Speaker 1: Getting Off the Hot Girl Hamster Wheel with Katie Gotty Tossin.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to
Speaker 2: save money, embrace simplicity, and liver your life. Here your
Speaker 2: hosts Jen and Jill.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Frugal Friends. My name is Jen, my name
Speaker 1: is Jill, and today we are talking with Money with
Speaker 1: Katie Katie Gotty Tossin about getting off the Hot Girl
Speaker 1: Hamster Wheel.
Speaker 3: In this episode, you will learn about the industries that
Speaker 3: profit from our insecurities, how to navigate negotiations as a female,
Speaker 3: and how to do a hot girl detox with your budget.
Speaker 1: But first, this episode is brought to you by our
Speaker 1: annual finance Planner. We released a budget a few months
Speaker 1: ago and saw that it was going to be way
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Speaker 1: wanted to include, so we made a separate finance planner
Speaker 1: for your whole year. So planning out the activities you
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Speaker 1: I know it has been for me, even maybe even
Speaker 1: more than the budget because I use an app. But
Speaker 1: some people love their spreadsheets.
Speaker 3: And this will be especially helpful for you after you
Speaker 3: listen to our conversation with Katie.
Speaker 1: So for those of you who don't know Katie, she
Speaker 1: is the voice of Money with Katie and she's the
Speaker 1: author of Rich Girl Nation. Her work focuses on the
Speaker 1: intersection where are economic, political, and cultural context meets the
Speaker 1: practical money advice that everyone needs to thrive. And that's
Speaker 1: a long winded way to say she has a really
Speaker 1: cool podcast. I really like following her on social media,
Speaker 1: and I really like listening to her long form podcast content.
Speaker 1: And I don't listen to a lot of podcasts. I
Speaker 1: know that my sound hypocritical, but I don't. But I
Speaker 1: really do love hers, So I'm really excited to introduce
Speaker 1: you to her. If you've never heard her before, you're
Speaker 1: gonna love her.
Speaker 4: Here she is Katie.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Frugal Friends. We are so excited to have
Speaker 1: you and talk about your book that I am very
Speaker 1: excited to read.
Speaker 5: Oh, thank you. I'm really excited to be here. So
Speaker 5: thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: We're fan girling. This is fun for us, fun for
Speaker 3: our audience. And you've got some really great things that
Speaker 3: you talk about in your book that's coming out. And
Speaker 3: one of the things that stood out to me that
Speaker 3: I'm curious to get your perspective on is a Hot
Speaker 3: Girl Detox. This sounds really fun in the budget. Can
Speaker 3: you tell us about it?
Speaker 5: Yes, So, the Hot Girl Detox is a conceptual offshoot
Speaker 5: from the hot Girl hamster wheel, which is the phrase
Speaker 5: that I came up with to describe just the absolute
Speaker 5: litany of recurring expenses that are necessary to uphold what
Speaker 5: I call the capital a capital f acceptable feminine experience
Speaker 5: or appearance. So I call it a hamster wheel because
Speaker 5: the nature of these purchases is such that many of
Speaker 5: them are things you can't really just do once, Like
Speaker 5: every single dollar that you spend is a commitment to
Speaker 5: spending more in the future. So I experienced this firsthand
Speaker 5: when I was in my early twenties and I was
Speaker 5: getting serious about my finances for the first time. And
Speaker 5: as you will know, The first thing that you do
Speaker 5: when you want to get better with money is you
Speaker 5: have to sit down. If you do an audit, you
Speaker 5: have to understand where is my money going. Been warned
Speaker 5: by all of the male personal finance gurus that I
Speaker 5: was following and listening to every day that, oh, housing
Speaker 5: is a big problem for most people, transportation is a
Speaker 5: big problem for most people. You're gonna have to watch
Speaker 5: your restaurant spending. So I go in expecting to find
Speaker 5: high expenses or high percentages in those areas, and that
Speaker 5: is not what I found. I lived with a roommate
Speaker 5: in an old building, I had a car that was
Speaker 5: pretty reasonably priced and within my means, and my restaurant
Speaker 5: spending was pretty average. But there was a section that
Speaker 5: really jumped out at me when I did this audit,
Speaker 5: and it was my personal care and beauty expenses. So
Speaker 5: I sit down and I start punching the numbers and
Speaker 5: the calculator on my phone and I'm like, that can't
Speaker 5: be right. There's no way that that's right. And then
Speaker 5: I rerun all the numbers again and it was like, oh, nope,
Speaker 5: that that is correct. I am spending over three hundred
Speaker 5: dollars a month on beauty on average. Now at the time,
Speaker 5: I'm just represented almost ten percent of my take home pay.
Speaker 5: So I had this horrifying realization that I was working
Speaker 5: for almost an entire month every year just to be
Speaker 5: pretty basically, and I essentially realized at the time, this
Speaker 5: is not going to work. I can't keep doing this.
Speaker 5: So I did the Hot Girl Detox. And now if
Speaker 5: somebody listening at home wants to do a Hot Girl detox, Basically,
Speaker 5: the steps that you take or you sit down, you
Speaker 5: list every single beauty or personal care expense that you have.
Speaker 5: You power rank them, so you're going to go, okay,
Speaker 5: this is the most important thing to me. It's number
Speaker 5: one all the way down to like the nice to haves,
Speaker 5: and then little by little, one by one, starting at
Speaker 5: the bottom, you are going to pull them out of
Speaker 5: the budget and you're going to pull them off the calendar.
