Financial Feminist - 238. How to Be a Rich Girl (Without Selling Your Soul) with Katie Gatti Tassin

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

Register for our FREE workshop, Stock Market Secrets: Debunking Common Myths for Successful Investing: herfirst100k.com/secrets-pod What does it really mean to be a “rich girl”—and can we pursue wealth without sacrificing our values or our mental health? In this episode, I sit down with one of my favorite personal finance girlies, Katie Gatti Tassin, founder of Money with Katie and author of Rich Girl Nation. Katie and I dive into what it means to define success on your own terms and how to untangle your identity from your income. We talk about the dangers of tying self-worth to productivity, the role of privilege in financial success, and how to build wealth while still staying grounded in rest, joy, and community. This isn’t about toxic hustle or selling your soul for a dollar—it’s about building a life that’s rich in more ways than one. If you’ve ever wondered whether your drive for financial freedom is helping you thrive—or quietly burning you out—this episode is for you. Katie’s links: Website: https://moneywithkatie.com/ Read transcripts, learn more about our guests and sponsors, and get more resources at https://herfirst100k.com/financial-feminist-show-notes/how-to-be-a-rich-girl-katie-gatti-tassin/ Looking for accountability, live coaching, and deeper financial education? Check out our exclusive community! Join the $100K Club: https://herfirst100k.com/100k-pod Our favorite travel and cash-back credit cards, plus other financial resources: https://herfirst100k.com/tools Not sure where to start on your financial journey? Take our FREE money personality quiz! https://herfirst100k.com/quiz Special thanks to our sponsors: Squarespace Go to www.squarespace.com/FFPOD to save 10% off your first website or domain purchase. Rocket Money Stop wasting money on things you don’t use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to RocketMoney.com/FFPOD. Quince For your next trip, treat yourself to the luxe upgrades you deserve from Quince. Go to Quince.com/FFPOD for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Netsuite If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, download the free e-book Navigating Global Trade: 3 Insights for Leaders at NetSuite.com/FFPOD. Masterclass Get an additional 15% off any annual membership at Masterclass.com/FFPOD. Indeed Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com/FFPOD. ResortPass Visit Resortpass.com and use code FFPOD to get $20 off your first ResortPass experience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Get in, financial feminists. We're getting rich. Today, we are talking about how to become a rich girl, but also class consciousness with one of my favorite personal finance girlies, Money with Katie. Katie Gaddy Taw San is the host of the Money with Katie podcast, and she is the author of the newsletter of the same name, both acquired by Morning Brew in 2022.

We have to remember that a movement that is predicated on like nobody can have nice things isn't really going to attract anybody. We need to build a more desirable and exciting and grand version for the future and in my mind I'm like I want more people to have nice things. She's one of my favorite personal finance creators out there but she also does something really really interesting with her content talking much more broadly about the economy about capitalism and about class. We're very very uncomfortable in the United States acknowledging that the class system that we exist within is relatively calcified. And the chances of somebody who grows up in poverty becoming very wealthy, it happens,

but it's certainly the exception to the rule. So today we're talking about how to get rich, but also how to get rich without losing your soul or losing all of the fun you're having. Katie and I dive into the unique ways personal finance affects women, including talking about the pressure we feel to uphold beauty standards, the low key brainwashing of the American way

of doing things, AKA capitalism, and why focusing so much on independent wealth might not be the answer to the issues of inequality and inequity. The way that beauty norms work is that the more people that work to uphold a standard, the more normalized it becomes. It just exerts incrementally more pressure on each woman that you come into contact with. Katie's work proves time and time again that building wealth and getting rich is so much

more than just flashing bills or having packed bank accounts. It's what we do with it that actually matters. This is one of my favorite conversations we've ever had in the show, and you're gonna want to share this with every single person in your life. So let's get into it. But first, a word from our sponsors.

You know that I know that we love saving you money on this show. So before we get into the rest of the episode, I want to give you all of the deals from our incredible sponsors that allow us to do this show free for you. This episode of Financial Feminist is sponsored in part by Squarespace, Rocket Money, Quince, Indeed, Masterclass, NetSuite, and ResortPass. Build a beautiful website to get your message out into the world with Squarespace. Go to squarespace.com slash ffpod to save 10% off your first website or domain purchase.

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we're here to make rest, celebration, and self-care easier than ever. Visit ResortPass.com and use code FFPOD to get $20 off your first Resort Pass experience. ["Return to the Future"] Katie, thank you for joining us on the show. Can you tell us why we need a rich girl nation? Because all women can and should be financially independent. And being financially independent does not mean that you have to be like rich, rich in

the traditional sense. You have to be literally, you know, retiring early in order to operate independently of anyone else's influence. But if you structure your financial life in a strategic way, you will find yourself in a radically different position six months or a year from now. This does not have to be a, you know, a 15 year payoff for you to start feeling the results. Yeah. I think you and I have similar stories

where we kind of got into personal finance education by accident. Can you talk to me about how that happened? Absolutely. So, oh man, I kind of stumbled into it the way that I think you did, which is basically, you start working for a paycheck, you realize you're kind of treading water,

and then you go, what the hell am I supposed to be doing? Like, and why don't I know what to do with my money? I think that you probably had a little bit more of a leg up than I did, because I know you had very early experiences with entrepreneurship. Was it the vending machines? Yes, so like as a kid, you were already kind of in it. I, on the other hand, was more like

making $12 an hour and was like penciling the back of the napkin math on like how much time will it take me to afford a Louis Vuitton bag. But I mean, I was still doing that shit too. It was, yeah, especially when I got my first like real big girl job. I remember sitting down with my parents and being like, my cell phone costs how much every month? Like, the just how much it costs to live life was just crazy to me the first time. I swear, I walked across the stage at college graduation and my mom was waiting on the other end and was like, and here's your car insurance bill, best of luck to you.

