I thought it would be fun to write a seasonal Thanksgiving article. You know—How to Save Money on Your Thanksgiving Menu! or something like that. But I cannot write that article for you, or anything remotely like it.
I have a confession to make.
Are you ready?
I spend $500 a year on Thanksgiving.
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.
Some days I wake up ready to crush my debts. I am filled with fire and vinegar. (No, the vinegar does not put out the fire.) I double down on everything I do on that day—I spend less, work harder, and plan more.
Other days, I wake up feeling like Idgaf, Queen of the I Don’t Give a Fuck Tribe of Greater New England. On those days, I find myself wasting time with stuff that distracts me rather than enriches me. I play old video games I’ve already beaten three times, and mewl at my partner to take me to Five Guys. On those days, it can feel like the sacrifices aren’t getting me anywhere.
What can I learn from this? Besides the fact that I suffer from intermittent depression, because I already knew that.
I have a sprinter’s attention span and marathon financial goals. My current financial goal will take at least nine years to achieve. Maintaining momentum and motivation over such a long period of time is really hard.
I’ve tried making visualizations to help me stay on track, and I’m going to share two with you today. Including an old one that is weirdly fucked up and embarrassing.
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.
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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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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.
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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.
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We recently wrote an article about how raising awareness isn’t enough. Our thesis was that you need to pair awareness with some kind of action. Well, good thing we practice what we preach!
Last time we talked about some of the many ways being white brings unearned financial privileges. We got a ton of great responses from readers—many of them white—who are happy that the talk is being talked within the personal finance community.
Now let’s tell you how we think you can walk the walk. Here are our suggestions to make the personal finance community more realistic, more inclusive, more ambitious, and all-around better.
Let’s get to work.
We were recently nominated for some industry awards! This was absolutely shocking. I have no idea who nominated us or how or why. But it instantly gave me two very strong, very different reactions.
The first was a variation on Sally Field’s Places in the Heart acceptance speech. “I haven’t had an orthodox career, and I’ve wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time I didn’t feel it, but this time I feel it, and I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!” Borrowing, of course, the original speech’s explosively manic and self-congratulatory tone. We feel tremendously hashtag-blessed to have found so many warm and welcoming people in our short stay in the personal finance community. And we are truly grateful to all of our readers.
My second reaction was, “Shit. We’ve been pulling our punches!”
See, one of the reasons Piggy and I decided to start this blog was that too much financial advice ignored the hard questions and contentious issues that drive personal finance. Take, for example, this question: why do some people have more money than others?
There are so, so many potential answers to this question. People are different! They have different personalities, abilities, interests, advantages, backgrounds, opportunities, drives, beliefs, and knowledge sets. These combine into a set of financial circumstances unique to each individual. The personal finance community seems inclined toward examining only a few of these differences—the ones that are easy to talk about, the ones that cast a flattering light upon ourselves.
Today I’d like to torpedo all hope of winning industry awards by talking about one of the things that this community really, really doesn’t like to talk about. That subject is race, and by extension, the financial advantages of being white in a white supremacist culture.
Friends, I’d like you to extend me a little trust. Take my hand and follow me on a journey. I’m going to try to inventory some of the gifts given to me by a white supremacist culture. I didn’t ask for these gifts—there was no registry, and I will not be sending thank-you notes. But they also didn’t come with a return address, and there’s no way to refuse them. The body I was born with—that of a white woman—comes with undeniable financial advantages. And the legacy of these advantages is terrible to consider.
Let’s consider it anyway!
For centuries they have lurked in the shadows. Stalking, hunting, draining their victims of their means of survival. They prey upon the weak-willed, the guileless.
I am of course speaking of financial vampires. And it’s time to slay these undead motherfuckers once and for all. Why? Because it’s October, the season for getting all spoopy.
A financial vampire is an activity, product, or person that routinely sucks you dry of money you didn’t plan to spend. It is tempting or unnoticeable, demanding or pitiful. They rely on you to spend unconsciously, or succumb to temptation.
Your financial vampires could be vices like absinthe and opium dens (or, y’know, cigarettes and beer). They could be the last-minute social invitations of your friends. They could be a beguiling advertisement for a fucking Amazon Echo (which I am as yet convinced no able-bodied person needs).
A financial vampire can derail your careful budget and responsible savings plan faster than you can say,
Let’s slay these bumpy-foreheaded, melanin-depleted, fruit-punch-mouthed bastards once and for all.
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