LadyGang - Rich Bitch Nicole Lapin on the LadyGang

Episode Date: January 10, 2017

"Rich Bitch" Nicole Lapin is helping you become Rich Bitches too! She's got financial know-how, lots of tips, and investment tools so you get the most from your money! Should you buy or rent a home? Buy or lease a car? How exactly do credit cards really work when it comes to those interest charges? And what's a realistic "emergency fund"? Should you save for and contribute to your kid's college fund? And what about retirement? Roth IRA or 401k or both??? See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey guys, the following podcast is a Lady Gang Network and Podcast One production, which means it's going to be awesome. 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 Vanek. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to the Lady Gang. I am Becca Tobin, actress and blogger. Across from me is Kelty Knight, entertainment journalist. Queen of Instagram. To my right, Jack Vanek, owner and CEO of Jack Vanek Clothing.

My fun fact this week is that anytime I see something gory or hear about a gross story, my vagina throbs. Wait, sorry. Say this again. What? Your vagina throbs? My vagina throbs. Wait, when?

If somebody tells me about a surgery or, like, if I'm watching, like, one of those makeover plastic surgery shows and they go in and they're, like, cutting open, my vagina throbs. Is this your bad week? No, this is my fun fact. Oh. Jack, are you here? Are you in the room? Welcome to the Langer Gang. We're doing a podcast today.

Are you ready? I was literally reading something else while you were talking. Perfect. Welcome to the show, everyone. So there's my fun fact. Wait. Would you like me to embellish? No, I haven't.

No, I haven't. something to add to your fun back because i thought this was going to be your bad week no we're not even at the bad we did you see on the pimple popper the lady that uh no i don't watch that anymore you don't no she i watched it once i fell in that rabbit hole once i'll never go back she got rid of this cyst that was like the size of like a hunchback and she had to literally reach underneath no no no my vagina is throbbing right now that's what makes that's what makes my vagina gross i watched the whole thing gross my fun fact is that i have really small ears you've already used that no i haven't yes you have i'm using it again okay great

hey lady gangers write us and let us know that you've heard this before i don't know if i've might have stacy our producer is shaking her head yes so i think that you're wrong so the only thing exciting things oh she's also senile i have very small thumbs okay the small body part is unless they're like it's like i didn't fully grow those aren't megan compare our thumbs compare well i have really long fingers for my age look at jack's thumb compared to my thumb it's not that small i have a long nail i hate you all what's your fun fact my fun fact i think i might use mine too i'm afraid of feet have i used that one no we've talked about it but that's good i'm terrified of feet do you let do you touch scott's feet no okay and he always wears socks to bed which i also think

I love psychopathic behavior. That is psychopathic behavior. Well, okay. Well, it's time for... Good Week. Yes, it is. Bad Week. Oh, no.

What was my bad week? My favorite thing, hold on, is that when the lady gang, like, tweets us, and they tweet that guy, they're like, good week. Oh, yeah. And then they're like, bad week. Oh, no. And they put, like, a hundred O's behind the notes. It is good.

That will never change. No. No. never um i'm gonna start okay go ahead so my my bad week is that i was on an airplane and i saw a commercial come on i was watching the like live television i don't remember what maybe bravo because that's the only channel i watch so good and there's this commercial that comes on and it's for a product that's that's come out and it's called like vipoo what what yeah it's like a potpourri like a poo potpourri oh it's like um you spray before you go it's like potpourri

but it's like um potpourri but it's like somebody else came up with this like some big whatever vi poo um and here's what bothers me is that clearly everyone's listening to the lady gang everybody in the world everybody came up with this idea no but everybody knows if the girl who's in it is like her majesty of hollywood and i sometimes need to take a poo and blah blah blah and i'm like it's like a squatty potty and it's a blonde girl an actress you're mad you didn't get i'm mad that i didn't get cast in that commercial because i am the queen of pooping and i talk about it i'd like to know if this girl has ever laid out her dirty deeds in front of thousands of listeners we need to make a poop spray yeah we do poop spray it's coming so okay that was my bad week

taking notes Kelsey's literally writing it down that was my bad week okay but here's my good week from that commercial I got the poop spray I didn't get the poop spray but she says something in it about getting rid of the smell from the devil's donuts how good is it so now I refer to my poop as the devil's donut I love because I love donuts and I love pooping I love okay Jack you're up okay this is great because my good week also has to do with pooping and airplanes it's like perfect transition perfect so one of my really good friends is a flight attendant and her stories are like insane it puts our good week bad week to shame every single story she tells me let's have her start calling in and telling us stories um and she works first class for this

airline and she was telling me that james franco like flies the airline all the time And she says every single flight that he takes, he gets a coffee and a newspaper and literally sits in the bathroom taking a shit for like an hour. And so they've all coined, if somebody takes like a long poop in the bathroom, a Franco. That is disgusting. It's so good that they coined it. He brings it into the bathroom. He brings his shitty airplane coffee and a newspaper into the bathroom and just stays

in there forever. Who would want to be in the airport bathroom? it's the worst bathroom airplane airplane bathroom no i mean that's what i'm saying it's would you rather go in a port-a-potty or an airplane uh neither the the yard i oh my god that's awful but it's such a good term we're gonna use it from now on i'm gonna go take a franco yeah so wait what airline is this i want to get on the first class and be like excuse me while i go take a franco i can't tell you because i feel like she might get in trouble okay um i'll tell you jet blue so my bad week

my bad week my allergies have been insane lately well they're always insane i'm always sneezing and whatever my face itches whatever so i was driving the other day and my nose was all itchy so i was like itching around my nose my nose is itchy on the inside so i'm like kind of like itching like the inside of my nose doing a little itch and i'm not really paying attention and i have like my finger just like in my nose just having like a scratch and i'm like sitting at a stop sign or whatever and i turn to the left and there's a car full of like hot teenage boys and they're all looking at me like i'm the most disgusting thing in the entire world my finger was like still in my nose as i like turned and looked at them

