LadyGang - Grammys, Pistachio Foam & Financial Advice from Alison Kosik

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

On this week’s LadyGang, the ladies dive into the viral “If Keltie is going to die” meme, and Keltie gives her dramatic take on the internet’s latest obsession with her hypothetical demise. Plus, they spill all the behind-the-scenes tea from the Grammys red carpet, including fashion hits, misses, and her viral fall. Becca debuts her new Starbucks drink obsession, and the squad debates if it's the next viral order. And finally, financial expert Alison Kosik drops by to share some real-world money advice—because let’s be honest, we could all use a little help making smarter financial decisions. Tune in for the chaos, the laughs, and a little wisdom along the way! We have deals for you!! Boll & Branch: Change the way you sleep! Get 15% off plus FREE shipping on your first set of sheets at BollAndBranch.com/ladygang  Quince: Give yourself the luxury you deserve! Go to Quince.com/lady for FREE shipping on your order and 365-day returns! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

well what is this welcome to the lady gang that's amazing say that again the lady gang things are about to change around here each week we catch up with hollywood's hottest girl posse kelty knight becca tobin and jack vanik hello hello hello welcome to lady gang i'm becca tobin here with jack vanek and kelty hello hey guys what's up kids hey um kelty's in a beanie like a little i'm like a child winter child you do look like you're like five years old right now she does yeah i know i yeah i know what what's wrong no nothing is wrong i'm amazing but i I just feel very strongly that I'm not starting 2025 off with the – what am I trying to say? I'm not starting 2025 off in the way that like Kelty on touching the baby seals in the Galapagos really was wanting.

so I've consumed so much sugar um and I'm breaking out have zits for like the first time you know when you like know it's a sugar zit like my whole sugar face and then I have had this is so stupid but I have had wait hold on can I can we have a bad week yeah yeah sure get into it all right it's time for good week yes it is bad week oh no okay I've had a canker sore in my mouth for three weeks. It's massive. It's making me talk funny and it hurts every time I take a, take a word in my mouth. I already have hard time with words. It's like a tiny little slice coming out of that bottom little teeth. And that's not a veneer on the bottom. Okay. That's a, that's a shneggle tooth bone tooth that is just slicing it, slicing it. And it's making me so bitchy.

And I know it's because I ate so much sugar and the fires happen and it was stressful and all this stuff. And I just can't stop drinking that people are like, you need to stop drinking sugar and drinking lattes. Well, 2025 is making me have one little treaty treat every day. And it's a beautiful latte from the fake Starbucks on set. And I just, I I've been gargling. I've been shenanigling. Like it's just, I'm in a bad, bad place. That's my bad week. Canker sore. They do suck. It's like a silent pain. It is so painful. And it's like sitting right. Anyway, You're doing like a salt wash?

I could not have been, I can't be doing more things. Okay. I've got the gels, I've got the salt wash, I've got the Listerine. You probably just have to stop talking. 100%. How could she ever do that? So then I started telling people that I was on vocal rest, and then we go into these meetings or podcasts, I'm like, I can't vocal rest.

Well, you could just cut back on it, you know? I'm trying. Just cut back. All right, I won't talk at all. It's hard. It'll be a silent podcast. Yeah. What's your good week?

Do you have a good week? I have a little bit of like a good week this week. So the Grammys was this past weekend and I got to be there for E and two things happened. So I have like kind of a double good week, which is hilarious. It's a double good week turned into bad week. Okay. My first thing is that the morning toast did a deep dive on me at the Grammys and people were tagging me in it because you know those girls are so supportive and I love that for me yeah and for us but like they're ride or die and they did this whole deep dive and they're like we don't know what uh Kelty did to her friends at E because she keeps getting stuck on the top of buildings talking over people and like why is she not doing the interviews and all this stuff and I just felt

like I'm getting that text so much and that DM that people are like you keep saying you're on the live from E and then you're like up somewhere, like discussing someone's outfit. Like we want to see you interviewing. And I just want to clear the air here. I am very lucky to have my job at E and I'm very happy to have it. The E live red carpet is a completely different beast. So just because you're the host of E news doesn't mean you're going to be the main host on the E live red carpet. People are very confused by this and they're like, where's Justin? Where's Kelty? It's a completely different show. It's a completely different department. I'm really lucky that they're asking me to do anything. I was supposed to do the interviews for the Critics