Speaker 5: And I bet what you will find is what I found,
Speaker 5: and that is that you are probably going to do
Speaker 5: this to try to get money back. But what you're
Speaker 5: going to find is that you're going to get a
Speaker 5: lot of time back to and that in some ways
Speaker 5: can be just as valuable. So now you know five
Speaker 5: to seven years later, I have introduced a couple of
Speaker 5: the things back. I mean, I'll still get my hair
Speaker 5: cut and still get highlights sometimes or you know, every
Speaker 5: once in a while, but have to buy skincare or
Speaker 5: new mas scara. But even now that I can afford
Speaker 5: those things, I didn't add them back in because doing
Speaker 5: that detox and experimenting with my spending in that way
Speaker 5: taught me that even though I thought I valued those things,
Speaker 5: I really didn't and my life wasn't any poorer without them.
Speaker 3: It's such a helpful thing to highlight because yeah, we
Speaker 3: do have these bigger expenses. We talk about the Big
Speaker 3: three all the time, but these these other kind of
Speaker 3: almost subscription based, even if we're not actually subscribed to
Speaker 3: a nail salon or a hair analogy.
Speaker 4: Actually, but so much.
Speaker 3: I love how you've described we are signed up for
Speaker 3: these things and kind of enslaved to them. But I'm
Speaker 3: curious how you saw this impacting then, just like view
Speaker 3: of self, because that could feel really scary for someone
Speaker 3: to be like, uh, am I giving up this fifteen
Speaker 3: step process skin routine. Am I really gonna not get
Speaker 3: my eyebrows done? Like?
Speaker 4: What then happens?
Speaker 3: Have you found any replacements or because we talk about
Speaker 3: it's not just about deprivation, it's about finding what works
Speaker 3: for you. What did that look like in your journey.
Speaker 5: Well, something that I found out after the fact, years later,
Speaker 5: is that what I was spending was actually almost exactly
Speaker 5: what the average was. Your average woman spends as of
Speaker 5: twenty seventeen, around three hundred dollars per month on beauty
Speaker 5: and personal care. So I do think it's important to
Speaker 5: start there because it helps us kind of set the stakes. Obviously,
Speaker 5: listeners of this show will be familiar with the idea
Speaker 5: of opportunity cost and if you're spending money on something,
Speaker 5: that means you can't be investing it. So if you
Speaker 5: were to take over a forty year career the average
Speaker 5: monthly beauty spending of around three hundred dollars, and you
Speaker 5: were to invest that instead, you're going to retire with
Speaker 5: an extra million dollars. Now, that is not a cost
Speaker 5: at the margin. We're not talking about the latte. This
Speaker 5: is a retirement supporting amount of money. And so I
Speaker 5: think it's important to get clear on the idea that
Speaker 5: we have become so comfortable and so adept at discussing
Speaker 5: beauty standards as psychologically oppressive forces in our lives, but
Speaker 5: we often don't think about them as economically oppressive forces.
Speaker 5: So when we talk about, oh, it feels vulnerable or
Speaker 5: it feels risky to disengage or to divest from these systems,
Speaker 5: that's because you probably receive signals every single time that
Speaker 5: you leave your house that the way that you look matters.
Speaker 5: We know that people who are above average quote unquote attractiveness,
Speaker 5: and that's that's how they dictate it in the studies.
Speaker 5: There's very bleak study methodology that I write about in
Speaker 5: the book, where they basically line up five thousand women
Speaker 5: and they go above average, average below average attractiveness, and
Speaker 5: then they track their their grades and in person classes
Speaker 5: over time. So we know that attractive people tend to
Speaker 5: have easier lives. Beauty is a real form of capital.
Speaker 5: It's social capital. We know that. So that's not to
Speaker 5: say that if it feels risky or vulnerable that it's
Speaker 5: all in your head. But the problem with investing in
Speaker 5: beauty as capital is that, unlike real capital, it is
Speaker 5: a depreciating asset. It's an asset that is going to
Speaker 5: require more and more cash flow as you age to
Speaker 5: kind of preserve the same benefits. It's a master that
Speaker 5: will never be satisfied. So I think about that, and
Speaker 5: I go, that is not a good ROI and I
Speaker 5: am not interesting? Did in things that don't offer me
Speaker 5: a good ROI? Now? Am I going to get something
Speaker 5: for looking a little bit nicer? Sure? But what I
Speaker 5: found when I talked to readers about the hut Girl
Speaker 5: Hmster Wheel, because this is something that I've been writing
Speaker 5: about for a long time, I hear interesting things. Some
Speaker 5: women who were formerly very high maintenance, maybe even more
Speaker 5: so than I was, and I almost very high maintenance.
Speaker 5: Don't get me wrong. What they'll tell me is not
Speaker 5: only did I get all this money back, but I
Speaker 5: noticed that my life actually didn't really change. I still
Speaker 5: got promoted at work, my partner still loves me. The
Speaker 5: things that I feared really didn't come to pass. Or
Speaker 5: they'll tell me, yeah, I let my I'm not coloring
Speaker 5: my hair anymore, right like I let it go gray.
Speaker 5: And I actually feel more powerful now because I know
Speaker 5: that in that decision, not only am I prioritizing something
Speaker 5: about my future that is a little bit more substantial
Speaker 5: than like how I look in the moment, but I'm
Speaker 5: also no longer contributing to a system that is bad
Speaker 5: for other women. And I think that's the really important
Speaker 5: thing when we talk about beauty standards that often get
Speaker 5: swept under the rug or kind of out of the way,
Speaker 5: which is that, yes, they are individual choices. Yes these
Speaker 5: things are up to you what you want to participate in,
Speaker 5: what you want to abstain from. But the way that
Speaker 5: beauty standards and beauty norms work is that the more
Speaker 5: people that try to embody them, the more expected they become.
Speaker 5: There's a really great culture critic named Jessica Defino who
Speaker 5: writes about this, and she basically says, when we all
Speaker 5: strive to uphold these beauty standards, then that becomes the
Speaker 5: baseline for what is expected for women to treat them
Speaker 5: with basic human dignity. So I will hear from women
Speaker 5: who say, I'm not coloring my hair anymore. I stopped
Speaker 5: getting botox, yet it's saving me money. But I also
Speaker 5: now know that when I walk down the street and
Speaker 5: another woman looks at me, she's not gonna go now
Speaker 5: feel like she needs to start coloring her hair or
Speaker 5: she needs to go get botox. So I really look
Speaker 5: at this topic as the intersection where individual choice and
Speaker 5: basically collective action kind of overlap in an interesting way.
