Planet Money - Maria Bamford gets personal (about) finance

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

Note: There is swearing in this episode.In 2017, The University of Minnesota asked comedian Maria Bamford to give their commencement speech. But the University may not have known what it was in for. In her speech, Bamford told the crowd of graduates how much the university offered to pay her (nothing), her counteroffer ($20,000), and the amount they settled on ($10,000), which (after taxes and fees, etc.) she gave away to students in the audience to pay down their student loans.Maria Bamford is a big believer in full disclosure of her finances, a philosophy she's adopted after decades in a Debtors Anonymous support group. In meetings, she learned important financial tips and tricks to go from thousands of dollars in debt to her current net worth of $3.5 million (a number which, true to her philosophy, she will share with anyone).She spoke with us about her financial issues, how she recovered, and why she believes in total financial transparency, even when it makes her look kinda bad.Disclaimer: Planet Money is not qualified or certified to give financial advice. And Maria is not a spokesperson for Debtors Anonymous in any way.This show was hosted by Kenny Malone and Mary Childs. It was produced by Emma Peaslee, edited by Jess Jiang, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Neisha Heinis. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Just a quick note before we get started. Someone does swear in this episode just one time. It is a comedian, though, so I feel like just one swear is doing pretty good. Okay, here's the show. This is Planet Money from NPR. You may have heard comedian Maria Bamford's voice on SpongeBob SquarePants. Hey, Uncle SpongeBob! Or seen her on Arrested Development.

Tobias had found a friend. You're neat! You're neat. You're neat. Or maybe you saw her in some Target commercials. Y'all know there is no I in team, but there is an I in Christmas! And at the Target two days... But for like the past five or six years, we at Planet Money have been talking about Maria

Bamford's work as a commencement speaker. Let us begin at the beginning. I will read a section of the email sent to me by the university. In 2017, the University of Minnesota asked Maria Bamford to give their commencement speech. It is unclear, though, if they asked her to give this kind of commencement speech, in which she paraphrases from the university's own email to a crowd of rapt graduates. And this is my emphasis. Normally, the college does not pay for commencement speakers. As you can imagine, being a state-funded institution, we have to be careful regarding the use of our resources. Well, I thought to myself, but I am a self-funded institution.

Who needs to be careful regarding the use of my resources? So we were listening to this speech and thinking, yes, yes, this is our stuff. A comedian who's talking about money, who seems to have their financial house in order here. As a Minnesotan, I am ashamed to admit that I love money. I love a fair exchange of goods and services. And I love a fair exchange of goods and services. And I love full disclosure. And what better way to combine these passions than by telling you the story of how I got paid to be speaking to you today.

Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Kenny Malone. And I'm Mary Childs. Not only has Maria Bamford been telling the story of how she got paid for that commencement speech, she's been telling the story of how she got paid for kind of everything. Yeah, Maria Bamford has adopted this sort of radical financial transparency that is incredibly rare from famous people who presumably make lots of money. But she has arrived at this point after decades of hard-earned financial lessons. So today on the show, those hard-earned financial lessons.

Maria takes us inside her time at Debtors Anonymous and tells us the extremely practical steps she took to get herself out of debt. And, of course, the backstory to her commencement speech paycheck. So last week, we sat down to talk to Maria Bamford. Now, have you done at this point a lot of business economics podcasts? No, no. I mean, I know nothing. I think it's a mystical science. But I, yeah, I love talking about personal finance, about open book accounting. I love numbers.

And in case some of our audience are not fans of your work, is there a specific bit from some of your stand-up that you think really captures the Maria Bamford essence? Oh, my Christ. I'm going to say I don't know. Is it dealer's choice then? You give us permission to find the right thing? Oh my God, yeah, no. Whatever the hell you want. There is so much to choose from.

She is famous for stand-up where she's super honest and hilarious about her struggles with mental illness, but perhaps more relevant to this exact episode. All right, so I got an offer to do a commencement speech at the University of Minnesota from- Yeah, Maria has a stand-up bit where she goes into even more backstory about the commencement speech and the negotiations leading up to it. So she recaps for her audience that she had been offered zero dollars by the University of Minnesota, which seemed too low. I went to my business advisor,

who's my dear friend Jackie's 83-year-old father, Mr. Elliot Cation. He's a former aluminum siding salesman, currently living at the VA Hospital in South Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I said, Mr. Cation, what do I do? He says, okay, you never say no without a number. That means if you're not even sure you want the job, put out something ridiculous, something you've never gotten before in your life.

