More Money Podcast - How to Claim Your Financial Power in a Broken System - Author of Rich Girl Nation, Katie Gatti Tassin

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

For my final guest interview for Season 20 (don't worry, I've got one more solo episode airing tomorrow), I am so thrilled to have financial content creator and writer Katie Gatti Tassin on the More Money Podcast to talk about how to claim your financial power when it feels like everything is working against you. Because if you're a woman, the data doesn't lie. There are a lot of things making it harder to build wealth and achieve financial independence. There's the gender wage gap, unfair hiring processes and unconscious (or conscious) biases at every step of the corporate ladder, and financial advice that was developed for men by men.Katie has been very vocal about these topics on her Money with Katie podcast and newsletter, and she dives even deeper into them in her debut book Rich Girl Nation: Taking Charge of Our Financial Futures, which we explore in this episode. For full episode show notes visit jessicamoorhouse.com/434Follow meInstagram @jessicaimoorhouseThreads @jessicaimoorhouseTikTok @jessicaimoorhouseFacebook @jessicaimoorhouseYouTube @jessicamoorhouseLinkedIn - Jessica MoorhouseFinancial resourcesMy websiteMy bestselling book Everything but MoneyFree resource libraryBudget spreadsheetWealth Building Blueprint for Canadians course Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to the More Money Podcast. I am your host Jessica Morehouse and this is the final podcast interview for season 20 of the show. Tomorrow I'll be dropping my season finale, which is going to be a solo episode to officially celebrate 10 years of the podcast. But I'm so thrilled to have my next guest on the show for this very special episode because she's just doing some incredible work in the personal finance space and has for years. And very exciting, she has her first book coming out, Rich Girl Nation, taking charge of our financial futures. I'm of course talking about Katie Gaddy,

founder of Money with Katie, which is a podcast, a newsletter and social media community and so much more. Now in this episode, we're going to talk about why she wants to encourage more women to become part of the rich girl nation, which is just to say, help empower women to take charge of their financial lives, protect their wealth,

and most importantly, get rich so they can have long and financially secure lives. And I think as women, we all want that. I think men want that too. I think everyone wants that. Who doesn't want that? So we really talk about that. What I love about Katie is she brings her data. She brings her statistics.

She really knows her stuff and does her research. So we're going to kind of go into the weeds a little bit and you're going to love it because I sure did. So without further ado, let's get to that episode with Katie. Welcome Katie to the More Money Podcast. Thanks so much for joining me. Very excited about this particular interview because I've been following you along your journey for a while. I actually didn't realize how long it is. I guess time flies how long you've been doing this. Right. So I'm thrilled to have you on the show, especially as my last interview for season 20 in my 10th year of the More Money podcast. Very special. Congratulations.

Thank you. And excited to have you fellow podcaster and just someone who, you know, as I was reading your book, I could see a lot of myself in it, which is so wild. You know, it's amazing to see what you've been able to create. And you have your first book coming out, Rich Girl Nation, Taking Charge of Our Financial Futures, which when I say this, you know, sometimes onto the podcast, part of the joy of having this show is I read a lot of books and it's always really special when I read one that does feel different. You're like, oh great, I haven't read this one before, literally. And so, you know, props to you for really, you know, saying something different when

it feels like everything's already kind of been said in one way or another. So I think this is a really special book. So congratulations. Thank you so much for saying that. That really means a lot to me. Yeah. I mean, there are so many personal finance books on the market and I read most of them. I was like, I don't want to just publish the same thing that someone else has already said 10 times over. And I do feel like we did that. I think the overarching goal for the book was to really marry a cultural criticism and a systemic critique with really rigorous financial advice and taking things beyond the basics, but at no point allowing either one of those goals to kind of overpower the other.

And so 18 months of writing and editing later, here we are. Here we are, damn. So I'm curious, actually, since you said that, I think that's part of the reason that I really liked when I kind of saw you pop up online and like, oh, what's she got to say? And you were saying something, you were already saying something very different. Why did you, you know, I'm just curious what your perspective

is. Cause you are, you, you don't really shy away from certain topics, whereas maybe some other financial content creators do. Why did you want to make sure that this book is going to kind of, you know, we're going to talk about, you know, why women earn less, why people of color earn less, why we can talk about negotiation, but also you can do everything in the world and it still may not work because of all these systemic issues that unfortunately I don't have the answers, no one has the answers to right now. Why did you really want to make sure that got into the book? And do you feel like there

is still, like a lot of people still aren't talking about it? I think people are talking about it, but in a superficial way. I think we often get really comfortable in some of the talking points, about 83 cents on the dollar, or XY group is oppressed. And I think that if you count yourself among a certain political orientation,

you wouldn't think twice about those statements. But what I really wanted to do was spend some time teasing apart how that functionally works, because I think in order to actually change these things, we have to have a really robust understanding of why they are happening in the first place and take it beyond just simple subjective interpersonal biases, because those do exist, but the idea that we can just shift things at the cultural level, we can just address interpersonal bias

and everything will be fine is a bit of a fantasy. And so I wanted to take it up that level to systems thinking of, okay, I didn't include this in the book, but take a country like Norway, for example, how did they close or work to close their gender wage gap? Well, they didn't host conferences about female empowerment. They just made paid maternity and paternity leave mandatory. So they made fathers leave the workforce

to care for their kids. And what do you know, the second or third order knock on effect of that is that now you have a dual caregiver society and women are not treated as the de facto unpaid laborers. So I think that really getting into the granularity of what drives these trends and why they're so entrenched, that was really important to me.

