October 2018 • Bitches Get Riches

Everything I Know About Minimalism I Learned from the Zombie Apocalypse

October 29, 2018June 1, 2022 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 13 Comments

Dear readers, it’s time I made a confession. You need to know The Real Me™. I’ve been hiding myself for too long.

Guys… I fucking love zombies.

It’s true. Every year around Halloween I go watch a live theatrical performance of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. I’ve met Max Brooks twice and both times he declined my marriage proposal. Same goes for Mila Jovovich. I finished The Last of Us in forty-eight hours. Zombieland is my favorite family-friendly, feel-good buddy comedy. I attend my city’s annual Zombie Crawl religiously.

I pride myself on having read the entire canon of zombie literature. Including the one about zombies on the Titanic. And the one where a zombie gets elected president. Even the one where a high school football team is reanimated as zombies just in time to win the state championship. Also the one where zombies played a pivotal role in the formation of ancient Israel. And yes, even the YA romance trilogy (no, the other one). I read Warm Bodies before it was published.

Having lived for years with this unhealthy obsession with zombies, you would naturally think that I would’ve learned something by now (besides the double-tap rule and how to steel yourself for mercy-killing a loved one, of course).

Turns out I did. I’ve learned a helluva lot about minimalism from the zombie apocalypse.

How Can I Justify This Deeply Unethical Purchase?

October 22, 2018June 1, 2022 Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 34 Comments

Readers.

I have a confession to make.

I am not the righteous and principled person I pretend to be on Tumblr.

When we were in Orlando for FinCon, I had one extra day and night to spend any way that I chose.

On my one night free in the city, I walked a three mile pilgrimage from my Airbnb to visit Pulse. Like most people who visit the site of horrible violence, I processed by considering that violence through a selfish lens. These people were my people. This could’ve been me. I thought a lot about the kind of life I want to lead, and how much that life depends on the kindness of others. It left me feeling somehow rejuvenated and drained at once.

The next morning I visited the Harry P. Leu Gardens, because I am the world’s oldest young person. I confess that I have a fascination with this one very niche kind of tourist attraction: the palatial estates of long-dead industry barons transformed into indoor/outdoor botanical art museums. I. Love. Them. I posted many cute photos on Instagram, which were liked by all the people at FinCon I’d drunkenly passed out my personal Instagram to. (By the way we are on Instagram now, but it’s all just pictures of food, dogs, and chickens. If you’re into that, add us @bitchesgetrichesofficial!)

But then…

With my last remaining afternoon in Orlando…

I…

…went to SeaWorld.

Investing Deathmatch: Investing in the Stock Market vs. Just… Not

October 16, 2018June 1, 2022 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 10 Comments

It’s time for another thrilling episode of… INVESTING DEATHMATCH! In which we pit two forms of investing against each other and see which one escapes the struggle unscathed.

Today’s fight is an ancient grudge match between two opposing philosophies: extreme caution and risk-taking. In one corner we have investing in the stock market—an inherently risky proposition but one that comes with untold rewards. In the other, we have the option of the risk-averse everywhere: just… not with the stock market, and instead, playing it safe by sticking your money in a savings account.

It occurred to us that we needed to cover this battle to dispel some incorrect assumptions about money management.

After the Great Recession and stock market crash of 2008, a lot of young people coming of age in a new and fragile economy were scared away from the stock market. They saw the grownups around them ruined by plummeting stocks and improperly leveraged debt.

As a result, millennials are statistically less likely to have anything invested in the stock market—whether it be through a retirement fund or a managed portfolio. These younglings are choosing to play it as safe as possible.

But is that truly the way to win this Investing Deathmatch?

Fighters… TAKE YOUR CORNERS!

Hogwarts Houses, Ranked by How Good They Are With Money

October 9, 2018June 1, 2022 Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 21 Comments

So Piggy and I went to FinCon 2018 in Orlando last week. It was super fun—but we’re not going to do a full run-down because so many great writers have already done so! It’s hard to pick a favorite, but, come on… It’s totally Josh.

We do have some Cliff Notes, though. Those are like Spark Notes, but for old people!

We met many incredible finance professionals eager to share their expertise. Obligingly, we drained them of their knowledge and left them as lifeless husks stacked three deep behind the cabana.
We won two Plutus Awards! Best Blog for Women and Best Blog for Gen Z & Millennials! Unfortunately, this means we must say goodbye to any readers outside those two demographics. <cocks shotgun> START RUNNING, OLDS!
We failed miserably at obscuring our faces in photographs. If you follow us on social media, you probably noticed a whole lot of our faces going on. So the secret is out: we are actually several toddlers standing on each other’s shoulders inside of two trench coats.
There is basically a FinCon: Netherworld Edition of the most powerful and creative women in the industry meeting informally in each other’s hotel rooms. And it was unspeakably inspiring, edifying, and encouraging. We traded monetization tips, then flew naked through the night air like the coven at the end of The VVitch. Oh! Sorry, spoiler alert for The VVitch.

Finally, and most importantly:

All business meetings are automatically improved by virtue of being conducted in line for frozen butter beer after riding a buncha damn roller coasters at Harry Potter World.

The real revelation of this past week was how right things feel for us right now. We really, really, really love what we do. And we’re more committed than ever to doing it. And we’ll probably talk about that more, but… Later.

We have pressing thoughts to share.

On Hogwarts Houses. And money.

It’s been a while since we did a good old fashioned #ranked article. Stick around, because I think you’ll find this one…

Magical…