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Bitchtastic Book Review: Tanja Hester on Early Retirement, Privilege, and Her Book, Work Optional

February 18, 2019June 2, 2022 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 8 Comments

Dear readers, we’ve been holding out on you. For there is something beyond the basic financial literacy we strive to teach you here at Bitches Get Riches. Something that comes after you level up as far as you go with your money.

It’s called FIRE, or “financial independence, retire early.” And it’s something a lot of our esteemed colleagues in the money-writin’ biz are fighting tooth and nail to achieve.

One of the beacons of light in the conversation about financial independence and early retirement is Tanja Hester, author of the brand new book Work Optional: Retire Early the Non-Penny-Pinching Way.

Tanja is awesome. Her book is awesome. Her advice is awesome.

She’s like the result of a long, fulfilling, romantic relationship between a timelessly wise Amazon warrior and your favorite cool aunt, the one who both comforted you about the mean kids at school and bought you your first box of condoms. I’d trust her both to carry my body to Valhalla from the field of battle and to give me sound financial advice, is what I’m saying.

Bitchtastic Book Review: The Feminist Financial Handbook by Brynne Conroy

January 7, 2019June 2, 2022 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 7 Comments

Gentle readers, it’s time we discussed the F-word.

It’s one we use often here on the blog, and it’s probably the most controversial part of Bitches Get Riches. It’s certainly the thing that brings us the most criticism crawling out of the woodwork of the Internet.

I’m talking, of course, about feminism. (What other F-word did you think I fucking meant?)

We firmly believe that personal finance has everything to do with feminism. This is partially because of super fun stuff like the wage gap, financial abuse, the opportunity gap, and other money inequities that have historically left women at an economic disadvantage.

But it’s also because feminism, at its core, is about equality. And one of the surest routes to equality—or at least equity—is by spreading around economic power to those for whom it’s been tantalizingly out of reach.

Enter the hot-off-the-presses book The Feminist Financial Handbook: A Modern Woman’s Guide to a Wealthy Life by Brynne Conroy.

Bitchtastic Book Review: Hand to Mouth by Linda Tirado

July 16, 2018June 1, 2022 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 21 Comments

“Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” originally meant “impossible.” Think of it: you can’t defy gravity just by pulling up on your shoes. It can’t be done.

And yet this phrase has become both a command and an insult wielded by those who insist that anyone can make it in America. “Quit whining and pull yourself up by your bootstraps!” is the refrain from news anchors and radio hosts who seem to think that being poor is a choice and poverty an indication of moral failing.

Enter Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America by Linda Tirado. I was pretty psyched to read this one, as most of the books on economics and inequality I’ve read recently have been written by academics or historians.

Linda Tirado is neither. She’s a person who has lived the reality of being poor in this country. She’s one of the millions of Americans who lives hand to mouth, told to pull herself up by her bootstraps, who has fought to navigate the maddening labyrinth of government welfare, been mistreated and shat upon in minimum wage jobs, whose life has been stressful and precarious because of a lack of money, and whose health and quality of life has therefore suffered.

This story on poverty in America is from the horse’s mouth.

Tirado answered a question on an online forum about what life was like for the poor and her post went viral. From there, she was offered a book deal. This book is basically an expansion on her original blog post. It is angry, frustrated, passionate, filled with the pent-up rage of years of being downtrodden.

Here’s what I learned.

Bitch-Approved Podcasts for Your Summer Vacation

June 4, 2018June 1, 2022 Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 5 Comments

We’re going on vacation! This is a thing that not everyone can do, but everyone deserves—so consider this your friendly reminder to help shift the culture by taking a break of your own!

We would never leave our beloved Bitch Nation with nothing to do for two weeks. So it’s our royal duty to leave you with some entertaining and enlightening FREE content while we go do internet-grandma vacation things. Like gardening and criticizing television shows made for a much younger demographic.

