Am I really writing about the FIRE movement? Seven years into running what is, ostensibly, a FIRE movement blog? Why yes, I am!
We’ve published over 400 articles for Bitches Get Riches. It’s possible that one day we’ll stop because we’ve run out of things to say. But today ain’t that day.
Today, I’m explaining a concept so important to us—so central and foundational to every aspect of our lives—that we forgot to write about it. For years.
What can I say? It’s peak me! When a friend comes to visit, I often meet them at the threshold, drag them inside, thrust food into their hands, and press them to name their favorite title card from the original Batman: the Animated Series before I remember to actually, y’know, greet them. A tiny minority of people find this blunderbuss communication style charming. I’m grateful to them! I collect them! And if you’re still reading our blog after such a glaring long-term omission, congratulations: you’re a part of my collection.
If this is your first time hearing about the FIRE movement, sit down. Get comfortable. I might have the privilege of changing your life—and I want us both to enjoy it.
You and your motley team of thieves have infiltrated the highly secured and top-secret Retirement Archives. You’ve made it past the trained guard dogs, the snipers, the laser grid, the biometric scanners. And now, you’re in position to steal the most valuable knowledge of all: how to save and invest to retire some day in dignity and comfort.
Retiring: it’s not just for The Olds anymore!
Over the years we’ve written about how to set yourself up to retire while you’re young, how to stick with a retirement plan during your working years, and even how to achieve FIRE (that’s “financial independence, retire early,” a forced acronym if ever there was one). Here is the sum of our retirement advice, gathered together for intellectual cramming purposes.
A few months ago, we had an opportunity to talk to an artist who’s been an absolutely iconic figure in our lives. Longtime readers know we are obsessed with Chris Dane Owens. His self-produced high fantasy rock music videos grabbed us at a formative time in our lives, and they’ve never let us go.
We first encountered Chris Dane Owens during our college years as roommates, when his viral hit music video for Shine On Me (2008) blasted across the duct-taped screens of our Dell Latitudes. Its radiant awesomeness pierced the clouds of our cynical art school education, which in the early aughts was insisting that art could only be good if it was gritty and brown and serious and rEaLiStIc. And to this day, we play its followup Light Speed (2014) before every speech and public appearance to pump ourselves up and appear effortlessly high energy.
Eventually, our superfanning caught his attention, and he magnanimously offered to come on our show. Our producer Ducky had to physically push our souls back into our bodies.
Today we’re thrilled to share that conversation.
Now, if you’re thinking “Eh, I’m here for the personal finance and career stuff, I’m gonna skip this one,” STOP! We talked about so many issues that matter to our readers.
How do you balance the soul-restoring work of creative endeavors with the draining but necessary work of paying bills?
Why does doing art on a part-time or hobby basis make us feel like failures or sellouts?
How do you identify the cross-functional skills of day jobs and passion projects that make you better at both?
Can you still grow and improve as an artist during times when money and work take priority?
If the work you want to do can’t be done alone, where do you meet collaborators and supporters?
How do you sustain a creative effort over a long period of time?
How do you fit self-funded art into a normal budget?
Chris provides a lot of honest and thoughtful answers to these questions, and more. We’re so grateful to him for his time and insights. We hope you enjoy listening half as much as we enjoyed making his episode, because it was easily the most fun we’ve ever had recording our podcast.
You can find Chris Dane Owens’s music on your streaming platform of choice. His YouTube channel has all of his legendary music videos. (If you haven’t seen them, have you even truly lived?) And if you want updates about his upcoming FEATURE FILM, Empire Queen, you can find links to videos, sneak peeks, and social channels for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and more at EmpireQueenMovie.com.
Special thanks go to Chris for so graciously appearing on our little podcast, and to our producer Ducky. Recording with guests always adds an extra layer of challenge, and she rose to the occasion!
Bitchlings, I am exhausted. Yet I’m also kind of… bored? Or not bored, but lacking in enrichment. The zoo enclosure that is my life is simultaneously stressful and dull in a way that I had trouble putting into words until recently.
As alert readers know, I recently read Barbara Sloan‘s excellent book Tipped: The Life Changing Guide to Financial Freedom for Waitresses, Bartenders, Strippers, and All Other Service Industry Professionals. Check out our interview with the author right here!
Reading Tipped gave me an epiphany: my exhaustion, my boredom, and my money stress are all symptomatic of a larger problem. When I’m not working, I’m spending too much time and money recovering from that work and not enough time and money simply in recreation. From Barbara’s book:
“Winding down after a shift, because of the shift, is a work expense.”
Barbara Sloan, Tipped
In other words, spending time recovering from your work is a cost of that work. Spending money recovering from your work is a cost of that work. And that’s a problem.
The topic of nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) has been the perennial runner up in our Patreon polls for future article topics for years. They’ve been edged out at least four times by sexier, more topical topics. But today they’re finally getting their place squarely in the middle of the sunbeam that is my attention!