Speaker 5: And that's why I start the book talking about this,
Speaker 5: because I think it's a really underappreciated and underdiscussed element
Speaker 5: of women in their financial futures.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's so much permission giving happening here that is
Speaker 3: really empowering. I remember seeing Chloe Daniels from chloebear, and
Speaker 3: she posted recently, although that could have been a month
Speaker 3: ago at this point, about how she stopped getting her
Speaker 3: eyelashes done. And it was interesting because for me on
Speaker 3: my side of things, and maybe some of our listeners too,
Speaker 3: we are accustomed to going without and now that maybe
Speaker 3: we've understood money more and how we can earn more
Speaker 3: that then we are faced with what do I do
Speaker 3: with my money? And this is what society is telling
Speaker 3: us to do? This is what maybe other women subconsciously
Speaker 3: or consciously are telling us to do that I have
Speaker 3: had the thought in the past, if I could I
Speaker 3: only afford it, I might get my lashes done, I
Speaker 3: might get my eyebrows one. I might be able to
Speaker 3: go get waxed every other month. And then to realize
Speaker 3: and hear from some of these people who have been there,
Speaker 3: done that saying, actually, I stop doing that, and I
Speaker 3: like how my eyes look more, and I like the
Speaker 3: freedom that I'm experiencing by not doing this anymore. I
Speaker 3: think it works on both ways to help people detox
Speaker 3: from the things that they're already doing, but also inform
Speaker 3: those who might be earning more you don't have to
Speaker 3: get onto that rat race.
Speaker 1: And there's this sense of like not everyone knows what
Speaker 1: these beauty procedures are. So like if you're looking with
Speaker 1: someone like super full lashes and you don't know that
Speaker 1: they get their lashes done, and then you just feel insecure,
Speaker 1: and then there's no solution for you even if you try.
Speaker 1: So then maybe you're not going to spend money on beauty,
Speaker 1: but then you're going to spend money on something else
Speaker 1: because you have this self like deprecating like feeling all
Speaker 1: the time. All the marketing across the board is marketing
Speaker 1: to our insecurities, so it doesn't matter if it's like
Speaker 1: insecurity in features and maybe you're not even going to
Speaker 1: spend there, maybe you're going to spend somewhere else. So like,
Speaker 1: if I can't be beautiful, then I'll be smart and
Speaker 1: then you're going to spend money somewhere else, or I'm
Speaker 1: going to go out and spend money and you know, happy.
Speaker 4: Hours and stuff. So it makes people like me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it just it doesn't stop even if you don't
Speaker 1: consider yourself to be someone who highly values aesthetics.
Speaker 5: I think the eyelash thing is just a really important
Speaker 5: example that I want to double down on for a second,
Speaker 5: because one of the more insidious elements of the hamster
Speaker 5: wheel is not just that you have to keep spending
Speaker 5: to uphold appearances, but that oftentimes there is like a
Speaker 5: coercive force underlying stopping where I used to have fake eyelashes,
Speaker 5: and let me tell you, when those things come off,
Speaker 5: when you stop getting the little things adhered to your face,
Speaker 5: your regular eyelashes, your natural eyelashes look terrible because they
Speaker 5: get brittle and broken down. Anybody who's ever gotten acrylic
Speaker 5: nails knows this game. You get acrylic nails, they look
Speaker 5: amazing for like two weeks, and then they grow out
Speaker 5: and you have to get them taken off, and the
Speaker 5: nails underneath your natural nails that before were probably perfectly
Speaker 5: suitable and beautiful are now yellowing and brittle and scratched, right,
Speaker 5: So oftentimes these procedures and these services have a tendency
Speaker 5: to leave you quote worse off than you even were
Speaker 5: when you started. And so it really does function in
Speaker 5: many ways like a trap. And so that's why I
Speaker 5: think it's not that you should disengage with all of it.
Speaker 5: They're very well maybe things that you look at that
Speaker 5: realistically and you go, yes, and I can still afford
Speaker 5: and still want to do this one particular thing, but
Speaker 5: knowing the stakes of like Okay, well, what is really
Speaker 5: going to be the consequences of this, both financially and
Speaker 5: then like upkeep wise, that I think is something worth
Speaker 5: going into with eyes wide open.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so much of like female aesthetics was like
Speaker 1: inherently designed to distract women away from other things, and
Speaker 1: like you talk about this in your book, how Like
Speaker 1: one of the book central themes is that the financial
Speaker 1: system wasn't built with women in mind. So like, what
Speaker 1: are some of the hidden rules or assumptions baked into
Speaker 1: this system that more women should be aware of?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So at a high level, I think that personal
Speaker 5: finance and investment best practices will probably be generally speaking
Speaker 5: the same for everybody. However, the system that we existed
Speaker 5: now was largely shaped in subtle and overt ways by
Speaker 5: men's experiences, men's preferences, men's priorities, and so the reality
Speaker 5: is that women do statistically face different financial challenges than
Speaker 5: men do. So we've already talked at length about the
Speaker 5: beauty and personal care consumer industries. These are industries that
Speaker 5: exist almost solely to invent insecurities and then market ways
Speaker 5: to fix them to one half of the population. You
Speaker 5: also have to consider the fact that women now negotiate
Speaker 5: just as often as men do, but they are now
Speaker 5: fifteen percent less likely to get a raise when they
Speaker 5: ask for more money, and this is in part because
Speaker 5: a lot of negotiation advice focuses on teaching women to
Speaker 5: be aggressive, demand your worth, ask for what you're worth. Well,
Speaker 5: that doesn't really work for women the same way it
Speaker 5: works for men. Because when women are seen as pursuing
Speaker 5: quote unquote masculine goods, power, money, status, these zero sum
Speaker 5: ideas that are considered to be inherently belonging to men
Speaker 5: and therefore could never rightfully belong to a woman, they
Speaker 5: are more likely to face pushback. So something that I
Speaker 5: always like to note here too, though, is that this
Speaker 5: road does go both ways that when men pursue flexibility
Speaker 5: or other things that are kind of deemed as like
Speaker 5: feminine values, they will also face more pushback. So really
Speaker 5: we're all trapped in like the prison that is the
Speaker 5: gender binary. But for women it results in fewer resources,
Speaker 5: so over time we see the reality of the gender
Speaker 5: wage gap worsen for women. This is true because when
Speaker 5: women become parents, when they become mothers, they are likely
Speaker 5: to kind of downshift at work. They're more likely to
Speaker 5: downshift at work than a male partner or parent would be.