That way either you get a ton of money or you don't have to do it. So Maria explains that she asked for $20,000. And then here is where the university and Maria remember the story slightly differently. So the university says they replied with, is that $20,000 number negotiable? Maria tells her crowd that the university came back to her with a counteroffer of $10,000, which she then took back to her aluminum siding salesman business advisor. Mr. Cation said, okay, now you say, well, split the difference, 15,

and then you settle for 12,500. But the guilt of the old country had done its work. And I went with 10, and then I ended up feeling so bad about myself that as a part of the speech I gave the money away to kids in the audience to pay down their student loans. Sounds like a nice thing to do. That is the only way I'm able to do kind things. If it isn't public, and it is grandiose.

You know, when we at Planet Money listen to comedy bits like this or anything, we just can't help ourselves. We hear financial lessons in them, whether they are intended or not. And in this case, I hear negotiate. You can always negotiate. Channel your inner aluminum siding salesman. Always be negotiating. So what we're going to do today is play for you our conversation with Maria, a conversation that is really a story. A story of her getting into debt early in her career, finding her way out of debt, and eventually full on succeeding at becoming this person on stage who talks about money so confidently. And along the way, we're going to planet money.

We're going to point out the money things that Maria did that sounded useful to us after the break. Maria Bamford's debt story begins in the mid-1990s. Maria had just moved out to Los Angeles. She was struggling to make it as a stand-up comic. She got sick, unfortunately, went to a free clinic. So anyways, I got an antibiotic from them. to a free clinic. So anyways, I got an antibiotic from them.

I had an allergic reaction, which caused me to, it closes up your throat. You stop being able to breathe and then your tongue sticks out or whatever. Anyways. Wow. The ambulance came. Anyways, that was about five grand from various medical facilities. And immediately the collection agencies start calling. And yeah, I just didn't have the money. I didn't have money for rent. And I know, I mean, I definitely had a parachute. I could have moved in with my parents, which they would have hated. So this wasn't just

five grand in medical debt. Maria says she was falling behind on rent because she had moved to LA and into an apartment that she kind of couldn't afford. Plus, the cost of living there was way higher than she was used to in Minnesota. Plus, she wasn't getting regular work. And the collectors are literally calling to demand their money. Do you know the amount of debt you're in at that point? Not really, just because I was just really scared. I was just in a panic.

But one thing to know about Maria Bamford specifically is that she loves a self-help group. Any organized group of people voluntarily dedicated to improving their conditions. Yeah, if you have a self-help group or a 12-step program, Maria will very likely join it. In fact, she just published a whole book basically about her love for these groups called, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult. The idea that you're sitting in a group making eye contact with people and people are trying to make better decisions in life. I'm down for that. And I'm down for free. I'm down for free. But yeah, I've been to all the great the hits. I've been to Sex and Love Addicts. I've been to AA, Al-Anon. I've been in OA, Overeaters Anonymous. And then I remember someone in my other 12-star program said, hey, I'm trying to try Debtors Anonymous. You don't have to be in debt to go, but I was in debt.

Do you remember where that first meeting was? Yeah, it was in Koreatown. It was Olympic and there's some church basement. Yeah. Your classic church basement situation. Yes, yes. So you're a connoisseur of these kinds of programs at this point. And so what is different about Debtors Anonymous? Well, it's the same thing. It's very odd. It's very odd if you've never been to one. There's a lot of prayer. So that is the main turnoff for a lot of people. I was raised in the church. For some reason, it just kind of, the words kind of wash over me.

