It's hard to believe Princess Diana died almost 30 years ago. Since then, interest in the former Princess of Wales has only increased, and many ex-Royal Family employees have written books about their experiences. According to one of Princess Diana's former butlers, the royal kept one secret hidden in a drawer in her home.

Writing in his book A Royal Duty, former royal butler Paul Burrell revealed that Princess Diana used to sell her old clothing in order to generate money to spend on her sons, Prince Harry and Prince William.

According to Burrell, Diana's old clothing included designer labels such as Chanel, Versace, Catherine Walker—a Princess Kate favorite—and Armani. "An outfit worth £2,000 [approximately $2,660] would be sold for around £200 [approximately $266], and somebody, somewhere, would be walking around in the princess's clothes," the ex-butler wrote.

Diana would allegedly generate a lot of money from selling her old clothing.

"These regular sales netted the princess around £11,000 [approximately $14,650], which she kept stuffed into an envelope in a bottom drawer," Burrell claimed.

Unsurprisingly, the princess's decision to keep a large amount of cash at home shocked some of her employees.

"[I]n April 1997, she decided to hand it over to [her financial manager] Michael Gibbins, whose jaw hit the floor when he opened the envelope," per Burrell.

The ex-butler continued, "He took the money and banked it, unaware of how such a sum had been raised. Even the accountant had been left in the dark about the princess's most private finances—until then."

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In a year marked by shifting conversations around sustainability, leadership, and innovation, the Cartier Women’s Initiative recently delivered a powerful reminder of what progress can look like when women are given the resources to lead.

Founded in 2006, the Cartier Women’s Initiative began with the belief that “empowered women transform society.” Two decades later, the proof is in the progress: the program has supported over 330 women impact entrepreneurs from 67 countries and awarded more than $14 million in funding to businesses that are tackling some of the world’s most urgent issues, including environmental and social causes.

To honor this year’s cohort of 30 fellows from around the world, Cartier held a week-long celebration in Bangkok, Thailand that included a series of dialogues, an immersive art exhibition, and opportunities for the fellows to connect with mentors, alumni fellows, and industry leaders. The theme of “Women Lighting the Path” illuminated the idea that women are often the spark for remarkable change.

The week’s events concluded with the Impact Awards ceremony held at Chulalongkorn University, where Amal Clooney delivered a keynote address to a room of over 700 people.

“We’re here to celebrate this year’s 30 Cartier Women’s Initiative Fellows, a formidable group of women entrepreneurs driving change across diverse sectors,” Clooney said. “I’ve seen how the Cartier Women’s Initiative fellowship not only accelerates these brilliant women’s careers but also creates a sisterhood committed to helping each other through its powerful community.”

At the Awards, each fellow was awarded a grant to continue their work. Among them are women like Vanessa Castañeda Gill, who founded Social Cipher to help neurodivergent children embrace their identities through games; Alba Forns, who is enabling everyday people to invest in renewable energy projects through her company Climatize; and Keely Cat-Wells, whose platform Making Space is helping companies train, hire, and retain disabled professionals.

“The Cartier Women's Initiative has been a profound validation of the work we're doing at Making Space, and meeting fellow founders from across the globe in Bangkok reminded me that the barriers people face in the workforce are universal, even when the solutions must be local," Cat-Wells said. "The recognition opens doors with funders, employers, and policymakers who can help us close the disability employment gap at the scale the problem demands. What I hope to accomplish is simple to say and hard to do, which is to build a world where disability and ambition belong together, where careers and dreams grow with the right access, belief, and opportunity behind them.”

While grant money is an important part of the Cartier Women’s Initiative, the program’s impact extends well beyond financial support. All fellows participate in a year-long fellowship program that includes executive education, leadership training, mentor opportunities, and access to a global network of entrepreneurs and experts.

It’s a formula that’s working: 66 percent of businesses that Cartier has supported are still operating, while 9 percent have been acquired or merged. Meanwhile, 76 percent of recent fellows have increased their revenue.

Next year, the program will take place in Amsterdam, where a new group of fellows will be introduced and honored. Proving that for Cartier, supporting women entrepreneurs is more than a moment—it’s a movement.

In The Cost of Starting Over, Marie Claire speaks with women who have experienced seismic change in their lives. They reveal the true price of beginning again, from the financial stakes to the emotional toll.

Chloe Elise built a career teaching women how to feel confident with money. Her life in Kansas City, Missouri looked picture perfect, but behind the scenes, she says the person she trusted most was quietly draining her bank accounts over their five years together. Looking back, she describes the alleged betrayal as a form of financial infidelity.

The 30-year-old money expert and author of Deeper Than Money spoke with Marie Claire about how it all unfolded, the financial and emotional fallout, and what it took to finally walk away.