Because even if we as individuals in our personal day-to-day lives don't have any control over paid paternity leave policy, I do think that it's important to be aware of the forces that are acting on you, because they make you really contend realistically with what is within your sphere of influence and what is not. What should you be holding yourself accountable to and what really is not your fault?

Yeah, and I know you talked to, there's a part that you mentioned that early on in your kind of financial journey, I did the exact same thing. We all read Lean In, we all thought it was, oh, I just have to lean in, it's a me problem. And the whole girl boss thing, which is exciting. You're like, oh cool, I can be a boss.

And then it kind of turned into something really, I don't know, for better work, icky, or just like, just very, yeah, vapid. It didn't actually give us any tools. Yeah, it kind of became cringe because I think people were like, oh yeah, this doesn't fix anything. No, just giving me a label of CEO is actually now it makes me feel like I'm not actually a CEO. You know, and I think for, I'm curious too though, because I find it interesting,

like you've got your community that you called rich girl nation. I sometimes have issues with the terms girl and that's my own thing being called you're just a girl or oh, do you just teach like women about money as if it's worse than teaching just like everybody, you know, like, oh, that's like a second tier kind of thing. And I'm always been like fighting like, no, I'm not just a woman. I'm actually more than that. I'm always curious, especially with you very much are like, I want to help women. Obviously, anyone can join into party, but this is who I see there's a big great need in terms of financial education. How do you balance some of these ideas? Because I think there's so many conflicting feelings about I want to be empowered as a

woman but also I don't want to kind of get into some of these tropes that have maybe held some women back. So let's start with the name. When I started Money with Katie, it was around the same time that the song Hot Girl Summer was getting really big and it was everywhere. I was in that time in my life really trying to pare back on my hot girl expenses. And so in one kind of tongue in cheek video, I was like, no, no, no, no, no, it's not a hot girl summer. It's a rich girl summer. We're going to be

rich girls, not hot girls. So it was a play on words that then just kind of stuck and Rich Girls as the moniker kind of became the like rallying cry. But as we were deciding the title of the book, we wanted to tap into that long standing inside joke with the community. But I agree because I did have a little bit of consternation around people who don't know this origin story might think that we're doing the same thing when in reality it's a little bit ironic. It's a little bit satirical, but just a little. So that's that.

I think when it comes to just offering money advice to women versus why not do it for all people. At a high level, we know that personal finance and investment best practices will be the same for everybody. However, the majority of personal finance books have been written by men, which means they have been shaped in subtle and overt ways by the average man's experience. And this is something that I joke about in chapter one where I'm like, why aren't Brad and Jonathan and Nick and Joey and, you know, I'm listing all these men's names, whose personal finance blogs I read.

I'm like, why aren't they talking about how to save money on highlights? It's like, okay, obviously we all know the answer to that. But the reality is that women do experience money differently. Statistically, we know they are going to run into different obstacles. And so when I spent years looking at this data, it just kind of became obvious to me that like, well, obviously we're going to need a different strategy. So to kind of run through what I consider to be the most pressing drivers of the gender wealth gap, You have the beauty and personal care industries, which we've already alluded to,

industries that almost exclusively market their products to women and manufacture insecurities that then you need to pay to fix. Oh, by the way, it's a moving target. Every year, the trend is different. So you can never achieve it. You just have to keep pursuing it. The average woman as of 2017 is going to spend $300 a month year, the trend is different. So you can never achieve it. You just have to keep pursuing it. The average woman as of 2017 is going to spend $300 a month on trying to hit that moving target. Over a 40-year career opportunity cost, we're talking a million dollars. So not insignificant. Then we have the fact that now, for a long time, there was like a narrative that women just negotiated less. And if women negotiate more, women negotiate more aggressively, they will close the have the fact that now for a long time there was like a narrative that women just negotiated

less and if women negotiate more, women negotiate more aggressively, they will close the gender wage gap. Not true. Women negotiate just as often as men do, but they are 15% less likely to be successful within that negotiation and the advice to be aggressive and directly ask and demand your worth. Well, that doesn't work for women because both men and women penalize women who behave that way because we are socialized to expect different behavior for women. What's interesting to me is that men who try to negotiate for time off or flexibility or more family time, they will also be penalized more than a woman would for asking for

those same things. So really, it's about behaving in a gender incongruent way, the way the gender binary traps all of us in this hellish, narrow lane. Then, of course, you have the motherhood penalty. So the reality that as women become parents, as women become caretakers, they are going to face a more challenging road in their career than male caretakers will, again, because of socialization, because of expectations, because of policy failure. Women are doing even breadwinning women roughly twice as much unpaid domestic labor in their homes. That's crazy. And if we don't think that that is going to impact

women's financial outcomes, we're kidding ourselves. And then you have the very boring but important fact that women just live longer. So if you have an average 6.5% longer lifespan, well, your portfolio actually needs to last 6.5% longer, which means it probably needs to last six and a half percent longer, which means it probably needs to be invested a little bit differently. You need to start investing earlier.

