Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Let's Strike About It

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

On today's weekly roundup of the headlines and how they affect your finances, Nicole tells you everything you need to know about the current labor strikes. All of them. Want to start investing, but don't know where to begin? Go to moneyassistant.com and meet Magnifi, your AI money assistant, designed to help you make a plan for your financial goals. Want one-on-one money coaching from Nicole? Book a meeting with her here: intro.co/moneynewsnetwork 

I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash. But I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start, or even too complicated, if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full-time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you.

I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself.

Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. Here's your weekly roundup of the headlines and how they affect your finances. This summer has a lot of stories about labor and the labor market. Right now, the labor market is tight. The unemployment rate currently sits around 4%, which is very good. It means that most people who want a job have a job. Now,

the job market is not quite as good as it was coming out of the pandemic, but it's still strongly in favor of the worker. And this means that workers have more power to demand better working conditions, higher wages. The natural outgrowth of this is that we've seen a lot of organizing around labor over the last year or so, and that really came to head this summer. You would have to be asleep all summer to miss the dominant labor story, the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild going on strike. The basic story here is that the way that the film and TV industry works has radically changed. When these guilds were first formed, people would be in a show, the show would have a few seasons, it would go into syndication, then it would live on forever

and ever in late night reruns. The actors, the writers, producers, directors would all get residuals. It's a royalty payment every time the episode they appeared in was played on TV. This system worked very well. It made some people very, very rich. It also created a middle class of camera operators, makeup artists, and others who didn't receive residuals but were well paid for the shows when they were first created. Then streaming came along and disrupted, well, everything. The ways that people at the top of the income hierarchy were paid changed. And then everyone else down the line made less money too.

And those pay issues were compounded by fears of the writers that AI would replace writing gigs on set and threaten job security. Both unions have stood very strong and their members have too. As a result, the corporations who work in this industry are starting to report serious losses. Warner Brothers Discovery alone is reporting $500 million in negative economic impacts. In the past, big entertainment companies have replaced scripted shows with reality television. Now, enter our friend Bethany Frankel, a former cast member, of course, on The Real Housewives of New York. Bethany had started to speak up about the need for reality stars to create their own union. Now, Bethany is an interesting case. Now, she is a boss business

woman who has been able to parlay her success on The Real Housewives into broader financial success with her Skinny Girl brand, line of products, and speaking fees. She has been such a successful entrepreneur that Bravo now includes something called the Bethany Clause in their contracts. Under this clause, the network takes 10% of any business venture that participants or contestants create as a result of the success of the show. That's 10%. So that's 10% of the businesses that cast members create. But that deal doesn't swing the other way. The network can basically slap any catchphrase from the show on any old piece of merch and profit without reimbursing the participants. While people at the Bethany or, say, Snooki

level are profiting off their participation in these programs, most are not. And as Bethany has pointed out, she doesn't get residuals like a normal TV show star. Her union calls haven't really gone anywhere, but it does point out an interesting pay dynamic where reality show stars make big money for networks but aren't compensated the same way as actors. Now, actors represent a unique set of workers. There's no George Clooney, but George Clooney. And reality TV shows represent the opposite problem. There will always be more bachelors lining up to replace the old cast, far more than they can ever use. But there's another group of workers that falls somewhere between George Clooney and

the Bachelor contestants. And those are our friends who are rural postal delivery people. Working for the post office used to be a decent job. It was a government job. It came with health insurance benefits and was considered a sensible career. Now, over the years, the job has become less desirable because of the changes to the way the retirement plan is funded, which has resulted in a lot of instability and funding shortfalls for the Postal Service. USPS has also been struggling since Amazon started

doing its own deliveries. So these issues were already coming to a boil. And then the Postal Service announced a plan to recalculate the way rural mail carriers are paid. The post office used to use an incredibly high tech way of charting the efficiency of rural mail carriers down to using GPS to chart the steps they took between the mailbox and their car. If you have ever though tried to use GPS deep into the country, you know how well that has probably worked out. So after this system went into place and the algorithm determined everyone's new hours, 66% of rural mail carriers had their pay and hours cut.

And this means that mail carriers, who again traditionally had been considered in the good jobs category, are now suddenly struggling to pay their bills and scrambling to find second jobs. are now suddenly struggling to pay their bills and scrambling to find second jobs. These workers do have a union, but they are so mad that their union didn't do more to protect them that they're organizing to decertify and potentially dissolve the union. This would be an unusual step in a world where workers across the spectrum are increasingly organizing with the goal of unionizing, even in the face of serious resistance from the organizations they work for. Meanwhile, workers at the dating app Grindr were forced out en masse this week in a move that many employees felt was retaliation for organizing. The company gave workers two weeks to comply with their new return to office policy. However, many workers were

remote and were unable or unwilling to move close enough to go into the office with just two weeks notice. The policy change was announced two weeks after Grindr employees started unionizing. The timing is sus, and retaliating against unionizing employees is technically illegal, so this could be only the beginning of the story. Outside of labor issues, Elon Musk has changed the tagline of the app formerly known as Twitter to Blaze Your Glory. What does that mean? I truly don't know. What I do know is that hackers scammed 500 grand in cryptocurrency on the app formerly known as Twitter by hacking into the account of one of the co-founders of Ethereum. Since Musk wants to turn this app into an everything app with

a financial component, this crisis suggests that X has a long way to go before they are ready to safely start accepting people's money. This week will also be a few new IPOs, or initial public offerings, out there. The big moment the company goes public, think debutante ball, but for stocks. Instacart, the grocery delivery service, and ARM, the chip maker, are both expected to launch this week, although in the case of Instacart, at a reduced price from what many expected. This sort of tempered optimism is also reflected in the bond market, where many companies have been rushing to get into a fundraising round. Companies are borrowing at rates not seen since April 2020. This is a mixed

indicator, though. It suggests that companies are optimistic about their overall future and potential expansion while also very worried about the Fed's next meeting and the possibility that they will raise interest rates yet again. So this all makes this sort of funding round that they're all frantically engaged in way more expensive. For today's tip, you can take straight to the bank. Recently, former employees of the old Bed Bath & Beyond reported that they took a significant hit to their 401 s as part of the bankruptcy proceedings. Retirement funds are protected during bankruptcy, but in this case, some plans were heavily

invested in bonds, which were liquidated and sold at a loss. So if you have a 401, please protect yourself by checking your asset allocation and also make sure you're not too heavily invested in your own company's stock. I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash, but I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high

quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoie.

Our researcher is Emily Holmes. Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions, moneyrehabatmoneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagram at Money News and TikTok at Money News Network for exclusive video content. And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.