So yeah, I think it came out of sheer necessity, but the difference was that once I started learning this information, it became clear to me how big of a difference it makes and how it can set you on a completely different trajectory financially. But I did notice that none of my female friends were talking about it. Like it wasn't something that often came up among the women that I was, you know, hanging out with every weekend. And so I kind of had this sense of obligation of like, well, if time is the most important ingredient, if you don't have to earn

six figures to build wealth, but you do need, you know, a strategy and you need time, then like I have to share this information with other people. I have to tell other people what I'm learning about. And my baptism into the personal finance world was very much in the financial independence, retire early community. So I think I had a very extreme version of personal finance that I began with and then have slowly maybe tapered back the extremity or tapered back the intensity of it. But I think that I still really cling to a lot of those core principles, which comes through in the book,

like particularly chapter three, which is it's called knowledge is power, but it's really like, how do we get into the savings rate math of understanding how your decisions today are going to impact your future? Yeah, we have remarkably similar stories. I was doing the Mr. Money mustache blog reading. Like I was in there deep and for

people who are not nerds like us financial independence, retire early, that's just the fire movement. And it's this idea, right? Of like, nobody wants to work till we're 65. So how do we basically gamify both savings and investing, but also our own spending to try to get to that financial independence number as soon as possible. What in that journey for you did you start realizing was helpful advice? And what was really damaging advice? Because I went through the exact same experience where I was like, some of this is fantastic and some of this is straight up garbage.

Well, I think that the parts that were fantastic that I really still hold firmly today is the proportionality of fire and understanding. Okay, if I save 10% of my income, it's going to take me 40 years to retire. But if I can save 15, then now it's going to take 34 years. OK, so this is amazing. I can see how these little incremental changes have these huge downstream impacts. But I think that for me, where things started to go slightly off the rails

is that I lost the plot a little bit. I became a little too focused on line go up. And so it started to feel like even though I was becoming more and more financially secure, right? Like first year you accumulate a couple of hundred thousand dollars, then you could commute your first million dollars. And you would think that as that process happens that you would become more comfortable spending money.

That you would become a little more lax with the rules, that you would think about money less. But I was having the opposite experience where the more that I accumulated, the more it felt like it was this constant weight on my shoulders. And so that was what I had to really work to unlearn. And I think part of that solution for me was A, realizing that I don't actually want to stop working. I don't want to retire. I love the work that I do. So, okay, I can always create more income. That's great. But it was also coming to terms with the fact that there will be a certain point on your financial journey and you might reach it early, you might reach it late, but there

will become a point where additional contributions are really not gonna be that meaningful to your outcomes. Like it's really not going to change your life in a meaningful way. And it's at that point that I had to start to grapple with some of my anti-capitalist inclinations, which were like, okay, well then if this is how I really feel, like I need to start redistributing

my own money, I need to start putting this belief system into action personally and recognizing where I may have internalized capitalist assumptions to the point that like it's starting to, I'd say, meaningfully affect my happiness. Yeah, I mean, I want to break down a couple of things that you said that I also have personal experience with. I think that savings rate part that you mentioned is so key and is so helpful to anybody listening where you almost get to the point where you treat it like a game, right? And this is what I did is, Hey, okay, I can save 10% of my income. Maybe I can save 12.

Okay. Maybe I can say 15. Oh, if I get a raise, I can save 12. Okay, maybe I can save 15. Oh, if I get a raise, I can save 20. And at the peak of my corporate life, I was saving 27% of my take-home pay and I had optimized my way up to that. And I think a lot of people, rightfully so, take personal finance very seriously, but then uniquely you also have to treat it

like it's a game of what lever can I pull in order to make this work? And I actually adopt the same thing with my business. Like, hey, if I post here at this time, I pull this lever. What kind of outcomes does that have? But I think for me, the three things that drove me nuts, one is definitely the sort of morality weirdly goes out the window where it's just like, how can I get the cheapest labor possible?

You know, and I'm thinking like four hour work week, Tim Ferriss bullshit, right? Like, have you tried exploiting overseas laborers? Literally. And I did that for a second because I read it in a book and I was like, oh, so I need to hire somebody who's in the Philippines. And like, you do that and you realize, you know, okay, maybe it is a living wage for them, but it just feels weird. You get to the point where the money, weirdly, is the only thing worth chasing. And then the other two problems I always had were up until, I think, probably around the time you and I became interested in this, it was all of the Tim

Ferris bros. They were all white guys who could bike to work even if it was dark, right? Cause their safety didn't matter. And they all founded tech companies when they were 25 and sold them by the time they were 30. Like that was the reality for financial independence retire early. Like if you wanted to do that,

you had to be a straight cisgender white guy who had sold a tech company. And then the other part that I always hated was the extreme frugality of it all, of the stuff that got glorified of I reuse toilet paper or like I only eat a banana for breakfast. And it's the same way a lot of these like morning routines, it's like, oh, I don't eat and I only eat one meal

and it's at 6 p.m. And I'm like, that's fucking disordered eating. Like it's the same thing with disordered spending of like I care about this so maniacally that I have cut anything and everything that might give me an ounce of pleasure for the greater good of my investment portfolio. It's such a bizarre world too, because it's so antithetical to, I would say, the broader public's

relationship to consumerism. So it's really feels like going through the looking glass where like you're suddenly in this world where rather than maybe in a normal setting, having a nice car and wearing nice clothes is seen as like a marker of success. In the fire world, it's the opposite, where it's like seen as a marker of irresponsibility or superficiality. And I think that that's connected actually to what I would call the conspicuous absence in that literature that you just kind of rattled off the core issue of where representation and issues of representation like the rubber really meets the road. When I was first getting interested in FIRE and doing my initial budget audits, the craziest

thing was that I was already living with a roommate in like kind of a rundown building. I already had a pretty cheap car payment. I was like kind of naturally living like not a super extravagant life. My fixed expenses were not that high, but I realized after doing this audit that like 10% of my take-home pay was going to my like hot girl expenses like hair, nails, and eyelashes and what have you. And I was like, why did none of the books talk about this? Why are none of the books that I'm reading about money acknowledging that this is like going to be a problematic area? And it's because none of them are written by women. None of them have

those types of expenses or understand that beauty standards, you know, impact us in that way. Exactly. And so it's interesting though, because I know you have spoken about this before. It's a double edged sword, right? Because on one hand, a lot of that stuff gets degraded because it scans as femme. If something is feminine, it becomes indulgent, luxurious,

frivolous, what have you. But then there is this very real part of it, which is like, it becomes indulgent, luxurious, frivolous, what have you. But then there is this very real part of it, which is like, okay, well, spending hundreds of dollars a month to uphold a beauty standard is also like not on its face empowering. Like that also is not necessarily going to be the best use of your money. And I think like the beauty standard and adherence to it is like worth interrogating further too. But that was just like a major, major gap that I found in that space, which is why I made it the first chapter of my book, because I was like,

well, this feels like the thing that I wanted some guidance on early on. It just didn't exist in that community. Yeah. So let's talk about that because the thing that I've come to in my book is it's like, yeah, we spend a ton of money performing femininity in the quote unquote correct way. But also if I don't, my earning potential is not as high. And like I give the example of everything I had to do even to shoot the cover of my book, right?