Choice Awards. And because of the fires, that got canceled. So I was supposed to have an interview moment. Who did the interview on the carpet at the Grammys? It was Zuri Hall, who's been a part of NBC and Access Hollywood and was an e-correspondent for 10 years. She's incredible. And they had Wells Adams because he was on The Traitors. And so that's like, you know, that's kind of like a stunt casting like Roxy in Chicago, where like he's not an interviewer, but they have someone who's like in the, in the zeitgeist right now. I mean, I'm not going to lie. It was hard for me because literally as the people were coming up on the platform, I'm like, that's my person. That's my person. Do you know what I mean? Like some of them were Chris's

clients. Some of them like Kelsey Ballerini, like Alicia Keys. I'm like, we could, you know, we have a friendship. We miss your interviews though. Like, cause you always do something that's weird. Like there's always a viral moment happening. And I think that's what she was saying is that we are in this world right now where i do feel like everyone's very scared to get canceled so we've lost the like pizzazz and it's not just kidding it's not pizzazz but like you know it's like you want jennifer lawrence coming on the red carpet talking about the housewives like you don't it just gets a little repetitive when it's like what does it mean to be here and then also like I give Zuri her huge props because this is the first red carpet since

LA burned down like how do you handle that how do you pick choose what the vibe is like some people wanted to come on and cry some people were happy like it was just very difficult but I love my position I was talking with Zanna about fashion I had a great time I had a I had a wonderful day at the Grammys except that and here's my good week or bad week um Derek is filming me all the time because I looked at him as like, take tons of B-roll, take tons of B-roll. So he films me and then I fall on the red carpet. Now here's where it gets weird. I fell on the carpet, has 4 million views. My boss, John came up to me last night. He's like, all my publicist friends think you fake fell for attention. I thought that too. Me too. Because it was the same position that you

fell in when you had your ring. It's like, make sure to get it from the same angle of me crawling on the ground and we we talk about you being such an evil genius all the time that when something organic happens no one can believe you it's like you're like the girl who cried wolf if I was going to fall on purpose I would have done it with in front of the photographers or where photographers were or where video was I was coming out you weren't really yeah no you were only in sight you got it was Derek and then I stood up and I saw Kevin Mazur who's like the main like head bitch in charge photographer and he was laughing at me and he goes can I go take you over here and take a photo so like if I was gonna fall on purpose I would have done it on the red carpet

or somewhere where I was on someone's live stream because that would have guaranteed virality this was just a stupid video that Derek had and I was like a stop putting me in shoes like this b I have nine people in my entourage no one's holding my hand I'm just left to walk alone on the red carpet it anyway oh my god jesus christ um i'm gonna go next because my good week kind of i mean it has to do with kelty okay and that is that i saw this post on instagram and the post was celebs that are going to die soon and it was a whole like this was exciting this it's one of the craziest things that i've ever seen it was like a list of celebs that are terminally ill i think it said well going to die soon this included bruce willis i don't even remember who else it included but people

that like had selene dion selene dion like people that were older and had like well this is what she gets for talking about all of her ailments until she's blue in the face and people think she's sicker than she is this is so true well number one it like started off with kelty like it like she it was like she was going to die soon it was like a video of kelty then it goes through like bruce willis celine dion whatever and then it ends with it's like kelty knight had a hysterectomy like something that is not a terminal illness and like is it gonna make you die soon but it was so funny because i uh anna our friend anna sent it to me and i was like you can't send this to kelty like i have to reveal it to her on the podcast and she's like so many people have already sent

it to her so like kelty would love this you would love the attention that's what i posted i was like i mean she she loves being included on any celebrity list so it doesn't matter what it is just as exciting yeah we're stressed best list gonna die soon i'll take it you know it was so funny i was like what the hell who made this i have no idea and i'm like in what world yeah i think so okay it's incredible it's incredible to all of my followers for your concern i unfortunately for lady gang she's still alive i'm going to live still here i would think it's like a premonition i'd get so freaked out but i know that kind of thought that too well no if it came out of nowhere but it's because it is probably some weird ai program and it's like well she had a

hysterectomy and they probably don't dive into the reasons why and some people have that happen to you know for more serious issues yeah yeah that's true anyways my bad week is fast and simple um it's a bad week by proxy for jared because he edits our podcast and yes something that he edits out of our podcast is whenever we say the word and he was recently editing the podcast that we had with tom schwartz that we were talking it was like oh boy thing oh god you guys we probably said that podcast i'm not kidding maybe 300 times jared yes and manually do it it's not like there's some like ai things so he's sitting there being like yep two minutes two seconds later two seconds later so i don't even know how that podcast ended up sounding because it was a lot of like boy

