World ride. And it was just, I mean, he was living the dream. I paid to

00:03:56.140 enter the park early, which was a great move when you're totally jet lagged and waking up at 530 in

00:04:01.900 morning because you're like, what am I going to do at seven? I might as well just go to Universal

00:04:06.220 Studios already. So we were the first people in line for the Jurassic World ride. And then we did

00:04:13.120 it twice. We did it back to back all over again. And it's a good ride. It's a scary ride. He was

00:04:21.680 not scared. He was he didn't like there's an 84 foot drop at the end, which is a little bit scary

00:04:26.540 for kids that don't like roller coasters. Whereas my six year old loves a freaking roller coaster,

00:04:31.260 loves a scary ride. He does not. But the animatronic dinosaurs are, like, real good. 0.78

00:04:39.340 There is a Mosasaurus. There's a T-Rex. There's these crazy Dilophosaurus, you know, those ones

00:04:45.920 that spit in Dennis Neri's face. And they actually spit water at you, like, right in your eye.

00:04:52.200 Which they did. But they got me both times. So that was amazing. And the best part, though,

00:04:58.740 was he loved the Universal Studio Studio Tour,

00:05:03.340 like where you go in the back lot on those little trams.

00:05:06.920 And yeah, he just had so, so much fun

00:05:09.760 because he wants to make movies

00:05:12.080 and he shoots things all the time and he writes scripts.

00:05:14.500 And so like getting to see the sets in the fake towns

00:05:18.720 and things blow up in a like contained area,

00:05:23.900 he just, he freaking loved it.

00:05:26.080 And we stayed at this amazing hotel

00:05:28.120 in LA it's in Studio City which is not that easy if you're like doing Santa Monica or

00:05:35.980 downtown LA but it's great for Universal or if you're doing anything at any of the studios

00:05:42.080 it's called the Garland but it was so freaking family friendly I'm like I want all hotels to

00:05:47.820 be like this because it was chic it was chic and it was cool and it had like a delicious

00:05:52.940 Mexican street food taco truck. But then it also had this great pool that both nights showed kid

00:06:01.400 movies until like 10 o'clock. So there's just hordes of kids jumping in the pool, watching

00:06:07.880 NeverEnding Story, which my kid had never seen, and Harriet the Spy. And I got to sit there and

00:06:13.080 read my book and sip some rosé. And it was absolutely dreamy. The Garland cannot recommend

00:06:20.880 it enough. I loved it. Okay, so I put out a call for questions on my Substack notes and on my

00:06:30.960 social media, and I wanted to just go through them. Just, this isn't ask me anything. Y'all know

00:06:38.480 that I am such an open book, much to the chagrin of my agents and publishers, because they're like,

00:06:44.540 Could we shut her up already? But alas, no, they can't. They can't. So yeah. So I'm just

00:06:51.840 going to start answering some of these questions. What's the biggest lie that you think women are 1.00

00:07:00.160 being sold right now? Oh my gosh. Let me count them. Let me tally them all up. I think about

00:07:09.880 this a lot. I think that the biggest lie we're being sold right now is the same lie that we've

00:07:17.440 been sold for a long time, which is that we can have it all. I do think you can have it all,

00:07:25.340 just not all at once. And I think you can also have it all, but it takes a lot of planning

00:07:32.660 and money and privilege to be able to have a job that you love that also gives you purpose

00:07:42.920 to be able to meaningfully participate in all of the relationships in your life, in motherhood,

00:07:51.320 in being a wife, which I think is sometimes even more taxing than being a mother, sometimes even

00:07:57.280 more emotionally draining. And I'm saying that as a person who has a great freaking husband, 0.71

00:08:02.760 has a great husband who I like 90% of the time, which I think is a good percentage

00:08:07.360 for liking your husband. So I think that it just needs to be universally acknowledged

00:08:13.140 that we're going to drop a ball all of the time, that you can strive to have all of the things

