My Cure for Aimless Wardrobe Syndrome: Manage Your Clothes the Same Way You Manage Your Money

My Cure for Aimless Wardrobe Syndrome: Manage Your Clothes the Same Way You Manage Your Money

Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 36 Comments

Until very recently, I suffered from a pretty bad case of Aimless Wardrobe Syndrome.

I felt lost when it came to clothing. I assembled outfits at random. If I ever looked good, it was at the cost of 35 minutes of standing in my closet, hemming and hawing like an asthmatic donkey.

It seemed like a pretty insignificant problem. But eventually, I realized it was quietly harming me every dang day. I was wasting way too much time, money, and spoons deciding what to wear. And it somehow left me feeling worse about myself, not better!

This led me to develop a cure for my Aimless Wardrobe Syndrome. And in retrospect, it was so obvious that I’m sorta kicking myself for not figuring it out sooner.

It requires a bit of time to set up. But it transformed my daily life for the better. Since I developed this system, I’ve been shopping less, buying less, and spending way less time considering my options. And y’all know how I value my money and my time! Yet I also love everything I wear, and wear everything I love. It kicks ass.

Here’s my system. Steal it!

Read More
How to Get Married: Bureaucracy, Finances, and Legal Paperwork to do before “I do"

How To Get Married: Bureaucracy, Finances, and Legal Paperwork To Do Before “I Do”

Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 17 Comments

Every once in a while we Bitches are asked marriage or relationship questions. And it amuses me to no end that we are seen as ADULTS with STABLE MARRIAGES and HEALTHY LIFESTYLES. Because we live in keen awareness that we’re floating slowly down a river of Parmesan cheese straight into the yawning mouth of the Ninth Gate of Death, just like everybody else.

Not that’s it’s necessarily wrong! My marriage with Bear just feels like such a humble, natural thing. How could it possibly be instructional to others? He’s currently listening to a podcast in the shower while I do blog stuff from the couch and I love him so stupidly much. 

Yet our loving relationship has much more to do with why we got married than how. Being in love and wanting to spend your life with someone is, sadly, not the only requirement for getting married (common law marriages notwithstanding).

So today I want to talk about the logistics of marriage: the paperwork, the bureaucracy, and the legal gauntlet you must run to get hitched.

In this era of modern romance, it’s pretty common for people to move in together before getting married, even to combine finances or buy property together. We did! That gradual combining of lives makes things pretty painless. But let’s say you’re doing it all at once around the time of the wedding! With that in mind, here’s a list of the steps you need to take to get married… punctuated with gifs from the wedding of John Legend’s dogs.

This is the slippery slope: dogs getting married.
Read More

The Bitches Are Hiring Staff (Finally) and *It Could Be You!*

Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 3 Comments

The time has come at last for us to do the thing every single mentor in our industry has told us to do for, like, four years: stop trying to do absolutely everything ourselves. The Bitches are hiring a few lil’ helpers!

Consider this proof of our emotional growth. Poverty mindset is like the smell of burnt popcorn: it lingers on and on, long after snacktime is over.

We started this blog as the kind of people who will stuff their faces with day-old bagels because they were left on a table outside the conference room. And damnit, we are still very much those people! We’re so not used to the idea that it might make sense to… pay? Someone else?? To do work we could very well do ourselves?!? LMAO OKAY.

The bitches are hiring?! LMAO OKAY.

But, our little blog ain’t so little anymore. Our style of writing requires heaping fistfuls of spoons. We’re finally ready to acknowledge that invisible, non-fun administrative work is snatching up far too many of said spoons.

It’s time to bravely don our competent businesswomen cosplay outfits, and strut around the hotel lobby like we know what we’re doing!

So… we’re hiring!? <breathes into a paper bag>

Read More

Inclusive Finance and the Financial Feminist Summit: With Bravely Go’s Kara Perez

Jess Fickett ("Piggy") Leave a comment

Bitch Nation, it’s time we talk about inclusive finance. It’s a nebulous concept! What constitutes inclusive access to financial products and education? How can we make our economic processes more inclusive of diverse populations? And if inclusivity is the goal, exactly who is currently being excluded?

As you know, I am too pretty to work hard lazy and averse to doing my own research on such an important yet complex topic. So naturally, I invited an expert to do my homework for me.

Enter the indomitable Kara Perez! Owner and founder of Bravely Go, activist for inclusivity and representation in financial education and economic opportunities, and all-around bad-ass. You guys… we are so lucky she lets us hang out with her.