That’s why we’re highlighting some of our favorite podcasts, in both money-related and non-money-related categories. Because you know what I won’t be doing for the next two weeks? Listening to any of the money podcasts. Sorry about it. When I’m off, I’m off!

So: what kinda podcast would you like to listen to?

Our Five Favorite Serious-Business Money Podcasts

If you answered…

“I want to hear some snappy stories about financial news and the economy, and I want it to be informative, but kinda light, with no big, anxiety-inducing bummers.”

We answer…

Planet Money
Length: 10-30 minutes

This twice-weekly NPR podcast was started in late 2008, after the financial crisis casually knee-capped the American public. “What the fuck!” we all cried. “What happened to my knees!?” Planet Money was there to help explain economic issues in plain language with engaging, almost hand-holding stories. And they’ve been there ever since! This is a no-brainer, especially if you have money in the market and need help understanding what’s causing your investments to go up and down. (Just assume it’s China. The answer is probably always China.)

Bitchtastic Book Review: Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos and Your Big Brain

May 10, 2018March 7, 2024 Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 5 Comments

This post discusses depression, anxiety, addiction, suicide, and self-harm. I think it does so in a pretty constructive and helpful way? But I wrote it, so here are some large grains of kosher salt.

Reading! It’s just like they said it would be! “I can go anywhere. Friends to know. Ways to grow.”

Today I want to share with you my favorite book about mental health. It’s not a memoir or a self-help book. It’s not even nonfiction! No, it’s a little ditty from 1985 about evolution, ghosts, Armageddon, and nubbins. Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos is a brilliant satire on the evolutionary advantages and disadvantages of the human brain. And it completely changed the way I think about mental health, including my own depression.

The opening scene follows a woman as she attempts suicide, and it’s narrated by the dispassionate ghost of a Richard Attenborough nature documentarian type. Here’s a brief excerpt, with a few plot things trimmed out:

“Mary taught that the human brain was the most admirable survival device yet produced by evolution. But now her own big brain was urging her to take the polyethylene garment bag from around a red evening dress in her closet, and to wrap it around her head, thus depriving her cells of oxygen.
“Before that, her wonderful brain had entrusted a thief at the airport with a suitcase containing all her toilet articles and clothes which would have been suitable for the hotel.
“Her colossal thinking machine could be so petty, too. It would not let her go downstairs in her combat fatigues on the grounds that everybody, even though there was practically nobody in the hotel, would find her comical in such a costume. Her brain told her: ‘They’ll laugh at you behind your back, and think you’re crazy and pitiful, and your life is over anyway. You’ve lost your husband and your teaching job, and you don’t have any children or anything else to live for, so just put yourself out of your misery with the garment bag. What could be easier? What could be more painless? What could make more sense?’
“Just about every adult human being back then had a brain weighing about three kilogrammes! There was no end to the evil schemes that a thought machine that oversized couldn’t imagine and execute.
“So I raise this question, although there is nobody around to answer it: Can it be doubted that three-kilogramme brains were once nearly fatal defects in the evolution of the human race?”

Yeah. This novel completely changed the way I thought about the human mind.

Bitchtastic Book Review: The Financial Diet by Chelsea Fagan

April 24, 2018May 31, 2022 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 1 Comment

Listen, it’s no secret we’re hardcore BFFs with The Financial Diet. They epitomize all that is good and just about financial blogging for millennial women, and they were one of our early influences in creating BGR. Plus, we have a monthly syndication deal.

What I’m saying is, if you’re looking for an unbiased review of Chelsea Fagan and Lauren Ver Hage’s new book, The Financial Diet: A Total Beginner’s Guide to Getting Good with Money, based on their amazing website… you can fuck right off because this is not that review.

The Financial Diet The Book is a gorgeously designed, delightfully written boost of financial inspiration and motivation. Each chapter is a mix of personal narrative by Chelsea, interviews with experts, and super useful resources like checklists, recipes, and how-to guides.

While the website serves as an exhaustive resource for all financial topics under the sun, the book functions as a primer. It’s a shiny golden key to a mysterious door in the garden wall of all things #adulting and #girlboss.

