Financial Feminist - How to Manage Money in Your 30s with the Dow Janes (Best Of)

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

Be the first to know when we launch Business Bootcamp Live! https://herfirst100k.com/biz-waitlist If you’re over 30 and not sure where to start with finances, this conversation is for you. In this special best of episode, Tori is joined by Britt and Laurie-Anne of the Dow Janes to talk about managing your money in your 30s and beyond. Tune in to hear why The Dow Janes have a different view of emergency funds and finances in partnerships, how managing money in your 30s is different than in your 20s, and why it’s never too late for women to start getting into their finances. The Dow Jane's Links: Website: https://www.dowjanes.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dow.janes/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DowJanesFinancialEducation Read transcripts, learn more about our guests and sponsors, and get more resources at: https://herfirst100k.com/financial-feminist-show-notes/managing-money-in-your-30s/ 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. Indeed Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com/FFPOD. 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. Zocdoc Visit Zocdoc.com/FFPOD to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. Saily Get an exclusive 15% discount on Saily eSIM data plans! Go to Saily.com/FFPOD download the Saily app and use code 'FFPOD' at checkout. Masterclass Get at least 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com/FFPOD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the ultimate guide to managing money in your 30s. We're diving in the archives today to give one of the most popular episodes we've ever done on Financial Feminist a second listen, because you need to hear it. I sat down with Britt Williams-Baker and Laurie Ann King, the incredible duo behind Dowd-Janes. There is good debt and bad debt. When debt is used properly, it can really help you build wealth. When debt is used improperly, then it works against you and it can really prevent you from building wealth. To talk about what it really means to create lasting financials,

financial change, better your money habits, and actually heal your relationship with money, and especially if you're doing it after years of financial anxiety and avoidance in your 20s. Know who you're dating from a financial perspective, because if you're considering having a future with this person, you're also considering having a future with their finances. We talk about financial trauma, budgeting that actually works, energy healing. Yes, really. Stay with me. And how to protect yourself financially in relationships. There's a lot of feelings that are holding people back from actually taking action. And so it's really stepping out of any feelings of shame

or making it about you to just being the situation on the table, kind of seeing it as something separate from yourself. This episode is packed with practical tips and is a perfect guide for wherever you're at in your financial journey, but especially if you're in your 30s or if you feel behind when it comes to money. And for more advice about how to get better with money,

you can subscribe to our YouTube channel. And if you're watching on YouTube, we have so many different guides about how to save your first 100K, about how to pay off debt, about how to show up and heal your relationship with money. We appreciate you subscribing and supporting our work. Let's get into it. But first, a word from our sponsors.

This episode of Financial Feminist is sponsored in part by Squarespace, Rocket Money, NetSuite, and Masterclass. Whether it's for a brand, portfolio, or store, Squarespace makes it easy. Head over to Squarespace.com slash ff pod and use code FFPod for 10% off your first purchase. Stop paying for subscriptions you forgot about. Rocket Money finds and cancels them. for you. Go to rocketmoney.com slash ffpod to take control of your finances. Running a growing business, NetSuite helps you manage it all in one place. Download the free CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com slash ff pod. Learn from the best to become your best with

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No, I'm in Northern California, just north of San Francisco. Last time I talked to you, you were in Idaho, right? I think we were probably both. Yeah, I think we were both in, because we had a whole discussion about how my mom is also from Idaho, from, yes, she would spend, like, summers and Sun Valley. Yeah, exactly. And Lorian's just outside Portland. Okay, cool. Okay. So you guys are pretty close. So we're just, we're just west coast in it today. It was like Seattle Portland. Yeah. Yeah. We just got the whole, the whole line down the coast. I love it.

We do this with every personal finance expert we have on the podcast. And so I would love to kick off by asking, can you both share your first money memories the first time you remember thinking about money? Yeah. Mine like popped into my head right away. I can remember being, I don't know, probably six. My aunt had given me a wallet for Christmas. It was my first wallet and had $20 in it, which was an enormous amount of money, so much money. And she was taking all of the kids to McDonald's to, like, get happy meals and, you know, whatever. And we were using, like, the money from our wallets to do it. And I don't know what happened, but I ended up losing my wallet on that trip. And it was like, I felt so much shame.

and I felt that loss of losing it. And, you know, it stuck with me. It's definitely a formative memory of money for me. Mine's from around the same age. I was also six. And I remember going to sleep in, I think, like, the bottom bed of the bunk bed. And my dad came in to tuck me good night. And I had this deep fear that we were running out of money.

That for some reason there was not enough money to pay the bill. And so what I said to my dad at six was, you can have all the money in my piggy bank if it would help. And it was like, thinking about it now, it just feels like so sad. And just to track that the scarcity and the fear that, you know, I was six. There wasn't a lot of reason for that that was likely ingrained and comes from, you know, generations back. but just that the fear that I carried with me and it just reminds me of the work we do with women of the healing piece that you have to start with healing because money is so deep and so emotional for so many people. The first chapter of my book is like let's just talk about the emotions of money

because you can't make a budget, you can't start paying off debt, can't do any of that until you start digging into why. So Britt, was that, was that actual? Like, was your family actually struggling or were you, was that more of a scarcity you were just afraid? Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, it was just a scarcity. It wasn't, I don't know what I overheard that I made that story up, but yeah. Did you find that that memory colored your experience with money as you grew up? I think so. I think, you know, Laureanne and I talk openly about our own healing, money healing story,

and mine was absolutely one of scarcity, one of learning that there is enough, it's going to be okay, like learning to feel comfortable. Yeah. Yeah, we found in our work that the first couple money memories that you used, you remember have a, have a very big impact on how you end up viewing money in the long term. Because, yeah, it's cemented by age seven, as you guys probably know. And like, it starts really early. I would love to hear from each of you how you got into the financial education world.

Britt, we can start with you. You casually went to Harvard Business School and have a background on personal finance. So talk to us. Tell us a bit about your journey. She just went on a whim. I know, just casual. Just casually went. It's like, what?

like it's hard. They accepted me. Yeah. So my money, my financial education started at a pretty young age. My parents, we had an allowance. We had what my dad called the daddy bank, where we earned compound interest if we calculated it ourselves. And so money was, it was taught to us at a pretty young age.