Before the Financial Fallout

In 2016, I was a full-time college student studying economics and Spanish and working multiple jobs. I was in the mailroom for workstudy, a babysitter, an after-school tutor at an elementary school, a personal assistant, and a “lunch runner” for a trading firm, which was basically DoorDash plus an office cleaning service. I also donated plasma twice a week and rarely ever missed unless my iron was low and I got denied. I was so fed up from working constantly and still feeling broke, plus student loans and a car loan had me in $36,000 of debt. A breakup got me really into personal development, so I made a list of what I wanted to change about my current circumstances and money was at the top.

I started teaching myself about personal finance. I checked out books from the library and watched YouTube videos, which is how I learned it’s important to have an emergency fund, even while paying off debt. I started saving and built up about $7,000 in a year. I spent pretty much every waking moment working to put money towards paying down debt, but I still managed to meet my ex-fiancé one night out at a bar. He was older and had graduated.

The relationship felt simple and fun. It was wining and dining in the beginning, which created this image in my mind that he had his life together. He’d also been working a corporate job, so I felt like the younger, more immature kid.

The First Red Flag

About six months into dating, I found out he was considering taking out a payday loan to cover a car loan payment. He claimed he’d lost his credit card and didn’t want to miss his payment. I knew how bad payday loans were and said he could borrow my debit card to make the payment and cover other costs while he waited for his replacement card. He ended up taking the debit card to ATMs all over town to withdraw the $7,000 in my emergency fund. I felt like I was being pranked and there had to be some sort of explanation.

He admitted to a gambling addiction and said he was going to pay me back every cent. I thought I should break up with him, but he was so charismatic, so visibly upset, and gaslighting me into thinking I’d be a bad human if I left him while he was struggling with addiction. Even one of his loved ones reached out to me to express concern that he might harm himself if I left.

The Escalation

After the loss of my emergency fund, I rebuilt it the same way I’d originally created it: I hustled. It was soul-crushing to think of the money he took from me, but I looked at it as a curveball—and it lit a fire under me to build a financial foundation that no one could take away from me.

As the years went on, I started sharing online about my journey to debt freedom and how I began building wealth without compromising my lifestyle. Seeing the impact of sharing my story and people wanting to learn about my process led to the creation of my financial literacy company Deeper Than Money.

Eventually, I was able to quit my corporate job and become a full-time entrepreneur, but my ex kept getting fired, so I ended up supporting him. Anytime he had any sort of assets, he would leverage them, and sell them to have money to gamble. We had good times too, though, and I thought everything bad in our relationship was because of his addiction.

Then he started to figure out creative ways to steal from me, like taking one of my cards to get groceries, buying some, but then also taking cash back. Or borrowing money from my friends and telling me, “You can let them be mad at you or you can pay them back.” Then things started to go missing. He’d convince me I’d lost them and berate me for misplacing my stuff. It made me so anxious and self-critical. Eventually, I found out he was selling it all on Facebook Marketplace.

He even forged confirmation emails that he’d paid off debts and lied about paying off his student loans. This started complicating my relationship with my online community.

I threw a party to celebrate him getting debt-free; beforehand, I discovered he hadn’t actually paid off any of it. It felt like such a betrayal to my community. At the time, it felt like I couldn't go back and tell them it was a lie because I was protecting him. It created so much shame and distrust in myself. In my mind, if he would choose recovery and sobriety, then everything else would be fixed, which is why I said yes when he surprised me by proposing publicly.

I thought to myself: "I did want this at some point, I'll just make sure he changes before the wedding." The day after getting engaged, he said, “By the way, I had your sister pay for the ring. I don’t have the money to pay for it, so you’ll have to Venmo her.” He’d told her we go over finances once a month, and he didn’t want me to see the charge on his account.

The Break-Up

Around the time of the proposal, I started going to therapy, which is how I realized I was in an emotionally abusive relationship. Oftentimes financial infidelity comes with mental and emotional toxicity and abuse. But at the time, I thought examples of financial infidelity were huge scandals—and not something that could happen to me as someone who was good with money. But now I see financial infidelity as one person in the couple betraying the other’s values and trust.

I also went to a support group for the partners of those struggling with addiction. One of the wives pulled me aside and said, "Are you married to him?" I said, “No.” She said, "Run." That shook me to my core.

An incident made me realize he was never going to change, so ​​I told him we’re going to break up and even offered him a lump sum to get his own apartment. He was dependent on me and I wanted it to end amicably. He was furious and didn’t think it was enough. He even said, “I’m two months away from getting half [of everything by getting married].”

The final night I saw him was frightening and resulted in my putting all his stuff in the hallway and telling him to come get it. I’ve never seen him since.