Here’s what I learned.

A Little Princess: Intersectional Feminist Masterpiece?

March 2, 2018May 30, 2022 Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 43 Comments

People really don’t like to be called “privileged.” We’ve had a small number of readers who’ve felt compelled to leave comments rejecting the term. Most of these fit into one of three categories:

“I am really offended that you would assume I’m a racist, because I’m not.”
“I am really offended that you would assume that I am rich, because I’m not.”
Or “I am really offended that you would assume that my life has always been easy, because it hasn’t.”

These comments speak to three of the most common misconceptions/misinterpretations of the meaning of the concept of privilege. Namely:

Having privilege implies bad moral character.
Having privilege implies some degree of monetary wealth.
Or having privilege implies that you have never known struggle, and that nothing bad or unfair has ever happened to you.

These three things are categorically untrue. But it’s hard for some people to see a more nuanced vision of the word’s meaning. It conjures up visions of sneering 1980s rich-jock villains with cashmere sweaters tied around their necks. The kind of people named ~ C h e t ~ or ~ T i n s l e y ~. That is an idea with which, very understandably, no one wishes to align themselves!

Both history and fiction are filled with privileged people of strong moral character who undergo extreme setbacks and losses. And privileged characters can make amazing heroes. There’s nothing at all about their privileges that excludes them from being admirably brave, loyal, clever, compassionate, fearsome, ambitious, or generally fascinating.

Now, this is Bitches Get Riches. If we need an example of an awesome intersectional-yet-privileged hero, we’ll obviously go straight to a G-rated 90s film that no one remembers.

The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander: A Bitchtastic Book Review

July 27, 2017March 21, 2022 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 10 Comments

It’s no secret that I’m interested in economic injustice. That’s why I wax grumpy and bitter about things like gentrification, fast fashion, clean water, and environmentalism. But I have a lot to learn about the kind of systemic inequality that keeps some people down while others float above.

Which is why I read The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander.

The premise of Alexander’s The New Jim Crow is simple on its surface. Since its inception, the War on Drugs has targeted Black and brown people at disproportionately high rates. This has led to a new racial caste system in the United States.

But of course, like anything to do with race in America, it’s far from simple. And Alexander seems to realize how far-fetched some might consider her findings because she spends, like, 20% of every chapter going “I know this sounds crazy but seriously, stick with me. Just look at this data.”

While I wasn’t completely ignorant of the racism inherent in our justice system before reading The New Jim Crow, I am now completely overwhelmed with new and damning knowledge. The insidious rules of the new Jim Crow state affect people socially and economically in disastrous, life-ruining ways. Through every stage of the justice process from arrest through trial, punishment, and release.

Here’s some of what I learned.

The Bitches Are Going on Summer Vacation

July 6, 2017July 1, 2022 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 16 Comments

Hail, Bitch Nation! (I hope you’re warming up to your collective nickname because this humble and retiring blogger certainly enjoys the hell out of it.) We come to you today with an announcement: we, the Bitches, are going on a brief two-week hiatus. A summer vacation, if you will.

Bitchtastic Game Review: Darkest Dungeon

March 30, 2017May 27, 2022 Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 4 Comments

When I asked a family member why he was considering voting for Donald Trump in last year’s election, his answer was something you likely heard many times. “He is a businessman,” he said, “and the country would be better off if it were run like a successful business.”

If memory serves I took the bait and started pummeling away with evidence that Donald Trump is a remarkably unsuccessful businessman. What I should’ve done was question the entire underlying supposition of his argument.

Let’s be real. I’m a progressive soul, and nothing short of bamboo under my nails was ever going to entice me to vote for Donald Trump. But what if a democratic candidate appeared with a strong, successful business background? Would I count that as a boon if the shoe were on the other foot? Would we all be better off if the country was run more like a business?

The most amusing way possible to answer that question is to play Red Hook Studio’s Darkest Dungeon.