Speaker 5: And this is true by the way, for like families,
Speaker 5: where like the man would like to be more involved
Speaker 5: or the man would like to be the one downshifting.
Speaker 5: Often the economics of the household are such that that
Speaker 5: really doesn't make sense. So you have these systemic forces
Speaker 5: that are kind of in a i don't know, not
Speaker 5: necessarily malevolent, and you could even say it's in a
Speaker 5: benign way or kind of keying these structures in these
Speaker 5: norms in place. So it is true that women spend
Speaker 5: less time doing paid labor than men do, but it's
Speaker 5: because they're spending on average roughly twice as much time
Speaker 5: doing unpaid labor. So I really like the work of
Speaker 5: Nobel Prize winning economist Claudia Golden. She found that this
Speaker 5: reality is the primary driver of the gender wage gap,
Speaker 5: this gap between paid and unpaid labor time effectively, and
Speaker 5: so if you look at somebody's entire lifetime and you
Speaker 5: compound those disparities, and then you consider the fact that
Speaker 5: women are just going to frankly live longer. They have
Speaker 5: average lifespans that are six and a half percent longer,
Speaker 5: well statistically, now they're gonna be the ones who are
Speaker 5: going to bear the brunt of any poor long term
Speaker 5: financial planning. So we look at all these obstacles, we
Speaker 5: study them longitudinally over the lifetime, and then you can
Speaker 5: see in the data these discrepancies compound and women retire
Speaker 5: with about fifty seven percent as much money as men do.
Speaker 5: So a big part of my work is looking at
Speaker 5: those realities, looking at that data head on, and going, Okay,
Speaker 5: we know, if we're being intellectually honest, that we're not
Speaker 5: going to fix these things in our own lives by
Speaker 5: just like quote unquote, making different choices. Countries that are
Speaker 5: serious about fixing these problems address them with policy, but
Speaker 5: in the meantime, we are not without agency, and there
Speaker 5: are things that we can do, whether that's negotiating in
Speaker 5: a way that navigates gender bias successfully, whether that's saving
Speaker 5: for childcare before you have a baby, and getting really
Speaker 5: serious about having an egalitarian partnership and really ingesting the
Speaker 5: knowledge that you need to be in the driver's state
Speaker 5: of your financial life, that all of these things really
Speaker 5: can make a difference. They do make a difference. So
Speaker 5: I try to marry those two realities in my work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're so right, because my husband would love to
Speaker 1: be a stay at home dad, but the nature of
Speaker 1: his work is so much more stable than mine that
Speaker 1: I am the parent that is doing drop off and
Speaker 1: pick up and he would love to be doing that,
Speaker 1: but like, financially, it's the risk we can't afford to take.
Speaker 1: Uh So, yeah, that's absolutely And having a partnership where
Speaker 1: both people are investing in each other's retirement like equally
Speaker 1: is so important. And knowing like even if you're the
Speaker 1: one making money and I'm the one staying home with
Speaker 1: the kids, you can't work without me staying home with
Speaker 1: the kids, or you will be putting this money into childcare.
Speaker 1: If I am not here, so value equaling, like valuing
Speaker 1: each other's work equally.
Speaker 3: Speaking of gender biases, gender norms, I think one of
Speaker 3: the things that stands out to me the most in
Speaker 3: this topic of salary and making money and finances is
Speaker 3: specifically salary negotiations. And You've already touched on this a bit,
Speaker 3: and I'm curious to dig in a little more on
Speaker 3: how it can look different. And I've even experienced this
Speaker 3: where if I try to implement the strategies of a
Speaker 3: bro with a podcast with one hundred downloads, which I
Speaker 3: do want to bring that energy to the temple.
Speaker 4: Energy.
Speaker 1: Energy that we are bringing everywhere.
Speaker 3: A white man with one hundred downloads has all the
Speaker 3: confidence going on and.
Speaker 1: I've never been more successful than when I have brought
Speaker 1: that energy.
Speaker 3: Okay, but truly, when it comes to asking for more,
Speaker 3: advocating for oneself, entering into negotiations, it is becoming a
Speaker 3: parent that our strategies do need to be a little different,
Speaker 3: for better or worse.
Speaker 4: What have you found? How can you guide us?
Speaker 5: So I really love the work of this woman named
Speaker 5: cass for in Valentine.
Speaker 1: Who we have had on the show. We will lick
Speaker 1: that episode.
