Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Why The Stock Market is Swiping Left on Dating Apps

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

On today's weekly roundup of the biggest headlines and how they affect your finances, Nicole explains: how the WeWork bankruptcy could affect your finances (even if you don't work at a WeWork!), why dating apps are struggling, and why Mint went extinct.

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every occasion, and every celebration. Be sure to check them out at justinwine.com and receive 20% off your order for a limited time. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. All right, it's time for the money news roundup of the week, where we take a look at the top money stories and check in to see how they're impacting your wallet. And we're going to dive right into your wallet actually with our first story. Mint, the budgeting app, will shut down at the end of the year. Mint's parent company, Intuit, also owns Credit Karma and they're trying to get users to replace Mint with Credit Karma.

Unfortunately, Credit Karma doesn't have the budgeting tools though that made Mint such a great app over the years, leaving many users looking for an alternative. What Credit Karma does have over Mint is a pretty decent profit margin. Despite having millions of active users and being a pretty great app, Mint has always struggled to make money themselves. But Mint isn't the only app in the news right now. Dating apps in general have been struggling to find users. Now, dating apps have always been a bit of a weird business model. If their product works, you delete it because you found your partner. While they have tried various different strategies to hold onto users after they find love, none of them have been as successful. This leaves companies dependent on new users

to sustain their business. So it's bad news for them that 79% of college students across the country report having never actually used dating apps in a recent survey. While it could be that they still have ample chances to meet partners in person and just don't need apps, it could also represent a larger shift in dating culture, which is probably good for the college students, but bad for companies like Tinder and Bumble. Bumble has suffered from a very bumpy run since it went public in 2021. In the first week of being publicly traded, the share price rocketed to $78.89, blasting Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolf-Herd, best name ever, into the position of being the youngest self-made female billionaire. She's since lost her billionaire status and her job actually as CEO,

with the stock price sliding all the way down to the $12 range in the early part of this week, and Wolf heard announcing that she's going to be stepping down as CEO and becoming executive chairwoman. The speculation is that she's stepping down in part because Bumble failed to expand beyond the world of dating apps, which remember, if they work, you delete them into a broader business model. Bumble released its earnings on Tuesday and things weren't looking so good. Revenue was down for the quarter and the year, and the company failed to meet its projected targets. Bumble isn't the only company that went public, though, in 2021, facing upheaval and sliding fortunes. WeWork started this week by filing for bankruptcy. Now, we've talked about WeWork a lot on the show before, so I'm going to keep it short.

WeWork's founder is a wild dude. Think leaving a cereal box full of weed on a private jet, wild. There is a bunch of stuff about the company that's funny to read from the outside, but High Key probably made working there when he was in charge a real nightmare. While the founder, Adam Neumann, is no longer in charge, the company is still struggling. WeWork was restructured for rapid expansion in a world with very cheap debt. That meant that in the late 2010s, they signed a huge number of leases and they took on a ton of leverage or debt. They were fully okay with the company not making any money for years because it was assumed that they would make money. Eventually. Then, COVID happened and the structure of work changed forever. But working from home

and broader reshuffling wasn't the only change. Suddenly, borrowing money wasn't as cheap anymore and companies needed to make money. WeWork tried. They tried to cut deals to reduce their properties and restructure their debt, but it wasn't enough, and last month the company failed to make interest payments totaling $95 million. Because WeWork has such a large footprint in cities and especially struggling downtown areas, this story is bigger than just a crazy founder and a company that grew too quickly and took on too much debt. Even in big cities like New York and London, WeWork was a big player. We don't know exactly how this bankruptcy is going to impact the commercial real estate market as a whole, but we can guess that it's not going

to be good. One of the sort of background themes and concerns this year has been a possible commercial real estate crash. It hasn't happened despite commentators being worried about it since last spring, but it is a complex market with so many moving parts. But having a major player declare bankruptcy in an already vulnerable market is not good. If you've invested in or are thinking about investing in any mutual funds focused on commercial real estate or your pension fund is heavily invested in commercial real estate, now is the time to take a good long look at those holdings and think about how you want to move forward. And if you're still investing in NFTs and bored apes, it is probably time to get your eyes checked. Back when it was still Twitter, crypto believers would often have profile pictures featuring laser eyes. Because we live in the wildest timeline,

that joke just got a little bit more real this weekend when attendees of ApeFest, that's a meeting group for bored ape holders, reported vision problems and eye pain after the party. Apparently, the stage lights were so poorly done that they actually injured several festival goers. At this time, it looks like no permanent damage has been done, but maybe if you are still going to parties centered around a meme from three years ago. I am no doctor, but maybe don't just get your eyes checked, get your head checked. For today's tip, you can take straight to the bank. When was the last time you checked in on your pension fund? If you're lucky enough to have a job that offers one of these plans,

it can be easy to assume that it's just going to cover all of your needs in retirement. And it may, but it may not. So take some time before the new year to figure out how much money you can expect to make in retirement and if that's enough to meet your needs. While sitting down and reviewing it can seem so intimidating, not having enough money in retirement is way scarier. Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Levavoie. 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,

moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.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.