I had to sit in a salon chair for five hours for a cut and color, right? I had to get my eyebrows waxed or threaded or whatever, plucked, you know, whatever you decided. It's like if you don't spend money on these things, then you get told you look tired at work. Okay, so yes, I have a lot of thoughts on this. In the book I write about the fact that pretty privilege is real. Like, there are studies that will show that women that are considered attractive receive marginally higher grades. I want to say it's like, you know, one percent. We know that attractive people have better outcomes in the legal system. We know that they're

more likely to get mentors at work. So it's not that the way you look doesn't impact the life that you lead. But I do love Jessica DeFino's work on this because what she writes about is kind of how we hold this paradox that, yes, if you more closely adhere to the white, Eurocentric, thin-bodied beauty standard, people are going to treat you better. People are going to be more accommodating of you. And like, yes, you individually are probably going to lead a better life. However, the way that beauty norms work is that the more people that work to uphold a standard,

the more normalized it becomes. So in 2015, when Kylie Jenner was the only person on planet Earth that got lip injections, none of us probably felt that much pressure to make our lips larger. Now, you know, where I used to live in Dallas, Texas, you go to any restaurant on a Saturday night and you are going to feel like a thin-lipped monster because the pressure that, you know, the bulk of people adhering to a beauty standard, it just exerts incrementally more pressure on each woman that you come into contact with. And so this has been something that for me I've had to really grapple with of, okay, how do I, and I write about this in the book of like that call it the hot girl detox, where I had to kind

of like piece by piece strip this back. Like, okay, I'm not doing the manicures anymore. Okay, I'm going to get my eyebrows waxed, but I'm going to do it way less. I'm going to just kind of manage them myself. Okay, I'm not doing the fake eyelashes anymore. Okay, I'm gonna start, do you know, I'm gonna transition from like the full blonde highlight to just like the partial balayage. And Tressie McMillan Cottom has some amazing,

amazing analysis on like the enduring privilege of blondness. And I think there's like a whole nother, you know, rabbit hole that we could go down there and just the, even the, how layered that is. But in any case, tapering it back little by little reverting back to my quote unquote natural self and seeing how it felt. And I think the biggest takeaways that I had from doing that was that A, it wasn't just money that I got back, but it was time.

I didn't really realize how much time and mental energy I had been devoting to maintaining the hot girl Jenga calendar of appointments, but it was also that my life really didn't change that much. And I think that there's definitely an argument to be made that if you are a white, cis, thin person, yeah, you actually are not getting that much more out of adhering to these beauty standards perfectly. Like the risk of you deviating is a lot lower than it might be for somebody else.

But I think for me, where I landed was like, and that's precisely why it is important for me to be the person that is like willing to take that risk and is willing to test it out. Because like, if I'm not willing to do it, then who is? You know what I mean? Well, and I find it really interesting. I think that's a great point where, for a lot of us listening, some of the listeners are not going to feel this way. But I think for, you know, cisgendered white women, especially in thin bodies, I think you're exactly right. Like, is it marginally better?

Like, you already have the privilege you have. So, like, is it worth all of the rest of it, even to just get half a percentage point more? I don't know. And maybe it is for you, but the thing I always come back to is, like, how much of the beauty standard do we truly want or how much of it do we think we want because we were told what perfection should be? For sure. I think Jessica Dufino talks about this really eloquently. When I had her on my show, I was like, Jessica, how do you know though that I'm not doing this for me? Like, maybe I just like a cat eye, you know? And she was like, maybe. But also, what are the chances that your unique expression just so happens to conform perfectly with the beauty standard? And that was like, good point. You just clocked me.

So yeah, yeah, I think that's what waxing a lot. You know, like, that's what I always think about, because it's like, and again, I'm sure I'm not shaming anybody who likes a full Brazilian, but in my head, I'm like, how is that not patriarchal? Like it is so painful. And you're just like, I don't know. Like, that's so hard to be like, this is something I want. And I'm like, are you sure? Why do you want it?

Do you want it because you've been told that body hair is gross? And so then you feel less desirable, either to yourself or to somebody else, if you have hair. Like, I don't know, that's the one that I think drives me the most insane is I was like, we're actively participating in so much pain. And for what?

And again, I'm not shaming anybody. If you want to flow Brazilian, fine. But I like, I can't wrap my mind around it. I just can't do it. It's a perfect example because body hair, that was kind of where I hit my limit. Honestly, I was like, maybe I'll try to just like not shave anything.

And that was where I was like, no, that is where it has been so internalized that I was like, no. But is where it has been so internalized that I was like, no. But that's the thing is that to me, not every decision we make in life has to be like an explicitly feminist stance, right? Like you can shave your legs and that's not going to make probably any difference to anybody. But I think that what I try to hold myself accountable to and keep coming back to is like, where am I choosing things and participating in things that are contributing to our collective liberation?