and i'm like you guys probably would have thought it was hot ball god this week is good it's it's good so good kelty um my good week is that i was in three magazines this week oh my god and here's the coolest part i was at a shoot and so another publicist that's not my publicist came up to me and she's like you're like always in the weeklies i was like i know and i felt really proud baby because i called the popper good job but are you proud of me i'm proud of you my fame's really coming along how do you get in the magazine all kinds of shenanigans that we'll talk about in great detail at one point on the show okay um bad week bad week guys you know i'm a vegetarian and i have been one for a long

time probably why your bones are so small probably you have no i've been one since like eighth grade and one of the things what happened you haven't eaten protein in like 20 or 15 years yeah when um i don't know you're talking about i'm only 18 but okay anyway so one of the things i like to do when i'm traveling for work all the time is order room service it's my guilty pleasure because someone else is always paying for it in the 18 charge you know and i always after a long shoot day love to get like a vegetable and then a french onion soup i love delicious you know it's beef stock right i did not know that until this week this is my bad week my whole life i have enjoyed a detectable detectable detectable a delectable cup of french onion soup as a treat

because i don't eat really have dairy ever it really gets me freaked out why is this so delicious freaking good and it's so delicious and hearty because it's meat it's actually bone broth well your bones are thanking you that's probably the only reason why you're not it's probably the only reason you still get your period okay thank you french onion soup you better still eat it it's so good oh i'm not eating it anymore get you the toots though that's the cheese in it well okay what do we have coming up well it's not poop and it's not french onion it's how to get your life on track it's a new year you gotta be rich and we have the original rich bitch here to help us with our finances because honestly i don't know how my credit card works can either do i

the lady gang inquire today is the day that we help you get your lady gang life together our guest is a tv host and new york times best selling author of the book rich bitch which p.s i'm gonna say it again go follow us on instagram because we're giving away an autographed copy at the lady gang she's a judge on the cw show hatched and writes a monthly column for red book magazine she's always wearing super expensive beautiful shoes which is how i know she really has life figured out welcome to the fake rich lady gang podcast the richest bitch of them all nicole lappen welcome yay bitches welcome um i'm so glad that bitch is the uh swear word we're allowed to say on our podcast. Cause there's other words we cannot say, but you're fine. First of all,

why did you write the book? We're very excited. The girls are pumped that we said we're having a financial expert. The questions came rolling in, but before we start, what about you? Cause you were on MSNBC and then all these things happen. And then now you're best selling author. I was on CNBC and Bloomberg and CNN and all these like wonky financial networks. And then I realized that my former self, the girl who couldn't speak money was so clueless that I broke got into hives thinking about money like i'm first generation american i didn't grow up with a wall street journal on my kitchen counter like my boyfriend in high school said he wanted to be a hedge fund manager and i thought he wanted to be in gardening like i was so clueless so clueless

he dumped me actually because i couldn't hang out with his wall street friends oh and i think they want to hang out with me now i was gonna say just saying guess who's real sexy on the cover of her best time who's laughing less it's like brunette uh elwoods basically because i figured out the language of money and i realized that it's a language like anything else like we get so angry at ourselves for not knowing this stuff but we learn like the pythagorean theorem in school but we don't know how to do a budget or like learn taxes why is that and so if you go to china and you speak chinese like you'll be really clueless if you go to wall street and you don't speak the language of money you'll be really clueless it's okay learn the language period end of story but

it's hard for ladies because we're so torn you know there's like you all have the friends like one of them is like super frugal and is like making their own granola and like bringing their box lunch and the other one is like has ten thousand dollars worth of credit card debt like it's hard to find that happy medium of where you can exist as a human and be responsible and fun and that's what i loved about your book which i read when it first came out in hardcover and it was like so sassy because you were like you can still get a blowout you can still buy these shoes but here's what you have to give up here's how you have to like live your life which i think is exactly what the lady gang needs so like financial dieting is a lot like regular dieting okay think

of it that way if you have some crazy juice cleanse or whatever like i don't even know what the popular paleo situation is that's about right it's air nicole it's the air diet you just have air and sadness uh you're gonna binge on something because you're gonna be so hungry hello captain obvious. If you do the same thing with money, you're going to be so deprived and so hungry. If you're like, I'm not going to buy a latte because some financial expert told me that that is my ticket to financial freedom. Like you're going to binge on a pair of Louboutins, let's get real, because you feel so hungry and so deprived. That's not sustainable. So I think of a budget as a spending plan in the same way as you think of a diet as an eating plan. An eating plan

is something you can stick to. Like you allow yourself a Hershey's Kiss so you don't end up binging or noshing on a big old hunk of chocolate cake in the middle of the night. Then I know what you're thinking about. We've all been there. Because you're so hungry. You're like, I did have a cupcake on the way over in my car. But you give yourself that latte or whatever the equivalent of the latte is, the blowout. So you stay on track and you don't binge later on.

Why do you think it is that money is such a taboo topic with women? I feel like men talk about it so freely and feel like kind of they know what's going on. And with women, we're all like, I don't really talk about money with my friends. We talk about everything. that's the thing we'll talk about blowjobs and diarrhea am i allowed to yeah yeah okay before we talk about money like it's crazy like we'll be at dinner and we'll be like let's let's talk about the bikini wax du jour or whatever like some crazy invasive thing but i'm like hey how much does your baby daddy make and my girlfriends are like what and i'm like what do

you mean like we just talked about your vagina for five minutes like this is normal right yeah Like, I'm not here to hurt you or I want to help you. Like, let's talk about money because that's the best way to get ahead and learn more, to have that dialogue. But I think we're scared because we don't know and we didn't learn this stuff like we said in school. It's kind of scary. It's crazy and nobody learned it. It's okay. I'll give you a hug.