These are things that it's just the reality of how compounding works. Because the vast majority of widows in the US are women, something like 84%. That means that every married woman who never gets divorced, eight and 10 of them, will still need to know how to manage their money because they will eventually be doing it on their own. So you take all of that and you layer these disparities on top of each other, they compound over your lifetime.

And then what do you get? Well, you have women retiring with 57% as much income on average. So to me, I feel and fear those same tropes and I think about them all the time. But at the end of the day, I just couldn't ignore the statistical realities. And I was seeing this from people all the time, women who would reach out to me. I mean, I'd see their stories reflecting this data. And it just felt really important that we address all of these different elements in one place. No, I mean, I completely agree. And I think, too, I've encountered so many women who have

tried to do kind of the most traditional personal finance advice that's there and then it doesn't work for them. And you're like, why is it? Is it a me problem? It's like, no, it's probably a system problem. And I've had personal experiences too where I'm like, I know I was capable and all this stuff and I never was able to get a raise or a promotion any of my corporate gigs. Why was that?

Now that I run my own business much more successful, maybe it was the system that was holding me back, not me not working hard enough. And often, I think as women, yeah, sometimes it's easier to rationalize that you're like, well, I just need to lean in more, work harder. And you're like, there's actually all this data that shows it's probably all these other things that, like you said, aren't discussed because most personal finest books or investing books are still written by men and they have probably no idea what's going on. Yeah. And I think that there's like a certain, as counterintuitive as it sounds, I think there's a certain comfort in believing that if you just lean in harder or that it is all your fault,

that in some ways actually is more comforting than believing the opposite, believing that this might actually be outside of your control in some sense or that not that you're not capable of navigating it or improving your situation. I always want to be very careful about how I present that, but that you might be finding yourself in those challenges and be faced with that limited set of choices, not because of anything that you did, but because of some broader systemic force that just kind of again, statistically funnels people into these different outcomes.

I want to talk since we kind of touched on negotiation, you learned a lot about that in the negotiation that you made with your current. Do you want to kind of explain what your current was it like, you you work for yourself, but you work for a company or it's kind of it's I don't I don't know too many other people that have that kind of structure, but I think it's super interesting. And well done you. Do you want to kind of explain how you learned a ton about negotiation during that experience? Sure, I've gotten a real crash course

in the last five years. So prior to starting Money with Katie, I worked for big corporations and those corporations had big compliance departments. So if you've ever negotiated with like a major HR department, you know that they are authorized to offer a handful of things. And then there are some things that below a certain level

are really not on the table and are not negotiable. So I had never really negotiated before outside of just kind of your basic base compensation, bonus or stock type terms. Well, when you become a business owner, you end up on the other side of the table from people who often do know a lot more than you, have a lot more experience than you, and you have to negotiate, oftentimes, deals with them. oftentimes deals with them. And so when I was going through the process of talking with Morning Brew about acquiring Money with Katie, I didn't know anyone that had ever sold a business before. So I was trying-

Just to get people some context, why? Because you started your own thing, Money with Katie, on your own. And then how did Morning Brew kind of come into it? Did you started your own thing, Money with Katie, on your own. And then how did how did Morning Brew kind of come into it? Did you approach them? And why did you want to partner with someone instead of just do it on your own? So I started Money with Katie in March 2020 or April 2020. It was very early on. I think it was, yeah, it was April, April 2020. And I did it on my own until about October, November 2021. So I don't know, 18 months. And it was at that point that the CEO of Morning Brew reached out to me and explained that they were trying to build up like a creator program, that they wanted to have creators

in-house and effectively said, we would like to buy your brand, but we want to hire you to run that brand within the morning brew umbrella. And so I didn't immediately jump at this because at the time I was having so much fun with Money with Katie and things were going so well that I was a little bit nervous about rocking the boat. I was like, well, I'm not really looking for an exit. And this wasn't an exit. I mean, I was still going to continue to do it. So I went back and forth on that a lot. And what I learned in retrospect is that I negotiated a pretty strong deal in so far as compensation, share of overall revenue,

et cetera, just kind of on accident, to be honest with you. It was basically me going, okay, how much am I making this? How much am I making doing this on my own? And how much am I making doing my full-time job? I'm basically gonna put those two numbers together, increase it by 10 or 20% and then say, that's what I want. So that's what we did. But in retrospect, I left the most valuable thing

on the table. And this is something that I talk about in chapter two of Rich Girl Nation, which is that if you are selling a business to somebody else, remember that the intellectual property is the gold. So don't get blinded or short-sighted by the money they're willing to pay you now if it means that you're going to have to forego access to your own IP in perpetuity. So the first time we did this deal, it was basically an asset transfer. It was a sale. So I no longer, I was an employee of Morning Brew who owned money with Katie. When we went to renegotiate that contract, when the first