And where am I doing things that just make my life a little bit better? And we're all, life's hard, capitalism is hard. We're all going to make decisions that just make our individual lives a little bit better. We have to pick and choose our battles. But I just think it can be useful to operate with that framework in the back of your mind because I think it will over time reorient you ever so slightly. And it will also in my mind, and I think some of the interviews I did for the book bore this out, I think it will also

help you to make those decisions and feel a little bit better about them. Because even if you are opting in, you know that you're doing it with your eyes wide open. And I think there's value in that. Well, and it can also be a really good gateway. And I'm not just doing this as a segue to my next question, but it can also be a really good gateway for us to start investigating, like how much of personal finance is our own personal choices or the narratives that we've been taught and the expectation that women or folks of color or queer people have to perform their queerness or perform their blackness or perform their gender in a certain way. But so much of personal finance that I talk about, that you talk about has nothing to do with our own personal decisions and everything to do with policy or lack thereof.

And we're recording this a couple of days after the White House has decided, hey, we need more babies. And they've come out in the New York Times being like, please have more children. We're not going to give you access to paid federal leave. We're not going to increase the minimum wage. We're not going to ban assault rifles. We're not going to help contribute to less climate change. We're just going to give you potentially $5,000

if you have a baby. So talk to me about how policy is not supporting women. This is a big question, but just But there's so much of personal finance that has nothing to do with our own choices. It would be easier to list the ways it does. Right. It would take less time. When we come back, Katie and I are talking about

why we don't believe personal finance is 100% personal. And we're talking about how women bear the brunt of American systems specifically, and why we can't have a conversation about getting rich without talking about class consciousness too. Stay tuned. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. We've been partnering with Squarespace for years because they were the first investment we ever made in our business. So whether you are a side hustle or a freel, or a full-blown business owner,

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use offer code SF pod to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Because you're listening to this show, I know that self-development is a primary goal for you. You're listening to financial feminists, you're interested in being the best version of yourself. And that's why you should also look at Masterclass. Masterclass is a fantastic way to better your life,

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as I've mentioned on the show before, I am excited to do a cooking intensive in Italy. It's like becoming very real. I'm like looking at the dates, looking at getting signed up, and I am going to masterclass to make sure my knife skills are up to par. Our listeners always get great discounts on Masterclass of at least 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com slash FF pod. See Masterclass's latest deal at least 15% off at masterclass.com slash FF pod. Masterclass.com slash FF pod. In my mind, something that I always like to say is be tough on systems, not people. And what I mean by that is I think the root of my radicalization journey came from recognizing how little of the things

that I perceived to be just innate personality traits of mine were actually the result of the environments that I grew up in and the systemic constraints that I existed within. So all of this changed for me when I visited Northern Europe for the first time. I visited Scandinavia after reading a book called The Nordic Theory of Everything. I dragged my husband there on our honeymoon. And I was absolutely blown away by what I saw. I saw people during the work week, you know, out to dinner with their kids looking so relaxed, not an iPad in sight. I saw dads, you know, just more dads than moms

at the park with the kids. I saw people on a Monday afternoon sipping coffee, reading a newspaper on a patio, you know, clearly they're in work attire, you know that they're just like taking a long break in the afternoon. And I started to realize that a lot of the things that I had believed were just innate to me, like my kind of chronic, I will call it just low-level anxiety, this feeling of

constantly needing to be productive, an obsession with money, right? That all these things that I thought were me were not me. And I was like, I think that this is just like the American in me recognizing how out of place I feel in a place like this. And of course, that sent me down the rabbit hole of learning, okay, how do you create a society like that? Well, you do give people paid family leave. You, and that's, that's a year, right? That's not eight weeks, that's a year for mothers and fathers paid. You give people universal childcare or heavily subsidized childcare

where it is scaled to your income and like at the most you're gonna pay $200 a month. And oh, by the way, your kid is guaranteed a spot. It is high quality. The teachers all have secondary educations. And oh, by the way, the teachers secondary educations were free because college is also free. And if something happens and you get sick,

my husband got sick in Norway, we were in Oslo. A doctor was in our hotel room for a house call in two hours. Universal healthcare, babe. Like this is, you just, you become a different person in a world like that. You are a fundamentally different person. You are working in different constraints.

There's a reason why you and I can have careers like this in America and like there aren't personal finance industries in Copenhagen because like, it's funny how many of your personal finance problems disappear when all of these issues are already kind of taken care of for you. So dude, I never thought about that. That's so true. Everybody's in my comments.

They're like, where is the U for France? Where's the U for Portugal? Where's the U in Australia? And I'm like, there's a me and Katie in Australia, but like there's less in Australia. And I'm like, there's a me and Katie in Australia, but like, there's less in Europe. No wonder. You're exactly right. Yeah. Well, and it's funny, because like, Australia, Canada, these countries are very American, like, they have more

than we do. But like, they also are more American than like a Denmark is. So I say all that to say that what does that actually functionally mean then in America that we don't have those things in the US? Well, women privately bear these problems for the most part. And I think that that's really what I wanted to explore in this book, which is let's talk about these systemic challenges, let's acknowledge them, let's understand them, and then let's see where realistically we can start to shape different outcomes for ourselves and the women that we care about. And I think the statistics are still pretty grim, to be honest with you. I know I'm not going to tell you anything that you don't already know, but like women do on average earn around 15% less than men.

And this is a gap that widens with time, doesn't shrink. So as you progress in your career, it is more likely that you're going to be paid less than the men that you're working with. The gap is the widest for ages 45 to 54. You have to consider that women are 15% less likely to get a raise when they ask for more money because the advice to be aggressive and demand your worth doesn't really work for women the way it works for men because we socialize women to think differently.

When women pursue masculine goods, this is something that feminist philosopher Kate Mann writes a lot about, power, money, status, They are more likely to face pushback. Now, the same is true for men who seek feminine coded goods. A man who is seeking more flexibility so he can spend more time with his family will also face more pushback than a woman will. But the problem with a lot of these disparities is that after a lifetime of them, we know what happens to women. We know that they live six and a half percent longer. They need their portfolios to last longer. And yet, because they face these disparities their entire lives, they retire with between like 57 and 70 percent as much money. So like, they're more likely to suffer the consequences of poor long-term financial planning, but they're also just up against bigger challenges every step of the way.