that you're so right yeah i can't stop thinking about tom's toe oh my god it's like the long toe i just changed my whole attitude about him that he had a long middle toe no any man if you see his bare foot it's gonna change the way you feel like it does not matter it's never gonna be positive never like i said their toes meld into each other it's like he was adorable though i did have a dream about him a couple nights ago it was not sexual it was not sexual you didn't wake up feeling differently no no um i did think though when i was looking at the clips of him like that we've made for socials and stuff i'm like god we like are so misogynistic like as women right like but also in the sense that that like men can get away with i feel like one of those like yentas

where it's like the the grandson can get away with murder the the bar is so low to be like admired and adored and then with women it's like we can't actually celebrate you unless you've like created female viagra yeah we're like oh my god you're taller than we thought yes oh my god look how flexible he is look at how flexible oh my god and i'm like okay in love we've like literally it's just crazy it's crazy no we are the problem no because he blew up his marriage we all know it's his fault and no i don't think it's his fault i think that was a very mutual marriage ender okay but like don't you i don't know yeah i mean i feel like in some ways my opinion is that he may have chose schwartz and sandys over prioritizing his marriage with katie but who doesn't well i

think that the marriage has to be in bad shape for you to choose a restaurant restaurant well no he was always choosing like other people's sides rather than hers like never standing up for her but this is a whole other this is this whole episode but anyway the fact that we were like oh my god you have nice toes all is forgiven kelty we are so boy crazy it's like you put an attractive man in front of us and we lose it it's wild it's so wild you guys are just that was the other thing about the grammys is that chris went and that chris went to the he was in the yeah he was sitting right there we saw him like a zillion times oh why didn't you go with him as a date because um he was with his client oh the managers don't get to bring their wives oh i don't know

i was like how weird he was sitting with he was sitting with his client and then his client had to leave to get on a flight so then he was like well i'm gonna stay because this is really fun and i was like great so then the amount of people the lady gangers that were like i'm so sorry is this chris knight right here like the amount of screenshots in the lady and facebook group is so funny but what's so funny is that i made them come come up to see me on my station on top of the earth at the Grammys. And I was like a cute boy in a suit. Like I was acting like, this is my husband who I ironed that shirt earlier in the day. I was acting, I was like, Oh my God, I can take a photo with me. He's my husband. Like I was such, God, it is the bar is low.

The bar is low. He didn't bring me a drink. He didn't bring me a flower, nothing. Nothing except for show up. He just existed in a shirt I ironed. Okay. Rebecca. All right. So my I hate to make all these about Kelty, but it just felt like it was perfectly aligned, aligned. I was driving in my car and I was listening to a podcast and it ended and my phone was in my purse in the backseat. And so I wasn't able to control like what podcast played next. And it was a lady gang quickie or yeah, it was a quickie or something. So I was like, oh, you know what? I'm kind of enjoying this because we record things that I kind of don't remember what we say. I never listen back. So I was like, Oh, this is kind of fun. This is funny,

blah, blah, blah. And at the end of the episodes, there's like a thank you to our person. Thank you to our person is like, thank you to Jared for editing. Thank you for Kali for social. Thank you for blah, blah, blah. And then she literally says, and thank you for me by mastermind or something about by mastermind evil genius Kelty Knight. It's like produced by. So Kelty has made herself a producer of the Lady Gang podcast, but not either one of us, Jack. I mean, she does produce it more than we do. Well, yeah, but like how weird to, to like, just acknowledge yourself. Does that surprise you? I'm so glad you finally heard it because I have been waiting for one of you to hear this for months. I knew about it because Jared's like, Oh, Kelty wants me to put

this weird ending into the podcast. So I have already heard it. Oh, okay. Well, I have to leave you a little Easter eggs. Okay. My good week is I'm going to add something about you and Jack. Okay. Great. I'll never hear it. I won't either. Um, I have, I very rarely get hung up on Starbucks drinks. You know, I'm just like, you know, it'll do the trick. It'll get me caffeinated and make me poop. However, there's a drink that I am fixated on. And every time I pass a Starbucks, it could be 8 PM. I'm going to get that coffee drink. Ooh, let me just tell you, okay. Do yourselves a favor. There's a pistachio cream cold brew. Okay. It's a cold brew with the pistachio cream on top cold cream. Okay. But however you, I don't like a sugar bomb. I like