00:08:20.140 that you want, but you're not going to have them all at once. And that is totally okay. And also

00:08:25.040 not our fault. We have to let go of the guilt and shame because we live in a very broken system,

00:08:30.740 a very broken system that makes it incredibly hard to be a mother, to work full time, and also

00:08:37.540 to take care of ourselves the way that we want to, not to be, you know, perfectly skinny or have a 0.65

00:08:43.960 bikini bod, but to feel strong and feel good and get to have that awesome, strong old lady body. So

00:08:51.500 So I think we just need to be a lot gentler with ourselves than we are and give ourselves

00:08:58.200 a lot more grace.

00:09:00.020 And I feel like I'm failing almost every day, even though rationally I know that I'm not.

00:09:05.660 And yet that's how I feel.

00:09:07.140 And so I've recently started doing something called a done list.

00:09:12.920 I'm a to-do list freak.

00:09:14.240 Like I have to write things down.

00:09:15.760 But now I'm doing a done list at the end of each day, at the end of each week.

00:09:21.660 And I'm like, all right, what did you accomplish today?

00:09:23.820 And how do you feel about that?

00:09:25.480 And it's a reminder that I do a lot, that I work a lot.

00:09:29.600 And I put the things there that are also emotional labor. 0.85

00:09:33.520 I'm like, finally called the insurance company about that dumb bill, right?

00:09:39.320 Things that we write off in our brains is like, oh, I didn't do anything today. 0.95

00:09:43.860 It didn't matter.

00:09:44.280 And I'm like, no, I went to the grocery store. 0.94

00:09:45.760 and I got more freaking berries. Because you know what? No one eats more berries than my children. 0.73

00:09:52.120 No, I mean, we're just, our fridge is like mostly berry at this point. And that is not work. That

00:10:00.480 is not writing time or podcast time. But it is something I did that is productive for me and my

00:10:06.520 family. So I'm loving the done list. It's making me feel very good. It makes me feel a little bit

00:10:13.240 like I'm failing less. But I hate that feeling. And it is something that I think so many of us

00:10:19.900 feel on a daily basis. And I wish that we, like I said, just that we could give ourselves a little

00:10:27.360 bit more grace. Okay, next question. How do you feel about your body now that you're in your 40s?

00:10:37.820 I feel freaking amazing. I love my 40s. I wouldn't go back in time for anything. I'm super happy

00:10:45.320 about just, you know, my whole past. Like, yes, I made mistakes. Yes, I was probably

00:10:52.620 a sociopath in a lot of relationships. That's a whole other podcast episode. I should do that

00:10:57.800 episode one of these days. Because I was also, I mean, I was also a lot of fun. I've got some

00:11:02.540 some really good stories. But I wouldn't go back to those decades for anything. And I was so body

00:11:08.320 self-conscious for so freaking long too. I mean, even when I was like a skinny mini size, practically

00:11:15.440 zero or like a two, right? Like I just never thought I looked right. And that is the world's

00:11:23.820 fault, not my fault. Like too many of us feel that way. But now that I'm in my 40s, I feel

00:11:32.140 freaking great. I mean, I gained about, during each pregnancy, I gained about 50 pounds,

00:11:40.300 maybe 35 to 50 pounds, right? And then, you know, lost a little bit when the babies popped out

00:11:45.860 from my body, but then kept it. I mean, especially after the third one. I mean,

00:11:51.120 I had a third baby at 42, right as I was coasting into perimenopause. I had the perimenopause

00:11:58.460 hormone crash right when I was stopping breastfeeding. I mean, like all the things

00:12:03.760 were going on. And so yeah, that extra 30 pounds clung to my body. I didn't love it. I've talked

00:12:11.600 about this before. I didn't love it mostly because I just didn't love how clothes looked on me. And

00:12:17.520 I'm a person that loves clothes. And I never actually, I'm definitely never going to be a