Speaker 5: I'm glad that you have. So some of this might
Speaker 5: sound familiar, but I do want to share one of
Speaker 5: the biggest negotiating tips that she shared with me that
Speaker 5: I find to be extremely relevant, even beyond the scope
Speaker 5: of just the very direct ask of more money, and
Speaker 5: it's to stop talking. Women are socialized to put other
Speaker 5: people at ease, to make other people feel comfortable. Right,
Speaker 5: so if you're asking somebody for more money, or you're
Speaker 5: you're really making any sort of ask of them, it's
Speaker 5: kind of uncomfortable, kind of inherently uncomfortable. And so often
Speaker 5: what they'll find in this research about gender bias and
Speaker 5: negotiation is that women will make the ask and then
Speaker 5: they will immediately begin negotiating against themselves and offering all
Speaker 5: the reasons why they totally understand if it's not doable
Speaker 5: right now, and I know the budgets are tight, so like,
Speaker 5: if it's not this time, then maybe you've probably heard
Speaker 5: this scene this and maybe even done this yourself. I
Speaker 5: know that I have. So the advice is, once you
Speaker 5: make the ask, and in the book I outline the
Speaker 5: specific ways to like structure that ask for the best results,
Speaker 5: stop talking and allow the uncomfortable silence the other really
Speaker 5: critical thing to remember that I have found very useful
Speaker 5: in my own work and in my time in corporate
Speaker 5: settings is that workplaces are a little bit like glorified
Speaker 5: high school lunchrooms, and so in many ways, perception is reality.
Speaker 5: So the best time to begin setting the groundwork for
Speaker 5: a negotiation is long before you are actually sitting down
Speaker 5: to have that conversation. There are a couple components of
Speaker 5: how you approach this. I generally bucket them into two
Speaker 5: main categories. The first is your perceived value in the company,
Speaker 5: and the second is your market rate. So, aside from upskilling,
Speaker 5: you have a lot less control over your market rate
Speaker 5: than you do or perceived value. So there are a
Speaker 5: couple little tricks that I like to use for really
Speaker 5: disproportionately shaping that perceived value. Women are extremely hard workers,
Speaker 5: by and large. That is a generalization I'm very comfortable making.
Speaker 5: So my advice is, these are not ways to work harder,
Speaker 5: these are ways to work smarter. So the first is
Speaker 5: socializing your wins. Oftentimes, popular negotiation advice will encourage you
Speaker 5: to keep a list of your accomplishments, and that is great,
Speaker 5: but it's actually way better if people know about those
Speaker 5: accomplishments as they are happening. So this is kind of
Speaker 5: an art and a science. There was one gal that
Speaker 5: I worked with at Southwest Airlines back in the day.
Speaker 5: She got promoted pretty much every time there was a
Speaker 5: promotion cycle, so I really studied her and what she
Speaker 5: was doing differently, and she was excellent at this. She
Speaker 5: would communicate her team's wins and the initiatives that she
Speaker 5: was driving for them as part of like, oh, just
Speaker 5: sharing out learnings that others might find useful from this,
Speaker 5: you know, user experience testing session that we were working on.
Speaker 5: You know, if you'd like to talk more, I'm attaching
Speaker 5: a deck of findings. So you're really it's a slippery
Speaker 5: slope because you don't want it to be a bragging montage.
Speaker 5: But the bottom line is that if you are doing
Speaker 5: impressive things, people need to know about it. The next
Speaker 5: is going the extra yard. So noe, we're not talking
Speaker 5: about the extra mile, just a yard. If your deadline
Speaker 5: for three factors that are impact and conversion is due
Speaker 5: on Friday, you're gonna hands it over on Thursday, and
Speaker 5: you're gonna throw in a fourth. If you are meeting
Speaker 5: with someone, particularly somebody who is above you and the organization.
Speaker 5: You're going to send an agenda ahead of time, and
Speaker 5: you're going to manage up. I think that this is
Speaker 5: especially important if you are bringing an issue to a manager,
Speaker 5: because if you're setting up a meeting with somebody like
Speaker 5: a manager or a supervisor, and you are bringing an
Speaker 5: issue to them, you're dropping a problem in their lap.
Speaker 1: That's no good.
Speaker 5: It's a little bit better to come with an explanation
Speaker 5: like here's my issue, and here's what I think is
Speaker 5: causing it. But what's even better than that is coming
Speaker 5: prepared with a few potential solutions and ideally which solution
Speaker 5: you recommend, and if you have the latitude to do this, Oh,
Speaker 5: by the way, I've already implemented my recommended solution. I'm
Speaker 5: just keeping you in the loop now. So that is
Speaker 5: something that I think goes a really really long way,
Speaker 5: particularly as you kind of get stuck in that quote
Speaker 5: unquote middle management. Oh my gosh. Moras with executing at
Speaker 5: a level that will allow the people that probably have
Speaker 5: a say over whether you are going to ascend higher
Speaker 5: giving them the impression that you are there to make
Speaker 5: their lives easier effectively, and that you are autonomous in
Speaker 5: your job. I think that that goes a really really
Speaker 5: long way. So my approach to negotiation, as you've probably gathered,
Speaker 5: is yes, specific, Yes, we're going to talk about the semantics.
Speaker 5: Yes we're going to talk about how to structure you're
Speaker 5: asking your argument, but we should also widen the aperture
Speaker 5: and talk about how you're actually approaching the job so
Speaker 5: that when you sit down to have that conversation it's
Speaker 5: just smooth sailing.
Speaker 1: Yes, sharing your wins strategic like that. That is white
Speaker 1: man with one hundred downb. That is what we mean
Speaker 1: because we see them sharing these things and we're like,
Speaker 1: that's to me, it's not impressive because I've like done
Speaker 1: that so long ago, But to other people who you
Speaker 1: need to impress, they don't know that. And they see
Speaker 1: that person sharing that success and that knowledge that comes
Speaker 1: with it, but they don't see you sharing it, so
Speaker 1: they don't know you have it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it can feel braggadocious or whatever you want
Speaker 3: to say about it, especially for women, but I do
Speaker 3: like the blanketing it in also a way to help
Speaker 3: other people as well, which is.
