bootstraps Archives • Bitches Get Riches

Kitty will be speaking at the Plutus Impact Summit on September 21-22, 2023. Sign up to attend here!

I have a confession. Piggy and I have been doing a lot of speaking in the past year. But you haven’t seen it, because they’ve been private events and conferences. This reveals a hypocrisy at the core of Bitches Get Riches. We pretend to be women of integrity and bravery, and yap on and on about inclusivity n’ shit, but the cold facts are these:

We’re too cowardly to ask for a +10,000 on those invites.
We wanted to minimize competition over drink tickets and/or cheese boards. Excuse me. I woke up early and brushed my hair. Those Bud Lights and sweating cubes of cheddar on a toothpick are obviously MINE.

But all of that is going to change! Because I’ll be speaking at the Plutus Impact Summit, and you can come too!*

It’s a virtual event running on the afternoons of Thursday and Friday, September 21 and 22. Tickets are dirt cheap, and the first 150 people to register will get a free copy of keynote speaker Farnoosh Torabi’s latest book, A Healthy State of Panic.

The Plutus Foundation is one of our very favorite organizations. They’re a nonprofit dedicated to the financial education of everyone—emphasis on the everyone. Honestly, they’ve done more than anyone we know to spotlight diverse new voices within the personal finance space. They’ve consistently rejected the traditional “suck it up, anyone can do it if they buy apartment buildings instead of food” bullshit we so loathe, and challenged the community to dig deeper and do better.

Given that, it’s no surprise they asked me to join a session called Burning the Bootstrap Mentality alongside Rich Jones and Kevin Payne. LORD, send us MILK, for this panel is going to be SPICY, and I cannot WAIT!

You can see the full agenda here. All of this year’s speakers are undeniably incredible. The lineup includes many of the people we love best and respect most. We’ll plant our lovely asses in the audience for every session. And if the topics interest you too, we hope you’ll join us!

Join us at the 2023 Plutus Impact Summit

*Tragically, because this is a virtual event, you will have to provide your own Heinekens and crudités + elegant tub of ranch dressing.

“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.

Tag: bootstraps

Join Us for “Burning the Bootstrap Mentality” at the 2023 Plutus Impact Summit