a little sugar. So I do it with the sugar-free vanilla syrup, but only one pump in the coffee itself. And then the pistachio cream cold brew. And sometimes I now have to tell the barista to be pretty generous with the cream because it really varies in who's going to be topping that off. It is, you guys, I just posted on Instagram and my neighbor is at the airport. She texted me within 10 minutes of me posting the order on Instagram her own order and she drinks black coffee so she's like very snobby about coffee and she said it's sickening how good this is really what's the pistachio taste like is it sweet yeah it's sweet it's just like pistachio ice cream or anything I hate pistachio but it's I'm not it doesn't taste like a pistachio it

doesn't like it I don't ever order pistachio anything it's just the cream on top is like a thick thick it's like a whipped cream and then this like delicious flavor that i mean it's obviously not a real pistachio flavor it's definitely artificial i you guys just go it's it's wonderful i need that i can't do cold brew though why because it like jolts me into another dimension which is weird because i can do celsius this is quite gentle but i know what you're talking about sometimes i can't do an iced anything coffee because it's too much i also feel like it tastes like rotting. Well, you can try this. I'll try that note on that note. Next up, we have a financial expert who's going to tell you to make your coffee at home. Bye.

Now back to the lady gang. Our guest today is a freelance correspondent and anchor at ABC News and a certified financial education instructor. In the past, she's worked at CNN and CNN International, and she's interviewed the leading CEOs and business people throughout the world, including Mark Cuban and Warren Buffett. She's here to help us today with our money. She's got a brand new book, What's Up With Women and Money? How to Do All the Financial Stuff You've Been Avoiding, which sounds perfect for the lady gang. Please welcome to the podcast, our financial friend, Alison Kosick. Yay! Welcome. Yay, I'm so excited to be here. Thanks, guys. What are we doing with our money? What are you doing with your money?

are you doing anything with your money? Help. First of all, the foreword for this book is written by Emma Greed. Greed, is that what you say? Yeah, Emma Greed. Power woman. And she made Spanx. Oh, wow. No, she's Good American. She was a co-founder with Kim Kardashian's Spanx, but she founded Good American. And she just keeps supporting women and women-owned companies and huge advocate for women and lifting us up. Yeah. That's actually so crazy and cool. Cause I've never seen her write anything before. Like I was like, did you read that? Isn't that amazing? It's the cool girl club. So first of all, how did you get into this position? Cause there's always some sort of trauma before you become into knowing what to do with money.

Yeah. So the reason I wrote this book is because I lived it. I would go on CNN at the beginning of my career there. And I would go with the New York stock exchange, the world's biggest stock exchange, and I would report business news, what the Federal Reserve is doing, what's happening with the economy, what's happening with mortgage rates. But in my own personal life, I did not have my money shit together. I was married and I let my then husband do all the big financial moves, everything financial, basically. I did the day-to-day budgeting, but I just didn't do it. Why didn't I do it? Because I felt overwhelmed. Life gets in the way. I was raising two young kids. And sadly, my marriage was failing. And I stayed in this

failing marriage longer than I should have, three years too long, many nights of crying. And I stayed in it too long because I relied on him to do all the financial stuff. And I didn't feel confident enough knowing that once we would get a divorce, I would have to do all that stuff by myself. And I didn't have a clue despite going on TV and talking about it. But they were two different things. I I mean, I would, my reporter hat was different from my personal finance hat at home. And, you know, I was overwhelmed about how to invest, how to refinance the mortgage. At the time, the, you know, we had the financial crisis and we needed to refinance the mortgage and how to buy a car.

One of the first things, when I finally did get a divorce, one of the first things I had to do was turn in my leased car and I made, I didn't know what I was doing. And I walked into the car dealership. I was thinking, you know what? I could do this. I'm a smart girl. And I made the first cardinal sin. The car guy asked me, he goes, how much do you want to pay in a monthly payment? And I told him. So apparently, and there's a chapter in the book about this, how to buy a car. You're not supposed to tell them how much you want to pay per month because that's how they wrap it all around and make it confusing and basically pump up the cost of your car. And so I, I completely screwed the whole thing up. And so after I finally got a divorce, I realized

there were a lot of women like me that we don't talk about the fact that we don't, you know, we're smart. Listen, we know what we should be doing. We're not stupid. We just, we just don't want to invest the time. We don't feel confident about it, but we don't talk about it. So it's this thing we keep silent. We're ashamed about it. We're embarrassed about it because we're badass bitches in our, in our, you know, in our work lives. So I got to talking with other women and realize I'm not the only one. And so I figured, let me write a book about this because if I would have had this book, which I didn't find out there at the time when I was in this mess in my personal life, I would have gotten out of my failed marriage earlier. Because while there are a lot

of books out there that talk to you about the steps of investing and the steps of paying down your debt and the steps of building up your credit, they didn't address, how do you actually feel confident? Like why should, who am I to think I can do all these financial stuff? So I went ahead and researched why women, why we are actually better at investing, why we shouldn't feel overwhelmed, why we should feel confident about doing all of these big financial moves. So I use research and I have a financial psychologist in there to talk us through how to feel empowered to go ahead and do those things that we have been putting off for so long. And I don't know if it's like the millennial in us, but there is something about, and I think about Becca and Jack and I,