So that's not to say that you can like empowerment girl boss your way, you know, through the problems. Like we ultimately do need policy change. I think that's like kind of the bottom line of both of our platforms. But I also want to be realistic that like people need answers now. People need help now. And if we can only help them, you know, get a little bit more, just a little bit of a raise, make that challenge or that

burden just a little bit lighter. I still think that that's worth it in the meantime. Yeah, I always say I don't want to win capitalism, because that means I exploited somebody, right? Or it means that, you know, I just used a system for my own personal gain, but I also can't lose it either, because that means deep suffering to me and my family and my community. So you just have to learn how to navigate it and survive it the best you can. Like, I don't want to win it, but I also can't lose it. So you still have to be an active participant, even while we're working to change the system.

Actually, that's something I would love to talk to you more about because it's so nuanced. And every time I've tried to talk about it, it feels like I am dancing on, I don't know. Let's do it. Let's dance on Fraser's Edge. Yeah. The thing is, is like a lot of people, I shouldn't even say a lot,

because I think most people who know me and actually know our work know that like, I am very anti-capitalist. But I think if they see my work or your work in a 60-second TikTok, they're like, oh, so you're just trying to like get rich. Because like my, literally my tagline is fight the patriarchy, get rich. Because on taglines, there's no nuance, guys. Like, the nuance cannot be, get rich with an asterisk and then see the paragraph in Legally is Down Below.

So I think a lot of new folks will see our content and just be like, but that's contributing to the system. And if you are trying to get rich in the system, then you were part of the problem. And I feel very passionately that that's like my not so conspiracy conspiracy theory is that we have been told as members of minority groups to not participate in the system as a way to keep us broke and tired and deprived so that we can't work to actually fight the system. Does this make sense what I'm saying? It does, for sure. Yeah.

What is your thought on that? Well, gosh, I think about this so much. So I do too. It was like the biggest thing I grappled with when I wrote my book because it's like, and I'm sure you did too. and I do this all the time in my work where I'm like, I can tell you how to save money, but at the end of the day, if you're truly broke, there's actually nothing I can teach you. For sure. That isn't like vote and protest and like, that's all I've got for you. That was also the biggest challenge for me was recognizing as I was writing the book that

if you are in the bottom quartile of laborers, none of this is going to help you because you're being paid an exploitative low wage. And what really is going to help is if we can increase labor power, teach people how to unionize their workplaces. Right now, that's a little bit shittier because like Trump is actively dismantling the NLRP, which is super fun. But yeah, I think about this constantly. And I think that on the highest level, I definitely identify with, or your non-conspiracy conspiracy theory resonates with me because to me,

it comes down to class consciousness and class solidarity. And whether you are a laborer who is earning $12 an hour or you are a knowledge worker who's being paid $100,000 a year, yes, you exist on a spectrum of privilege and financial access. But ultimately, you are fundamentally in the same boat as one another because neither one of you really has control over the economy. Both of you are at the mercy of the-

Oligarchy. Small group of men who own everything. And so one of them could wake up tomorrow and upend your entire life. So- One's doing it right now. We have a couple doing it right now. Literally as we speak. If only there were an example, right, of what happens when one,

the whims of one person disrupt the entire economy. So, it comes down to control and it comes down to class solidarity. And I think that Chelsea Fagan does a really good job of talking about this as well. But we have to recognize that we are more similar than we are different. And abstaining from accumulating wealth or power of our own is not actually going to further our goals. That's not going to get us anywhere. Because you know who doesn't have any time to go down to the local, the local, city council meeting where they're blocking affordable housing, the person who's working three part-time jobs and has no fucking time or energy

to go fight the boomers with their $2 million, 401ks who are sitting on an inflated asset and don't wanna see the value go down. And even then I'm like, but even those boomers are still in many ways in similar positions. And like, again, it comes down to class solidarity and recognizing that like our interests are aligned. So I think that that's something to, I guess, broadly keep in mind. But there is some truth to that critique.

I mean, and I face it as well, there is some truth to the reality that like, once you own the means of your own production, and once you have money, you do have more optionality. And I do think that puts people like us in a position of more responsibility. And to use that privilege for good. I think that one major way that we've tried to do that is I have another project called Diabolical Lies that I co-founded with my friend, Carol Claire Burke, and we just decided from the jump, we're going to redistribute a third of the revenue.

Like, that is one easy thing that we can do. It is not going to impact our financial security. And like, we have to start figuring out how do we socialize wealth in a meaningful way. but I do want to disabuse people of the notion that like there's anything noble about jeopardizing your own financial future to like make a statement because there's just not. Yep I completely agree I mean we talked to Viv, your HBFF, we had her on the show and you know she's a friend of mine as well and we're all kind of in the same space.

And the metaphor she always uses is like, OK, if a million dollars is a grain of sand, right? Like Jeff Bezos has a beach. Yeah. Like, so we try to lump millionaires and billionaires in the same category. It's not even close. And as we all know, because we all typically live in expensive places and we know the price of eggs, like, yes, a million dollars is a lot of money, but not really. Like, it's not that much money. The average home price where I live in Seattle is $900,000.

So it's not that much money. And I think a lot of women, especially, this is back to the narratives that I researched for my book is like, we've been told that wanting money is bad, wanting wealth is bad. It is greedy, it is gauche, it's impolite to pursue money. And so we actively push it away. And then I think the element on top is the, well, I don't want to contribute to the system.

And I'm like, I don't want to contribute to the system either, I get that. But you do have to survive the system because if you don't, you are a victim to the very thing you're fighting against. Something that I've been thinking about a lot recently, we did an episode about capitalism for diabolical lies and we talked about this idea called fully automated luxury communism. And it's basically like the utopian version of AI fixes everything. What's the best case scenario? It is publicly owned. You don't really have to work if you don't want to. We have an abundance of resources. We get

rid of the manufactured scarcity that makes capitalism go round. I really think that on the left in particular, we have to remember that a movement that is predicated on nobody can have nice things isn't really going to attract anybody. We need to build a more desirable and exciting and grand version for the future. In my mind, I'm like, I want more people to have nice things. I don't want nobody to have them. And I think that we have to get over the idea that having nice things or living a beautiful life is synonymous with capitalism. It's not. That is in itself capitalist propaganda, like, oh, this is the only system that can deliver you wonderful things. It's not. And so I think we have to, at least I have been thinking a lot about kind of reclaiming that idea.

