Jess Fickett ("Piggy"), Author at Bitches Get Riches • Page 19 of 24

Understand the Hidden Costs of Travel and Avoid Them Like the Plague

January 22, 2018May 27, 2022 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 26 Comments

Like traveling ladies of yore, we daintily but enthusiastically wave our kerchiefs to our Patreon supporters. They selected this week’s topic in our monthly donor polls, and I’m thrilled. Because I have some things to get off my chest. Other than my bra, which has already had its ceremonial end-of-day removal and flinging.

Gentle readers, I come to you straight from my biannual trip back home for Christmas.

It fucking suuuuucked.

It’s not that I hate spending time with my family (though the inclusion of the Commander in Chief in this year’s Christmas dinner prayer was more than enough to ruin my appetite). But visiting them during the holidays is an expensive logistical nightmare.

We have to buy our flights, get to and from the airport four times, feed ourselves during a long day of travel, arrange for pet care while we’re away, and even pay for lodgings and transportation once we’re there if my in-laws are inexplicably remodeling the house again during our visit.

Again: it sucks. And I’ve realized that traveling to visit family is the thing that most often puts me at risk of overspending my budget.

Fortunately, this cheap bitch has learned a few tricks along the way to cling to my hard-earned pennies.

A New Job, a New Day, a New Life, and I’m Feeling Good

January 15, 2018May 27, 2022 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 32 Comments

Remember that time I was so miserable about work that I swore I’d quit my job by the end of the year?

I did it.

And I got a new job.

I know! Me too! I’m sure you’re all just dying to know all the details because, well… this is my blog and if you’re reading it you clearly don’t have anything better to do. So let’s discuss!

I’ve Succeeded at Every New Year’s Resolution I’ve Ever Made. Here’s How.

January 8, 2018May 27, 2022 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 22 Comments

Ah, January. The time when everyone bravely makes a super ambitious New Year’s Resolution to Lose Weight™, Get Better At Money™, and Stop Stalking Exes on Facebook™. And then, before the Ides of February, quietly shelving said resolution and wallowing in nihilistic self-loathing. “Nothing ever changes, so why bother?” millions ask as they wipe Cheeto dust from their fingers to scroll through the Facebook profile of ex-boyfriend Doug Jackson and wonder how he can look so happy and fit now that he’s dating what’s-her-face.

But what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if you could make a New Year’s Resolution and actually keep it?

According to Kitty, I am the only person in America who ever completes a New Year’s Resolution. I therefore consider myself a bit of an authority on the topic.

For the past five years, I have made a New Year’s Resolution. And every single year, I have succeeded at my resolution. Here’s a quick tally:

2013	Read a book a week (52 in all)
2014	Run a 5k comfortably by the end of the year
2015	Write 100,000 words by the end of the year
2016	Save $10,000 by the end of the year
2017	Do a good deed every week (52 in all)

Every one of these goals was made in the spirit of self-improvement and creating a life I love. They were rewarding, challenging, fun, and empowering. I am #livingmytruth and a dozen other inane platitudes AND SO CAN YOU!

Below, I’ll use each of my goals from the past five years as an example of effective New Year’s Resolutioning. Buckle up.

The Bitches Get Riches Annual Review and Soirée

December 18, 2017August 14, 2021 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 18 Comments

‘Tis the season… for the Bitches to take a hiatus!

That’s right, my darlings. Your humble hosts are fucking tired as shit. So we’re going to take our own advice and go on a brief two-week hiatus for some R&R.

During this hiatus, we will be busily contemplating the mysteries of the universe and researching all things economic and adulty. That way, when we come back from our vacation in early January, we can continue to give you the same mildly useful, humorously tasteless, unrepentantly self-referential content you’ve come to expect from us.

Just kidding. We’ll mostly be doing this:

You Won’t Regret Your Frugal 20s

November 30, 2017April 7, 2022 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 14 Comments

The topic of regret is a controversial one, especially in personal finance. Whole treatises have been written on the premise that if you live frugally during your twenties and make sound financial decisions for the future, you’ll regret wasting your youth as a joyless loner.

We reject this characterization of a frugal youth for a couple of reasons:

It doesn’t take a lot of (or any) money to have fun with your friends. In fact, some of the best times I’ve had with friends involved spending zero dollars!
You can (and should) pursue fun long past your twenties. A great woman once said that if you’re not getting happier as you grow older, you’re fucking up. And I whole-heartedly agree! Life has only gotten better after thirty for me.
You’re at more risk of regretting not saving than you are at risk of regretting not going out to da clerb that one time. Saving for retirement in your twenties isn’t a ticket to Regretsville or Unfuntown. It’s a way of ensuring you’ll be able to have fun later in life instead of working forever.

And yet fear of this kind of regret persists.

FOMO

I get it! No one wants to constantly feel left out. FOMO is real! But I also firmly believe that no one wants to get to retirement age only to realize that all the money they could’ve lived on for another twenty to thirty years got puked out after a night of binge drinking. (It has been said that you’d have to drink a lot of alcohol to puke out your retirement savings. These naysayers underestimate both the power of compound interest and the alcohol tolerance of the average 23-year-old.)