You're going to be okay, Jack. Okay. So I want to thank, first of all, all of the amazing women and like five guys in our Lady Gang Facebook secret group. Um, I was so excited because, you know, we have these ideas of like, let's bring a financial expert on. And I'm never sure if like, you're going to like it or not. And we're like, is this going to work? And then we got so many responses.

So I want to take the questions right from our ladies and figure out their lives for them. So rich bitches, like when they own, I love seeing them hold the book. Yeah. Right. It's for boys. The five guys. Yeah.

Bring it on. It's for everybody. Yes. For everyone. Okay. What are three things every woman needs to stop spending money on that they're spending money on now? It's kind of a negative way to start, but let's start.

Well, I don't think it's about stop spending money. I think it's about figuring out what you want and then figuring out how to live the life you want with that money that you need for whatever that is. So many times women don't know what they want. The question that got me the most anxiety is, what do you want to be when you grow up? Or what do you want to do in five years or 10 years or whatever? And I would be like, um, I want to do, but, and I didn't really answer the question. So like, once you figure out what you want, then you reverse engineer to figure out how

to get the money to live the life you want. It sounds sort of touchy feely, but it's so basic, like coming up with goals. I break them down into the three F's because I do love me some F words, family, finance and fun. And so I literally just like broke it down one, three, five, seven, 10 year goals of what that is. because some people are like, well, Nicole, if I only had a million dollars, like my life would be so amazing. And I'm like, Oh really? Like, what do you want to do with that million dollars?

Like maybe you need more than a million dollars. Maybe you need less than a million dollars. Like what do you want? So that's like the number one thing everyone should start doing is figuring out what they want before like trimming here and there. Like it's not about clipping coupons or digging in the couch for coins or skipping a latte. Like it's about bigger life goals. and a lot of times we get like pound foolish penny wise um what are the best this was a question that was probably asked 25 times a lot of our girls they have been good they've saved up a little nest egg and they want to invest it and they're freaked out about the guys in the suits at the banks that want to take a giant fee and they're asking what is the best place to invest their

money online without crazy fees that's sort of safe you know and i know that money it's all about your own personal level of you know how much risk you want to take but just in general like are there some sites that you would recommend are there some places to go look yeah I think first you know people get really excited about oh I have a little bit of money I'm gonna go invest or I'm gonna buy a house I'm like whoa whoa whoa like hold on sister um first like have that six to nine months of an emergency fund that you never ever touch and if you're freelancing or if you don't have a steady job or whatever it's more like nine months to a year it's more like a year like stuff that you need to live on every single day so put that aside whatever it is it's

not the extras it's not the blowouts it's like rent and transportation and all of that stuff and have that and make sure that is like if you're gonna have to stop and drive for uber not that driving for uber is not a bad job but like if you get stuck and you're like i'm gonna go drive for uber you can still pay your rent that's right okay yeah so figure out like what that is and put that aside before you even think about investing and then before you think about investing or house or whatever is your retirement situation in check like nobody wants to think about getting old right yeah i don't not it i'm trying not to get old botox botox you need eye under eye concealer yes i'm all about that too but at the same time like a

roth ira and a 401k are super easy ways who has a roth ira yay go to you wow we're so adult but i But I want to ask you about this. I'm interested about that, too. Wait, I'm going to come back to the IRAs because people asked about it. Okay. So hold tight on that. But, okay, so we have the checklist of the things. And if they get there, then there's not one particular place I suggest, but there are like TD, Schwab, whatever does it for you if you want it all under the same thing.

Merrill Lynch has a B of A, and they also have Edge, which is fine. I'm like, I'm not endorsing one particular one, but like you can get in for about 2,500 bucks. And the difference between a discount brokerage and a full service brokerage is that a full service brokerage is going to charge you a lot more for your trades. And so what makes the most sense for our ladies? Can we do it ourselves? Yeah, for sure. I mean, when, when women especially tell me like, I don't know anything about investing, you know, the biggest percentage of what drives our economy around 70% is us, the consumer. And so I've talked to so many fund managers or investors

who go with their daughters to the mall and see, like, do they like Lululemon still? Like, is that hot? Like, or is Coach like, mm, over? Like, Coach and Lululemon are both publicly traded companies. Like, what do you think about these types of companies? Are they on the up? Are they on the down?

Trust yourself. Like, you don't need to necessarily know all of this data. and you, you know, you as the consumer drives investing and stock prices. So like an E-Trade or an Edge or those types of things are really easy to get into. And so like, say I have $2,500, if I go to like Vanguard that you don't, you can either invest, like I can go invest in Apple and Coca-Cola, or I can just be like, I want to put this in a mixed money market. What do you suggest? Do you suggest like the fun of going and being like, I love these companies? Or do you think just like a a mixed sort of situation where they're going to pick but they're promising you

know six percent or whatever totally and it depends on like how old you are and what's your profile and all that stuff but if you do have time if you're young and you want to play around and you're like oh damn i want to get into like facebook early like yes please please do that um but otherwise index funds the mixed mutual is that what that is i don't even know it's totally yeah index funds are good because they basically like replicate an entire you know when you hear like the Dow or the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ or whatever. So you're basically like buying. I hear that all the time.

I have no idea what the Dow is. Yeah. So the Dow is like the biggest 30 companies in the country. Did you know that, Becca? You're so smart. Hot girl. You know. Jack, did you know that?