00:12:22.620 size two again. I'm actually, I'm a pretty solid medium size six to eight in almost everything

00:12:30.900 at this point. And so, yeah, God bless those GLPs, but because I don't think I was ever gonna

00:12:37.620 lose that weight on my own. But more than that, I think they've helped me to grow more muscle

00:12:44.740 instead of losing muscle because I've just I've just felt healthier and I've had a lot more

00:12:52.440 energy. I talked a lot about the side effects in the beginning. When I first started taking them,

00:12:56.760 I felt hungover all of the time, like just a wicked hangover, a little bit of like first

00:13:02.800 trimester nausea. But now I microdose them and I feel great. I do. I think that there is something

00:13:12.560 to them of like, all right, there's like less inflammation in your body. I don't know. Hopefully

00:13:16.900 they don't kill us all in the next 10 years because that would suck. But yeah, right now I 0.96

00:13:22.920 love my body. It is the strongest it's ever been. I mean, I know, look, like we're all seeing

00:13:28.140 weightlifting and protein maxing on the socials and the internet, but it's true. I can lift heavier

00:13:35.760 weight than than I ever did. And I can still do mini sprint triathlons with with my husband. And

00:13:43.860 yeah, I feel I feel good about that. I also feel really comfortable with my face. I haven't gotten

00:13:48.620 Botox in about a year. I usually get Botox around book tour time in the summer because I have to see

00:13:55.020 my face a lot on television. And that's just an annoying thing to have to see your face on

00:14:00.540 television, but I might not get it this time because I haven't had it in a while. It's been,

00:14:06.180 you know, cause we're coming up on the launch of the Parisian heist. Get those orders in people,

00:14:11.180 get those orders in. It is so helpful. Oh gosh. Yeah. I can talk about that next too.

00:14:17.040 But no, I like my face and I didn't always like my face. But now I'm just, I'm pretty happy

00:14:24.800 with aging and being in my body and, and all of the things. I also, I've got to tell you,

00:14:31.840 being a 45 year old woman in this world, I do not give any of the Fs anymore. I don't,

00:14:41.420 I do not give an F and I think, and that's really freaking liberating. It truly is. I mean,

00:14:47.880 if someone doesn't like me, I'm like, cool. I don't care. And I'm willing to be more brave

00:14:54.620 and to try new things because I just don't give any of the Fs. And I think the fact that the world

00:15:01.100 is a dumpster fire is also part of that, right? Because you're like, what are consequences? Like,

00:15:07.700 we have a leader who has no consequences. Like, if I do this thing, what's the worst that could

00:15:13.320 happen, right? If I put myself out there, if I if I try this, if I say this. And I like that it

00:15:21.300 feels it feels really, really great. Let's take a quick break. And when we get back, let's talk

00:15:28.600 about skincare and division of labor and maybe money. Okay, we are back. So I got a couple

00:15:46.960 questions about my skincare routine because, you know, we're women and we like to ask each other

00:15:53.400 such things. I did just talk about my Botox. I got to tell you, my skincare routine generally

00:15:59.240 is just chaos. I get sent a lot of free products for work and because I'm still on a bunch of

00:16:07.760 lists from when I used to be a magazine editor. And I try everything. I mean, I love a free

00:16:15.480 product. I truly do. And I am kind of a basic B when it comes to just general skincare, though.