My grandfather taught me to invest in the stock market. So I did that when I was in college. And then when I moved back to the Bay Area after Harvard Business School, friends just kept asking me how to invest. They thought there was something that I learned at business school. They're like, teach me to invest. I think I should be doing this. You know, I'm in my 30s working. I should be investing. And so I started this club in my living room, called it Dow James, after the name of my mom's investment club. She was in when I was a little girl. And it just kind of took off. People heard about Dow Janes. They'd see me out and say, when's the next

Dow Jane's meeting? Everyone wanted to be in it. And it was this kind of like book club for money, where we talked openly about, you know, how much did you spend on groceries last month? What should I be spending? What do we need to have saved for retirement? Just conversations that otherwise weren't happening. And Lorian, what was your experience? Well, I kind of enter the story around that moment, but I'm going to back up a little bit further before Britt and I come together. Well, because you're an energy healer, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I started off in a little bit of a more woo-woo way with money where, gosh, my personal story, you know, I didn't grow up with a lot of money or family of five living on a nurse's salary. So we had enough, but we had like just enough.

And both my parents got really sick when I was in the eighth grade. My mom had a brain hemorrhage. My dad had a heart attack in the same year. And they were both like really scary experiences and impacted their ability to work. And so, you know, we had kind of just been getting by and then we were not getting by. And I grew up in Canada and this happened in Canada and I'm really grateful for the system there because I think if we had been living in the U.S. and it happened here, like I'm not sure my family would have been able to recover financially from it. And so that was that was a pretty formative experience for me and I was like, okay, I don't want to be unsafe when I grow up. And so I did all the right things,

like worked hard, got the good job, was making decent money. But I did not have any financial education growing up. And I didn't know how to manage the money I was making. And so, you know, a few years after working, like selling my sole corporate job, probably kind of similar to your experience story, was like, okay, what do I actually have to show for this? Well, I have debt. And it didn't feel very good. So I started to take my finances really seriously when I got engaged. My husband is a registered investment advisor, and he comes from a money family. Like, his dad was a financial planner. His grandfather was a financial planner, both his brothers work in finance. It's like money is just talked about all the time, which at first was

super uncomfortable for me. But then I started like learning and getting to realizing, oh, it's okay. It's not this taboo thing. Like, you can actually talk and learn about this. And so when we combined our finances and I had debt. My husband's like, what is this? What are you doing with this credit card debt? This is not okay. This does not work. This is like not. And I like didn't even know what the big deal was. You know, it was like normal to me. So it created a lot of stress in my marriage and it was something we had to really actively work on to learn how we manage finances together. And so we went through a pretty painful experience of learning how to budget. it. And it totally changed our life, but it was very hard to do. And around this time is when Brit

had been running the Dow James meetings in person in California. And she had found that all these women were coming who were super excited to learn how to invest. And a lot of them didn't actually have any money saved to start investing with. And so she realized, oh, I got to back up a little bit and teach some personal finance basics. And that's when she asked me to come teach like a workshop on budgeting. And I taught one around values-based budgeting and thinking about how you're spending your money in alignment with your values and as an amplifier of your voice out in the world. And because the way I learned budgeting had been so painful and restrictive. And it was like, this is this is not the way people should learn how to do this skill. This is

actually an amazing skill to have. Like, it is life-changing to know how to be in intentional and in control of your money. But most of the way it's taught is as this like super restrictive limiting experience. So that's when Britt and I kind of started doing this together. And I guess I skipped the energy healing part in there. Sorry. But tell me about that because I actually started working with an energy coach two years ago. I am not a woo-woo person. I was like very skeptical, but I was in a really hard place in my life. And I had a good friend of mine just be like, work with an energy coach. Like, what do you have to lose? And then I started working with and I was like, oh, interesting. Okay. This is very helpful. So tell me a bit about that

experience, especially like, how do you jump from that to money? And actually, they actually really moved in tandem together for me. So when I left my corporate career, I actually started off in relationship coaching. I was like, I don't know what I want to do, but I know I want to help people and I love love. And as I just shared, my marriage had been hard in the very beginning, a lot to do with money. And it's like, I learned a lot in figuring out how to navigate that conflict in this process. And so I started off relationship coaching. And the more I did that, the more other things bubbled up, including talking to women around sexuality and talking to women about money. And I actually saw there was this link to those two elements. And from an energetic perspective,

our first two chakras, energy centers in our body, our root chakra is all about our right to exist and our resources, which in the modern world, the number one resource is money. And then our next chakra, our sacral chakra, is where our sexuality lives. And so these are like two foundational elements to ourself. And I just started finding as I was working with women actually around their sexuality, their money situation would start to shift. Or as I worked around their money, their relationship situation would start to shift. So there was just always this, this connection in the way that I was doing the work. And my first really successful online business,

I was teaching a course called orgasmic manifesting. And it was all about the energetics of sexuality and attracting what you want into your life. And it focused a lot actually on attracting money. And it was amazing. I mean, it is amazing. It's like the course is still available. I don't really work on it at all.

But it's a really amazing connection. And then I found I was helping women create more income. Like they were drawing more money into their life, but they were in the same situation that I had been in in my corporate career where they didn't have the skills to actually manage the money. And it wasn't improving their quality of life at all. That's one of the things I'm so worried about specifically with like the dawn of like the social media creator popular. Like so many, I'm the person on TikTok that people are sliding into my DMs being like, a huge brand offering me $500, I have 3 million followers. Should I take it? And I'm like, no. No, you shouldn't take it. And like, my biggest fear is that they're going to get a bunch of money. These 19 year olds, 20 year olds, even older than that, but they just don't know how to manage it. And I'm like, I am so worried that that's going to end up happening. And we already have seen it, right? We have a bunch of, especially women, like women, creators, women influencers who are making really good money. And I don't know if they have the tools to be able to manage it.

well. And it terrifies me. Yeah. I mean, your your fears are likely very founded. Most people don't. Most people are not taught how to do a skill that we are asked to do multiple times every single day, which is make decisions with money. And then we feel guilty that we don't know how. But like, I don't feel guilty that I don't know how to figure skate, but I weirdly feel guilty, right? If you don't, if you don't know how to money, you feel weirdly guilty. Like, you should have learn this at some point. Yeah. Lorient, can we talk about budgeting really quick? Because what you said is in total in alignment with what I believe, which is like budgeting is like a permission slip to be able to spend money on things that you love as opposed to you feeling guilty or depriving

yourself. So talk to me a bit about your mental switch from like deprivation, scarcity and maybe Brett you can chime in as well to like abundance in addition to like, yeah, value based spending. I can actually spend money on basically whatever I want as long as it's like I have some guardrails. So can you talk to me about that? Yeah, for sure. For sure. So when I first learned budgeting, it was coming from, well, I've overspent. So I have debt.