No. No, me either. Okay. 25% smart. Hello. We know these words. Okay. And so you're basically like buying part of the index and what the entire index and like

basket of companies. So you're buying a fruit basket of investments. Totally. sometimes that's nice like I feel like it's less overwhelming at least for me when I was going through the process like I felt like to keep up we keep up with so many things in our lives that the thought of just being like I'm gonna just do this one time and I'm gonna make this investment every week or every month or whatever and not have to think about where it's going it's sort of nice to do that like it was less stressful to me but that's just how I felt yeah

I feel like unless you're like super into it yeah I like want to watch it like ebb and flow and stuff like that you might as well go to somebody that knows what they're doing me too like i'd rather just look once a month and be like oh i'm up or down yeah okay um a lot of our girls wanted to know what is your advice for paying off their student loans oh and um student loans and then they also decided our debt consolidation oh my god yes are they legit no i mean they can be but there it's just stuff that you can do on your own you know i think first of all negotiate everything like whether it's this is a great thing that i learned from nicole's book please really go into this because thank you so many girls can do this it's so easy especially your credit card apr right

now and we'll get to student loans but all of it is negotiable like just because you get a credit card statement that says you know 14.9 or whatever like just because it's printed on a fancy paper does not mean it's gospel. Everything is negotiable. Your credit card APR is negotiable. I've saved women thousands and thousands of dollars a year. You can buy all the lattes you want if you just get a couple percentage points off your credit card APR. I mean, it goes for your typical bills, like your cable and your utilities and all that stuff too. Any bill collector, like the highest debt in collection right now is actually medical debt and it's not student debt. And all of that stuff is negotiable too. Don't hide from the bill collectors. You

have to talk to them they're annoying and they sound super scary but like talk to them because they'd rather get a little bit than get nothing at all and so if you can somehow create a settlement like if you have a little bit of cash and then you can offer that to them then that's better than screwing your credit which will in turn give you higher interest rates for whatever you do your credit score is like their most valuable thing that you should focus on versus like clipping coupons or trying to like nickel and dime yourself your credit score is connected to like how much you got when you got a mortgage miss grown up she just bought a house too yeah we were really crazy about that like that was the thing that i never knew was like the interest rate being

negotiable like to me and i never even knew that that was something that was important because i'm an idiot but like you're not an idiot it was really fascinating and those are things that you only learn i think when going through the process but it's super fascinating and so you're saying so if i have a credit card and i owe 10 grand on my credit card and i'm getting charged 7% or 19% or whatever it's at that point. I just call up the credit card company and say, hi, it's Kelty. Here's the deal. I have $2,000 to pay you right now. I'll pay you, but take away the rest. What's your advice? Give us like, let's do a fake phone call. Well, I actually did this for Dr. Oz, not to like pimp out that segment, but I had this woman where

I was like a Cyrano de Bergerac type of deal where I was like in her ear telling her what to do. And you know all you have to do is like spend for her i had her keep asking for a supervisor like just be a dog on a bone like this is your money so you might as well fight for it and then at first they gave her like two percent off and i was like ask again like keep asking she was like i got two percent like i'm totally good like i'm out i'm like no no keep going and you know they'll throw you a bone versus losing you as a customer wow and so with credit card debt or i mean with um with student debt so okay student debt is the last thing you should pay off figure out how to okay when people think about the debt debt is like my least favorite four-letter word

you have to prioritize your debt payments because they're not all created equal and so i think a lot of people psychologically want to just like rip up a bill they get something in the mail and they're like oh i have you know 100 bucks i'm gonna pay off the 100 bucks sally may thing rip it up like peace out sally may that's not the best thing because those interest rates are probably much lower than your credit cards and if you have a car loan so it goes like this prioritize to pull verizon first your credit card interest rates are always going to be the highest second your car loans if you have a car loan which you shouldn't because you should buy used cars cheap and run the jalopies into the ground obviously um yeah yeah who bought a used i bought my car

used but i still owe money on it i lease my car but the reason is because as a performer you get a higher tax deductible well that and i feel like when you i've been told and this could be totally wrong that you really you do you never make money on selling your car like if i buy a car drive it for five years like i'm never gonna make money on that investment when i sell it like i'm always gonna essentially lose money rich bitch what do you think a car is not an investment right and neither is a house. So thinking about that from the idea of making money is just not the way to approach it because the reason car companies came up with the idea of leasing is because they make a ton of money. You know what ton of money, obviously. And you're basically paying a new car

price for a used car because you're still driving it and then you're giving it back. So it's not that you're not making money, you're not even breaking even or close or you're just spending way more than you should got it and so if you bought so the greatest appreciation period is in the first four years of a car so if you buy a car after that first four years and then you sell it later see that my problem is is i'm snobby and i like driving brand new cars so it's like for me it probably makes more financial sense for me to lease a car than to go buy a tesla right she really wants your seal of approval i'm being dead serious there's girls out there who like prefer to have like for me like i really like having nice new cars like that's where i choose

so for me i shouldn't go buying a brand new car right well it it depreciates the most in the first four years four years but like the most most the first year so if you can live with like a two-year old then it's still better one-year-old car i can't even yeah really tell then it's still better than doing what i'm doing and if you're going to buy a car like um october to december is the time when the new inventory and so they're more eager to give you a deal and in october they're more you know choices so the closer you get to december that's just like people buy them so this now is a good time um okay so pay down your student loan last though pay debt so then then it goes your mortgage and then it's your student loan and you know look

they say debt is student debt is like good fat like right it's good debt i'm like healthy fat it's like an avocado it's like but seriously if you eat avocados all day long like you're gonna be fat or caches or whatever and so almond milk do not binge on the student like don't neglect it yes it's good yes you have a brain no one's gonna take away your brain that's the thing because you can they can take away your car you know your car they can take away your house they can't take away your brain so that's the last thing you should pay off and then you should think about doing it automatic payments so like it comes out of your paycheck it you like there's no risk of not doing it it doesn't feel as scary it doesn't feel as bad um okay well we just talked

about should we buy a car versus lease and now we know that becca's about to sell her car put her lease back in a new car um now this is very interesting i love being a homeowner but i didn't remember reading in rich bitch that you were like do not buy a house rent your house so let's talk about it jump out this window i'm becca just bought a house but it is really interesting it's very interesting and i will say owning a house is damn expensive and all the ladies out there that own a house know um because you have your mortgage and then you have the insurance and then you have the umbrella insurance and then it's super fun and you're looking for electrician like yeah you're paying to repair everything my light bulb yeah um okay so rent versus buy so you look