term ended, I basically said, we need to build in a term that says what'll happen if I want to leave. I need to be able to buy this back from you in some capacity. Yeah, it's not really worth a ton to you without me, but I also don't want to have to start over and I've spent five years now building this brand. I don't want to lose it, but as a business owner, you have way more latitude than if you are within someone else's company. That's just the reality of it. There's drawbacks and benefits to both paths. I think for the stage that I was in at the time, it was the right decision

because I wasn't ready to be fully self-employed. I was honestly scared of that level of instability. So being able to be W2 and still have upside and have healthcare and be plugged into a larger media organization that does $70 million a year in revenue that had professionals who I could learn from. That was definitely what I needed. And I think now as a more experienced entrepreneur and someone that's been doing it for a while and has been on the inside and seen how it works, now I do feel more comfortable that someday I will be able and it will be the

right time to move on and do this by myself or do something different and I won't be too scared to do it. Oh yeah. If you could do all of that, you can absolutely do it on your own if you want to but it's interesting to hear just a different perspective because a lot of the people that I know in the content creation space, they do it on their own. And yet, like you said, there's pros and cons. Sometimes it would be nice to have a team where you can tap into some of their resources

and stuff like that. And I think that's definitely kind of amazing to see what you've been able to do with those resources, including writing your first book, which is really exciting. So I want to talk a little bit about now some of the kind of core things that you talk to your audience and that are in your book. Investing is one of the biggest ones. That's something that I feel like I've been talking more about that than say budgeting because I don't know about you, but yeah, when I just started in personal finance, it

felt like budgeting was for women, investing was for men. And it's like, yeah, we need to, we all need to invest and go beyond budgeting. So, you know, when you talk to women, especially you kind of already touched on this, it's like, this is why investing is so important. You need to actually probably start sooner than you think or than men, because you are going to live longer. And we also have all these extra things that we have to spend money on. I mean, when you were talking about the kind of, you know, how much we have to spend on makeup and it always drives me crazy when like, man, it's like, you don't have to wear makeup. Like you don't understand. I actually do. I would not get hired if I was not wearing makeup all the time. And I was just before this, I'm like, Oh, I wonder if I have time to

find out how much do I actually spend per year on makeup? I'm like, I'll look up that later. It's probably way too much. And what would that mean if I just invested that? I would love to know. I will let you know after I compile all that. I was just looking at my Sephora and there is at least like six orders for last year and I don't just buy one thing for order. So it's, it's going to be the, if not thousands. So we will see. But anyways, going back to investing, what are some of the core things that you want women specifically to know about investing? What I do love is you did talk about how, and I see this a lot with US, I'm based out of Canada, US creators is they talk all about like, but just buy an S&P 500 index fund, you're good.

And for me as a Canadian, I'm like, that is wild for you to say, because there's a whole world out there that you need to invest. Why is diversification, especially something that you feel is so important for investors to actually know? Because it doesn't, like, I feel like, yeah, people just don't talk about it. You're like, this is one of the core principles of being a smart investor. I don't get it. Well, I think if you're a US citizen, you're kind of living right now through why it's important to diversify out of one economy because boy can things change quickly. So I think the predominant argument, let's start with why someone would only invest in the

S&P 500 and what the predominant argument for that path is. Well, typically what they're going to say is that you're diversified enough in an S&P 500 index fund because you own 500 companies. How much more diversified could you get, right? And there is a kernel of truth to that, but I feel as though that glosses over the fact that this index is cap-weighted. So it's not as though you own 500 equally sized bits of different companies. You own roughly, I mean, 25% of that fund is just tech and just American tech. So we'll start there, right? The cap weighted issue is big. The second thing that I think I would point to is that I think that argument is driven by both

recency bias and American exceptionalism. Because of the US dollar's status as the reserve currency. The US government basically has like an infinite money spigot, they can make as much money as they want. There will always be a demand for it because oil trades in dollars, all financial transactions have to be converted to dollars. So in any case, a lot of the quantitative easing that has happened in the US in the last two decades has flowed into asset prices, which has propped up the US stock market and made the returns

look abnormally good. Now, I'm not saying that without that, they wouldn't be good, but the kind of consistent overperformance that you see in my mind is inseparable from American monetary policy and the US dollars reserve currency status. So that to me is like, all right, those are two really, really important legs on this table that should something happen to either one of them, this house of cards is gonna come tumbling down

and who knows how long it's gonna take to rebuild. I personally do not feel comfortable being that overexposed to that sort of systemic risk. The other thing, the American exceptionalism, is this idea that, well, Americans are just uniquely suited to have really good ideas and build really good companies. And I just don't think that that's true. I'm glad that I own developed markets funds because when Novo Nordisk invented Ozempic a couple of years ago, I owned that. I own Novo Nordisk stock. So I want to own companies all over the world. I want to be invested in every region. I don't know which country or which region of the world or which sector is going to succeed over the next 50 years, but I personally don't feel comfortable staking 25 to 30% of my future on American text talks.