Yet I don’t fear regretting my frugal twenties when I get to my twilight years. Now, depending on a single, barely funded income stream after retirement, one that could easily go up in a puff of smoke… that’s something worth regretting.

In Defense of Shameless Regifting

November 27, 2017November 24, 2021 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 8 Comments

“There is only one fruitcake in the entire world and people keep passing it around.” Ah, Johnny Carson’s ole’ traveling fruitcake story. So ancient and apocryphal it took significant googling to uncover its origins.

It’s a perfect example of the holiday season’s most notorious social faux pas: regifting.

Many consider regifting tacky and thoughtless: the worst version of “being cheap.” If you regift, it means a) you were too lazy to go out and buy a new gift for someone, b) you didn’t actually appreciate the gift in the first place, and c) you care so little about the giftee that you won’t even spend a little money on a personalized gift for them.

I’m here to propose a new way of looking at the practice of regifting. In fact, I think it can be an economical, creative, waste-free, and considerate way of bestowing presents upon your loved ones.

Yes, I am of course an uncouth and cold-hearted shrew. But I’m also an uncouth and cold-hearted shrew with a damn good point… and a damn fat wallet.

Not Every Savings Account Is Created Equal

November 16, 2017January 8, 2022 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 15 Comments

When I was but a wee little thing, my mom took me down to the local branch of our regional bank and helped me open a savings account. We deposited my birthday money from Grandma, and I was told in no uncertain terms that I would thenceforth deposit half of my $2 a week allowance into the account (the other half went into the basket at church… a fact about which this apostate is still a little bitter).

Then Mom and the bank clerk told me of the wonders of my new savings account. “It’s a safe place to keep your money while you’re saving up for something like a car!” they said. “Plus, it earns interest.”

Interest, as you know, has the ability to work for you and for the forces of darkness in equal measure. You want your savings and not your debts to earn interest. So having a savings account is a great way to lure the vicious specter of interest to your side of the financial war.

I was all excited to check my balance and see how much interest I’d earned after a few months of dutifully depositing half of my allowance. But alas…

Baby’s first savings account wasn’t accruing jack shit in the way of interest. This is because most brick-and-mortar banks offer savings accounts with dismally uncompetitive interest rates.

I was facing an APY (annual percentage yield) of 0.01%. That’s… almost literally nothing. Which meant my savings weren’t even going to keep up with inflation if I trusted to the false promise that interest would help grow my savings.

Enter the high-yield online savings account.

The high-yield savings account

Dafuq Is Insurance and Why Do You Even Need It?

November 10, 2017August 14, 2021 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 11 Comments

This article is definitely not about health insurance. I specifically refer to pretty much every other kind of insurance you can get in the United States, but not health insurance. Because contrary to what our fearless leader said recently, everyone knows that healthcare is really fucking complicated. Not to mention expensive.

Therefore, I’m saving it for another post so as not to muddy the waters… with our tears.

Our readers from civilized countries like Canada and Namibia are probably recoiling in horror right about now. Yeah. WELCOME TO THE LAND OF THE FREE AND THE HOME OF THE BRAVE, BITCHES. Moving on.

Insurance in general can seem like a confusing and unnecessary gamble. Obtaining it and taking advantage of its benefits might seem daunting. Why should you pay money for something you might never need? You’re healthy and careful! What’s the point of this expensive service?

Worry not, my confident yet naive marshmallow peeps. I’ll break it all down for you.

How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Financial Math

November 2, 2017August 14, 2021 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 16 Comments

I fucking hated math in high school.

It was torture. Though I did ok throughout Algebra I and Geometry, once I got to Algebra II… the wheels came off the bus. I listened to entire lectures on logarithms delivered in the voice of Charlie Brown’s teacher. I didn’t understand why it mattered, its practical application, nor why I needed it.

And to this day I’m convinced my teacher was a sociopath who derived great joy from my confusion. Let’s call her Dorothy Ball because her fucking name was Dorothy Ball. (How you like me now, Dotty?) She was one of those teachers who, instead of motivating students to give it their all, slowly crushed the joy of learning out of me and convinced me that I was a feeble-minded and frivolous girl for not picking up what she put down.

Clearly I wanted to learn math—or at least I cared about my academic standing—because I remember sitting through a meeting with my mom and Ms. Ball to come up with a strategy for improving. I’ll never forget that meeting.

With great pity in her eyes, she said, “It’s ok that you’re not good at math. You’re good at other things. So let’s just shoot for passing, ok?”

The callous harridan was right: I was good at other things. Like mentally eviscerating those who dared to condescend to me.

But, as we all know… I still needed math to survive.

Raising the Minimum Wage Would Make All Our Lives Better

October 30, 2017November 28, 2021 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 29 Comments

Hello and welcome back to liberal propaganda rag Bitches Get Riches, where we strive to contradict aging conservative lawmakers at every turn!

Today’s topic is curated especially to bring various political dog whistles spewing from the mouth of Your Dad! Things like “job creators” and “small businesses are the backbone of our country.”

Yes of course. It’s time we talk about raising the minimum wage.