The Financial Costs

Over the course of our entire relationship, I’d ballpark that he’d easily taken around $100,000 from me between me manipulating me into repaying his debts, outright stealing, and me financially supporting him.

I did make a document with a timeline of everything and linked to receipts. I included text messages, bank statements, documents he forged, and Venmo receipts. My therapist had me do this in case I wanted to file a restraining order, if I ever wanted to try to recoup some of the money, or if he tried to come back and claim I owed him.

If I’m being honest, I don’t know if I want to calculate how much time the financial infidelity set me back on the path to my financial milestones. I never got paid back for any of it, but I was so happy to be free.

The Emotional Costs

All the lying and manipulation created such a distorted reality that I stopped trusting myself. I wasn’t honest with friends and family about what was happening, which was so hard, and created a lot of distance in those relationships.

Plus, I felt like I was betraying my community. I was sharing about financial literacy to an online audience of more than 500,000 while my partner was stealing from me behind my back. It made me feel like a failure.

My friends didn’t learn the full story until after we broke up. Luckily I have the best friends in the world and all of them immediately dropped everything to support me, and never held it against me that I had distanced myself.

It took longer to be open with my online community. I shared that we broke up, but it was triggering to keep getting asked what happened. It took about a year before I was ready to talk about it.

I did a lot of healing work in therapy prior to dating, but after my previous engagement I said I’m never getting engaged or married. I didn’t want to ever have to trust someone in that capacity. Then I met someone.

Life After Starting Over

I recently got married and going into a wedding feeling joy, ease, pure excitement, and love was so healing. It was opposite to how I felt prior. My intuition had zero hesitation and fear.

Deeper Than Money keeps growing. Hiring people is one of my proudest accomplishments. I wrote a book and I've purchased two properties now that are short-term rentals. In addition, I also purchased my first commercial property that I am renovating to become Deeper Than Money’s headquarters, and bought my dream home in 2023 in Kansas City.

From a personal perspective, I hit my goal of becoming a millionaire before turning 27 and am now a multi-millionaire at 30.

My experience with my ex, while traumatic, made me more passionate than ever about teaching women how to have financial independence to leave bad situations and to go after their dreams.

The Money Lesson

Make sure to create financial boundaries and have financial independence. In my story, the financial infidelity happened from the person who didn’t have the finances to the person who did, when it’s often the other way. In that regard, I felt incredibly lucky because ultimately, even though there’s trauma, I had the independence and power to get out of that situation.

It’s important in any way, shape or form to create some type of financial independence, like having your own savings account on the side.

When you're looking to get lost in a book, sometimes you need your reading material to match your mood. With Marie Claire's series "Buy the Book," we do the heavy lifting for you. We're offering curated, highly specific recommendations for whatever you're looking for—whether you're in your feels or hooked on a subgenre trending on #BookTok.

Rich girls like the Blair Waldorfs of the world might not be the most relatable of characters, but that’s what makes them all the more delightful. While we’re saving up for a Dyson Airwrap, fictional gals from the upper echelons of society are busy globetrotting and buying themselves another Birkin. Fortunate for us readers, when books feature girlies of a certain tax bracket, they don’t shy away from a little drama, either. Between shouldering the burden of their wealth, dodging freeloaders, and keeping an eye out for rare clothes/homes/cars/whatever to buy, rich girls literally give main character energy, making them the perfect protagonist (or let’s be real, villain) in a novel.

Which brings us to these uproarious novels in which rich girls are immersed in conflicts and comebacks—some of their own making. After all, these women are used to getting what they want. Why should anything—a partner, job, or reputation—be any different? From ambitious lawyers to famous film producers and a few socialites to boot, these books are all about rich women who find themselves tangled in maddening webs of deceit, gossip, and plenty of danger. But with their refined manners and social know-how, these heroines are forces who know how to play the game—and win.

Below, check out the 11 best novels to read about rich girls with IDGAF energy.

In 2024, Prince William and King Charles were criticized for some of the ways they generated income via the Duchy of Cornwall and the Duchy of Lancaster, respectively. Following the revelation that Prince William earned a whopping $30 million salary from his duchy in 2025, some Cornwall residents have claimed they feel "abandoned" by the Royal Family.

As reported by People, the annual report for the Duchy of Cornwall—which was released in June—revealed "a distributable surplus of £22.9 million ($30.9 million) for the 2024-2025 financial year, Prince William's second year as the Duke of Cornwall." Per the outlet, the impressive "sum covers the official, charitable, and private expenses of Prince William, Kate Middleton, and their three children"—Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis.

However, some Duchy of Cornwall residents have expressed displeasure at the state of their towns, and the alleged lack of interaction from the Royal Family.