And I love the Aaron Bostani fully automated luxury communism because I'm like, yeah, let's start to really push back on that idea and show people that you can live a life of abundance. You can live a life of extreme generosity and luxury and beauty. And it can be actually fully aligned with your values. It does not have to mean exploitation of other people. I think this might be the only time we've used the phrase fully automated luxury communism on this show,

but I'm definitely doing a deep dive after this episode. When we come back, we are talking about the downfall of the girl boss era. You're going to want to stick around for that. A lot of people are shocked to know that her first inner K financial feminist, it's not just me. In fact, we have a team of 17 people, I think, across not only the United States, but across the world on all women team. And next time we need to hire we're looking at Indeed. When it comes to hiring Indeed is all you need. You can stop struggling to get your job

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just lump it for now into the whole girl boss thing. But we do get sort of the backlash happens every time a woman wants to think about building wealth. So can we talk about the girl boss phenomenon? And can we also talk about how girl boss is now the dirty word for what it was in the early 2010s? Yeah, I mean, this is also something that I think about a lot because I think there are many real ways in which girl bossism or sometimes called white feminism or pink capitalism failed because it was very focused on individual ascension and not on collective liberation.

So it's like also sometimes called choice feminism, right? It's like, well, you can choose. It's like, well, is it really about choices or is it really about like, you know, liberation from the limitations that are keeping our choices small, right? So there were a lot of really, really valid critiques that came out of that.

But something that always didn't quite sit right with me during that kind of girl boss downfall era was that it felt like we were taking a lot of pleasure in the crumbling empires of these young women founders. And it felt like it went like a critique of poor leadership or a critique of capitalism more broadly. And I really couldn't help but feel like, you know, I'm happy that we are critiquing leaders that are treating people like shit, but I do wish that this was applied a little bit more evenly. And it's just something that I think we have to be aware of and conscious of because I think, I mean, I'll speak personally as like a self-proclaimed feminist who cares deeply

about the liberation of women and femmes, that internalized misogyny is a hell of a drug. And it'll come out in the weirdest ways. And I think sometimes we have to be a little bit less trusting of our own instincts around the quote unquote problematic woman. Not that they don't exist, they certainly do. But I want, I just want to live in a world where we hold everybody accountable. And that we don't allow maybe some very valid critiques of women founders to throw the baby out with the

bathwater, right? Women have to be allowed to make mistakes too. Yep. Katie, I mean, I felt the same way because there was a period of time where you were watching headline after headline after headline be like, woman ousted, right? It was away one week and then I think it was rent the runway and then it was the wing, right? And it was like, they're again, honest, true critiques, most definitely, but Steve Jobs is lauded as this like visionary leader, deeply abusive, like he would shower for weeks.

Such a good example, dude. Such a good example. But why is that? That's, he's a visionary. He's a manic genius, not he's an abusive boss and a not present father. Tyrant, yeah. Yes, exactly.

But that's not the criticism. So yes, if you're going to criticize women, great. And I had, I actually felt this way about Elizabeth Holmes too. What she did, absolutely wrong. What other men in tech are doing or other people in tech who happen to be men are doing similar shit. Are they getting prosecuted? No, they are not.

And I completely agree that it's almost like when a woman flies too close to the sun, it's like, well, we have to do something about it. Teach her a lesson, make an example out of her. Exactly. And it's usually from other women. And I experienced this in my comments every day. I've experienced this with people I've worked with, I'm sure you have too,

where I think a lot of people who are quote-unquote successful, we've discussed this on the show before, but almost become mirrors to other people, and rather than having any sort of self-reflection of, why do I feel threatened by this person? Or why do I feel like this situation makes me uncomfortable? It's just, there's something about her that I don't like. And again, a lot of valid critiques in these articles, but you're 100% correct that this is a massive double standard. Men are lauded for these sorts of traits. Women are actively punished for them. It's just interesting too,

because I think if we go back to the systems level thinking, it becomes even sillier to call out individuals for behaving this way. It's like they exist in an incentive structure that demands that of them. A lot of founders are a little on the Steve Jobs spectrum, like a little abusive, a little manic, because in a lot of ways, like the people that are extremely delusional

are the ones that end up having very successful companies. They don't always treat people that well. And like the fact that we exist in a system that rewards that is what I think we really should be looking at rather than like this part, Audrey Gellman is a bitch. You know what I mean? Like there's a, there is just a bigger question there

about until we actually shift the incentive structure that people are operating in, you are not going to get different outcomes from people. And so we can beat up on women who are running with that incentive structure and basically doing the same thing that men have been doing for hundreds of years, or we can go, okay, let's, yeah, oh my God, what a good example in that documentary, dude. She, I mean, I had no idea that it was basically like, not to use a Trumpian phrase,

but like that it was like a witch hunt. It was a full witch hunt. Everybody thinks I thought she was arrested for insider trading. Me too. She was not. She was not. And also basically what she did was not different

than what, again, Finance Brosos and Patagonia vests have been doing for decades. But because she was not palatable as a woman and she was, you know, what, the first self-made billionaire I think, American woman, it was then we have to... Yeah, she became a target. Many such cases. Many such cases. Yeah. I don't know what the answer is. Yeah, she became a target. Many such cases, many such cases.

Yeah, I don't know what the answer is. I don't feel like I have a solution, but I do think that something that I, as the scales kind of fell from my eyes, because originally when I first learned about personal finance, I was like, oh my God, this is all the answers? Oh my God, the 4% rule is gonna change everything?