in the mirror and you're the landlord now and so you have all this stuff so people say to me like lapping, but like renting is like throwing away money. And I'm like, okay, that's like saying that spending money on food is throwing away money because you poop it up. It's true. There is a cost for a living, ladies. And there's a lot of stuff with a home that you don't get back. So closing costs, all of the money that you're putting into the repairs and everything else and the headache and the heartache and all that stuff. And so I think the idea of looking at a house as an investment is the wrong way to look at it a house is a house it's a home and you know you're building your family you are sort of like feel good about being there just don't be delusional

that you're going to make a boatload of money because you forget about this thing called inflation so when people think about like oh grandma bought a house when you know it was 50 grand and now it's worth like a million dollars and like by the way when grandma bought that house like movie tickets were like five cents. And so a lot of times people don't equate the right prices and they forget about this like booger called inflation. And so, um, so when thinking about home ownership, it's super serious. Like it's not just a thing, especially if you're moving around, a lot of young people are moving around. It costs so much to move. And so it's not like a, Oh, let's just buy a home. Um, you know, renting is the, let's bring the sexy back to

renting there are a lot of great places you can rent to and you won't have all those extra fees along the way if you're looking to grow your wealth too because a lot of say people say like you're growing this equity thing is that like the only time you know the value of your house is when somebody actually writes that check you can like make this up from here to attorney be like it's worth 10 trillion dollars well great like it's only worth that if somebody actually writes you we had our appraisal done and i remember my fiance getting so excited because our appraisal came back as being like a good amount more than what we paid and i'm like but like it's not i mean you don't have that we don't have that money until we sell it and then we still might not even get

that money right but it's yeah it's so it's funny yeah and the largest studies done over time like if you take that in the thing is a lot of young people especially are house poor so let's say they have a hundred grand that are they've saved up they're like okay i'm gonna put all of that into a down payment for a house and then they don't have stuff like they don't have money for other things. And then you become a slave to your house. And the largest studies done over time have shown that housing hasn't even kept up with inflation. And so the reason to invest, going back to our previous question, is because of that thing called inflation, because typically inflation is growing at about 3%. So you're typically getting 10% of the market. So subtract three

from 10 and you're making about 7% generally otherwise. Okay. What's going on now? Here's the lady gang. Okay. I want to pretend we have a listener named Jenny and Jenny makes a thousand dollars a week and she wants to know what percentage of her paycheck should we put away and where should she put it? So I love alliteration. I love alliteration. Who doesn't love it it's great it's a good one we talked about the three f's um let's talk about the three e's jenny essentials end game and extras i love this so 70 of that thousand dollars so 700 a week is what you're gonna spend on for your essentials so like your housing your food i'm literally taking notes i just want everyone to know that like i know we're taking notes take notes notes

no the notes are rich books just books like literally it's all in the book but okay you don't need to know thank you yeah and then 15 to extras so 150 for jenny for her blowout a week or her whatever i don't care what how to how you have fun like i'm not gonna tell you how to have fun you do you okay um and when you're first starting to budget um think about taking that fun money out in cash because when the cash is done my old roommate new york is to do this it was so annoying you'd be like let's get groceries and she'd be like i have seven dollars left for the week i always thought she was so anal i want to do that too and my mom actually does this she she like budgets for my sister who's like 35 years old it's hilarious but she actually does it in

envelopes like they do the cash and like for the fun stuff but i'm like but then i want like i want sky miles on my fun stuff like with my credit card i get in that trap where i don't want to pay anything in cash because i'm jewish and i love free fights well when you're first starting out and you can sort of like figure out what that 150 gets you and then you can sort of guesstimate but like guesstimating is not is gonna get you yeah you always go more you always i always go especially when you're drunk like it's so easy to swipe swipe for everybody i go i also wait till i'm drunk sometimes to buy things because then i don't feel like late nights on revolve That's like probably the worst advice ever.

Don't listen to Jack on this episode of shopping. I honestly don't know anything. Do not drink and shop. Seriously. And then that last $150 should go to the future, Jenny. So that's whatever you're saving for, like your end game. So your retirement, your savings, like you want to do a trip to Mexico. I don't care what you do.

Like just figure it out. And then on your savings account, you can actually create sub-savings accounts, which has helped a lot of people because you're visualizing what you're saving for because otherwise it just feels like a drag like i don't want to save more like i don't know where it's going some like a dark abyss but if you're like jenny's mexico vacation fun then you're like oh snap like i'm gonna go yeah i got 27 bikinis on the ladygang.com blog jack vanek i have another question there's a lot of girls out there who are freelancing and they don't know how much they're going to bring in every week every month every this how do you budget when you don't actually

know how like your earnings what they're going to be and also with small businesses too that are cyclical and like a lot of times they'll make the most money over the holidays and so it's just in the same way as you're hopefully with your car like figuring out how many repairs you need a year or how much your insurance is a year and then amortizing which is a fancy word to just say like figure out how much you know a week or how much a month you average for the entire year so you can break it down into smaller chunks so it's it's just about cost averaging and figuring out you know unfortunately when you start you're not going to be able to have a great gauge so try to be a little bit more conservative but like budgeting sucks but you know what sucks more not having

being broke being scared it's not even being poor because i've been very poor in my life It's the anxiety of like, I'm not going to be able to afford my rent or my food or like, I can't get the plane ticket or I'm scared. I can't go to the doctor if you don't have health insurance. Like the scaredness of my early twenties of being poor is like, I still get those anxieties where I'm like, I'm going to skip. I'm not getting a manicure this week. And then I said it there and I'm like, I'm not going to spend $25.