Speaker 5: Something that would already expect for women to do. We
Speaker 5: expect women to act relationally we expect women to think
Speaker 5: communally to be helpful. So the more you can, I
Speaker 5: don't know, man play into that trope now, trust me,
Speaker 5: I'm the first person to be like, let's break the
Speaker 5: glass fourth wall for a second. That's so annoying that
Speaker 5: we have to think this way. But this is the
Speaker 5: world we live in, and if you want to be
Speaker 5: recognized for the good work that you're doing, these are
Speaker 5: some ways to make sure that that happens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And there is a balance between fighting against the
Speaker 1: system and playing to your advantages within the system, and
Speaker 1: you don't have to choose one or the other. You
Speaker 1: can do both, and I love that you do.
Speaker 3: That.
Speaker 1: Last question is that you make a strong case for
Speaker 1: women claiming unapologetic financial autonomy. So, for someone just waking
Speaker 1: up to how uneven the playing field is, what's the
Speaker 1: very first mindset shift or action you'd recommend?
Speaker 5: Oh, the first mindset shift or action.
Speaker 4: Most you want to jump to step ten.
Speaker 5: But no, I think that that's a good question because
Speaker 5: I think that it's a step that every single person
Speaker 5: is going to have to confront. And before I answer it,
Speaker 5: I just want to tell you a little bit more
Speaker 5: about why unapologetic financial autonomy is where I landed, and
Speaker 5: it was some of the research that I found that
Speaker 5: bolstered chapter three, which is called Knowledge is Power. It's
Speaker 5: research from a bank called UBS, and every year they
Speaker 5: do something called the Own Your Worth Report, and what
Speaker 5: they find consistently is that even high earning millennial women,
Speaker 5: so we're talking a young women, and we're talking women
Speaker 5: that are making a lot of money in many cases,
Speaker 5: are the breadwinners in their relationships. They're the primary primary,
Speaker 5: they are the primary financial providers in their homes still
Speaker 5: have a tendency to outsource their financial decision making to
Speaker 5: male partners. Something like seventy percent of men in the
Speaker 5: surveys will claim I am the financial decision maker in
Speaker 5: this home. And there are a lot of reasons for this,
Speaker 5: I mean, a popular reason for this, to be honest,
Speaker 5: if we want to link this back to systemic forces,
Speaker 5: is that women today, even modern high income women, are
Speaker 5: very overburdened in their homes. To link it back to
Speaker 5: the time you study data, right, we know that women
Speaker 5: are within familial relationships probably spinning a lot more plates
Speaker 5: just on average. Now, if someone in your relationship is saying,
Speaker 5: don't worry babe, by God it, I'll take care of
Speaker 5: the money. They're offering to take something off your plate,
Speaker 5: and maybe it's something that you don't feel very confident
Speaker 5: about anyway, you're like, great, Yeah, one less thing that
Speaker 5: I have to worry about. So it makes perfect sense
Speaker 5: why we've gotten here. But what jumped out to me
Speaker 5: in this research is that a lot of women, what
Speaker 5: they say when asked why do you do this, is
Speaker 5: something to the effect of, well, financial decision making is
Speaker 5: just quote less natural for me, And that phrase jumped
Speaker 5: out at me immediately because I was like, natural, Well,
Speaker 5: nothing about managing money and thriving under capitalism is natural.
Speaker 5: I mean, everyone has to learn how to do that.
Speaker 5: No one comes out of the womb knowing how to
Speaker 5: balance a checkbook or diversify a portfolio. So I thought, Okay,
Speaker 5: that's a really good insight. The idea that we feel
Speaker 5: as though this is something that should come naturally to
Speaker 5: us is something that we can affect right now, and
Speaker 5: that's why I called it Knowledge is Power. Chapter three,
Speaker 5: where we really get into some of the granularities around
Speaker 5: how to plan long term for your finances. But that's
Speaker 5: why I really wanted to lean into this idea that
Speaker 5: we need to be unapologetic about this. We need to
Speaker 5: recognize that this is something that not only are we
Speaker 5: capable of doing, but we really ought to be doing it.
Speaker 5: We are the best people to be making these decisions
Speaker 5: about our future. No one is going to care more
Speaker 5: about it than we do, even our spouses, who we
Speaker 5: may love very much. Eighty four percent of wado's in
Speaker 5: America are women, which means even women who are married
Speaker 5: to wonderful male partners who never get divorced will still
Speaker 5: need to know how to manage their money on their own.
Speaker 5: So I think getting out of the mentality that any
Speaker 5: of this should be coming naturally to you is probably
Speaker 5: the mindset shift that I would say somebody should start with.
Speaker 1: Which is it's crazy because as a high performing woman,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of things do come naturally to us.
Speaker 1: So like it's just catch on to more things more quickly, right,
Speaker 1: And so I don't know if there's like a disconnect obviously,
Speaker 1: like us being in personal finance, like that's just something
Speaker 1: that we live in and comes, you know, more quickly.
Speaker 1: But I wonder if that's part of it. It's that
Speaker 1: more things they do pick up more quickly and just
Speaker 1: haven't gone into the money part.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it probably comes down to interest too,
Speaker 5: because I mean, I don't know, I don't know that
Speaker 5: it's true that money came came naturally or easily to me,
Speaker 5: or if it was just that I was so interested
Speaker 5: in it that learning about it felt easy, And that
Speaker 5: might have been your experience too, where you were just
Speaker 5: so enthralled with the topic that like studying.
Speaker 4: It was fun.
Speaker 5: But if I needed to know physics to manage my
Speaker 5: life and future, I can promise you I would be like, Hey,
Speaker 5: anyone else in my immediate circle want to handle this
Speaker 5: for because I'm yeah, I could learn it, but I'm
Speaker 5: not interested in learning it. So it might be a
Speaker 5: matter of interest as well. But I really think that
Speaker 5: the majority of women, particularly the type of women that
Speaker 5: are being interviewed in surveys like these, they have done
Speaker 5: and mastered far more complex topics than personal finance. As
Speaker 5: the two of you probably know, Like we're not talking
Speaker 5: about rocket scientists rocket science here. A lot of this
Speaker 5: stuff is pretty pretty manageable once you like pull back
Speaker 5: the curtain or lift up the hood. So that's that's
Speaker 5: probably where I would start.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what I'm always interested in and actually
Speaker 3: it does come quite naturally.