And then I kind of like, I don't know, learned more, like just became more interested. And I had a real disillusionment period where I was like, I don't know if any of this matters at all. And I really reflexively rejected anything that's scanned as girl bossy because it felt like a capitalist lie. And I think that what I eventually had to come around to is like, okay, we just have to keep the cause

and effect straight. So for example, in chapter two, I write a lot about negotiating and earning more money and doing deals and what have you. And something that I wrote was like, I always took umbrage with the idea that women earn less because they are not as good of negotiators. And so if they can just be better negotiators, they'll earn more. And I was like, I reject that. But I accept that learning how to be a better

negotiator will help you earn more money. And those two things, there's a subtle difference there, right? So it's rejecting the cause and effect that like we earn less because of this negotiation gap, which by the way is not real. Women negotiate just as often as men do. We know that this is born out in the research now. But yeah, I think that that was a really interesting kind of, it wasn't quite full circle, but I did come back around to like, no, this stuff does help. And there's actually nothing wrong with embracing advice that is going to help you succeed. We just

have to be realistic about the fact that like getting rich on its own is not inherently progressive. What is the thing that you discovered either about yourself or about personal finance in general as you were writing the book? That is such a good question. I think the thing that I was, because writing is a process and it's a process that really is a means of testing your ideas and figuring out what you really think. And I think something that I revealed to myself while writing it that I never even really set out to do came through in how I structured the bookends of the introduction and the conclusion.

So the introduction was kind of my story about how I became interested in personal finance. And it all started when my friend Kylie invited me to the Money Diaries book tour. And I write about this night and realizing being around other women talking about money for the first time, like, oh my God, this is what I want to spend my life doing. I've never felt this way before. But it only happened because I was invited to this event by a friend. And by the end of the book, the conclusion is about a panel that I was on in New York last year with another female founder and sitting on stage and just kind of realizing, oh my God, like six years ago,

I was the one in the crowd at an event like this and I knew nothing. And like now I'm the one with the microphone. And it all started because someone invited me along. And I was looking out at this crowd of women and just thinking, I'm sure many of you are here tonight because one of your friends dragged you out on a Thursday night to come to this

and your financial future might be different as a result. So it a Thursday night to come to this, and your financial future might be different as a result. So it really came down to, for me, the importance of bringing other women along for the ride and how powerful individual action can actually be. I think we talk so much, and rightly so, about systemic change and collective action. But it really is, it's not like a what can I do,

it's a what can we do. And it's kind of crazy how the ripple effect of, you know, your individual decisions can impact other people's lives. So I kind of conclude with this kind of call to arms of, you have to invite your friends. I want you to use all this information. I want you to become financially independent.. I want you to become financially independent. I also want you to tell every woman that you know about it.

And I want you to encourage them and be a sounding board for them. And like together, we will change things for the women that come after us. We have to believe that that is possible. Otherwise, why are we here? Why are we even, why are we doing this? I completely feel the same way. And I think it's something that I've experienced in my own work, too. The amount of women who tell me, and I bought your book for my best friend, or I bought my book

for your sister, or I shared the podcast with my best friend. And then the second thing, you were talking about, you know, hopefully changing this for generations of women, the amount of messages I've gotten that are something like I'm 50 and this is the first time I've learned anything about money. And it might be too late for me. And by the way, it's not, but it might be too late for me, but it'll be better for my daughter. Oh, wow. I know. I'm like, I'm like, teary. I've been crying nonstop for like a week, but like, that's, that's the shit that like, you're exactly right, dude.

Like we can talk about systemic oppression. We have to talk about it. We have to talk about all of the policies that are in place or not in place that support women women don't support women, that actively seek to destroy our rights and our access to our own choices and money and freedom and bodies and all of that. And at the same time, this does matter. And we can see when women show up and take it seriously. Like we see the impact on their lives. We see them be able to leave abusive marriages

because they have their own money. We see them start businesses where they're able to employ other women. We see them donate to causes they believe in or just pay off their student loans. Like we see the change that can happen and it really has nothing to do with personal finance. And that's the thing I wish more people understood.

And I don't know if you have this experience, when people discover, oh, you write talk about money, they're like, oh, that's so great. Financial literacy is so important. And they almost like niche me to this, of like it's personal finance. And I'm like, it's so much more than that. Like it is just as necessary as the air we breathe.

You need money, unfortunately, in a capitalist system to survive. And so, yes, I'm a personal finance educator, but at the end of the day, I'm like, you need money to do anything you want in life. And you also need money to have any sort of power or choice or freedom in this life. I think that thing that always drew me to this world, even beyond the tactical stuff, because as I've grown, I've now been doing this for half a decade.

Yeah. I really, I felt interested in the tactical stuff for years and then my interest started to expand beyond it because I started to recognize money is in everything, classes and everything. These are forces that influence nearly every aspect of our experience of our lives. And I think that sometimes the fact that from the most tactical level, personal finance itself, how much money you have, how much you make, what you're saving, et cetera,

to kind of calling out the role of class or class signaling or class privilege, kind of making those unspoken subtextual things real and speaking them out loud. I have found great power in that. I have found great comprehension in that. And it has made me feel like I understand the world around me better. I see the world differently now, and I think I relate to other people differently now, because I have seen some of these things firsthand. And in the US, we're very uncomfortable with class. There is a sort of a myth that it's not real or that social mobility is available to everybody.

And we're very, very uncomfortable in the United States acknowledging that the class system that we exist within is relatively calcified. And the chances of somebody, you know, who grows up in poverty, becoming very wealthy, it happens, but it's certainly the exception to the rule. And I think that the more that we can have those sorts of conversations, we do two things. that the more that we can have those sorts of conversations, we do two things. People like you or I, who grew up middle class or upper middle class, and then maybe ascended beyond that because we stand on the shoulders of people who gave us a lot of advantages. We know that our accomplishments are like 10% hard work and like 90% circumstantial. But we also know that people that were not given those same advantages,

who are not in the same position now, are 90% circumstantial as well. And I think like the level of empathy and the level of like understanding what that implies, as far as like the responsibility that we have to other people. I mean, I've spoken with so many very rich people who I have to tell you the amount of mental gymnastics they do to convince themselves that they deserve what they have. And I'm like, you know what, I don't doubt she worked hard, but like we have to get real about the fact that capitalism is not a meritocracy. It's just, it Wealth begets wealth. That's just the way it is.