00:16:25.520 So I use CeraVe for a moisturizer. And then I use Cetaphil for a cleanser. And for retinol,

00:16:36.700 I do use A313. It's like it's one of those fancy things that you get in the French pharmacy. But I

00:16:44.200 can only use it three days a week. I use it before bed because you're not supposed to go out in the

00:16:48.840 sun in it. If I use it more than three days a week, my skin gets really irritated and dry and

00:16:56.180 feels itchy and gross. And that's about it. I also, when I go to Paris and go to the French

00:17:05.800 pharmacies. I also get the Embryolay, Embryolays, I don't know how to say it, uh, late, the milk

00:17:14.040 concentrate cream, uh, which I also use as, as a daily moisturizer. Uh, and that's great. And

00:17:21.700 other than that, like I said, I'm, I'm a pretty basic B. I love a face mask, but like, I don't

00:17:27.620 have a favorite face mask. I mostly just buy whatever Grace Atwood, the influencer tells me

00:17:34.520 to buy that week because I just, I trust everything that Grace says. And she's the

00:17:41.240 reason that I have so many fuzzy Lola blankets in my house. Oh my God. I just got a Mother's Day

00:17:47.880 email from Lola. It's the best fuzzy blanket in the whole world. We already have three of them

00:17:54.480 in our house because there's one on my bed, there's one in Charlie's bed, and there's one

00:17:58.900 in the living room. And they're just divinely, ridiculously soft. And I love them. But I also

00:18:06.920 know damn well that we don't need another Lola blanket. And yet, and yet, and yet, this 50%

00:18:12.400 email very nearly influenced me to do it again. I could maybe ask for it for Mother's Day,

00:18:20.640 except I already know what Nick got me for Mother's Day. I'm a very hard person to shop for

00:18:26.100 because I buy whatever I want when I want it for myself.

00:18:30.560 And so he has a hard time.

00:18:31.980 But this year, he bought me a billboard.

00:18:34.680 He bought me a billboard in Times Square.

00:18:38.220 We got a very, very good price on a billboard on Mother's Day

00:18:41.740 from one of our friends who had bought a bunch of billboards.

00:18:46.200 And I think the billboard industry must be so fascinating.

00:18:50.100 I would love to know more.

00:18:51.180 Anyway, we got a good price on this billboard.

00:18:52.620 And Nick bought it for me for Mother's Day to promote my books,

00:18:55.700 which is really all that I want. I think we'll put Everyone Is Lying To on it. I haven't decided

00:19:02.280 if we'll put Parisian Heist on it because it's still so early, right? I mean, I get stressed

00:19:08.020 about pre-orders. I was just on the phone with my friend Casey, the author of The Fountain,

00:19:13.740 which is, you know, my favorite book of the year. If you need a book recommendation,

00:19:18.260 y'all know that I can't say enough good things about The Fountain. But she was like,

00:19:22.660 how do you feel about Parisian heist? And I'm like, I don't know how to feel. Like, I love this book

00:19:27.800 so much. And I also know that pre-orders are down across the board, across the whole book industry,

00:19:36.000 and that even though a first week sales shouldn't matter, I truly believe the first week of a book

00:19:44.520 shouldn't matter. I think it takes time for a book to percolate through the world and through readers

00:19:50.540 and gain that word of mouth and steam, and yet the publishing industry puts so much weight

00:19:59.620 on that first week because the pre-orders get folded into the first week sales, which is what

00:20:05.500 the New York Times bestseller list is based on. And, you know, publishers and editors can pretend

00:20:11.980 like, oh, I don't care. It doesn't matter if you hit. It totally matters. They tape those lists

00:20:16.660 up outside their door. It matters on what kind of an advance you get next. It just freaking matters.

00:20:22.940 And so we have this crazy system where authors have to be out there saying, pre-order my book,

00:20:28.560 pre-order my book. And you don't do that with any other product in the world. No one's like,

00:20:32.480 pre-order this lipstick, pre-order this lipstick. No, you wait for that lipstick to live in the

00:20:36.600 world and then for other people to talk about how much they love that lipstick, right? Like,

00:20:42.220 lipstick gets a longer shelf life than most books. It is crazy pants. This system is crazy pants. I 0.59

00:20:50.620 do not love it. This is one of the other questions that I got. I got, what do I love and what do I

00:20:57.320 hate about being an author? I love, love, love writing books. I'm a very fast writer and I have

00:21:04.000 thousands of ideas and I love creating worlds and characters. I just finished the second draft

00:21:12.080 of my book that'll be coming out next summer. It's called The Last Ride, and it's a murder

00:21:18.160 for hire plot at a very fancy dude ranch in Wyoming. And we are indeed going there for

00:21:25.660 research in June. The whole family is going. And it's great. It's delicious. It's so fun.