Now I need to learn how to spend within my means and live within my means. And so that's the way I approached it initially. And that's the way it's kind of taught. If you look up a YouTube video on how to budget, they're going to say like, all right, write down your category, set how much you can spend in each category. And then fingers crossed at the end of the month, you're under it, which almost no one ever is, because there's actually like six additional skills you need to successfully budget, which involve reviewing your budget along the way.

And that's the way it started. And then as I was doing it, I realized this is actually about designing my life. Like the things that I want to have in my life, so many of them I can create through money, or I can create faster through money, or I could get help to, you know, have it happen if it's not something that's directly related to money, but it's something that having money would either help me have the time to put towards it or actually buy it and have it in my life. And when I realized that, that doing my budget was actually designing the life I wanted to live, it became very easy because I just know I want to have a great life. As far as I can tell, we get one shot at this

thing. And I'm like, well, why would I aim for anything lower than what I truly want? And part of what I want is to feel safe, if you remember when I said, you know, I didn't feel that way growing up. And so that involves taking care of future me. And my perspective has always been, if I'm here right now making decisions about money, I know that I'm okay in this moment. And I don't know what the future holds. It might be harder in the future. So I want to do what I can right now to protect future me and make make it likely that it's going to stay easy for her because I have put money aside that she can draw on if things get difficult. And then once I've done that, the rest is mine to spend.

And I'm going to spend it in ways that enhance my life and enhance the life of people that I love because that brings me joy. Yeah. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. One of the biggest things I hear from people who want to be business owner, is they don't know where to start. They're like, I don't know what to do. I'm so overwhelmed. I want to start this business, but I need a logo and I need brand colors. And they make a million excuses to prevent them from getting started because they're too afraid of failure. They're too

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app's premium features. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with RocketMoney. Go to RocketMoney.com slash FFPod today. That's RocketMoney.com slash FFPod. RocketMoney.com slash FFPod. So you said, which is so important, this idea of safety. Britt, I think all of our work is very similar, right? We work with women. I think you both work with women who are slightly older than our typical demographic, but I think one of the things that we talk about so much on this podcast is that when women have money, it's not just the ability to buy nice things, right? It's actual safety. It's the ability to make choices, to leave bad situations, to, you know, to take a job that might be. pay less money, but is better for their mental health, to leave an abusive relationship.

Can you speak to how you've seen that play out with women that you coach? Yeah, we have a phrase that we say at Dow Jains, which is women with money have more choices and louder voices. And so it's both the- Please tell me you've trademarked that. Tratemark the hell out of that. That's lovely. Yeah, we talk about more choices, but I love, oh, louder voices.

That's so great. I love it. Yeah. And it's, it really, I mean, I wish it weren't the case in our modern day that money does carry so much power, but it just does. And so when you have money, you can vote with your dollar. You can spend it on things that you care about or choose to not spend it on things that you don't support. And so it really becomes your voting power, your way of speaking up. And then as well, with choice, just giving you more options, yeah, to leave the job, to leave the relationship, to go do that thing that you're passionate about. And we've seen this. My favorite story from our program is this woman named Sylvia, who she's living in New York, barely getting by, paycheck to paycheck, like just kind of struggling when it comes to money. And she's been a dancer, loves dance, and just doesn't have time for a dance in her life anymore,

or can't even afford the classes to go to dance class. And in our work, she got clear on why she was budgeting, what her reason for doing it. it was. And she set up this, her single goal was to go on a staycation. And so she saved up enough money to be able to actually enjoy New York for a weekend. I think it might have even been a whole week. Yeah. And a whole weekend. So she saved up money to go to the dance classes, to I think even go to a show, to have cocktails out on the town, like had designed this entire week for herself. And the best part about her sharing of this story is that she's like, every drink I had every class I went to was guilt-free. I felt so proud of myself for having saved enough

to be able to do this, that it was just part of the budget. And I could enjoy it on a level so much deeper than when you're just doing it, like, crossing your fingers, it's going to work out at the end of the month. Yeah, or taking the vacation and realizing, like, you're putting it all on a credit card. Yeah, right. She did this while she paid off debt. Like, she got out of credit card during this same year. And she's like, I didn't think I could afford to do this even before I was paying off the debt. And now I'm doing both because she got so much clearer on how she wanted to spend her money.

Right. And that Pena Colada tastes a little bitter when you realize that you're putting it on a credit card, right? It's like there's no full way to like enjoy your vacation or enjoy, yeah, you're, you're weak if you're realizing that all of it is going to come back to bite you at some point. Yeah, and I love that she planned ahead. And I think we talked with Rumii on a previous episode about he calls it like, what is your rich life, right? Like, what is what is the version of your life that you want to live? Not that somebody else is telling you to live, not the society wants you to live, but like what makes sense for you. And I love that she was very specific. And it was what she, you know, it wasn't this, you know, she didn't take a month off. She didn't like even have to travel anywhere. It was just like, no, I want to do. And it was what she, you know, it was just like, no, I want to do. this thing. And, you know, Lurian, you were talking about budgeting, right? This idea that budgeting is the permission slip, right? You do it guilt-free because you've planned ahead

rather than depriving yourself of the things you really want or the things you really love. Yeah. Yeah. We have this other incredible woman in our program named Mary, who is in her 50s, has five kids, you know, grown kids, and she and her husband have had debt for their entire lives. They've just always had a line of debt that they've been carrying with them. And our husband has been managing the finances. And she joined our program, the million dollar year. She's in it for a year, goes through a lot of hard things, but stays focused, stays committed to it, and decides to take over running the family finances from her husband. So she takes it over and she starts building a budget for the household. And for the first time in their entire life, she paid off

over $20,000 of credit card debt. I think it was like 80. I mean, I might be wrong, but my memories, I'm pretty sure she paid off $80,000 of debt. And they were debt-free for the first time in their marriage. And she, just the confidence that came from her taking over and being able to do that for them. Yeah, it's phenomenal. Well, and so you mentioned Mary, right, in her 50s. We very much talked to like a millennial and then sometimes Gen Z audience. We have women who are, especially if you're listening, hello, in, you know, late 30s, 40s,