But yeah, everybody goes around the room, says their name and identifies or doesn't identify or you don't have to say your name. You can just say, I'm just here to visit or whatever. So I went to a meeting and immediately got some suggestions. Now, Maria wants us to make it very clear she is not a spokesperson for Debtors Anonymous in any way. The following are things that she took away from the group. And actually, maybe while we're here, let's just also add that Kenny and I are not qualified or certified to give financial advice. So this is definitely

not that. This is just what we took from Maria about what she took from her group. It's just very simple tools. So writing down numbers, you write down everything you spend, everything you earn. And that I think can be kind of just a calming thing. Also getting, so they have you write down all your debts. They say, you know, get clarity on who you owe, how much, and just write it down. Okay, so we're going to call this the second lesson that we hear in Maria's story. Find the simple things that can calm your financial nerves. The thing about personal finance is that, like, on paper, it is not particularly complicated, I suppose. Money coming in needs to equal or more than equal the money going out. But that stuff on paper we're talking about is

your shelter and your food and your health care. And we as a species have not exactly evolved to be calm and thoughtful when basic needs are in peril. So yeah, writing things down is, as Maria says, basic. But also, it is not basic if writing things down helps you move away from the emotional parts of financial distress. And you can take this technique further. So, okay, you write everything down. You discover that you owe more money than you're making. How do you start to fix this? And here Maria had some help. Her debtors anonymous group had her create a little subgroup, what they call a pressure relief group, to help with granular advice and to provide accountability. The people in her pressure relief group, it was just two other

people, went through her numbers with her. Like, hey, Maria, that unaffordable apartment, can we find something affordable? Immediately got some suggestions. They said, call everybody you know and people that you don't know in Los Angeles and see, do they have a room for rent? You don't have any money right now, but you could pay them $50 a week. Call and ask verbally like do it person to person and and just put it out there. Now, eventually, a friend of a friend had a spare room and and was OK with Maria doing a payment plan for the first few months. Great. Lowering the amount of money going out the door. The pressure relief group says, OK, let's also look at the money coming in part of this basic equation. That number needs to

go up. At this point, Maria is a startup stand-up comedian, which is famously not very lucrative. So the group says, okay, until the big bucks arrive, how can you make money? Another thing, you know, Maria sign up with, can you type? Oh yeah, I can type. Sign up with five temp agencies, call in every day at 7.30 a.m. and say, Hi, I'm available to work. Hi, I'm available to work. It's just like every recovery thing, like a day at a time. Also, the group helped her figure out ways to address the specific obstacles that were messing her up, like the friction of getting dressed in the morning for a job.

Can you dress up, be available dressed up for work? Sometimes I went to go sleep in my work clothes so that I would get up. So went to sleep in the clothes that you would wear to work if you ended up with a temp job. Yeah, because I just, I was worried I wouldn't get up otherwise. So do that. Things I just did not are very elemental or whatever, but I still need to do that. I think of all the things Maria talked about, the pressure relief group is the one that I think about the most still. This idea of building a small group who is there for you to help you through the tiny little details of a hard situation.

And also just to laugh at how weird it can get and silly or I don't know, whatever lesson we want to name that, like that's lesson number three that we hear in the story. Yeah, it's like build your own emotional support advisory board. Yes, yes, your own E-S-A-B. Yeah, an ESAP.

And Maria's pressure relief group did have a piece of advice that's somewhat unconventional in the world of personal finance, specifically for someone like Maria who owed various parties a lot of money at the time. They said, do you have any money at all and can you treat yourself to do something nice? So they suggested Disneyland, but I was like, boo. I think I must have gotten myself, I don't know, a Diet Cola out or something nice. Yeah, she wasn't going to go ham, but she also took the advice that she still deserved some joy. Right. As opposed to the kind of personal finance advice that says, don't buy the Starbucks, live as frugally as possible and pay your creditors as quickly as possible. Well, Maria was

making payments, just, you know, she was paying what she felt like she could do, not necessarily what her creditors were demanding. I think for me, although my credit was already terrible, so it didn't matter to me, if I pay all my money to them first over every expense, like over health care, over shelter, I move back in with my parents, over me going out or having meals or friendships, good times. Well, what that is going to mean is I'm going to have this very small life, and then all of a sudden, the debt's going to be paid off, and then I'm going to be like, oh my God, I'm free. And then you'll maybe go into debt again. necessities of life and you and you outlay enough money to do that in a sustainable way and then pay off your debts using various techniques you you are building you're building like a sustainable financial engine that can keep going even once your debts are paid off yeah because it's not it's not a financial engine it's your life right it's your life. Right. It's your life. So I just think putting any ethical thing about like, oh, you've got to pay back your creditors right away is cruel. So after a bunch of temp jobs, one of those jobs became a permanent job