00:21:32.200 I just created a character who is a menopause influencer, and her last book is called Hot

00:21:38.260 here. And she married a man 20 years younger than her. And she's just crazy and ridiculous. And

00:21:44.240 I love her. I also have some Easter eggs from the other books in this book, which I think all of

00:21:51.460 you will really seriously enjoy, truly, truly. So I love that. I love writing. I love connecting

00:21:59.880 with readers. And y'all know this. I love a book event. I did a book event last night. We did a

00:22:04.840 pop-up bookshop at Fittler Club here in Philly and got to hang out with so many book clubs and

00:22:13.020 so many readers. And I love a chat. I just love it. What I hate, hate, hate is the marketing.

00:22:18.440 The marketing and just having to constantly worry about getting books in readers' hands.

00:22:27.140 It's the most stressful thing that I do. And I think I've gotten really good at it,

00:22:31.960 you know, but yeah, I hate it. It's, it's the, the freaking, it's the freaking worst. It's 0.97

00:22:37.000 totally the worst. Yeah. But I love writing books. And if I want to keep writing books,

00:22:41.120 I have to do this weird part of it. So big sigh, big sigh. You can't love everything about your

00:22:49.720 job. It's just, it's not possible. There's always going to be something that you don't like. I also

00:22:55.060 love that my schedule can be super flexible. I can go pick up my kids from school. I can stay

00:23:01.260 home with them if I need to and that is the biggest blessing that is honestly I don't I mean

00:23:08.820 I think I'd be a feral animal if I were in an office all day long I mean I just I don't even

00:23:14.800 think I could function like someone would walk by and be like why aren't you wearing pants and I'd

00:23:19.200 be like oh crap you have to wear pants in an office I totally forgot about that or they'd be

00:23:24.700 like why are you in your bathrobe which I was I was in my bathrobe on a zoom call yesterday and 0.97

00:23:30.560 I didn't turn on the camera. But then I did end up telling everyone that I was in my bathrobe

00:23:36.960 because I just couldn't help myself. Again, see, just feral. I could not be in a nine-to-five.

00:23:43.700 Or honestly, my nine-to-fives were never nine-to-fives. I was always like nine to 730,

00:23:49.060 which just feels terrible when you have a kid and when you have a family. So I would be very,

00:23:56.120 very bad at that. And I feel very lucky that I get to make my own schedule. It's a crazy schedule.

00:24:00.900 I'm often working still about, you know, 60, 70 hours a week. And yet it's my schedule, which feels

00:24:09.520 really, really great. Okay, some more questions. Some more questions. These are fun. This is really

00:24:17.520 fun. Have you ever seriously considered walking away from your current life? No, no. I mean, I,

00:24:24.800 like i said i love my husband i love my kids i really like my life i'm i'm like nine out of ten

00:24:32.020 happy on most days which i think is a pretty good good number like the things that make me the most

00:24:41.160 unhappy are social media and having to hustle to sell books like that's it that's that's all 0.95

00:24:46.380 and also the state of the world the state of the world is is total crap i don't i don't like it 0.99

00:24:51.140 I don't like it. And that is that's an understatement. What's the closest you've come to quitting social media? Oh, my gosh, I want to quit social media every goddamn day. But I can't. I mean, that is where I connect with my audience. It's where I let people know news about the books and the podcasts and all of the things. And honestly, I've talked about this a lot. 0.98

00:25:11.600 But I've managed to train my social media algorithm pretty well.

00:25:16.980 So I do want to talk about how I trained it.