And I think that the realer we can be about that, the better decisions that we can make personally, the better we can make it for everybody. The more class solidarity we can find, the better world we're going to get out of it. And I just, I feel grateful that this career path has led me to a place of like deep curiosity and exploration and like true, truly a worldview shift. When we come back from a word with our sponsors, we're wrapping up our conversation with Katie and her last piece is perfect,

but she still has so much to share with us about the ideals of the American dream and how we find hope in a system that at times feels extremely stacked against us. It is an interesting time to run a business. Tariffs and trade policies are dynamic, supply chains are squeezed, and cash flow is tighter than ever. And if your business can't adapt in real time, it's going to be very difficult. So you need total visibility from global shipments to tariff impacts to real-time cash flow.

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and I would just call that the American dream, right? The American dream, then you can come. But I feel like most of us, if we really do the excavation and the research and the understanding, we know the American dream is largely false. But if we don't have it, then what do we have to believe? Yeah.

And more largely, and again, this is opening a huge can of worms, but I believe that this is why Trump is so popular with lower income people or people of color is because if they don't believe in the American dream or they can't have that hope, then what do they have? Like, if they're immigrating to America, and it turns out that the American system's also fucked, no, better than war-torn countries, hopefully, and better than religious persecution,

right? But if you don't believe in the system, then like, what hope do you have anymore? It's so funny that you bring up kind of like escaping war-torn countries. Cause even then I'm like, and who made them war-torn? I'm like another L for American capitalism. Totally, totally. But like, no, I think that what you're hitting on

is really powerful, which is like, sometimes it But like, no, I think that what you're hitting on is really powerful, which is like, sometimes it feels like what we risk when we are honest and face our history honestly, is cynicism. And cynicism is not the answer. Um, but I think a lot of people ask, like a lot of people ask, like, why are Hispanic people voting for Trump? And like, for sure. Well, that's probably the best answer I have.

He is speaking to real problems. Like there is no other politician in America, with the exception of Bernie Sanders and AOC, who are being fucking real with people about the fact that we have- Maybe Putin had- Yeah, I mean, we should have an unsustainable system. Like this isn't working for the majority

of Americans. And I think the gaslighting of neoliberalism, which is like, we have to preserve the wealth and we had, it'll, it'll trickle down to you eventually. I promise. Like we know that that's just not true. And so when you have a person, a strong man, like that is the appeal of authoritarianism. when you feel like you have no other options because it's like things are shitty and this person is delivering a very simple message that they will fix it. Trump is an incredible marketer. He's so good at messaging and he's so instinctual about it. But that is why I think we have to build a vision for a better future. And like I said, I think the left, we are really good at diagnosing problems.

We are less good at like getting people excited about how much better it could be. But I don't, yeah, I don't think the answer is driving home the idea that the American dream is false. The answer is like, we can rebuild a better American dream together. We together can fix this. And that does require hope, right? That does require the belief that together we are powerful. And I'm really encouraged

by the protests. I think that the more people start to see themselves as part of a body politic and not as individual consumers. I think it's really telling that a lot of the boycotting action has come from a place of consumerism and not buying things. And it's like, we're close, but our real power is in withholding our labor. That's how you really start to put some grit in the machine of capitalism and slow the wheels down as you withhold your labor. So I think we're getting there. I have hope for the future. I think that we have a lot of people doing really important work and helping others to see the path forward. But yeah, in the meantime, you

got to be putting money in that Roth IRA, babe. Money with Katie, 2028. That's all I'm going to say. Very funny. Okay. So I started our conversation by saying, why is Rich Girl Nation so important? And I'll end our conversation with asking you, if somebody joins Rich Girl Nation, does all the things we're talking about, takes their personal finance education seriously, is working to dismantle their internalized misogyny, is excavating the beauty standards and which ones they want to keep and which ones they want to throw away. How does their life change?

You will know a freedom that you did not know was possible. You will move with a confidence and with self-assuredness and with the real knowledge that you are unfuckwithable. Making yourself unexploitable is one of the most empowering things that you can do under capitalism. Really nothing compares. So I think if you want to seek freedom, this is one really good way to do it. Katie, this was so good. I could talk to you for 62 hours and still not be done. Plug away, my friend. Tell us about the book. Tell us about everything you got going on. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It was so fun to finally get to meet you and

talk to you. And I do feel like I've been talking to an old friend for an hour, which is just pretty much exactly what I expected. But this book is everything that I wish someone had told me when I started earning my own money and building my life. And the strategies that I put in it are the strategies that I used. I are the strategies that I used. I believe they will work for you. I will show you every step of the way, the very specific strategies that you can use to achieve financial freedom.

If you like the conversation that we had today and you wanna hear more systems level financial conversations, we do that a lot on the Money with Katie show. It comes out every Wednesday and every other week in my newsletter, I publish essays that skew toward the kind of class and cultural critique. So less of the like tactical stuff that you're going to get so much of in the book, but more of how do we make sense of this world that we live in and the role that money plays in it and plays in our lives.

Thank you. Appreciate you. Thank you. Appreciate you. Thank you so much to Katie for joining us. Katie really does feel like a version of me and I feel like a version of her. And I just so enjoyed having her on the show. just so enjoyed having her on the show. If you love Financial Feminist, you will love her show Money with Katie. And if you love my book, Financial Feminist, you will love her brand new book called Rich Girl Nation. Rich Girl Nation is out wherever you get your books.

And her second podcast, Diabolical Lies, is something that I am definitely subscribing to right after this episode. Thank you as always for being here. Thank you for supporting Feminist Media. Thank you for sharing this episode with the people in your life who need it most. And we'll see you back here very soon.

Bye. Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First 100K podcast. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First 100K, our guests and episode show notes, visit financialfeministpodcast.com. If you're confused about your personal finances and you're wondering where to start, go to herfirst100k.com slash quiz for a free personalized money plan. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap. Produced by Kristin Fields and Tamesha Grant. Research by Sarah Shortino. Audio and video engineering by Alyssa Midcalf. Marketing and operations by Karina Patel and Amanda Lafue.

Special thanks to our team at Her First 100K. Kaylin Sprinkle, Masha Bakhmageva, Sasha Bonar, Ray Wong, Elizabeth McCumber, Darrell Ann Ingman, Shelby Duclos, Megan Walker, and Jess Hawks. Promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolf, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First 100k community for supporting our show.