I don't know about our lady and girls, everyone grew up in a different sort of family, but we did grow up in that child of the eighties, nineties, which was a little different than the kids. I think growing up today where it was like, dad goes off to work and mom, you know, mom, you know, spends the money and dad keep, I mean, not everyone is like that, but there is something that I feel like I was taught throughout my life is like the men handle the money and the women handle everything else, you know? And, and, and you get to a point where you're like, I love what you said about, I didn't feel comfortable like leaving my marriage. Cause we've seen that so many times, whether it's literally Dorit on the housewives right now, or in the lady gang group,

we do see that, which is so interesting. Okay. So the, one of the chapters, um, or one of the things that you talk about in the book is where the F is my money going. Talk me through this because I think that this is one of the big things that we are trying to rein in for 2025 in the lady gang. Like we just, it's the dopamine shopping. It's the, it's the, I know you can't get rich off like cutting out your latte and that's just like a little bit of happiness every day, but like where the is our money going? So about that latte thing, let me just say this. I mean, I'm not looking to take the joy out of your life. I love to have a coffee out, but think about how much you're having out. So maybe the idea with the coffee thing is limited a little bit. So just to

give you an idea, let's say you had a $5 coffee every day in the morning. Cause that's, that's your joy. I'm going to my shit job. I'm going to have my damn latte and feel good. But the problem is, is that adds up. If you add it up week per week, that adds up to a small car payment, 140 $40 a month, five days a week, and a little over $1,600 a year. Those little bits are investments that you can make into your retirement account that will grow and compound over time. So I'm not saying don't have the coffee. I'm just saying have less of it out. Just like if we're talking about how to cut corners a little bit more, if you go to a job every day and you know that you eat out breakfast and lunch, maybe just eat out breakfast and bring your lunch every day or vice

versa. Just start cutting back a little bit, a little bit more. And the way to realize if you're overspending, so to dovetail into the budget question that you asked here, is half the problem of our spending issue, meaning my spending issue and many of our spending issues, is we don't know where the fuck our money's going because we're not really keeping tabs on it. So it's kind of tedious. So I have you go through your budget and actually write down all of the stuff. So you go back and you look and you see how much money you've spent over the past few months on exactly what. And I have you make columns and it's a pain in the ass, but it's worth it because instead of having an app do this for you, I have you put pen to paper. So you actually see where your money's

going out. And that way, when you finally do choose a budget that you can actually stick to, you understand how you're spending your money, where you can cut back. And so you also see you won't stray from your budget as well. One of the big parts of the budget plans that I put out there are these non-monthly expenses. These are budget busters. What's a non-monthly expense? Like things that you know, big things that you know are coming up that come up every year, like your car insurance payments, your car maintenance, car registration, charitable donations. Does your girl have a wedding coming up in nine months? There are ways to actually budget for that early on. How? Well, you know, let's say that your car registration is coming up

in May. So January, February, March, April, May. So you've got five months, whatever that payment is divided by five months and sock away each month into a certain account that you know will go to your non-monthly expenses for that expense. And so when it's time to pay that car registration, you just dip into that fund. You've already saved for it because you've been treating it like a bill every month. Same with the wedding. The wedding's coming up in nine months and you want to be able to spend X amount of dollars. Divide it by nine months and pay that every month into that non-monthly spending account or non-monthly savings account. And then you'll have that money sitting there. So then you can actually have this pot of money

you can take with you and actually have fun at the wedding instead of being like, oh, I couldn't afford this. You're like creating your own payment plan. bingo yes yeah and that way you're not stressing about it you could actually have fun and it does make a difference i think for many years i had like my normal bank account and i just would always think like i'm gonna save this much and and i'll just always have it at this amount or i'll have a little extra like it actually made such a difference when i separated the account and had a specific account that held that money that i it was harder to have access to Like it was something mentally I didn't think I needed but made the biggest difference was really