00:25:20.060 I don't know if I've explained it.

00:25:22.360 I think the key right now, and this could change, right?

00:25:24.880 Because Meta is constantly changing things on us.

00:25:27.500 But I think the key right now is to save things and to share them to your stories.

00:25:33.880 So I no longer get any political rage bait.

00:25:37.120 I unfollowed all of the news organizations because I want to choose to go to the news.

00:25:42.500 I don't want the news to come at me.

00:25:45.220 And that means that I am actually I was about to say that means that I'm less informed than

00:25:50.000 I was before.

00:25:50.660 But I do not think that's true.

00:25:52.980 I have a very good news diet.

00:25:57.400 I read the Associated Press every day.

00:26:00.860 I read and also listen to NPR in the mornings.

00:26:05.520 I read the Times less and less because I think they've been making some some questionable

00:26:12.140 decisions that I don't love. I still have the app. I still scroll it once a day,

00:26:17.720 but I don't want the news coming at me. So I don't get alerts on anything.

00:26:24.640 And the things that I like and share on social media are pretty much exclusively

00:26:28.560 videos of otters because y'all know I love a freaking otter. I do, even though I've heard

00:26:33.640 that they're actually kind of bastards in real life and not kind to each other. But I still love 0.98

00:26:39.380 them because they are cute and furry and they put things in their pockets. Videos of sexy gay 1.00

00:26:46.940 Norwegians dancing through fjords. Recipes, mostly cheese. So many cheese plates, like people 0.96

00:26:52.740 designing cheese plates. Vintage crafting, so like getting crap from Goodwill or from thrift stores

00:27:00.540 and turning it into something very cool and unexpected.

00:27:04.400 And that's about it. 1.00

00:27:06.220 I mean, I don't follow Trad Wives. 1.00

00:27:08.980 I don't follow political influencers.

00:27:11.340 I just, I took that completely off my social media.

00:27:14.000 I also use The Brick, which I love.

00:27:17.600 The Brick is, you know, it's like just,

00:27:19.520 it's a little square and you tell it

00:27:23.280 when you don't want to be on social media.

00:27:26.380 And it works, man.

00:27:28.840 it is really great. Uh, I, I brick my phone for about 16 hours at a time. Uh, and I can't go on

00:27:39.980 Instagram and you can use one for the whole, for all the devices for the whole family. It's just,

00:27:46.680 yeah, it's, it's wildly helpful because I am a person who will scroll, right? Like I like a

00:27:51.720 dopamine hit as much as anyone else, but, uh, I also know it is a massive time suck and a massive

00:27:57.780 waste of time. And my brain feels good for like a second and then stops feeling good very quickly.

00:28:05.300 One of the things that makes my brain feel great, and this is a little bit of a tangent,

00:28:10.220 but Nick Astor put two bird feeders, one outside my office window, which I'm looking at right now.

00:28:17.400 And there is a house finch in a house sparrow. I can now tell the difference. Thank you, Merlin,

00:28:22.940 out there as we speak. But we also get a lot of cardinals and blue jays. And then he put another

00:28:29.120 one in the backyard, which I can see when I'm working downstairs on the couch. And these bird

00:28:36.240 feeders have brought me so much freaking joy. I love them. A lot of y'all have recommended that

00:28:44.120 I get the bird buddy, which takes the pictures and the videos of the birds. But I just, we have

00:28:49.720 We have really, really just squirrels who are just sons of bitches, okay? 1.00

00:28:55.780 They're the worst. 0.99

00:28:57.080 They destroyed Nick's, the budding oak forest that he was growing.

00:29:02.780 He put those baby oak trees in the backyard, and those squirrels just came for them.

00:29:08.480 So they'll break into any bird feeder.

00:29:10.620 So I think that they'll probably get into the bird buddy.