It's just not comfortable to me. So this is a decision that every investor, they're going to have to look at the evidence, weigh their options and decide accordingly. I think there is a strong case for, okay, if you really just can't be bothered and you want to buy one US stock market index fund, I get that. But at that point, I would say just buy a world market fund, buy the Vanguard VT Wax world market fund and at least get a little bit more exposure than just the United States. I just, for me, I think that that's more in line with what the data would suggest makes sense. I'm curious, has any of your views on investing, like your personal investing philosophy,

because you experienced what happened in 2020 and now it's all this volatility right now. Anything changed or is it just kind of confirming what you already knew and you've been telling people for years? I think, yeah, in a sense I felt sort of vindicated by how things have played out. I think that I do feel like some of the warnings that I was issuing in 2020 and 2021 during the run-up, when everybody was going 100% large cap growth, I was like, guys, this can't last forever. Like, let's be cautious here. So there were years where I was underperforming the market because I was more diversified than the market.

But this year I'm outperforming the stock, the US stock market because of my exposure to other things, developed markets, emerging markets, what have you, small cap value. It's another popular one. But yeah, I also think there is a bit of a myth in the United States that the US stock market has been the best stock market in the world over the last 100 years. And that's not true. I think Sweden has had higher returns in the US on average after accounting for inflation. I think Australia has too, at least in the 20th century. It's not just like the US won't in the future be the best place to invest. It's that it never really has been.

It's been up there and it's certainly done really well in the last 20 years, but other countries have had just as much growth if not more. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. And I'm curious too, during that time, especially 2020, when everyone was talking about alternatives, NFTs, crypto, what were your thoughts? And again, the same changed. I'm sure we're kind of aligned with them all. Yeah. Well, it's not quieter these days. What's weird about that is that at the time, I was like, this is all so stupid. This is all, especially like Bitcoin. I was like, this is a technology solution in search of a problem. We don't need this. Don't buy this. Just stay the course. But I think as my economic knowledge has improved, coincidentally, I think that I now see the

use case for something like Bitcoin or some sort of global reserve currency such that the US dollar is not at the center of that system. I don't think Bitcoin will be that, but I am ironically more open today to the use cases that people were making back then than I was back then with how things have shaken out. Yeah. Yeah. I understand the concept and how it can, it makes sense, but it just, I feel like we're still too early to see what it's going to end up like. I'm like, yeah, I think we're way too early to be like, no, it's all gonna be Bitcoin. Yeah, and I don't think that the-

No. It's not inelastic currency, that's the wrong word. Fixed currency, I really can't remember. But essentially this idea that like, it can't expand and contract, that there's just however many Bitcoin there are, and like, that's it. I think that that often gets positioned as a

strength of the system. And I would just point to the fact that dude, if you think wealth inequality is bad in a system where you can print more money, just wait until you see how bad it is in a system where you can't do that. Yeah. No, for sure. It's not going to be better. Not going to be better. No, no, that's, that's for sure. And there's even like a part two, like, you know, because you also talk about just like, here, just like some simple strategies, like besides having that diversified portfolio, which I completely agree that these things do work and they do work for everyone. Like you talk a lot about like dollar cost averaging and like automation. Those are two of the simplest things that have been around forever

that just work for everybody. Was there anything else that, you know, the years of just, you know, your research and everything that you're like, this is something that is work and it's boring and no one wants to talk about it or they think it doesn't work anymore, but this really is, you know, something that everyone should consider, you know, to build wealth. Start earlier than you think you need to. Yeah, yeah, I know. People say that all the time, but it literally, you know, as you get older, you're like, oh no, that was one of the best things I ever did.

It's just true. And it's just the nature of how compounding works. And if you can be in the market for 40 years, the money that you're putting in now is going to 15X. So even if you don't think that that couple hundred dollar contribution is gonna make a difference, well, give it 40 years and it certainly will.

The time is gonna pass anyway, right? You're gonna, 40 years is gonna go by and you're gonna be there anyway. So you might as well be there with 15 times as much money as you have now. I think that would be my number one piece of advice. I would say my other kind of, it's boring but it's true, just do it, is don't be afraid to take advantage of different tax statuses in your retirement

accounts at the same time. I know you're in Canada, here in the US, we have 401ks, we have IRAs, I know you all have- Or RSPs and TFSAs. Exactly, so you have your similar parallel accounts. But in the US, they'll let you do traditional or they'll let you do Roths. You can put in pre-tax money or post-tax money. There is so much analysis paralysis that I see

with like, which one should I do? Which one is better? And my approach is do both at the same time, use the bigger bucket for pre-tax, get as much in tax savings now as you can while you're earning, and then take those tax savings and invest them in the Roth or the post-tax account. Don't be afraid to do both. Yeah. Yeah, similar thing here. RRSP would be where you get that tax deduction. Don't be afraid to do both. Yeah. Yeah. Similar thing here. Our RRSP would be the, uh, where you get that tax deduction. So you get that kind of a bonus and a lot of people, younger people, especially. And I get it. Cause there's, there's, you know, um, depending on your tax bracket, it may not be the best place to start, but in general,

it's like, this is the thing that has made, you know, our parents and our grandparents be able to retire one day. So RSP first, TSA, or at the same time, like you said, like the goal is to max out both of these accounts because they are incredible. But yeah, that's the thing. It's like simple, but it works. So just do it. I think we like tune out the advice because it's so boilerplate now. It's also just old. And I think we're looking for something new all the time. And you're like, sometimes there's nothing really that new. That's the funny thing about it too is that the 401k and the IRA, relatively speaking in the span of history are themselves very new. I mean, we're talking 1970s. So even the retirement schema that we have now, in so far as how people are expected to retire.