50, 60s, but I think for you guys, you do work with women that are slightly older than the demographic I tend to hit. What do you think are some of the differences in the way of thinking about money for those women versus, you know, maybe somebody in their 20s or early 30s? Yeah, it's, well, I'm going to say one thing before I answer your question, if that's okay. When Britt and I first started, we really set out to help people in their 30s. We thought we were going to be helping a lot of people like the. original Dow James, people who came to our in-person meetings, who were really Brits friends. And as we started marketing our program, we were really surprised at how broad the range

of women who were attracted and wanting the help were. We were like not expecting to be helping women in their 40s, 50s, 60s. And I mean, we also have some millennial clients as well, but really we were really most surprised by the older demographic and realized, okay, these are people who are being completely ignored in the current financial industry. And, you know, if you don't already have money to invest, you go to a financial advisor, they want nothing to do with you because they don't make any money off of you. And so this demographic of women who are getting closer to the end of their working life and are not yet prepared for retirement is a population that really needs help and really wants help and has had no idea who can help them. Because

everyone in the industry is somehow motivated to make money off of them in not such a transparent way. It's not like they charge you for a conversation. They charge you inside of the, you know, investments that you make or they charge you inside of the life insurance plan that they sell you that you may or may not actually need. And so we've created something where we charge people for our help, but it's really upfront and it's really transparent. You're paying for that and you're getting, you know, you're getting what you're paying for. And so I would say the main mindset differences that we've seen is the level of fear that's associated with their situation. You know, the older you are, the less time you have to course correct the situation. And so it starts to feel

scarier and scarier and more and more painful. And sometimes that creates a bigger cycle of avoidance. It's like, okay, it feels bad. So I don't want to look at it or deal with it, but the more I don't look at it or deal with it, the worse it gets and the scarier it feels. Would you say any other differences, Britt? Fear is exactly what I was going to say. The other piece is urgency. Just as you're, there's people who get into their 40s and 50s and think, you know, I should have figured this out. All of a sudden, this isn't a luxury to know how to manage your money. It's essential because you're either in debt or on your own post-divorce or looming retirement. And so it becomes this thing that you really just have to take care of. And so I've noticed the willingness to take action and do the

hard thing and really stick with it when it feels overwhelming. I think there's also this realization that it's not going to work out on. on its own. I think when you're younger, you can bury your head in the sand a little bit and like, oh, that's a problem for later. That's a problem for future me. Okay, well, we're talking to the future me's. And they're realizing no one else is coming to do this for them. There's no, like, white knight that's going to scoop, scoop them up and pay off their debt in a magical staples. That was easy button for money. I say that multiple times in my book. Like, I wish there was just a button that you could press. That was just like, debt-free button, boom. Now, those are

Yeah. So there's there's like a realization that they need to face the reality because no one else is going to do it. Yeah. But also like kudos, there's so much courage. We see so much courage of the women in our program that they are willing to do it. And when they get into a group that's supportive that where they can see other people in their situation who have done it, who have made that switch and course corrected their finances, it starts to feel so much more accessible. And they do it. Like we, we get to witness people have miraculous shifts in their finances. And they do it themselves and they own that and they're empowered in the process. Yeah. Do you find that it's a lot of women in heteronormative relationships who their male partner was handling the money and either that partner passed away, they divorced, something shifted? Is that the vast majority of people that you work with? It's not the majority, but it is about, 25%. Yeah, which is pretty significant. Yeah. Well, in the realization too that, yeah, I mean,

even in 2022, I think even with if you're in your early 20s and you're in a relationship with a man, like that I think is unfortunately still like women are handling budgeting maybe and like saving and coupon clipping, but men are handling the wealth building. They're handling the investing. They're handling, you know, the big truly like money change. changing decisions. And yeah, it's what we're all trying to change or at least become more equitable. But it's so interesting that like I can see the mistakes, right, of potentially, I shouldn't even call them mistakes because it's conditioned, right? It's taught of women who are older. And yet we still have women now in their 20s who are getting into relationships. And it's

still, it's still inequitable in terms of the management of money. Yeah, you really have to advocate for yourself. It really do. And I experienced it in my own marriage. And my husband, he's pretty woke. You know, he works, he works at our company. He coaches some of our members. He truly wants women to be financially empowered. And even in our relationship, there have been moments or ways where he has either had an approach to like an investing decision or actually made an investing decision and not included me. And it's like, whoa, hey, what's going on? Hold the phone. Let's talk about this. Oh, interesting. You know, and I'm thinking of a time early in our relationship. I think we were either engaged or very newly married, but we had totally combined our finances.

And he made a really significant investment in a friend's investment fund. And he invested all money that he brought to the relationship. So, like, you know, I, I didn't actually have any claim to that money or anything. It was totally his money, but he invested it without talking to me about it. And I thought it was really interesting that I didn't even occur like someone whose opinion might be helpful in making that decision. Right. It was like, oh, maybe even just like, let me, you know, ask for what I think about it. And you should be counseled. Yeah. Yeah, I was like, you know, your money, your decision for sure, but I would really love to like get to talk about it with you. And so that was, I'm so grateful that that actually did happen early on in our relationship and that I felt confident enough to get pissed about it so we could talk about it and have those conversations and change the way we do it.