00:29:14.200 So alas, I don't think that we can do that. 0.98

00:29:16.480 but if anyone has a bird buddy and has recommendations for how to keep these goddamn 0.98

00:29:20.480 squirrels out, I am all, I'm all for it. I'm here to hear it. Okay, let's take one more break, 0.98

00:29:26.640 and when we get back, let's talk about marriage and money.

00:29:31.780 okay we are back so I got a lot of questions about money one of them was really good it was

00:29:49.180 what does enough look like for you financially and I think that's really really interesting

00:29:54.320 because it's so different for everyone and also varies so much based on where we live.

00:30:02.040 When I lived in New York and San Francisco, I felt like I was struggling all the time

00:30:08.240 to keep up, right? I mean, the real estate prices were just so stupidly high. And also, 0.98

00:30:15.300 you have so many people in those cities making such extreme amounts of money that you always feel

00:30:22.840 like you're not making enough or doing enough and that was that was tricky and so moving to

00:30:28.800 Philadelphia was like a real conscious choice right of like okay like this is a much more

00:30:35.220 affordable city than than those places you know we can afford to live in the neighborhood that

00:30:41.240 we want to in the house that we want to it feels much more comfortable I don't feel like I'm on

00:30:48.460 the struggle bus the way that I used to feel in New York and SF. Money is such a tricky thing for

00:30:56.720 me because I was essentially raised by feral wolves, who just like always lived paycheck to

00:31:01.700 paycheck and never saved. And just, you know, it was, it was something I thought about so much

00:31:09.040 as a kid that it was all consuming. And that has completely shaped who I am as a grownup.

00:31:16.480 It truly has. I mean, it has made me be a person who never has debt, who never keeps credit card balances, who is just, I mean, I'm like an old Sicilian grandmother.

00:31:25.820 Like, if I could tuck money under my mattress, I would. Like, I barely even trust banks.

00:31:31.660 I only recently, like, finally, you know, started putting money away into various funds and things like that and high-yield interest accounts.

00:31:43.100 Like I did did all of the responsible grown up things. We are not living an extravagant life. We have one car. It is a oldish model Subaru, you know, and we I don't I don't buy like fancy, fancy things.

00:32:01.000 I could care less about purses or shoes or I like I like lovely vintage clothes and I like

00:32:07.660 clothes that are fun but like not super pricey stuff like I could care less about designers

00:32:13.640 things like that but I do like travel and I like going out to eat I love a restaurant okay I love

00:32:20.600 restaurants by the way did you all know that park here in Philadelphia which has been my favorite

00:32:25.120 restaurant for a very very long time I mean since they opened their doors because I went to college

00:32:29.620 chair. And fun fact, I was a restaurant reviewer in college for our college entertainment magazine,

00:32:35.040 34th Street. True story. The Atlantic, Katie Weaver in The Atlantic, just did this whole long,

00:32:44.140 gorgeous article about how Park, my favorite restaurant, has the best free bread in America.

00:32:48.920 And I just feel so validated because they do. It is truly the best bread basket and it's free

00:32:54.680 in the entire country. When I do not finish this bread basket, I smuggle what's left of it home in

00:33:00.780 my purse because it's that good. And I make toast in the morning. And that's exactly what you should

00:33:04.760 do too. If you go to park, do not leave any of that delicious bread to go to waste. So I think

00:33:11.280 I prioritize spending money on experiences, definitely travel with my family. And travel

00:33:18.500 has a real sticker shock for me because I was a travel journalist for so long. And so I was sent

00:33:25.800 all over the world for free. It's ridiculous. It was a ridiculous job. It's a ridiculous job 0.93

00:33:30.900 for anyone to have. And I had it and it was amazing. While I worked at Yahoo Travel, 0.92

00:33:36.500 I went to 32 countries in three years and met my husband on a boat in the Galapagos Islands.

00:33:42.660 Crazy, right? Like that's, it's just, it doesn't even sound real. It sounds fake,

00:33:47.160 even though I know it's real. I wrote about it in a book. I wrote about it in How to Be Married.