50 years ago, even before 401k, it was like social security and it was pension. And before that, people really didn't retire. Like retirement itself is kind of a new, you just like worked until you died and that was it. So even this idea that like we should all be saving and investing for retirement, that idea is like a hundred years old. The idea that we should be doing it in these specific accounts is like 50

years old. So we're still engaged in a pretty modern system or modern paradigm. And I think that the millennials and the Gen X generations, the ones who by and large did not have pensions, generations, the ones who by and large did not have pensions, but are just going to be relying on these retirement accounts and will be facing lower Social Security payments in the US than their predecessors did. We're kind of like guinea pigs. I mean, it's half of baby boomers in the US have no money. The other half own 20% of the world's wealth. So half own 20% of the world's wealth. So intra generationally, you really see these trends here. I'm sure the same is true in Canada, but I mean, I just, I think you're going to continue

to see that concentration at the top as the millennial generation retires, where you're going to have the richest millennials richer than anyone has ever been in history. And then probably 60 to 70% of them are gonna have next to nothing. So we're eventually, this is what I always say on the show, eventually something will have to change.

We will not have a choice or society will collapse. The government is going to have to make a different choice here at some point. We just can't keep going like this. But I still think we have kind of a ways to go until we reach that cliff. So in the meantime, we're writing books like Rich Girl Nation being like, let me tell you, you want to be the person with the robust retirement fund when you turn 59. You don't want to be in that 60%. No.

And, you know, speaking also of, you know, protecting yourself and your wealth and things that you can do, I also really appreciated the sections that you talk about, things like when you are married or you're in a partnership and how to, you know, figure out finances together, especially the pre-nup, post-nup. I am seeing a lot more people talk about those because telling you 10 years ago, no one was talking about that. Or it was always in the context of if you're a wealthy man, get a pre-nup. Because you know, and you're like, that is kind of wild. Why did you really want to make sure that you put this, and again, it's different, US, Canada, and then even within US, different states to state, in Canada, same different problems to

province, all this kind of stuff. But why is it just like, this is something that women especially should know more about because again, a lot of us women are earning a lot more than previous generations. We need to protect ourselves. And this is why you should learn more about it. And also too, I guess one argument I always hear is like,

well, I don't have money going into the marriage. So what's there to protect? Yeah, good question. there to protect? Yeah. Good question. I loved this quote. I put it at the beginning of this chapter. It's from a divorce attorney named James Sexton. He says, getting married is the most legally significant thing you will ever do besides

die, and you don't receive so much as a leaflet about how your rights just changed. There really should be a booklet or a leaflet you get before you sign on the diet. I spoke with another attorney who said, yeah, it's a lifelong contract with nothing to read. Wild. Imagine that. There's practically no other decision that I can think of where you are signing a contract that binds you until you die that comes with no terms to review first. So that was emotionally why it felt important to me. I also would hear from women all the time, their forts, their 50s, their 60s, going through divorces, stunned

to find that, oh, he's entitled to half my 401k. Oh, he had $50,000 of debt I didn't know about and now I'm legally on the hook for half of it. Oh, he gave me the house, but I can't make the mortgage payments on my own. What do I do? I think that understanding the legal ramifications paired with hearing women's stories over the years really made it clear to me that, okay, I'm not reading other books that are talking about this. There was maybe one other finance book that I read that had a chapter about prenups, marriage, how to protect yourself legally in relationships, and it was written by an attorney. So I was like, we need to talk about this. And what the chapter does

and why I think it's really important is because it focuses on two equally significant goals. The first is how do you manage money in a relationship or in your marriage in a way that solidifies that partnership? How do you approach it like a team so that money is actually something that's making your marriage have a better chance of going the distance, right? We often think about money as something that's a reason why people get divorced, but if you are approaching it

proactively as a team, it can actually kind of be a point in the other column and will make your marriage and your partnership stronger. So I wanted to talk about tactically what that looks like within marriage, managing money together. But I also wanted to talk about how do you realistically protect yourself when you get into what is effectively a business agreement, a never ending indefinite business agreement between yourself, your partner and your state. So everybody has a prenuptial agreement. The difference is whether you are writing it yourself

or your state is writing it for you. And even if you are going into marriage with nothing, you still might want to get a prenuptial agreement because it is the one chance that you have, the best chance that you have at writing in terms that will outline what happens someday if at some point in that marriage, either one of you leaves paid work to be an unpaid caretaker in your home and for five years, 10 years, 20 years, you're out of the workforce. It is very difficult to reenter the workforce,

especially a workforce that is changing as rapidly as the one that we have now. If you are gone for that long, and so if you are a stay at home parent and then you get divorced someday, you are likely to find yourself in a really rough position. So the chapter was intended, at least in part, to show people, hey, this is something that you can do to protect yourself from the jump. You can write in terms about spousal support that basically tie the amount of time

you're out of the workforce and the work that you are providing in your home to a set cadence of, here's how much money I'm going to receive if this marriage ends and for this long. Because judges are often not very kind about spousal support in the absence of an enforceable prenup. So it's just a common sense step that you can take from the jump to protect either person in the marriage. But as we know, this typically tends to be women.