But it's, it just really, truly is ingrained in our culture that men make the investment decisions and like women. are frivolous spenders and need to be controlled when it comes to money yeah but but like oh she's going to the mall again i'm like it's not a good joke anymore guys like it's not a good joke well sorry i'm like a little embarrassed to say i was watching some bachelor in paradise last night oh that's fine and i watched fuck boy island have you guys seen fuck boy island no it definitely sounds like i think i'm gonna watch i do not i hate reality dating shows i like refuse to watch them. I hate them. And then my boyfriend was like, you have to watch the show. And he's like, I'm addicted to it. And I started watching it. It's hosted by Nikki Glazer,

which I think is the best, the best. Like, it's the reason I was in. But yeah, you basically, you date good guys or nice guys versus fuckboys. And if you choose a fuck boy at the end, the fuck boy gets to pick whether he takes the 100K or he splits it evenly 50. 50. Oh, I'm watching. I'm sold. I'm solid. But you know who the fuck boys are. So you have all of these women choosing fuck boys. Like you have all of them at the end choosing fuck boys. And I'm like, yeah, because every time

the contestants know what the boys are. They know about like four episodes before they're supposed to choose who the fuck boys are and who the nice guys are. And yet they still choose the fuck boys. Because all the fuck boys obviously know how to play this game, right? And they're like, you know what you've really changed me? Like, I really feel a connection with you. And sometimes

the fuck boys do split the money to their credit. And sometimes they do not. And so, oh my God, it's such a fun show. It's ridiculous. It's they're all, you know, they're all like drinking and they're making out with each other. There's three women and then like 25 men. It's insane. Anyway, Bachelor of Paradise. Oh, I can't wait to watch that. Okay, on Bachelor of Paradise last night. HBO, fuck boy, I don't sponsor, just fantastic. There was a scene where one of the women, they were like all sharing their scars and one of the women didn't have a pinky finger and she was like talking about how she lost her

pinky and first of all she was owning it it was so badass I was like loved this scene and and then she says when I go get my nails done I get 10% off and everybody laughs because she's like missing a finger and she's talking with but the guy that she was most interested in dating goes she's a saver I just loved it he noticed that mindset sweet I hate the bachelor and that's so sweet. He's like a single dad, one of the, you know, forlorn stories where the wife passed away and he's now there to like find love again. That's so hysterical about Bachelor in Paradise. That's so ridiculous. She's a saver. Let's talk about, speaking of like dating, can we talk specifically about the importance of finances both in marriage and partnership and in divorce? Because many women get married and they don't go through the pre-up

process and they don't protect themselves when it comes to their independent finances. So what are some ways that women can protect themselves financially before getting married or before partnering with somebody? Yeah. Yeah. We, so we mostly work with people on the other side. We are not at all giving recommendations as people are going into marriage. It's not our expertise place. So I don't know a ton on this topic, but I've listened to a little bit about prenuptials and the importance of basically there's this there's this idea when people get married they think they're you know they have all the fantasy of how it's going to work out and they don't it's just not fun to think about the potential of it not going well and so it's a place where people

don't actually want to dig in but they don't realize is that they're essentially signing a prenup with whatever state they're getting married in and a lot of people don't look into what the rules are and so it's either like you take this boilerplate prenuptial that the state of California or the state of Illinois or the state of Texas is giving you or you write your own and the it's an act doing a prenuptial I would put it this way instead of it being like expecting the worst case it's a first act for the woman to take take some like take a place what's what am I trying to say like take a stand of confidence and ownership of of of their future of, hey, I'm going to have a say in our financial decisions starting right now.

And here's, here are my expectations. And I mean, people can get creative and say, like, if you cheat on me, you give me all your money. There's like things you can write in that really, you know, set yourself up for the future you want to have. Yeah. No, and I, I so appreciate you bringing that up. I think it was Aaron Lowry, who's broke millennial who says, like, if you don't make a pre-up, the state makes one for you. Right. Like, like, if you don't, if you don't, if you don't, decide what you want, the state laws have already decided for you. So I think there is all of this weird shame and like, yeah, there's like, I don't want this relationship to fail. And me signing a pre-up means that I think it's destined to fail. And I'm like, I wouldn't enter a

business decision with somebody without a contract. And that isn't because I think that, you know, eventually we're going to hate each other and need to like separate assets or whatever. But like I wouldn't enter any sort of business deal without a contract and yes marriage you hope is full of love but it's also a legally binding agreement and so if I'm going to enter this legally binding agreement with somebody especially the person who I love and respect I want to make sure that both of us are taking care of and that both of us have a very distinct plan of what's going to happen as opposed to letting the state government or the state laws decide what that looks like for us. Yeah. And I mean, with a 50% chance of divorce, it's just the smartest thing to do. Just protect yourself. Right. And it's even too, I think, you know, the opening conversations about money in general, right? And one thing I am, you know, I very much talk about like personal finances personal, but one thing I refuse to, like, I refuse to counsel women on. Like, a lot of people are like, I'm going to fully combine my finances. And I 100% disagree with that. Like, you need some of your own separate money. Like, even if it's just a small emergency fund and you have joint accounts, I think the ideal for me is that you have separate accounts and then a joint account for your shared expenses. But I've seen so many women get done really dirty because they don't have any sort of money to their name. And so you need some sort of money on the side.

Yeah, it's, it's tough. It's a tricky thing to navigate. It really is. And I think before, before even getting to the level of marriage, if you're just dating someone and you're starting to like think about shared finances and combined finances, I think the best thing you can do to protect yourself in the beginning is try and get transparency, understand what the other person's financial situation is, like know who you're dating from a financial perspective. And that doesn't mean you have to make any

like decisions about the relationship based on that person's financial reality, but you should know what it is because if you're considering having a future with this person, you're also considering having a future with their finances. And then when it comes to actually combining finances, Britt and I, we put together a workshop in our program to help people navigate this because it is so tricky. And there's like a lot of different aspects to finances. There's how much you earn. There's how much of what you earn goes towards shared expenses, goes towards individual expenses. There's who's actually responsible for keeping a budget or managing the money. Who's responsible for making spending decisions? Who's responsible for paying

bills, like the actual work that is involved on managing your finances. And then there's also decision rights and who gets to make those choices and are they consensus decisions? Are they unilateral decisions? Is there a certain dollar amount that if you're going to spend more than this, now you need to have a conversation, like how you do it. There's a lot of nuance to it. And in our work with women, we really, there are times where we will be prescriptive and say, this is how we suggest doing it. And then there's other times. times, I would say actually majority of the times where we really try to empower and inform people to make their own decisions. Me as well. Yeah. Here's here's the lay of the land. Here's what

I personally do. Here's what Britt personally does. And you choose for yourself. And here are some of the pros and cons to, you know, of the different options. And when it comes to managing money and partnership, Brit and I do it totally differently. Like my husband and I, we have 100% combined finances. Was that like really well thought out? No. I mean, what happened was I moved from Canada to the U.S. and I didn't have any bank accounts or anything in the U.S. And I met with, I can still like remember the moment where I'm in the kitchen with my husband and his father-in-law, who's a financial advisor, who's looked at, you know, a lot of people's money situations for a long time. He's in a very good, stable marriage. And he says, combine your finances. Every

every marriage I've ever looked at where they didn't have combined finances, it wasn't a good marriage. That was his perspective on it. And so my husband just added me to all of his accounts. And I didn't bring a lot of money to the table. So, you know, for the person who that was risky for, it was riskier for him than it was for me. But it also wasn't a very good way to navigate like building credit and things like that in the U.S., which I didn't know I needed to do. And then Brits on the other end of the spectrum where her and her husband are mostly separate finances and they share expenses and you know it works really well for them and what I'm doing works really well for me but I also know like I'm more at risk based on the situation that I'm in.