Going through the trouble of opening up a different account or attaching it and having it like a sweeps account type thing Um, that was really helpful just from personal experience Yeah, becca. I mean like and also putting the account out of sight out of mind You're very smart doing that So you don't feel the urge to dip your hand back in there and grab it just because you see something you want to spend it on yeah Okay. One of the questions that, um, and because you had this psychology, like part of this book

that I think is so important that you don't see in other books. Um, I'd love to talk about the dopamine is so big on Tik TOK. Every time I go on, it's like, here's how we have to like take a dopamine retox or detox or whatever. Like, can you just discuss like what it, what is our brain doing when we go on amazon or timu or whatever and we buy there's like all those memes about i just needed a little treaty like you know what what how do we like we know we shouldn't be spending that money on stupid plastic stuff we don't need like i just bought i'm gonna be honest here i just bought donut holders like i don't need a donut holder it's like a it's a coaster it's a I'm having a party it's a coaster and it has a thing that comes out the top and you can

stack donuts on it like do you eat donuts that much that you needed that no no judging here exactly no this is the point it's like we could have had the party without the plastic donut holder but I was like I saw it on Pinterest and I was like I need the donut holders but like no I did not need this but then when I bought it I got a little treaty and it felt happy inside gives you a rush. Yeah. The rush. Can you discuss like, why are we so sad that like these stupid things that we're buying, you know, are, well, let me just say, don't stop beating yourself up. It's okay. Like, you know, we, we all do it and that's why it's called retail therapy. It makes us feel good. And, and you know what, I'm going to keep doing it. Um, but what I try to do is if I,

if I take the plunge and buy a couple of silly things, and I know they're dumb, but it made me happy, I will cut back in other areas, or I will just remember that I need to make that money back somehow. And honestly, the whole thing is, let's not beat ourselves up. We're human. But we should try to rein it in if we are sitting on a pile of debt. But retail therapy is no joke. It makes us feel good. So I've got a rule in there. If you see something you really, really want, I honestly say give it five days before. If you're really on the fence about it, you're like, do I really want to spend that much or do I really need that donut thing? Give it five days. If you're still thinking about it after five days, go for it and have fun. But a lot of times after you give it that waiting

period, you kind of come to your senses. You're like, you know what? I'm really not excited about it anymore. I'm good. I don't need it. Wow. Yeah. Waiting period. I've trained myself to get a dopamine hit after, after not spending money. Like I used to be the person where I had any social event, anything I needed a new outfit. Like I just needed, I couldn't go in my closet. It just was out of the question. I was going to order something new. And I, I started to realize that that was so much extra spending and no one is looking at you. Like it's truly insane. The amount of effort we put into looking good. And it's like, yes, I think it's important to feel good in your own skin, blah, blah, blah. But there's plenty of things in my closet that I've invested in that

make me feel good. So then I started doing this thing where I was like, I'm going to challenge myself and wear something I have to this birthday party, to this wedding, to whatever. And then when the thing is done and I get home or the next day or the next couple of days, I'm like, I get a dopamine hit knowing I saved a couple hundred dollars and I looked just as good as I was going to look with something brand new. Like it's just the, the reality of it is, is like that I had to shift my mindset. And now I actually do get a dopamine hit when I don't buy the thing on Amazon or I don't do the easy, like Shopify thing when I'm on Instagram. And I'm like, it would be so easy to order the stupid thing, but I don't, I don't know how I did it, but it really does work

for me now. I think it's also like, you got to think about how you feel after that, because there is this like guilt that you have if you do buy this expensive dress for the event and then it's over. And then you're like, wow, I spent $300 on that. And I work for five hours to stand in a dark room to sit at a table where you're only seeing me from my waist up. Like it's so wild. The amount of effort we put in. Hey, you know what? I just saw Bethany Frankel literally just posted something on Instagram. I mean, she looks fantastic and her, her clothes are, I don't even know what they're worth. I mean, obviously worth a ton of money, but she, she's wearing this gorgeous black dress going to some event. And she's like,

oh, this dress is years, 10 years old. This coat is 10 years old. These shoes are old. This is old. Even she doesn't, I mean, mind you, her stuff is like forever clothing, but hey, even, even the big stars do it. It's all relative, you know? Yeah. Yeah, it is. I love it. All right. When we come back with Alison, we have your questions that you wrote in and we are going to have her answer them you're listening to the lady gang we are back here we go number one please ask for advice on federal this is so deep please ask for advice on federal student loan repayment we have been in limbo for so long how to handle um income-based plans for high debt like 150 000 plus situations, make minimum payments on a path towards 20 year forgiveness, or try to pay it down