Speaker 1: It has truly come, probably most natural in anything that
Speaker 1: we've done in podcasting.
Speaker 2: The week. That's right, it's time for the best minute
Speaker 2: of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and
Speaker 2: his name is Williams. Maybe you paid off your mortgage,
Speaker 2: maybe your car died and you're happy to not have
Speaker 2: to pay that bill anymore. Duck bills, Buffalo bills, Bill clon.
Speaker 1: This is the bill of the week, Katie. Every week
Speaker 1: we yell at our listeners and our guests to share
Speaker 1: with us their bill of the week, and we leave
Speaker 1: it as vague as possible to give you the freedom
Speaker 1: to be unapologetically autonomous in your answer.
Speaker 5: Cool, okay, my bill of the week. I'm gonna go
Speaker 5: the business owner route here. I just invested and I
Speaker 5: paid part of the invoice, which is why it's my
Speaker 5: bill of the week this week. Around fifteen thousand dollars
Speaker 5: and getting a custom site made. And this is the
Speaker 5: biggest investment I've ever made personally in the business, so
Speaker 5: I'm excited about it. It's a lot of money. I
Speaker 5: hope it pays off, but we're living through the risk
Speaker 5: rewards cycle as we speak.
Speaker 1: Your branding upgrade is flawless. It is my favorite branding
Speaker 1: I at least in personal finance, but like really in
Speaker 1: a lot of other places too.
Speaker 5: So that very kind compliment the designers.
Speaker 1: Thank you, it's so good.
Speaker 3: Oh, business decisions, we were having a conversation ourselves about
Speaker 3: where to invest money because there are so many options
Speaker 3: and everybody wants your money and figuring out what is
Speaker 3: going to be the best thing now and long term.
Speaker 3: What's the opportunity cost here? It is no small thing,
Speaker 3: and it is a little bit different than maybe some
Speaker 3: of the ways that we would approach our own personal
Speaker 3: finances and the choices that we would make. So yeah,
Speaker 3: we can appreciate that. We feel that so deeply well
Speaker 3: done for making this decision, and we are hopeful with
Speaker 3: you that it turns out yet.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know, I'm like, come back to money with
Speaker 5: Katie dot com in August and hopefully you'll be greeted
Speaker 5: by a much much improved experience.
Speaker 3: Fun If you all listening, have a bill that you
Speaker 3: want to share, if it's about just a full send
Speaker 3: on a business investment, or a bill that you didn't
Speaker 3: have to pay, or your name is bill, visit Frugal
Speaker 3: Friends podcast dot com, slash Bill leave it for us
Speaker 3: a week, cannot wait, and now it's time for hang Bach.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get real vulnerable right now. What's a
Speaker 1: recent life experience that made you feel like a rich girl?
Speaker 5: Oh? Man, a recent life experience that made me feel
Speaker 5: like aurache girl. Well, so, for my book promotional tour,
Speaker 5: I'm doing a talk at ninety second Street y in
Speaker 5: New York, which is I learn I didn't know this
Speaker 5: because I'm not from there, but is apparently like a
Speaker 5: really really good venue for that sort of thing. And
Speaker 5: I did kind of have a moment of like, oh, wow,
Speaker 5: I've made it like I'm talking about my new book
Speaker 5: at this you know, prestigious New York venue. And I
Speaker 5: am a kind of normal person from northern Kentucky who
Speaker 5: had never really set foot in a real city until
Speaker 5: she was an adult. So I definitely had a moment
Speaker 5: of Wow, I've really I've really come a long way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that is so cool. That's osculations. What about
Speaker 4: for you, Jen?
Speaker 1: Oh? So, I don't I don't know if it made
Speaker 1: me feel like a rich girl. But last week we
Speaker 1: got invited to be on a news segment and when
Speaker 1: we get there, like they reached out to us, and
Speaker 1: when we get there, we're like, so, how did you
Speaker 1: like find us? And the anchors? Like my daughter is
Speaker 1: a huge fan. Oh, I was like, dang, that sounds
Speaker 1: like so fun. Yeah, so she was like begging me
Speaker 1: to get you guys on So that was very gratifying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is cool, And I got to share it
Speaker 3: that too, so I won't steal that. I'm sorry if
Speaker 3: that's no, that's fine for me. I have been really
Speaker 3: enjoying figuring out. We have been giving ourselves permission year
Speaker 3: over year to earn more and recognizing the responsibility that
Speaker 3: we have to be able to manage money well and
Speaker 3: not approach it from a scarcity or deprivation mindset, and so.
Speaker 4: That has been happening.
Speaker 3: And then to have more to be able to make
Speaker 3: decisions with and so one of the decisions that I
Speaker 3: made recently was to pay my friend who is starting
Speaker 3: her own business, to pull together a personalized style. She's
Speaker 3: gotten into style theory and kind of did this whole
Speaker 3: testing quizzes measurements on me and is creating a whole
Speaker 3: style guide for me to feel much more confident in
Speaker 3: the clothing that I wear as I also aim at
Speaker 3: having a minimalist wardrobe that I am able to per
Speaker 3: just secondhand. So it feels so values aligned, but also
Speaker 3: you know extra like it's not fair minimum and it's
Speaker 3: giving to a friend and I just feel like a
Speaker 3: rich girl.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when he got our colors done, that was like,
Speaker 1: have you heard of like getting your wardrobe colors done?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I've heard of it. I've never done it. What
Speaker 5: were yours?