Like that's what I did today about buying a sweater. I was like, maybe I won't do it. Should I get it? I don't know. I know. I can afford it. It's like, but then it's like what you're talking about with dieting. it's like i'm gonna be an idiot and for three weeks i'm gonna be so stubborn and be like i'm

gonna save 25 a week and not get my nails done but i'm so but then i'm like but i'm gonna go spend 400 on a facial peel yeah because i'm so sick of saving or you're not gonna negotiate your credit card interest rates that could save you a lot more money so i think it's about changing your mindset and your finances will follow it's also focusing more from a place of abundance like if I make more, then I don't need to save as much really. Like if I focus on investing in Kelty, investing in Becca, investing in Jack, like I'm going to make more money than like nickel and diming and like, you know, trying to like clip here and there. So I think it's coming to a place from abundance and also like those, you know, envelopes that your family had too. It reminds

you that like that $7 for groceries or whatever Kelty that your roommate had, like that feels like real money versus just like the swipe effect and so you sort of when you start tracking everything you're spending it's sort of like my new kick where i'm telling women to stop saying i'm sorry because once you start like tracking how much you say i'm sorry it's crazy so once you start tracking it you'll see like how much what's good what's happening um i want to talk about credit cards because i am 34 years old and i'm still i'm so embarrassed to admit this I'm legitimately cannot understand how my credit card works. I know this is so stupid. Okay. So here's the deal. I have a credit card and I use it and I pay it off here. I pay it off every month

auto pay. Right. And then for a while I was like, well, it feels weird because it's like a month behind. So like I'll go and do, say I do a $2,000 auto pay. And I'm like, yeah, my credit card is zero. Like I'll pay it off in full. And then I get the bill next month. I'm like, it's another have two thousand dollars because it's like a month behind when you actually pay it off i'm so confused so anyway i have a question if i'm auto paying it or at least paying the minimum am i then paying the interest rate like i never see the interest charge on my credit card do i have a zero and i know i don't have a zero interest rate the best way i mean are you paying it off off like well here's my question like i'm either paying it off total and then for a while i was like no i'll

just pay a little bit because we were buying our house was i paying interest when i just paid the minimum if you pay the minimum you pay an interest like a ridiculous interest i'm this is mind blowing to me i can't believe that i have had the success in my life that i have had and this like you know what i mean like i'm not a dumb girl why don't i know this okay so unless you pay your credit card off in full every month you are paying some sort of interest so compounding interest too which is like we'll screw you in the how much interest is it it depends everybody's different it goes back to your credit score that's why i like that's credit score is so important because it's basically your what's compounding interest on my credit card oh god so just explain it tell

us the truth but here's the it's like it's like um i don't know what your interest rate is okay 15 say it's 15 15 on like but then it's 15 of that so they add the 15 month one and then it's 15% of the new total. So that's why investing is so awesome because it's compounding interest in your favor. Credit cards is like, you know, in some cases it can be criminal how high these interest rates are, especially for folks. 100% stuff. Yeah. Store cards can be ridiculous.

Like I have graphs and charts and stuff that show like a pair of socks can turn into several thousand dollars if you don't pay it off. Like compounding interest will. That's why it's like the number one thing you should pay off before anything else. So credit cards are like, don't be, you know, a lot of financial experts will say, cut up your credit cards and just be a debit devotee. That's not great because you do need to accumulate some credit. Even if you don't plan on buying a house, people are like, well, I don't want to do anything.

Employers also look at your credit score sometimes when you're buying an iPhone or whatever, they pull your credit score. So like when you rent an apartment, renting an apartment. Yeah. So having a good credit score is super important, but the best way to use credit cards, my most favorite perk of a credit card is the fact that you can dispute it so like if you have all your money on a debit card and someone jacks your stuff yeah like you don't have any yeah but with the credit cards like and if you have especially if you have the money you should be paying it off

like zero like goose egg every time yeah okay great i love that good to know good to know at 34 i have a question and i'm halfway through my work in life don't know how to credit card um i i have a question he'll do it's gonna be old bitch i'm writing my sequel old bitch yes old old ignorant bitch that's how i feel right now old dumb bitch my question and i'm sure i'm not the only one out there i'm sure there's so many girls out there who are dealing with this like and i've been this way my entire life from being having no money to having you know a good amount of money i get so terrified to to look at it like to go in and actually see like even to look at my credit card statement like i or my bank account or whatever it is it's like i

i have this thing where i'm like if i don't see it it's not there that's like if i don't see it it's not happening how do you change your ways and like just face it and it's not like i'm even acquiring i don't have debt but it's still just like the little things that i just like don't want to see how much i spend every month on my credit card i want to like pay it off and like never look back don't look money's scary it's so scary agreed and like if i am the least likely person to be a financial expert like i was as i said so clueless like i knew nothing i have been scared like i've been there that's why i was like there has to be a better way to talk about this because we're all freaked out and i think like burying your head in the sand like you know

especially when it comes to money there's no better way than just like putting on your big girl panties and just like dealing with it and like take a shot i don't care whatever you do like it sucks for everyone that's the thing like you're not alone like they call me some i have like some alphabet soup nonsense after my name for like financial certifications but like i was just as clueless like the most clueless of them all and if i could do it like anyone i tell you anyone can do it what's the critic score sorry good jack i was gonna say i think um also because i mean i know nothing about like financial anything that that's why it scares me and when you were talking about it before it was like in a place from like a powerful place where it's like

you know i'm taking initiative of this and like doing it rather than just being like oh god i'm so scared yeah i agree well i think a lot of women too they they only get their financial you know what together when they like get divorced or like their husband dies and like the truth is like you know just it's about like channeling this mentality more than anything else like it's your own mind it's your own negative thoughts that are screwing you the math is like what a fifth grader could do like the math of money is not scary it's the cultural interactions yeah it's the interpersonal stuff especially when we're with relationships 100 so weird um two more questions from our from our girls number one uh first one is what credit score should we have what's the