help. Oh my God, my head is spinning. Um, well, I don't know much about what this person's situation is. Um, they could, they, if they're completely overwhelmed, they could, they could just put a pause on it and defer. It's going to still, the loans will still earn be, you know, interest will still be tacked on and it'll just give that person a breath as to what to do. Um, I can only talk about with student loans with what I went through, which I took out tens of thousands of dollars to go to American University. Loved it, though. Thanks, American. I deferred many times and and but I kept paying the minimum. If you can pay more than the minimum, do that. Those the student loans, unfortunately, will not go away.

That is the one thing, even if you claim bankruptcy, it will they will not go away. But you can hit the pause button, take a breath, try to, you know, earn some money while it's, you know, and then just go back and start paying the loans again. Maybe you can pay more per month. But I don't know enough about that person's situation to give any more detail than that. Got it. Okay. How to get started with investing for dummies. Okay.

First of all, we're not dummies. We just, you know what, we haven't, we weren't taught this shit in school and we're made to believe that the men do it better. And by the way, they don't. there are actual studies showing that women make more money investing and it's our lack of confidence that actually helps us because we take a little more time and we're not looking to day trade. And so just so you know, we do better than men. So we're not dummies. Um, how to invest for dummies. Um, you know,

I'm going to assume that you don't want to go with a financial planner. That's okay. Uh, first move you want to do is sign up for online for a Fidelity or a Schwab or a TD Ameritrade. I go with Fidelity. I don't go, let's say with, sorry, Merrill Lynch. I don't go with Merrill Lynch because if you don't have a ton of money to invest, you can't buy a $550 investment, one share of a $550 index share. So you want to buy little pieces of it called fractional shares. Not all of these companies that have these investment platforms offer fractional investing. Merrill Lynch does not at this moment. I'm sure they will at some point.

So I go with Fidelity where you can buy fractional shares. So you sign up on Fidelity, open up an account, put some money in the account. Then you want to move it to a, I'm assuming, depending on what your income is. If your income is lower, you probably want to go with a Roth IRA because then you pay taxes on the money going in and you don't pay the taxes on the money going out. If you make a higher income, you want to go with a traditional IRA because you're putting pre-tax dollars into the traditional IRA. But when you want to take the money out, that's when you have to pay all the taxes on it. I'm going to assume because you're a new investor, you're young, you're not making maybe a ton of money, open up a Roth IRA, put

the money into the Roth IRA. No, you're not invested yet. Next, you want to plop it into an investment. What's an investment? It's a stock. It's a fund, basically. I would say if you're starting out, you want to try to grab as much of the market as you can. So if you go for an ETF or a fund or an index fund that tracks one of the biggest indices called the S&P 500, you'll get a piece of all the 500 stocks of the S&P 500. You get that by putting your money into an index fund. Right. So that's like you take a little piece of apple, a little piece of Coca-Cola, a little piece of Lululemon, like all that, right? Okay. Yes. And so let's say you put it into a VOO. That's the name of the index fund that let's say you want to put it in. I'm picking VOO because it's got a

low fee. That's one thing you want to look for. Make sure these funds have a low fee. You want something below 1%. So I think theirs is like 0.03% because someone's got to get paid for putting the fund together. But that's very low. So you put it into a VOO and let's say VOO right now, I haven't looked, but maybe it's 500 bucks a share. And you're like, oh my God, I don't have $500. That's okay. If you go, let's say somewhere on Fidelity, you want to click the dropdown box. You'll see it when you tap on trade. You fractionally invest. If you can put $100 in, great, do that. It's something, I promise you, every little bit is going to help. So you put a hundred dollars into VOO, you know, you're not buying a full share, you're buying a fractional share, but over time

you're going to earn, you're going to, that's going to compound because just time itself, it's sitting there in that index fund. You're going to, it's going to probably grow because the S&P 500 grows at eight to 10% every year. Plus they give you free money. What's that free money called dividends and you want to and in my my suggestion is you um have those has have those dividends reinvest in that in that account just all that money those little dividends that you get every quarter of you know every three months just have it reinvest and over time you're as you live your life you'll you'll you know check out your account you're like whoa that thing grew and you'll be like well how'd that happen oh that's called compounding wow so i have a i have