Kara joined me to explain how we can embrace inclusivity in financial media and education and to tell me all about her upcoming event, the Financial Feminist Summit. Our conversation inspired me. It motivated me to do better for my community and my world. And it increased my hair’s natural luster by 32%.

Read on for wisdom and realness from Kara Perez.

Read More
How to Use Labor Shortages to Your Advantage

How to Use Labor Shortages to Your Advantage

Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 12 Comments

Labor shortages? With a 6% unemployment rate? On the heels of a recession and global pandemic? Seriously?

Seriously. If you’re like me, you’ve seen the signs hanging in almost every restaurant, coffee shop, and gas station window you’ve walked past. “Now hiring! Check our website for details!” But there’s something off about them. Usually such signs have a cheerfully neutral tone. But these are radiating powerful desperation stink.

“We’re hiring! Like, SERIOUSLY hiring. Literally every role is open! Do you want my job? You can have it! We have signing bonuses. If you show up all five days your first week, I will give you my cat. Don’t get me wrong, I love my cat like a son—but if someone doesn’t help me bus these tables, the fabric of my reality will unravel all around me lol.”

When employers are desperate for employees, they’re weak. And when they’re weak, you are strong. You can use this moment as an opportunity to claw back lost ground.

But situations like these have been super rare in recent history. Honestly, unless you’re a Boomer or older, this really hasn’t happened in your lifetime! (Yes, to my eternal surprise, BGR does have enthusiastic Boomer and Silent Gen readers. We salute you—the few, the proud, the kickass—for enduring our 90s pop culture references and ageist hissy fits with grace and poise.) Younger readers will be forgiven for not knowing how to take advantage of it.

So that’s what we’ll teach you today! C’mon, finance, let’s get fin~nancial!

Read More
10 Ways to Spot Financial Scams and How to Defend Yourself

10 Ways to Spot Financial Scams and How to Defend Yourself

Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 12 Comments

Last year we collectively lost our minds stanning MacKenzie Scott. She’s the absolute QUEEN making all the other billionaires look bad by giving away half of her money to charity. No expensive foundations, no self-congratulatory PR machine. Just direct funding to worthy causes. Y’know: what people with more money than they could ever possibly use should do.

Her philanthropy is especially popular because it came as a graceful “fuck you” to her amoral cheat of an ex-husband, Jeff Bezos. (And you guys know how we feel about that guy.)

The $6 billion she’s donated so far is literally record-breaking. Which is why it’s so reprehensible that scammers have taken advantage of Scott’s reputation to steal from unsuspecting victims.

Recently, criminals masquerading as MacKenzie Scott have targeted the vulnerable for financial scams. These desperate individuals have lost thousands in fake transfer fees at the promise that they could be the lucky recipients of Scott’s philanthropy. Which is… so breathtakingly heartbreaking yet also predictable.

Financial scams are on the rise. Thanks in part to advances in digital currencies, global communications, and tech in general, it’s easier than ever to fall prey to these criminal schemes. There are even brand new scams using the COVID-19 pandemic to fleece the unwary.

So today we’re talking about financial scams: how they work, who they target, and how to avoid them. That last one most of all.

We want to arm you against the forces of darkness and set you loose upon the criminal element! Like a bunch of Google-wielding vigilantes, you shall dispense justice by defending yourselves and developing the perfect level of disdain with which to utter “How do you sleep at night?“

Read More
Dafuq Is Interest? And How Does It Work For the Forces of Darkness?

Dafuq Is Interest? And How Does It Work for the Forces of Darkness?

Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 10 Comments

Here at Bitches Get Riches, we’re constantly extolling the virtues of compounding interest, which Albert Einstein, Mother Theresa, and Nelson Mandela all deemed the Eighth Wonder of the World.* This might lead personal finance novices to believe that interest is universally a great and wealth-building thing. Not so, dear readers. Not so.

Just as interest can work for you, contributing mightily to your financial goals over a long period of time, so it can spell your very doom. DOOM.

Like a monetary Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, interest has both your best interests (see what I did there?) and your utter financial destruction at its heart. Let’s explore its dual nature with a healthy dose of hyperbole, shall we?

*Not intended to be a factual statement

Read More
If you want to eat the rich, stop feeding Amazon.