Much like Piggy and I, NDAs have been running amok for about thirty-five years, getting stronger and more belligerent all the time. But unlike us, it seems they’ve peaked.
Within the last six months, three major changes have drastically reduced the enforceability of predatory NDAs.
These changes provide general protection to all impacted employees, and specific protections for victims of sexual harassment. With this, it seems the power and popularity of predatory NDAs is finally waning. And workers are gaining back ground they never should’ve lost.
If you’ve ever applied to a job, you’ve seen it: the list of ~*fun job perks*~ at the end of a job description, meant to entice would-be employees with grand promises of free coffee in the break room and foosball tables! Who wouldn’t want a discounted monthly membership to the fancy yoga studio, or massage chairs in the lobby, or an automatic vacation day on your birthday???
ME, that’s who. I righteously spit in the face of your fun job perks! And you should too! Because no matter how much you might appreciate a monthly pizza day in the office… it’s not going to pay your rent.
I am here today to call out fun job perks for what they are: infuriatingly meaningless bribes meant to distract us from a lack of humane compensation. And I brought backup.
We asked our readers for a list of the kind of fun job perks employers offer in an attempt to attract potential employees. The kind that seem great on the surface, but are almost always offered insteadof rather than in addition to higher compensation or better quality insurance. And as always, when we sent up the Bitch Signal, the citizens of Bitch Nation delivered.
While we were in the mystical city of Cincinnati recently, we did a live Drunk AMA on YouTube! It was great. We slow-flossed to a church hymn and dispelled the rumor that Ducky is, in fact, a vampire.
One of the questions we received was about Experian Boost. It’s just one of many services that offer to raise your credit score… for a fee. Even in our chaotic drunken state, we were lucid enough to unequivocally recommend that most of you shouldn’t bother with these paid services. There’s an easier, faster, and free way to raise your credit score!
Since not everyone wants to suffer through a 97-minute YouTube video of our collective vocal fry, I am now here to share the wisdom of how to instantly raise your credit score for free. Cast aside those paid services that promise you a better credit score! This is all you need to know.
When news of the Silicon Valley Bank crash broke, I sighed deeply. Because sighing deeply is the age-appropriate version of a toddler pounding their fists on the floor screaming “I don’ wanna, I don’ wanna, I DON’ WANNA!” That’s always how I feel when I have to understand some complicated new brouhaha caused by oligarchs’ greed, when all I truly need in this life is more naptime.
Guys, don’t worry. Because I am a grown-up woman with finely tuned coping mechanisms, I worked through my tantrum and I did it! I understand what the hell happened to Silicon Valley Bank.
Paragon of intellectual generosity that I am, I’m going to explain it back to you.
If you want an in-depth, technical breakdown, this ain’t gonna be it. I’m going to focus on what this means for us plebs. That means skipping all the boring parts, creatively employing childish metaphors, recklessly speculating about its impact on the future of the economy, and oversimplifying absolutely everything.
Complex, dense financial topics explained by babies, for babies. That’s the Bitches Get Riches brand promise!
You check the mailbox. In between the ubiquitous Bed, Bath & Beyond coupon, snail mail from your Aunt Clarita, and a bill you’d rather ignore, you see it: you’ve been pre-approved for a brand new credit card!
Holy shitballs, what luck! Of all the random folks with mailing addresses, you have been deemed special enough to receive a credit card pre-approval offer! Bring out your finest meats and cheeses, for surely this means you are that most superior of beings: a person worthy of credit! Dance about the maypole and imbibe your most decadent libations!
You should call your bestie, your family, your therapist! Things are looking up now that a credit card company has bestowed upon you a pre-approval offer. Cancel your evening plans, for you need to respond to this with… an application? For… a credit card? For which you’re already… “approved”???
Something’s off. If you receive a credit card pre-approval offer in the mail, shouldn’t that mean you don’t need to apply for it? Especially since you didn’t even ask them to consider pre-approving you.
Today we’re going to teach you what those credit card pre-approval offers are really all about. And we’ll show you exactly what to do with them. It’s easy, it’s fast, and anyone can do it! Read on to learn The Deep Magicke.
I’m always looking for great sustainable swaps, because I love finding ways to reduce my footprint. (In an ecological sense only—been holding steady at size 7.5 for years.) I try to recycle, compost, buy less, shop local, and choose more sustainable options. But I’m just one woman! I can’t test out everything. So I asked our endlessly wise Patreon community. And boy did Bitch Nation deliver!
My only caveat was that these sustainable swaps can’t suck.
Paper straws that disintegrate into wet clumps in your mouth? Absolutely not!
Coffee pods sold to us as green because you’ll “waste less water”? Lies and pictures of also-lies!
Cloth napkins that cost—I’m sorry—$92 for a set of four?! WHAT! I’m not linking to the site because they claim to be handmade by artisans, and I’m sure those artisans are very nice people. BUT STILL!
Out of this list, ye devils! These sustainable swaps need to be as good—or gooder!—than the products they’re designed to replace. Nothing prohibitively expensive or complicated.