Women report leaving marriages to, sorry, women report leaving paid work to take care of their family members at a rate that's something like 60% higher than men. And we know that divorced women are something like 56% more likely to be in poverty than divorced men. So again, we have the data that tells us, okay, when marriage goes south, it tends to be worse for the woman in that marriage, no matter what the gold digger trope tells you, that's just not true. But there are ways that we can protect ourselves

from the outset when things are rosiest, when we're both feeling the most optimistic about this relationship that we're about to legally codify. Now is the time to decide what happens in event of the worst case scenario. And for anyone who did not know, like, oh, shoot, well, too late. We're already married. You do talk about a post-nup. Now, obviously it's a little bit different. You want to kind of explain for anyone who's never heard that term, what can that maybe do if I'm currently in a relationship?

Yeah. So if you are in this boat, you were like me. You were somebody who got married before you knew the importance of having a prenuptial agreement. And the embarrassing thing is that I did want one. My husband's a lawyer. He also was like, yeah, we should get one. And we just never got around to it. That is the- It's a busy time getting married. I remember. It's the embarrassing truth. And now in retrospect, we're like, well, that was stupid. Like we really should have prioritized that. So a post-snubtional agreement is kind of exactly what it sounds like. It's an opportunity for you

after you are already married to essentially build similar terms into the relationship. The only downside with the post-nup is that they tend to be less enforceable if you ever need to use it. Now, pre-nups can run into issues of enforceability as well, which is why you really need to make sure that you are crossing all your T's and dotting all your I's. And I talk about all these finer points in this chapter for I be wed and spend thy bread. But you wanna both be represented by your own attorney.

That's important. There has to be a legal perception of fairness. So if you are in a marriage where you're sitting here listening to this and you're like, oh my God, my husband's crazy rich dad like threw a prenup at me to sign three days before the wedding. Well, good news, that thing is almost definitely not going to be enforceable if you ever get divorced because the judge is gonna look at that

and be like there was never any consideration period. She never had a chance to review it with her own attorney. So the law does a decent job of making sure that people don't get saddled with bad terms that are executed in bad faith. But it does mean that like unless you are using an attorney that is very familiar with the laws in your state and your each represented by your own people and they're you know, all these all these finer points are considered you might run into an issue of enforceability and post snubs tend to have that problem more frequently than pre nubs. Now on a lighter note, let's say, you know, marriage is good. It's all

working out great. One question I get often, I'm sure you do too, is just got married. I actually have never, we've never talked about what to do with our money. Should we keep it separate? Should we co-mingle? What do we, what do we do? Are there right and wrong things? Personally, I'm of the mind that it's like, whatever works for you as a couple. There's no right or wrong things and you can try something. If it doesn't work, change it again. What would you say to women entering a marriage for the first time? And yeah, it is kind of a business relationship. How do you make sure that you can continue to protect yourself? You don't want to be in a situation where, oh, he just controls all the money and I don't know where it goes.

Like what should we do and not do? Definitely don't want that. So the rule of thumb to keep in mind is that anything that either of you earn, buy, or borrow after the date of marriage is probably going to be treated like joint property if you get divorced. So that is a caution that I will tell people who choose to operate completely separate financial lives. Like I have my accounts, he has his accounts,

I have my debt and investments, he has his debt and investments and like we just keep it all separate to keep it easy. That's okay if y'all have talked about it and decided that that really is strategically what works best for you. But just keep in mind that that separation is an illusion. Should that marriage end, if he has a bunch of secret debt, or maybe he doesn't have any debt, but you're investing diligently and he's on draft kings with every paycheck, half your assets will go to him or some, you know, quote unquote, equitable distribution, depending on

what state you live in. So whether you want to physically keep things separate or together, you have to be on the same page. And that is kind of just common sense, protecting yourself. Like there's almost no way around it. You have to find a way to get on the same page about money. And that can be really hard. I talked to one CFP who runs a nonprofit for women who are in abusive financial relationships. And she told me that she and her husband,

now mind you, this is a woman who like counsels women financially and emotionally through these things for work, she told me that she and her husband saw a financial therapist for years because they were having such a hard time getting on the same page. So you can know all this information but interpersonally and implementing these things with another person is extremely difficult. So if you're having trouble with that, or like your money conversations up until this point have not been good ones, you're not alone,

but it is worth either finding the professional who can help or, you know, following the steps in the book in chapter four to get on that same page and to try to find common ground basically, because ultimately it is more fun to do it as a team. Like if you can, and you know, I lay out a couple different scenarios in the book of keeping things separate versus combining everything versus the more hybrid approach of yours, mine, and ours, which is something that I personally use and think is the best approach. Yeah, it's nice to have the best of both worlds a little bit. Yeah. So there are different ways that you can do it, but you just want to avoid a situation

where you're keeping things separate so you can avoid having conversations about money. That's the red flag. Yeah, no, absolutely. Now, I know like we are getting this just kind of flew by this interview, and I feel like we've only gotten to like halfway through your book because there's so many great things in your book. And again, like I mentioned, this was such an incredible read again from somebody who's read a ton of books.