Speaker 1: I'm an autumn in the summer, So that has been
Speaker 1: super helpful and understanding why am I holding onto these
Speaker 1: things in my closet but I never wear them? And
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, because the color doesn't look really good?
Speaker 1: Or why do I not have any of this color
Speaker 1: in my closet? Oh because I keep looking at this
Speaker 1: shade when really this is the shade that looks best
Speaker 1: on me. So that was really eye opening for us
Speaker 1: to for me to and then now I can thrift
Speaker 1: more easily, like I just stay away from certain colors
Speaker 1: and yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh, so there's your sales pitch, Katie. Everyone already
Speaker 3: knows about you, but in case they in case they're
Speaker 3: not fully aware, where can they get more from you?
Speaker 5: Well, if you like podcasts, check out The Money with
Speaker 5: Katie's show. If you like to read like longer form essays,
Speaker 5: I send those out nearly every week on the Money
Speaker 5: with Katie Newsletter, which you can find out the imminently
Speaker 5: remodeled Money with Katie dot com, and then on Instagram
Speaker 5: you can find me at Money with Katie And of
Speaker 5: course if you are interested, you can pick up my
Speaker 5: new book, Rich Girl Nation.
Speaker 4: Excellent. Thanks so much for being here with us.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.
Speaker 3: That was a dream come true because I don't fan
Speaker 3: out over many of our guests.
Speaker 4: Usually I don't know who they are. Wow, pick, I'm
Speaker 4: on the show.
Speaker 1: Sorry if you've ever been on the show.
Speaker 3: And then we became friends, and that's great. That's the best, organic,
Speaker 3: authentic Katie. However, I follow never thought that we'd be
Speaker 3: able to wrangle her in for our podcast, but she
Speaker 3: was so kind and willing and that was very fun
Speaker 3: for us, and I loved her concept of the hot
Speaker 3: girl hamster wheel. Honestly, anytime we can reframe the situation
Speaker 3: and look at it from a new angle, it's very
Speaker 3: fun for me. And anytime we can push back on
Speaker 3: well established ideas and kind of saying, what about if
Speaker 3: we're a little subversive here, and are we sure that
Speaker 3: that's actually where we're spending the most money? And are
Speaker 3: we sure that we really need to cut our rent
Speaker 3: if we've already slashed it so far, there might be
Speaker 3: other areas that.
Speaker 4: We need to be looking at.
Speaker 1: Yeah, questioning the traditional norms because personal finance is so
Speaker 1: different now than even it was five years ago or
Speaker 1: ten years ago. It always behooves us to be questioning
Speaker 1: what was right then. If it's still right now, nine
Speaker 1: times out of ten, it will still be like good
Speaker 1: advice then is still good advice now? But there's always
Speaker 1: something that can be approved upon or changed. So I
Speaker 1: love that I can go to Katie's content to rethink
Speaker 1: some of the things that I have thought of as normal.
Speaker 4: So true.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you all so much for listening, for watching
Speaker 3: if you're on YouTube. If you are on YouTube, please
Speaker 3: hit that subscribe button. It really helps us.
Speaker 1: If you're not on YouTube, head over to Frugal Friends
Speaker 1: on YouTube and also hit the subscribe Please.
Speaker 3: We really love your listening and your watching, and we
Speaker 3: also love your reading because many of you have read
Speaker 3: our book by what you love Without Going Broke that
Speaker 3: we wrote and published earlier this year, and we've been
Speaker 3: loving to read some of those kind reviews, like this
Speaker 3: one from Shell Pavlavich five stars. This book was entertaining
Speaker 3: and easy to digest. I've been a Frugal Friends podcast
Speaker 3: listener for years now, and I still learned new concepts
Speaker 3: with this book. Jen and Jill offered tangible tips and
Speaker 3: a call to action at the end of every chapter
Speaker 3: that was important to us. I'm so glad we did that.
Speaker 3: I love their simple approach to managing spending and building
Speaker 3: a life that aligns with your values while still offering
Speaker 3: grace for our humanity and easy read and I'll be
Speaker 3: revisiting on a regular basis.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Michelle so much.
Speaker 3: We're so glad that those action steps and questions at
Speaker 3: the end of every chapter was super useful for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you enjoyed the show, please take a minute
Speaker 1: to leave a rating review. It helps potential new listeners
Speaker 1: and watchers know what the show is all about. And
Speaker 1: if you've read the book, please take a minute to
Speaker 1: leave a review wherever you've gotten it. And yeah, if
Speaker 1: you have it by what youlovebook dot com, head over there.
Speaker 4: See you next time.
Speaker 1: Gorugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni.
Speaker 4: Jen. Have you ever been on a Hot girl hamster wheel?
Speaker 1: I feel like I never get off as much as
Speaker 1: I try.
Speaker 4: M I what hot things? Are you presuming things?
Speaker 1: It's not even hot. It's just like minimum standards for
Speaker 1: being a female. That's I mean, honestly, I am not
Speaker 1: forced to do them, but they do provide confidence, and
Speaker 1: so there's like this balance, right, like I want to
Speaker 1: feel confident, but what is confidence and what is insecure?
Speaker 1: So that is a continual battle in my mind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because you can have both people being like, yeah,
Speaker 3: let's be positive about your looks and you're beautiful and
Speaker 3: whatever makes you feel good, which that is also mashed
Speaker 3: into spending a lot on your hair, makeup, clothing, exercise, nutrition,
Speaker 3: and sometimes we can cloak it in I just want
Speaker 3: to feel good, but a lot of times it is
Speaker 3: I just want to look good, and yet there's nothing.
Speaker 4: Wrong with that. It's like, oh, I can talk myself
Speaker 4: into all these sort.
Speaker 1: Of episodes on skinny talk and GLP ones and the
Speaker 1: health and wellness industry is coming.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have been obsessive about that line and it's coming.
Speaker 4: Subscribe stay too. If you want more of this conversation.