score the higher the better it's from 300 to 850 so like it's super competitive especially now like if you're trying to get a house so the higher the better like the closer to 800 um some of our mamas out there asked saving for children's school how much someone told me 500 per kid per month okay no so rich bitch says no so here's the deal with kids like i don't have them um i froze my eggs we could talk about this on a whole other podcast you're coming back the biggest thing to like focus on you know like kids and family is the thing that's going to affect your finances most as a mom i can only imagine you want to take care of your kid but it's like when you're on a plane put your oxygen mask on first before helping

others and so you know i'd ask this person and the answer is probably no because i've had this conversation 50 000 times like save for your retirement first max that out first like your kid might not even go to college like they're they should negotiate like a small rich bitch in the making should or whatever get scholarships deal with it get student like all that stuff like you will not be helping your kid if you show up to their couch like eating cat food when you're old like that's not helping anybody you want to take care of your kid take care of yourself that's such a good point that's like so i mean like people forget about that like my parents always said you know like if they weren't giving us things and we were being brats as like high

schoolers whatever college whatever they're like wouldn't you rather like do take care of some of this stuff on your own and make sure that like, we're going to be okay. And not showing up at your front door to be taken care of later because we've spoiled you so much. And we bought you houses and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, and that to me, as we're getting older is so important that I'm not going to have dependents being my parents because they were so smart in saving their money. Yeah. Well, here's the BS about retirement is that people will tell me, Oh, Nicole, like, no, no, I got my retirement. Like I have a 401k. I'm like, okay, sister, like 401k is not going to save the day in retirement like that's going to get you cat food

like i don't know what marketing genius has like made the 401k like the darling of the retirement world but like that's not going to save your life and guess what you have to pay taxes when you take that money out like people forget about that all the time they're like look at my juicy 401k i'm like by the way taxes are gonna go way up and like if you're not maxing out all of your options for you if you have a business and you have other options the sap a simple all super fun other ira options it's not like one you pick one and you max that out like all of them do all of them yeah the last thing was 401k versus roth ira so more the more the merrier i want to also let everyone know that i have a roth ira and i don't know how it works it's five thousand dollars a

year fifty five hundred is the max but is there like you make enough money that you can't give it to it anymore something yes um but you can always sort of transfer from another so there's this weird loophole where you can do in two steps what you can't do in one which is crap but whatever it still exists so you can you can contribute to a traditional and then um okay can you explain what they are 401k versus roth irate because i think a lot of people have no idea you guys know no clue okay no okay so would i god i'm so embarrassed for us no we're good look at all the things we're learning it makes me feel like i don't know any no we're learning but the only way to do it. Let's talk about it. Come on. Rich bitch cloud. 401k first. So 401k is through your

employer. Okay. So it's, you know, it's an employer, um, retirement account. And so you're contributing and you're paying, um, no tax. Um, so it accumulates, but you're paying tax when you take that money out. So that's the thing where on your paycheck, if you check in with your employer, if you make a thousand dollars a week and you're like, Ooh, it'll take $200 before you pay taxes. and then you'll only pay taxes on the 800 of your paycheck girl look at you i do have i had a 401k when i was a rocket thanks that was really nice you don't understand you spoke too fast okay so you don't pay tax well no but let's explain it maybe the girls didn't get it so like you so if you got sold a thousand dollars of jack vanek t-shirts a week and then you had a 401k it

would take money out of your and you wouldn't pay tax on it so it's like instead of making a hundred thousand dollars a year you'd actually make eighty thousand dollars a year you'd be taxed on eighty thousand instead of a hundred because it comes tax rate yep and then you and then that accumulates and then when you're an old sexy sexy beast when you're an old rich bitch irreverent what are we calling it what what did i call ignorant old ignorant bitch no girl nobody's ignorant here no everybody's a smart sexy sassy badassy rich bitch um and then the difference between a Roth. Okay. So there's also sometimes a Roth 401k option, which is where you, you should generally try to do that option if you have it from an employer, because you're paying taxes now.

I know you're like, why do I want to pay taxes now? Good question. But I would say I'm not a betting woman, but taxes are going to go up and bet on yourself because your tax bracket is probably going to be higher when you're older. So your tax bracket is probably lower now because you're, you're going to just keep making money. Stacks on stacks for everybody. So it's better. And in fact, it's better to, you know, diversify and have like different options, but do the Roth option. An IRA is an individual retirement account. And so, um, that goes with you wherever. I had no idea. It meant individual retirement. It's literally, I just thought it was code that's hilarious wow okay continue please Nicole so you can like depending on where you

work like if you work for yourself you have some super fun retirement like options that are solo 401k get excited I don't know what I have guys but if you work for somebody else you can also get like go to your bank and open up your own IRA and so it's as Kelty said 5,500 a year it's you can divide that in any way you want between a traditional and a Roth IRA so if you made like a million dollars you can still only put 5500 in there that's right but you also have other other options and you know a 401k max is much higher i think it's like 16 something yeah and then and so the same thing goes for that the tax diversification so roth pay tax now don't pay tax later i think when you're old you don't want to be paying the tax yeah that's right because you

want to just be on your island in costa rica okay well nicole it's clear that you're gonna have to come back again because I think we just skimmed the surface because now I have like a hundred questions but we do have to move on because there's other areas of the lady gang life we have to fix so when we come back Nicole is going to hang out and fix the other parts of your life that

she can't fix with a budget alright welcome back guys so for this part of our podcast you're going to help our listeners answer their questions about non finance related things okay what'd you do i cut her open with my cord and kelty is messing everything up sorry um yeah so you're gonna help everybody answer we have questions about love life relationships business we're not good at it no no we're pretty bad i think all together like

we could be an adult one adult yeah there's one we will maybe one yeah i don't know what i'd bring to the table but i'm gonna think about it okay do your best becca before we start if you guys want 20 off of jack vanek.com use code lady gang at checkout and if you guys have us a question have us a question you guys have a question for us you can write it in at the lady gang.com and you can be anonymous if you want if it's juicy if it's juicy juice all right our first question comes from hannah she says one of my childhood friends is getting married in three weeks and i have not received an invitation i received to save the date a few months ago an invitation to the bridal shower we don't live in the same town and i was unable to attend the shower