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Terms and conditions apply. Hiring. Indeed is all you need. And I have so much empathy and compassion for anybody regardless. a situation. I want to be clear on that. For me, I've just, what I've seen is, like, there are so many people who are entering marriages and they believe, oh, if I have my separate money, that means I don't trust my partner. And that's not it at all. Like, that's not it at all. And that's the narrative, I think, that, yeah, has been pushed, I think

of, like, Dave Ramsey, like, all the time, right? And as he's, like, unique, fully combined finances. And if you're separating your money, it's because you don't trust and you don't have a good relationship. And I'm like, no, I don't think that's it at all. And the same way that I think a lot of people are successful fully combining their finances. You just, to your point, you take on more risk. You take on more risk. And unfortunately, the risk in a heteronormative relationship tends to fall on, on the woman. Like, that's, I think, yeah, what ends up? Totally. It's not lost on me that that that advice that I've heard, both from my father-in-law and from Dave Ramsey is, like, coming from older white men, right? Patriarchal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yep, yep. So can we

break down by either like decade or by your progression through your financial life, what sort of goals that women should have? If someone's like in listening right now and they feel behind because they haven't started investing yet they have debt, like what can you share with them? For that person, you're doing the right thing. Don't invest until you've cleared your debt. So we have a really specific roadmap for people to follow that you have to move up the roadmap. And when it comes to personal finance, it's really important. to do things in the right order because if you do things out of order, you're just shooting yourself in the foot. You're basically spending money to try to make money, but it's not going to work out.

So the way to do it is you start at the bottom of our pyramid with spending less than you make each month. So that means that you're taking home more than you're spending. And most people actually don't even know that number. They don't know if they are saving money each month. So that's the first thing is to get really clear on knowing, are you able to save money each month? If you're able to save money, then you can move up the roadmap to the next step, which is paying off high interest rate debt. And high interest rate debt is anything with an interest rate over 7%, so most credit cards, some personal loans, some car loans. That's the most important piece because that is actually costing you more than anything else with a 20% interest rate, 30% interest rate sometimes. You're

never, you're not going to make that up by investing. So that is actually the most expensive piece in your financial life and you have to pay that off first. Then you want to save up an emergency fund. And for that, it's usually three to six months of expenses. If you're, if you have like a great backup plan, you could save less. If you're on your own and don't really have a backup plan, you maybe want to save more. And the reason that we have, you save an emergency plan before you start investing is so you can invest for the long term, five plus years, long-term. And when people, this is the mistake that most people make is they start investing when they don't have an emergency fund. And so then when the market goes down and they

get in the car accident, they have to pull their money out of their investments. And that's when you lose money from investing. So we really emphasize having your emergency fund before you start investing. It's okay to wait. You know, you're not ready to invest. That's okay. That's a good thing. It means you're doing things in the right order. Save your emergency fund first. Then you're ready to invest and start thinking about long-term retirement, future planning. And you can invest at that point pretty safely and securely. A lot of people have this fear that investing is scary, but when you do it in this order, it doesn't have to be scary at all. Yeah. So this is the interesting part about personal finance is like, Britt, I am very much like you need an emergency fund first

before you start paying off debt. Like I have a whole, what I call the financial game plan is very similar to your guys as I think pyramid is like we have that in episode five. And And it's like, I am like, you do not start paying off debt. You do not start investing. Nothing happens until you have that emergency fund. And how much, what would you say? Three months of living expenses. Before paying off debt. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, if people are like, they have a ton of debt and it's really giving them a lot of anxiety, I'll be okay with like one month of living expenses. But like I truly, especially after pandemic, I'm just like, I think you need an emergency fund that's going to sustain you for a lot of anxiety. little bit of time before you start paying off debt just because, yeah, we're in the wild, wild west at this point in the last two years, like, absolutely unprecedented, right? And then I think a lot of people who didn't have any sort of savings, right? And like, I want to be clear, a thousand dollars one month, whatever you have is better than nothing in savings. But yeah, I'm very much of like, I don't want you going into more debt

trying to pay for an emergency. And then I find that my clients, like, they sleep better at night knowing that they have something in the bank should something happen. But yeah, this is personal finance. It's so interesting. Well, and I think we could debate this and it's interesting because we, there's places where we agree with you. Actually, it's like we left out the step of have at least $1,000 that you're saving on the side because you don't want to go further into debt.

And the way I've thought about it is this debt is costing you so much that if you have three months of emergencies, yeah, sitting in your savings, you could, Right. And once you free off that debt, in theory, you have more money to contribute to a savings account. Yeah, exactly. Or you could, you know, the ideal is we're keeping people from going back into debt. And so if they have this, the worst case is they are paying off their debt and they have to start using their credit cards again. And the reason that, actually, let me back up for a second. One of the reasons that we have it this way is because of the mindset piece of becoming debt free. So if you can, take what you have sitting in your three months emergency fund and actually pay off that last credit card and become debt free with, you know, a $7,000 payment. And then you're starting from zero. You can see yourself as someone who is debt free. And going forward, you're going to make

different decisions. And so really getting people into that place of believing, you know, I can be debt free. I can start saving. That's another reason we have it that way. Well, and it might feel potentially more of a win to become debt free than it does to save a thing. three-month emergency fund, right? Yeah, I feel like a success. Right. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, the best plan is the plan you actually follow, right?