And just yeah, no, it was really, yeah, it was just like you did your research, you came with your numbers, and I love that when I read that. And yeah, just so many incredible, yeah, things to discuss. I feel like everyone should grab a copy of your book. The book will be out by the time this episode is out, but where can people find more information about the book? But also you, because you've got a lot going on as well. Where can people keep up with you? Thank you so much for having me on, for saying that. I really appreciate it. You can either

follow me on Instagram at Money with Katie or if you like to read long form essays and kind of prefer to stay away from social media, I have an awesome newsletter that comes out every Wednesday that you can sign up for on moneywithkati.com. I also have the Money with Katie show. If you like podcasts, I have really transitioned my podcast toward talking more about these systemic issues and about kind of where the economic, political and cultural intersect with personal finance.

So that's what you'll get on the Money with Katie show. And then I also have a culture and politics podcast called Diabolical Lies that I co-host with a woman named Carol Claire Burke. So if you like that sort of kind of snarky feminist political commentary, check out Diabolical Lies. I love that. Well, that's up my alley.

So yeah, we'll be checking that out. Well, thank you so much, Katie, for coming on the show. It was such a treat having you on and can't wait for your book to come out. I know people are going to absolutely love it. Thank you. It was genuinely my pleasure. And that was my episode with Katie Gaddy. Make sure to grab a copy of her new book, Rich Girl Nation, Taking Charge of Our Financial Lives. And you can follow her on Instagram at Money With Katie. And make sure to subscribe to her podcast, The Money With Katie Show. And because, I mean, this is the final episode and she's the final author that has been on this show,

of course, I'm giving away a copy of her book and I'm giving away a copy of so many other books. And I will be drawing winners sometime in the summer, sometime maybe late July, early August. We'll see. I just want to give time for everyone to catch up on the podcast and know that there is a contest, a big book giveaway. So make sure to go to JessicaMoorhouse.com slash contest to enter to win Katie's book and all the other books that I'm currently giving away. That is Jessicaessicamorhouse.com slash contest. It's where you can enter to win. Now, speaking of books, I guess this will be my last,

well, no, tomorrow I'm gonna mention it, but last interview episode that I'm gonna mention, I also have a book, it's called Everything But Money. It is out now, it's been out since January. And man, I've been busy marketing it and promoting it and telling everybody that we'll listen about it because I think it's such an important book. I'm gonna continue to do book events throughout the year.

I've already done my kind of big book tour, but I'm planning on doing other events. So wait to see about that. And because I will be soon going on kind of a summer break for my, I mean, my mental health, I just need a break. Make sure to continue to follow me because I will be continuing to do other things other than the podcast. It's just my YouTube channel, my Instagram.

You can follow me at Jessica I. Morehouse. And of course, if you don't know, the podcast also has an Instagram at MoreMoneyPodcast. And yeah, more events to come, which I'm very excited about. Make sure to also, I'd say the best place to really stay in touch with me is my newsletter. So jessicamorehouse.com slash subscribe. And also too, speaking of my book, grab a copy, borrow it from the library, do whatever you like.

If you have already read it or you plan on reading it, you may wanna know that if you give my book a rating or review online, wherever you like, but some of the biggest places that have big impact are Indigo, Amazon, Goodreads, but I know there's lots of other websites where you can give a review like Kobo and things like that. So if you do give me a rating or review for the book, and again, say whatever you know, I know there's lots of other websites where you can give a review like Kobo and things like that. So if you do give me a rating overview for the book,

and again, say whatever you like, that is not for, I don't check them, FYI. I do not check the reviews because that is for other readers. It is not for authors. That is something I was told. And that is great advice because I don't wanna get my feelings.

So say whatever you like about my book, but please do, because you can get some book extras for free. You can find all that information at jessicamorehouse.com book. And these things include, you know, worksheets, videos, audio, all this kind of stuff. And also in case you don't know, another thing, since we talked about investing in this episode, I have an investing course specifically made for Canadians because I know a lot of the things we talked about in this episode were, you know, maybe specific to Americans like the 401ks and stuff like that. Well, I've got a course specifically for us Canadians. So if you want

to check it out, jessicamorehouse.com slash course is called Wealth Building Blueprint for Canadians. You may want to check it out. Okay. That is it for me for right now, but I will be back here tomorrow with that very special solo episode, which I've been looking forward to, honestly, all year to record because it's a pretty special moment reaching 10 years of the show. That is kind of crazy. So I'm going to share my thoughts, updates, what's been going on with me, a whole bunch of great stuff. So make sure to check that out tomorrow. But yeah, that's really it for me for right now.

Thanks so much for listening and supporting the podcast and I will see you in my next episode. The More Money Podcast would not be possible without the amazing talents of video editor, Justice Carrar and podcast producer, Matt Rideout, who you can find at mravcanada.com