a question what do you think about these investing apps like robin hood and acorn and stuff like that because it's like for somebody that doesn't have the time to kind of do this manually like is there a simpler way for somebody to be like okay i'm gonna do it like through an app i mean apps are great i'm sure i don't know personally um i mean you can do the do those the robo trading is that it i think so yeah yeah i mean robo trading is great if you don't know what to do or where to invest and they sort of you fill out a questionnaire and it sort of decides for you i didn't go for robo trading. That's just me. I just felt like I didn't have enough control over where my money was going. Like, like I can, I can go online and you can go online and pick out a few ways on how

to see how, uh, how an investment is doing over time. Yeah. And just based on that, you can decide whether or not you want to invest in it. And, um, I just felt like I wanted more control. So I never went the robo-investing route. I know the Cash App thing is useful for the younger set, but from my experience, my son who's 19, he put a ton of money into Cash App. He had a hell of a time just now, because I was kicking his ass, moving into a real platform, getting that money out of Cash App into Fidelity was a real pain in the ass. So I don't know. I like to go for the more reputable names that have been around for a long time. Like if they've been around for a long time, you can kind of trust that they're going to be around for years to come. And I'm not into the

fly by night places. That's just me. Not saying that those places that you mentioned are, but I just like to go with the ones that have a real reputation in history. I kind of feel the same way, but maybe, but also we had, um, Oh, what was it called? Like, was it chime or something? Chris and I remember we had something and we put it like a thousand dollars in it. And then we just looked at it and we're like, Whoa, it's got like $4,000. Cause we just left it. And it was like reinvesting itself. So, you know, it, it happens. I think the last thing is that Alison, I just wanted to ask is like, one of the girls wrote, how do I enjoy my money, but also be like, how do I balance? I think you're the perfect person to talk about this. How do I balance enjoying my money

and being financially responsible? So, you know, like we have our lady world festival coming up in September and we offered a payment plan. And so we, we tried to make this like the most affordable thing that we could. And we were offering, you know, girls, this payment plan with no, no money down. And like, it's, but it is an investment. And it's like, man, at the end of the year, I want to be like, I did this and I lived my life because who knows what's going to happen in the future. But then you also want to be like, I have everything planned and I'm saving so much. So like, what, what's the balance? This is a great question. And I actually, well, first of Well, by the way, your payment plan, great idea, because the same way that I was saying to figure out how to pay those monthly expenses, you break it up into months.

If you want to go to Lady World, then break it up into months or break it up into weeks and how much you're going to pay into that account so you can go have fun. Because we don't want that money scarcity mentality where we're afraid to live. There is a balance. And I did an interview with Shelley Wright. She's a country singer and she talks about it in the book about how she was making all this money and her manager calls her into the office and says, you're not spending any money. And she's like, yeah, I am. I went on tour. I did this. He's like, no, you're not enjoying your money. And that's not good. And we've got to live, you know, that whole you only live once. It really is true. So how do you do it?

In my opinion, I think you budget. You go through the agonizing task for just, you know, spend a day, go through it. And I'm telling you, do it by hand. Don't do it the app thing. I know everybody says do the app thing, but you're not actually seeing and writing it down and write down. And I walk you through how to do the budgeting. I actually cut it down and make it pretty easy.

But once you figure out everything coming in and then you put yourself on a budget that you can handle. The trick is to put yourself on a budget that's sustainable, not one that you're struggling to maintain. And you want to make sure that it's something you can stick to. Really discipline yourself to stick to it. And by the way, part of those budgets is fun money. It's not all just socking it away in savings and paying it on expenses and variable expenses and monthly expenses. There is room for fun too. So the way you balance the fun money with the saving is to literally budget. And I know that sounds really boring, but it really is the only way to do it.

It's the grownup way to do it. And at some point we all have to do it or else you're just going to never know where your money's going and you're not going to be able to control it. You're not going to be able to go on vacations and have fun. I love it. All right. Alison's book, what's up with women and money, how to do all the financial stuff you've been avoiding right here on page 32 is Alison's no BS budget worksheet. You know, I love a worksheet, ladies and gentlemen my daughter drew that i think there's a lot of things in this book that is like it's a little bit like a journal where there's a lot of like tables and things to read so you make it you break it down you make it really easy we'll put a link to this in the

newsletter and on social allison thank you so much for being here my pleasure you guys go live your life but also you know you don't need the plastic donut holder and we will see you next tuesday Lady Gang is produced by Podcast One with podcasting production assistance from Steve Delameter, Derek Haley, editing by Jared Monaco and social support from Kali Carrera and mastermind evil genius from Kelty Knight.