It's like, if anyone is listening and they're like, oh, I, you know, I definitely want to pay off my debt first or no, I want my emergency fund savings first. If you have a strong feeling like that, trust it and do it in that order. We've just seen a lot of our clients come to us with $20,000 in credit card debt and $50,000 in savings. And we're like, hey, this doesn't make any sense. we actually want to use that money to pay off the debt because that is preventing you from investing successfully. And it can feel really scary to let go of that money in savings. There's like a lot of

feelings of safety attached to it. And I think for me and our audience, $50,000 in savings is a crazy amount of money. Like that's that's not a thing. Right. So like they're just excited to get a couple thousand in savings or maybe 10,000 in savings. So like it's also right at like a different potentially demographic or financial situation. It's a lot easier if somebody has a lot in savings to be like, you should be paying off the debt that you have and then you still have $20,000 left over for I think the majority of people in my audience, that's just not the reality. The reality is they're just trying to save up to that $1,000 or three months of living expenses. So yeah, this is the interesting part about personal finance. I'm also just, as everybody knows,

I'm just so anti-Dave Rancy. And I think like his focus on just like getting out of debt at all costs just like exhausts me. And of course, know that you guys are, you know, like value-based spending, sustainable, like debt payoff, all of those things. But I think everybody just has this like default state of like, this debt has to be gone no matter what. Yeah. And I'm like, I think you need a little bit in savings to build yourself up and give yourself that financial foundation and then work to pay off your debt. Yeah, we, we teach a lot about debt in our program actually because there is good debt and bad debt, right? Like not all debt is created equal. Well, talk to me about that.

Okay, so bad debt is debt that you have incurred and the benefit that you realize from the debt is already gone. Like, it's already used up and yet you are still paying for the debt. Yeah, so it's like consumer purchases. So you bought a new TV and now you've got the new TV, but it's gone down in value since you bought it and you are still paying for it now. That's bad debt. And if it has an interest rate, which we kind of demarc the interest rate into high and low interest when it's over 7%. because that's an average return you're going to get, right? So any interest that's up over that amount means it doesn't make any financial sense

for you to invest for your future if you are carrying that debt. It is more expensive. You'll be losing money by investing. And so good debt, it can be debt that you have used strategically, which is why in the business world, they refer to debt as leverage. What's leverage? It's like a lever. You can do a little bit and you can get an outsized result.

from it. So something like debt, we can use strategically to buy assets, like real estate, for example, and you can buy a lot more than you could if you didn't have access to the debt financing. And so we teach about good debt and bad debt because when debt is used properly, it can really help you build wealth. When debt is used improperly, and then it works against you and it can really prevent you from building wealth. And that mindset you were talking about of people like come and have this kind of panicked reaction about their debt and feel like I have to get out of it as fast as possible and I'm like my life is not okay until I'm out of this debt. We I we we differentiate between what we call sprint debt and marathon debt and some

debt is sprint debt like it is harming your ability to build wealth and protect future you by continuing to carry that debt. So if you're tolerating that debt, it would be better to take a little sprint and make it a focused effort and clear it. And then there's debt that we call marathon debt, which let's say student loan debt, for example, we can consider that marathon debt depending on your interest rates because that's an investment that you made to get an education that hopefully increased your earning potential for the rest of your life. And so if you are actually, you know, working the career that you use to get the, get, you use the debt for to finance that education, that's benefiting you over the long term of your life, and it's okay to pay that debt

down over the long term of your life. All of that being said, like I said earlier, the best plan is the plan you will actually follow. And people have different relationships to debt. For some people, it just feels like handcuffs. They're not interested in having debt. And other people, they can see debt as an instrument or as a tool that they can use. And this is another place where Britt and I have really different relationships to debt, like Britt bought her house in cash. I just refinanced before interest rates went up because I was like, I'm going to get that money at 2%. I'm going to invest it at 7%. Hot damn, I just made 5%. You know, and like it doesn't phase me at all. I'm very comfortable with it when it's used strategically. And so that's just for people

to decide and explore. But that immediate reaction that debt is bad, you know, certain types of debt are bad for your financial health and certain types of debt can be used positively for your financial health. Totally. So we were talking about the mindset of money and the emotions and the psychology. You guys call it facts versus feelings. Can you explain what you mean? Yeah. So one of the things, one of the things we say is that you can't store it through money financially until you've seen it emotionally. And there's a lot of feelings that are holding people back from actually taking action. So this is a big one that comes up with debt, with the identity around having debt. So a feeling is, you know, I am, I am unworthy because I have credit card debt or I'm a bad

person or I'm dumb because I have credit card debt. And so really dropping into this shame space of really making it about you and who you are. So that's a money feeling. A money fact is I have $20,000 of credit card debt. I also wasn't given a financial education in high school. I also never learned how to use a credit card when I was given one on my college campus. Like those are It doesn't mean anything about you. And now you can take action to changing that situation if you want. And so it's really stepping out of the any feelings of shame or making it about you to just being the situation on the table, kind of seeing it as something separate from yourself. There's this debt that I have. And now I'm going to clear it. Yeah. There's so many similarities

to how we teach money. Because for us over here, like, again, when we were writing the book, when I was writing the book, it was all about like, what are the narratives that you're believing about money? So almost every chapter we spend like debunking the narrative. So yeah, if I have debt, I'm a bad person. Oh, people who have money are bad people. Money can't buy you happiness. Like all of the investing is complicated. Investing's intimidating. Investing's risky. Like all of the narratives you were told about money versus what is the actual, the, you know, the reality of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And And the money feelings also come up in some of the specifics of dealing with your money. So we might have a money feeling like, I'm drowning in debt.

And you'll know that you're using a feeling if it's like, if you're not actually saying real numbers and you're talking about a physical sensation, like this debt is weighing me down or holding me back or I'm drowning in it, okay, we're using language that creates strong emotions. Just think about those words, drowning, being held down. Like, those are real survival, scary situations versus I have $6,000 of debt, or my monthly minimum is $600, and I only have $400. Those are facts. Those are things we can work with.