and it took eight years, but eventually, Maria says, she paid off all that debt. And, you know, look, we have been doing our Planet Money thing and imposing our own, like, sort of lessons on this story. But it does seem like Maria took her own one giant lesson away from this time getting out of debt. And that lesson is to be very open about money. So after the break, what happens when you decide to show everyone all of your accounting? Maria Bamford is in a very different financial place than she was 28 years ago when she first went to Debtors Anonymous. She's had her whole own Netflix show. She's had big comedy specials.

She's a big deal. How big of a deal? Well, you know, this is typically where I would Google a celebrity's name and one of the first results would be net worth. And then there'd be a website that's like some wild guess about the celebrity's net worth. But no, in Maria Bamford's case, just ask her, she'll tell you her net worth. Yes, $3.5 million. It's gone up. 3.5 million. Oh, 3.5. It's got- Yes. Yeah, we read 3.1 or something. Yes, but due to the tulip bulb nature of Los Angeles real estate. This house is now somehow, despite the wasps filling the pool and the little rats running up and down the walls, worth $2 million. So yeah, Maria Bamford is doing well, but she is still in Debtors Anonymous. It's not just for people with debt. Maria still calls her Debtors Anonymous. It's not just for people with debt. Maria still calls her

Debtors Anonymous friends when she's thinking through money stuff. She has sponsees who talk to her about money stuff. Which brings us to the kind of meta lesson for this whole episode. Maria's experiences have led her to become radically open about money. So for our final chapter, we just want to spend some time seeing what life is like when you're willing to tell anyone, almost anything about your finances. Maria has stated publicly that,

specifically, she's a big believer in something called open book accounting. It's this buzzword in the accounting business world where you share key financial information to anybody that might have an interest. In the business world, that might mean not just shareholders and employees, but the public. And since Maria Bamford is her own business, Bamfuko Inc., this generally means that she will share anything you want. I operate a business. You know, it is a business and I have employees and I want to treat people fairly so that at least people have the chance to say,

hey, Marie, you're an asshole. And I don't know. I'm relatively useless. I'm an older white woman who has had everything given to her and has said everything, every platform. So might as well show people the books. This is the final frontier. He's this pretty amazing chunk, right in the middle of Maria's new memoir,

where she just publishes a month's worth of her business's accounting. And for just a second, let's just go through some of this. Yeah, the finances for Bambuco Inc. from September 2022. It says here Maria made $13,177.51 from voiceover work. Yeah, she made $40,418.75 total from live shows. She somehow only made $97.96 on merch, which is really, that seems to be a great growth area. But the thing about being this open about your finances is it's not just your finances.

You know, Maria hires people for things, and so their numbers are in here too and out in the world. So an acting coach named Ivana Sheen, that's $400 Maria paid her. Maria's publicist, Jess Ginevin, $1,650 for that month. And Maria says her publisher would not let her put more finances in the book because they thought it was boring. That's just a wrong call, in my opinion. That is incorrect, Simon & Schuster. Sorry. But she says if you come up to her on the street

and ask her, she will just tell you, which, of course, we had to test. Well, so I just saw you at the Kennedy Center. You're, you're, you will tell us how much you, you made for that show. For the, oh, for the show. I'd have to open my QuickBooks. Do you remember roughly? So my current rate seems to be, depending on where I am, like right now, I do door deals. In California, it's very difficult to earn a lot because there's so many comedians. So I'll get a guarantee of $1,000 versus 80% of the door. I'm doing one in Torrance this weekend. Probably the gross will probably be around $3,500.