00:33:51.780 And we have photographic evidence of us hanging out with some blue-footed boobies and a bunch of

00:33:56.580 giant tortoises. But everything was stupidly free. That trip to the Galapagos was free. 0.98

00:34:03.780 And so now I do have intense sticker shock. And traveling with a family of five is very,

00:34:09.040 very pricey um the air ticket the the airline travel the the airline tickets alone are insane

00:34:17.180 and also we haven't gotten there yet but when you travel with three kids it gets really tricky

00:34:22.240 booking hotel rooms like you can't do it online most of the time without booking a suite or two

00:34:28.820 rooms which is why i often lie okay i'm just gonna admit this i lie and say that i'm traveling with

00:34:33.780 two kids because the one of them barely takes up any space at all she'll sleep anywhere although 0.97

00:34:37.980 she doesn't sleep in the bathroom anymore. This is a fun story. We went to Niagara Falls for spring

00:34:44.260 break. It was really fun, really, really delightful. And the first hotel that we stayed in had a big

00:34:49.700 bathroom and she doesn't sleep in a crib anymore. She sleeps in a big girl bed. But we were like, 0.99

00:34:56.900 oh, it'll just it'll be so much easier to get her down. So we got a crib in the room and she loved

00:35:01.960 it. She thought that was so fun. But what she didn't like is when we put the crib in the bathroom.

00:35:05.420 so she pulled it out herself she physically pulled this out of the bathroom and put it next to the

00:35:10.580 window she like gave herself like a lovely view uh for for sleeping and waking up she was just

00:35:16.560 like no i'm not a child who sleeps in bathrooms anymore i will happily sleep in this crib but 0.96

00:35:21.460 only if i can look out at niagara falls because i have opinions and she does my three-year-old

00:35:26.740 has so many opinions so this is a long way of saying that you know to feel financially comfortable

00:35:32.040 I want to be able to travel and with my family and to eat out because those are the things

00:35:39.740 that I love and that I want to prioritize.

00:35:41.740 And I don't want to have to worry too much about being able to do that.

00:35:48.080 That's vague.

00:35:48.960 I think this is such a different question for so many different people.

00:35:52.700 I don't mind talking about money.

00:35:54.320 I worry that not enough women talk about money.

00:35:57.120 I think we should talk more about our salaries and our book advances.

00:36:00.280 is when I'm in a private group or doing a book talk, I'm very open about those kinds of things,

00:36:07.160 about advances and what different fees look like, especially if I'm talking to aspiring writers,

00:36:13.460 because I think that is the key to understanding how business works and also for advocating for

00:36:18.740 yourself and negotiating for yourself. That just, it feels really important to be open and honest

00:36:25.580 and authentic about that. So I've been babbling for quite some time now. And honestly, actually,

00:36:30.920 I've got to get going because Nick just took Charlie rock climbing and I've got two feral 0.99

00:36:36.800 girls downstairs who want to hang out with me and they're going to come up here real soon. 0.99

00:36:41.500 And you'll hear them because they're so loud. My girls are so loud. They're so, they're so much 1.00

00:36:47.080 louder than my boy. I hear boy moms complain all the time about the energy and the noise in their 0.69

00:36:53.180 house. And I'm like, no, no, it is my girls. Like my girls need to be run miles a day. They need, 0.51

00:37:00.620 like, they are just, they're so much. And I love them. I love them to the moon and back. But like

00:37:07.280 my girl children are insanely feral. So I got to go. I got to go be with those crazy ladies.

00:37:14.840 This was so fun. If you have more questions, send them to me. I'll do like one of these a month. 1.00

00:37:18.860 you can literally ask me anything. I am an irritatingly open book. Have a great day, guys.

00:37:48.860 You

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - April 23, 2026

Money, Marriage, And The Myth of “Having it All — Ask Jo Anything

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