It's really hard to work with, like, feelings that are related to death or being, like, restricted, imprisoned, you know, so just notice that language and see, okay, how can I translate this into an actual, just fact-based statement that isn't as scary to start working with. Well, and your energy coach flag must pop up, too, where you're like having very physical sensations, right? Like, weighing me down, drowning, like holding me back, right? These are all very like physical manifestations in your body of what it feels like to be in debt. And that, as we all know, has severe impacts on your physical health, your mental health, the way you carry yourself in the world, like literally physically, if you feel these, like, yeah, physical manifestations

of money. Yeah, the language we use matters, right? Like, words have an emotional and an energetic weight to them. And a lot of the words that we use around money in the negative, especially often have to do with the physical body, but are just, like, very intense. Even if you think about someone saying, oh, it cost me an arm and a leg. Imagine that losing an arm and a leg to get whatever it was you bought. It's like really, really warped ways of talking about dollars and cents. Yeah. Yep. You're so right.

It is official, everybody. I am going on the cooking intensive. I know we've talked about it before. I've been dallying with the idea, but it is official. I've literally booked it. I'm feeling out the forms, Now, I am so excited. But boy, do my knife skills need work. So Masterclass is where I'm going to be turning to today. With Masterclass, you can learn from the best to become your best. With plans starting at just $10 a month built annually, you get unlimited access to over 200 classes taught by the world's best business leaders, writers, chefs, and more. You get thousands of bite-sized lessons across 13 categories that can fit into even the busiest schedules. So I'm going to Masterclass to learn knife skills from Gordon Ramsey. Not Dave Ramsey, Gordon Ramsey. It was a better teacher for teaching

me how to use a knife properly than the chef himself, the king of chefs. Right now, our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com slash ff pod. That's 15% off at masterclass.com slash ff pod. It is an interesting time to run a business between talks of tariffs and trade policies and supply chains and just the talk of the recession coming. It's just a lot. And if your business can't adapt in real time, it's not going to be fun. It's not going to be fun to keep running that business. So you need total visibility. And that's where NetSuite by Oracle comes in. They are trusted by over 42,000 businesses. And it's the number one cloud ERP for so many reasons. It's one of the things I'm going to

look into using as I continue to grow our business because you have one source of truth with NetSuite by Oracle. It gives you the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions. It helps you know what's stuck, what it's costing you, and how to pivot your business fast. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, download the free e-book Navigating Global Trade, three insights for leaders at netsuite.com slash ff pod. That's net suite.com slash ff pod. So one of my last questions for you all, what do you hope Dow Jane's grows into in the coming years. What is the goal for you both? I'm so excited to listen to Brett's answer for this question. She's like, let me take notes about the future of our company.

So Dow Jane's is a three-year-old business, and yet we have grown really quickly in those three years and have really seen what a need there is for education, for community, for affordable coaching. when it comes to money. And we have built our business. We've been really lean. You know, it's basically been Lurian at the helm for, Lerian and me. It's been me and Lurian at the helm,

doing most of it for three years. And, you know, we have independent contractors here and there. We have a lot of agencies helping us. And the next phase of Dow Jains is really is building out our company. So whether that's a new app that we're developing, whether it is, you know, expanding our product line to really build financial freedom and create more choice for women, potentially an ethical investing line of getting, helping people create values aligned investments. There's a lot of different directions we could go. We've been

really focused on the million dollar year and it is incredible for getting results. And so that will continue to remain our main foundational program for getting people, you know, from either debt or minimal savings to being ready to invest. And then basically from there, what happens after the million dollar year is what we'll be building out next. Yeah, we're also pretty excited to be a business that's doing business differently. So treating our employees really well, doing profit sharing, having, you know, compensation that feels lets people live a really good life.

You know, that's what we're, I think either, no, someone else has listening to. But yeah, kind of like an anti-capitalist. We're anti-capitalist capitalists, you know, wanting to. we're in business we love business we're making money we're helping other people make money and yet wanting to create a better world with that totally amazing more than anything to add yeah i think i think on the notion of doing business differently it's been really amazing to get to build this company with my best friend you know brit and i've been best friends for a decade and there's there's just so much that's been available to us through sisterhood and doing this together and our love

one another and wanting this to be not only a great company that's out there having a great impact in the world, but something that's really great for each of us in our lives and getting, you know, to add that into the filtering decision. And, you know, we thought early on in starting the company, do we want to go raise capital? Do we want to get VC money so we can like go, you know, lightning fast and we don't. You know, we want to go as fast as we can while still loving our lives. And in building the company, we've always said, we want to build something that we could sell if we want to, but we want to run it in a way that we're never going to want to sell it. And getting to do that and really practice that and live at a super high level

of integrity as people who are doing well by doing good in the world. It's just like it's a really fun challenge to take on. And, you know, Britt went to Harvard Business School. I studied business in our undergrad. And so we have the imprint of how business has always been done. And now getting to take it into our own hands and really intentionally create our culture and our systems and our decisions. And we're like learning what is the decision-making criteria if it's not profit at all costs? What are those ways that we decide? So it's just, it's a really fun challenge to take on in terms of a company level and goals. What do we want to be? We want to be big. We want to help as many people as we can. And we don't know what that number is yet. We know we haven't hit it. We

feel like we're just getting started and we're really excited to keep going. Amazing. Thank you so much for being here. Where can people find you? Dowjains.com is where you can start. And then all of our links are from there. We have a pretty great Instagram influence at Dow.Jans. And then our YouTube channel is really helpful, just free educational videos that we drop each week. So find us on YouTube. We're also on Pinterest, TikTok. Amazing. Thank you again to Britt and Lorraine for joining us. We love working with other women and women focused companies in the personal finance space. So make sure to check them out and support them. We've linked all of their socials and their offerings and their advice. In our show notes, you go to Financial Feministpodcast.com.

If you're loving these episodes, you know what to do, review, tag us on social, share with friends and family. This podcast is 100% free resource to you, and we appreciate your support. It allows us to be able to give you this advice and guidance. And we just appreciate you being here. Thanks for joining us at Financial Feminist yet again, and we'll catch you later. 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 Financial Feministpodcast.com. If you're confused about your personal finances and you're wondering where to start, go to her first 100k.com slash quiz for a free personalized money plan.

Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap. Produced by Kristen Fields and Tamisha Grant, research by Sarah Shortino, audio and video engineering by Alyssa Midcalf, marketing and operations by Karina Patel and Amanda LaFew. Special thanks to our team at her first 100K, Caitlin Sprenkel, Masha Bakkeyeva, Sasha Bonar, Ray Wong,

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