If You Want To Eat the Rich, Stop Feeding Amazon

Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 39 Comments

I’ve been waiting for years for Americans to stop feeding Amazon. We had a good chance last week. Amazon employees in Bessemer, Alabama had the opportunity to form a union. But it didn’t go well. It wasn’t even close. By a margin of two to one, warehouse workers voted against it.

It’s a really disappointing outcome. But it’s also not surprising. Labor unions are weak in America.

You know who isn’t weak? Amazon.

The world’s largest retailer is one of the most powerful entities on the face of the planet. And their union-busting policies are robust, well-funded, and prodigious.

According to many reports, they paid $10,000 every day to anti-union consultants who created an environment of pervasive secrecy, fear, and misinformation. Amazon spies on its employees and fires labor organizers. Bessemer workers were bombarded with anti-union messages in every private space from bathroom stalls to their personal phones. They forced their employees to attend several hours of anti-union propaganda meetings every week filled with ominous warnings about the “union threat” to their jobs. And they fired organizers, made fake social media accounts, and even changed traffic light patterns. They even flat-out told workers they’d lose their jobs if there was a union—all for the single purpose of discouraging the workers from using their constitutional right to organize with each other.

And it worked.

I knew it would. Story after story has made it incredibly clear that Amazon doesn’t give a flaming hot shit about the well-being of their employees. To an extent that is downright cartoonishly villainous! And they don’t have to, because they won’t face any consequences for it.

No legal consequences, because everything they’ve done is perfectly legal. 

And no business consequences, because despite everything, you’re still shopping there.

Read More
Ask the Bitches: What's the Difference Between Credit Checks and Credit Monitoring?

Ask the Bitches: What’s the Difference Between Credit Checks and Credit Monitoring?

Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 5 Comments

The world of personal finance is full of terms designed to confuse and waylay the innocent. Yet you are a beautiful and mysterious adventurer on the exciting journey of life! You do not have time to parse the different meanings of seemingly synonymous financial terms like “credit checks” and “credit monitoring.”

Fortunately, we’re a coupla’ nerds with nothing better to do.

Recently, an anonymous follower (we’ll call them “Pudding Cup” because I assume that, like pudding, they are both sweet and smooth) asked:

Dear Piggy and Kitty, I have a question. I just got an email from the auditing office of my state saying that the unemployment filing host “Accellion” was hacked and they don’t think anything happened, but are offering a free year of credit monitoring. I have no idea what that would do or how I would use it to make sure nothing bad happened? Also doesn’t monitoring your credit (somehow?) make it worse? Would this be helpful or not really?

In short, Pudding Cup has mixed up two distinctly different concepts to do with credit: credit monitoring and credit checks. I’ll detangle the two below.

Read More
The Financial Order of Operations: 10 Great Money Choices for Every Stage of Life

The Financial Order of Operations: 10 Great Money Choices for Every Stage of Life

Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 27 Comments

One of the reasons personal finance can feel so overwhelming—nay, defeating—is that there’s so much pressure to do everything at once. I think it’s why so many people feel lost and incompetent with money. I did too, until I discovered a financial order of operations.

Money decisions are always intimidating. Every financial decision you make compounds over time! That can be good, like when investments grow. But it’s also terrible, because financial mistakes can haunt you for years after you’ve made them. With so much pressure to get it right, every single time, and always on the first try, it’s no wonder people freeze up.

I wish someone had sat me down and compassionately explained that I didn’t have to do everything all at once. If you want to stay motivated and make meaningful progress on a goal, it’s so much better to focus on just one at a time. And just like in eighth grade math, there’s a right order of operations to everything, depending on what stage of life you’re in.

Today I’m going to take you through my financial order of operations. It’s a basic blueprint of ten steps most people could follow to transform their finances for the better.

In my opinion, it’s the best order in which to save, invest, and pay off debt. It also takes into consideration the incredible importance of maintaining motivation and keeping financial decisions centered exactly where they should be: around your personal goals, dreams, and emotional well-being.

Best of all, anyone can follow the first two steps! You don’t need to have money or a job to get started. Woo-hoo! Gates are open—send in the teenaged overachievers!

Obviously, everyone is different. Think of this journey as the Oregon Trail. We all start in the Independence, Missouri of total ineptitude, and we’re all trying to get to the gloriously fruitful Willamette Valley of financial independence. Some of us may choose to raft down the Columbia River Gorge, and others will take the Barlow Toll Road. That’s totally fine! This guide will help you make informed decisions, even if you don’t follow it exactly.

Read More