due to other obligations but i'm sending a gift it looks like i'm no it looks like i'm no longer invited right after she got engaged she told me i better be at her wedding i would love to hear y'all's opinion on how to handle this situation she doesn't want you there what what do you think yeah well if you don't get invited you don't get invited people ponder over their wedding list so much but she gotta save the date oh maybe it got lost in the mail that's what i'm thinking i had that just happened to me this summer i gotta save the date and then i never got an invitation and i had to ask my friend to like super sleuth and be like is kelty still invited she was like yeah and she had the wrong postal code yeah maybe ask a friend close to the bride to like do you a solid

and just ask or if you guys are close enough just text and be like listen i got to save the date but i didn't receive the invitation and be passive aggressive i don't care either way but i don't really want to go anyways yeah yeah if she got to save the date and she i mean i'm talk to her at her engagement i think that she's yeah i'm tacky but i would never say send a save the date if you were on like a not definitely on the list that's kind of whatever okay oh no lady drama yeah i don't do girl drama okay all right our next question comes from brit and she says my good friend recently got in a car accident oh this is so bleak you guys yeah this is pretty bad p.s she so this girl did not get hurt in this car accident her car just had a dent in the front bumper and

the very next day her parents bought her a brand new 2016 car because of it she keeps talking about it and posting it all over instagram and i'm honestly annoyed by this does this make me a bad person it's not so much that she's getting new things it's about the excessive bragging first of all you should never buy a new car nicole just told us that yes come to it from the financial perspective why are you so dumb it's such a better perspective than maybe that'll make her feel better no no it won't because her parents bought it who cares yeah she doesn't I mean I've talked about this all the time I hate the bragging on social media but like sometimes people just do it and you just have to deal with it also like how much is she posting about it

Is this the Ferrari? Like, are you Kylie Jenner and you bought Tyga, like, a Lamborghini? Like, I don't know. Maybe that's the only thing she has going for her life. That's what I'm finding, too, with my friends is the ones that are, like, kind of struggling. They're overcompensating on social media. It's the ones that are posting the inspirational quotes. Like me.

I love them. Yeah, Nicole. We're the same. I knew there was a reason I invited you. What do you think? See, you're super positive. You two get it with the positivity. You do.

But I think I tend to, like, under-brag. like i'd rather show like the nastiness than i don't know the fanciness like makes me very uncomfortable like it's also i'm on a boat i mean if i was on a yacht okay also i don't feel like your friendship's gonna last forever but you'll be fine okay her last question comes from she's annoying you now on like instagram this is not your lifelong friend it's fine her last question comes from v vayette i don't know how to pronounce your name but it's pretty she says recently i've been really doubting who my inner person is many times i've had panic attacks that were very scary and i wondered to myself who am i i really developed who i am through my style but that's

what i'm always changing i was goth bohemian chic and many other things but i never felt like i fit into those titles what should i what should i do when trying to find my style sweatpants well but jack why don't you take everyone down memory lane of all your looks well my scene kid days but i'm still an inner scene kid i'm always a scene kid on the inside so you don't even know what that means yes i was trying to sneak backstage and yeah i was a scene queen oh my girlfriend's daughter by the way is two years old and we just asked her um daphne os who's lovely and adorable and has a new book too she said are you a princess she's like no I'm a king I think girl you just be whoever you want to be some days

I'm like an athleisure sports girl some days I'm in a gown some days I'm like in a lady boss blazer and a pointy toe pump you can be all the things you don't have to just be bohemian all the things I think even though that's one's the easiest to wear without underwear so this is such a deep question like she's doubting who her inner person is like your inner person is much more than what you're wearing on your body like the inner person that you are is probably a very like loyal and you know fun and thoughtful and generous like there's probably all these very very very good qualities that make you you and you should tap into what those are and that means you can wear whatever you want those things will always be there that was the nicest thing you've ever said

on this podcast it felt really weird haters gonna hate on itunes yeah she is i went to Bali this summer. Isn't that like a pretty life-changing experience? It sort of did. And I'll give her the cliff notes of it. They have these bracelets that are like three braced strings smooshed together. And that's what you should do to find your balance is realize you have

different personas. You're Kelty the wife, Kelty the host, Kelty the podcaster, Kelty the friend, Kelty whatever. And so like you have a lot of faces and it's about like stringing them together and just realizing you're just one you. I think that when you're young you do go through that like struggle

where you're like well you're trying to fit into a certain group too so it's like once you kind of decide what your likes and interests and things that make like your soul happy rather than just like looking in a mirror i feel like that's when you'll actually find who you were anyways true happiness true happiness is over on our instagram right now you guys the lady gang um because nicole's book rich bitch is being given away to one of you right now she's about to open it up and sign it it's a new york times best-selling um book and it has all the things we talked about and so much more. You guys are going to love it.

I absolutely loved reading it. I learned a lot from Nicole. Nicole, where can everyone find you on social media to follow along? At Nicole Lappin. Yep. All over the place. Yep.

L-A-P-P-I-N. And we're going to tag her. Lappin making it happen. And what's the site? Lappin making it happen. Is it just NicoleLappin.com? Yeah. NicoleLappin.com.

And you have like little blogs and stuff up there and all that like interesting information. Super fun thing. Guys, follow us at The Lady Gang, at It's Becca Tobin, at Jack Vanek, at Kelty Knight.

Make sure you go on over to iTunes. review and I want to hear what you thought of our expert episode. We're very excited about it. And on that note, see you next Tuesday. Yay! Join the Lady Gang every Tuesday at iTunes

and at PodcastOne.com That's PodcastONE.com Thanks for listening.