Category: Lol

(Sigh) Why Is Astrology Coming Back?

(Sigh) Why Is Astrology Coming Back?

Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 40 Comments

Sometimes I feel really in-touch with America’s youths.

Like when I read a headline about how they don’t care about Joe Biden. “I, too, don’t care about Joe Biden!” I cry, pulling off my readers, rising up out of my Chesterfield, knees cracking, brandishing the physical copy of the newspaper, feeling positively nineteen again!

On the other hand, young people like a lot of wacky shit that I just don’t get. Like the D*va x Lucio ship. And the word “yeet.”

One of the trends I find a little mystifying is the return of interest in astrology. You know. Them little amminals that live in the sky and make us impulsive or conflict-avoidant or whatever. These proto-Pokemon (Capricorn = the Water Goat Pokemon, don’t @ me) are part of an ancient tradition of what we now call woo.

Woo (also called woo-woo) is a catch-all term for pseudoscientific models of thought that don’t hold up to much logical scrutiny, but are popular nonetheless because they simplify the world and appeal to the base human predisposition to find patterns, connections, and order in our extremely strange world.

The term woo can encompass a lot more—everything from the belief in ghosts to the belief in chem-trails. But I’m focusing today on types of woo that are meant to guide adherents through an understanding of the future and/or themselves, like astrology. Because consumption of those beliefs are growing rapidly.

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Are You Working on the Next Fyre Festival?: Identifying a Toxic Workplace

Are You Working on the Next Fyre Festival?: Identifying a Toxic Workplace

Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 11 Comments

Ever had a dream job become a nightmare?

I did.

On paper, the job was everything I wanted and more. Sexy product with high growth potential; industry stars leading the initiative; the best Glass Door reviews I’d ever seen; snazzy downtown office with free snacks, free catered lunches, even beer on tap. I’d be working with a few beloved former colleagues, and oh, right—they were doubling my previous salary. I even got to interview and approve my own manager, who was hired after me.

This opportunity sparkled from every facet like a lovely jewel. I entered that job with this-close-to-literal stars in my eyes.

Wobble wobble.

Four months later, it was 8:05 a.m. on a Monday. I was lacing up my snow boots for the walk to the train station. And I couldn’t see the laces anymore because tears reduced everything to a wobbling blur. They were tears of pure dread. These tears had replaced the stars in my eyes and the job that had once thrilled me filled me with misery.

My train leaves at 8:31, I reasoned. It takes me twenty minutes to walk to the station. I have six minutes to kneel here and let the tears flow. Not the healthiest calculus.

I told myself I would give it a year. After all, I had known real hunger—I could do anything for a year. But I only made it to six months.

All my life, I’ve had instruction on how to identify people who want to abuse me. Peers who want to bully and backstab; husbands who want to beat and control; strangers who want to rape and kill. But nobody ever warned me about their institutional counterparts.

These are the hospitals that confound you with arcane billing procedures; colleges that frame their loans as special awards; police that may arbitrarily enforce or not enforce the law based on who you are; unscrupulous realtors who redline; vampiric MLMs who predate. The list ain’t short!

But worst of all, the place you are obliged to go for forty hours (or more) every single week: the toxic workplace.

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Bitches Get Riches Merchandise is HERE AT LAST!

Bitches Get Riches Merchandise is HERE AT LAST!

Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 7 Comments

We want to quit our jobs and do this full-time.

That sentence may have been easy to read, but you have no idea how hard it was to write!

I mean, I doubt it’s shocking. If given the opportunity, who wouldn’t want to be a caring Internet grandma slash pushy rich best friend who gives great advice but also needs to take it down two notches on a full-time basis?

We’ve been running Bitches Get Riches for just about two years now. We’ve started to get lovely, heartfelt emails from our readers. “I asked for a raise and I got it!” “My first job starts Monday and I wouldn’t have aced the interview without your help!” “I finally moved out and I’m so happy!” Absolutely nothing feels better than hearing you’ve helped someone improve their lives. Nothing.

And that got us to thinking: How many more people could we reach if we could give Bitches Get Riches our all?