That $3,500 generally has to be shared with her opening act, which very often is her friend, comedian Jackie Cation, who is also the daughter of Maria's aluminum siding salesman business advisor. And then I'll pay Jackie probably $1,500, and then I'll make $2,000. And then if I go out of town, it's usually between $7,000 and $15,000 gross, not net. Gross is the disgusting amount of money you're never gonna get yes i'm curious how these how this radical transparency has affected your relationships um like with jackie or with you know just your publicist but are they

like wow thanks man like yeah um i would you'd ask them please Please ask them. Because the idea of living as financially open as Maria sounds nice, but it certainly seems like it would come with some unintended consequences for the people around you. So yeah, we asked. I emailed Maria's publicist, Jess, who responded by sending us a quote from Maria's manager who said, by sending us a quote from Maria's manager who said, quote, Maria's team has always been completely transparent about their refusal to transparently comment on Maria's transparency. Yeah. In other words, there's no way they're going to weigh in on how they feel about their famous client's big transparency experiment, which, you know, fair enough. That is a good business decision, probably. We also asked Maria's opener, Jackie Cation, about this. What does it feel like

to have your friend publish all your money stuff? Yeah. And, you know, Jackie told us that she's actually kind of used to it at this point. In fact, it has made her more open as well. So now she asks other comedians how much they get paid and tells them how much she's making. Here's Jackie. Because there's no union, there's no HR, there's no anything in stand-up comedy. So we have to sort of have each other's backs in sort of a more guerrilla fashion. And Maria's the best. She pays fair at the very least and pays more than enough on the regular. It's very great that Jackie feels like she's getting more than enough on the regular. But because the information is so public, everyone else gets to also have an opinion.

And Maria says they do. I've had a few people say that I should pay my friend, after reading the book, I should pay my friend Jackie Cation more per show. And so I'm thinking about that. I'm going to talk about her because we did do profit sharing for a few years and then I stopped doing that. And I don't know why. I think it was out of fear, greed, et cetera. It's not a detractive trait for sure. uh, greed, et cetera. It's not a detractive trait for sure. Um, but somebody mentioned that. So I was like, yes. Okay. Yes. You pay your friends the best. You pay your friends the best. You know, financial transparency is not like a new idea at all. In fact, we've done stories about companies that share salary information, but, but there is something about what Maria Bamford is doing

that is different to me, I think, because she seems more like a financial transparency-free spirit. She's moving through the world in this kind of enviable way. She isn't ashamed if people know her business. She also knows whether or not she's getting ripped off because she will apparently ask anyone what they're making. And it does seem really useful. And yet I found it terrifying to try and imagine moving through the world like this sort of agent of open finance chaos. And actually, just to maybe illustrate that point a little bit, let's just finish with something that happened during our interview. So at the beginning, we're all getting set up. Kenny and I are recording in our own studios at our homes.

Maria is in her home. We're talking to her through Zoom. But I don't know. Are you guys getting paid to do this podcast? Oh, my God. And let's ask Hema. Hema is our tape sinker. That's the person that we hired to go and hold a microphone to Maria so that we could get Maria's answers into a fancy recorder. How much are you getting paid?

It's $2.50 for the first hour, and then each additional hour is $75. $75. Okay. $250 for the first hour, $75 additional for the next hours, which is odd because you'd think it'd be $250 more for each additional hour. Are you paid for drive time and gas time in Los Angeles? Oh, dear. I usually am. Mary, Maria has just taken over financial negotiations.

Is she our boss now? I don't know. Well, it's just interesting. It's just information. I want to get a bump for this, a beautiful young person who also is a musician. Now, do you have a website? I do, yes.

Hemacastro.com. Hemacastro.com. That's G-E-M-M-A-C-A-S-T-R-O. Yeah, so my only use as an older person. I have enough money. I don't need any more money. Maria has a new book out. It's called Sure, I'll Join Your Cult.

She also has a new comedy special out called Crowd Pleaser. Maria did also tell us if there's a show that you want to go see that you can't get into. Well, here, we'll just let Maria say it. If you cannot afford a ticket, you can always email me at ariamayamphibay at gmail.com, ariamayamphibay at gmail.com, and I will get you into a show for freezies, plus one. Unless it's terribly sold out, which is rare. Our show today was produced by Emma Peasley. It was edited by Jess Jang. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Nisha Hainas.

Alex Goldmark is our executive producer. I'm Kenny Malone. And I'm Mary Childs. This is NPR. Thanks for listening. And a special thanks to our funder, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, for helping to support this podcast.