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Why Do Bitches Get Riches?: The Power of Unapologetic Confidence and Getting Shit Done

Why Do Bitches Get Riches?: The Power of Unapologetic Confidence and Getting Shit Done

Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 20 Comments

As you know, Kitty and I went to FinCon 2018 this past September. It was a magical time of education and bonding with our comrades-in-arms, and we returned with our heads spinning with new ideas for making Bitches Get Riches better, faster, stronger. We also came back with a renewed vigor for our mission. And that meant taking a long, hard look at what we do here and why.

Like our name, for instance. It’s not just a blog title, but a call to action. For this blog is founded on the premise that bitches do in fact get riches. But like… why? And more importantly, how?

It feels like all our most important career advice here at the blog—asking for a raise, getting a promotion, negotiating a salary, getting paid fairly for your work—can be summed up in this one little phrase: bitches get riches.

Let’s unpack that.

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Everything I Know About Minimalism I Learned from the Zombie Apocalypse

Everything I Know About Minimalism I Learned from the Zombie Apocalypse

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.

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Hogwarts Houses, Ranked by How Good They Are With Money

Hogwarts Houses, Ranked by How Good They Are With Money

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!

  1. 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.
  2. 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!
  3. 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.
  4. 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:

  1. 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…

EVIL LAUGH
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The Ultimate Showdown: Cheese Crackers, Ranked

The Ultimate Showdown: Cheese Crackers, Ranked

Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 29 Comments

There is an ancient and terrible blood feud between the Bitches.

It is a grudge as old as Jörmungandr. And like the World Serpent, it bides its time in wrathful slumber, awaiting the three cock crows that announce the great battle to end the world.

The first, the crimson rooster Fjalar crowed on January 22 of 2018 when Piggy wrote this:

Hit your local grocery store the day before a flight and stock up on cheap, filling snacks to take with you: granola bars, almonds, dried fruit, white cheddar Cheez-Its with the extra cheese dust. (BGR’s dark secret is that Kitty and I have an ongoing feud concerning the best cheese-based cracker snack: Cheez-Its or Cheese Nips. If you prefer somewhat less delicious cheese crackers, I guess you can substitute Cheese Nips here. But we all know I’m right.)

The second, the golden rooster Gullinkambi, crowed on March 19 of 2018 when Piggy wrote this:

Shopping with the smaller cart prevents me from filling it with impulse buys. If I feel tempted to buy a box of Cheez-Its (The Superior Cheese Cracker™), but my mini cart is getting full… it goes back on the shelf.

And today, the nameless black cock of Hel calls the dishonorable dead to rise, rise, RISE, and take arms. The Twilight of the Gods is here. Ho thunder, ho lightning! Ragnarok is come!

With spears and magic helmets provided by our extremely awesome Patreon donors, it is time to shake the foundations of the earth with the mighty clash and clatter of our fate-ordained mutual destruction.

WHICH

IS

THE

BEST

CHEESE

CRACKERRRRR?

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The Bitches Get Riches Annual Review and Soirée

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:

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Sailor Scouts Ranked by Estimated Net Worth

Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 12 Comments

You know that feeling when you’ve been writing scathing 4,000 word critiques of entrenched white supremacist attitudes in the personal finance community? And you get really tired and depressed? So therefore you decide to write about Sailor Scouts instead?

No? Did y’all think I was joking?

Uh uh. No sirs and ma’ams. Fighting evil by moonlight, making money by daylight. That’s the Bitches Get Riches mission statement in a nutshell!

I’ve conducted thousands of hours of exhaustive research on Sailor Moon (this research was done from age ten to, um… the present). And I am ready to provide a definitive ranking of the hypothetical net worth of all the Sailor Scouts.*

*This research does not include Tuxedo Mask, whose star seed belongs to the guardian of planet Earth but is technically not a true scout. Also does not include villains, such as the Amazoness Quartet or the members of Shadow Galactica. Also-also does not include one-offs, musical exclusives, corporeal manifestations of the light of hope, and other bullshit characters.

It’s dinnertime, people. Let’s get to the meat!

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