Residents of Poundbury in Dorset—a so-called "model town" based on "King Charles's vision of a utopian idyll"—have suggested that it's "no longer living up to its paradisal image," the Daily Mail reported.

According to the publication, "[D]isgruntled locals allege that the town...has fallen into disrepair since [Charles] became King and Prince William has no interest in it."

One nearby resident told the outlet, "This place is bloody awful now. This was Charles's baby but he doesn't have time to look after it and William doesn't want to know."

The resident further alleged, "If we could move out tomorrow, we could, but we are getting too old to do that...The leaves are piling up, the grass isn't cut, and the windows are falling apart."

As the Prince of Wales enters his third year running the Duchy of Cornwall, perhaps he'll be able to assuage some residents's fears.

As a young hedge fund analyst working on Wall Street, HeyJune Jeon always sensed she had an edge. Her job was to crunch numbers, track markets, and advise on trades. But what set her apart, she says, wasn’t what she could see in her spreadsheets—it’s what she could feel. “I just knew who would call me that day. I knew which client would reach out. I knew where the market would move,” Jeon says, on a call in October “And every single time, my gut was right.”

Still, no amount of perfect forecasts could fix the burnout that came with the hedge fund life. In 2017, hoping for a reset, she left for a tech startup. But even then, she felt something was missing. That’s when she met Frank Andrews, New York’s legendary “Psychic to the Stars,” who often sat outside his Lower East Side apartment with his dog, just a few blocks from her office. Intrigued, Jeon began reading with him—until one day he suggested she learn the craft herself. “He doesn’t take on too many students,” she says. “I was like, okay, why not?”

That private curiosity eventually developed into a full-blown side hustle when Jeon’s peers in finance and tech began asking her for financial readings at happy hours and client dinners. “I was already in the right environment, and I had the street cred, because I was already working with people who just so happened to know that, ‘Hey, she’s a good analyst from a financial analyst perspective, but she also happens to be a reader,’” Jeon says. “I had gotten so many names under my belt just doing readings for free that I had a waitlist.”

When the pandemic hit, Jeon started posting tarot and astrology videos on TikTok, which went viral almost instantly. Then came a 2020 appearance on Fox Business, where she was interviewed about her financial readings live on air. “It felt like a calling,” she says. “So I made the decision to be like, you know what? Let me just quit my job and go full-time with this.”

Today, 35-year-old Jeon runs Pheydrus, working with a team of specialists in astrology, feng shui, and numerology to diagnose clients’ energetic and financial blind spots. With more than a million followers on social media, her roster runs the gamut from traders and VC investors to women trying to reach the C-suite, paying anywhere from a few hundred dollars for a single reading to $10,000 for a full program. One seven-week course provides “assignments, live coaching, and personalized workshops” to help entrepreneurs.

Jeon isn’t an anomaly so much as a signal of a broader cultural shift: the merging of money and mysticism. A 2024 survey found that eight in 10 Gen Z and millennial Americans believe in cosmic guidance, including when it comes to their careers and finances.

Across social media, women like Jeon are part of a fast-growing cottage industry of “money mystics.” On WitchTok, hashtags like #manifestation and #moneyspells have amassed billions of views, turning tarot cards and natal charts into financial planning. Their accounts traffic in the parlance of “vibrations” and “consciousness,” and offer a supernova of options, including monthly memberships, coaching programs, and astrological consultations for traders, investors, and those seeking unorthodox financial advice for unorthodox economic times.

For Jessie-Susannah Karnatz, otherwise known as the Money Witch, that disillusionment became a business plan. The 44-year-old built her San Francisco–based practice after what she calls a “tower card” moment: a divorce, an eviction, and a financial collapse that forced her to rebuild from scratch.

“I had become intrigued by why it's not just the financial literacy gap,” she says. “When you give people the information they need to have the financial habits that are going to support them in their financial goals, why do they still not do it?” Drawing on her experience running small businesses and doing bookkeeping and tax work, she began to merge those practical skills with her growing spiritual awareness.

Now over a decade later, Karnatz’s practice blends traditional financial services with psychic guidance. A typical two-hour session with a new client begins with a simple question: “When I first sit down with someone, I just say, ‘What can I do for you?’” she says. From there, she uses what she calls a mix of “psychic capacity and technical financial knowledge” to start pulling apart “what is working and not working.” She asks about “family history around money”—how they were raised and what beliefs they inherited—then studies their astrological chart, using their birth details to trace those patterns.

Karnatz describes her intuitive process as “clear knowing,” explaining, “I rely heavily on my intuition, my psychicness, to help people understand what their real problems are with money,” Karnatz explains. “It’s not so different from what you might uncover in a therapy journey.”

On the low end, Karnatz offers a membership group, Money Coven, for $99 a month. It’s community centered, with daily discussion threads and five guided sessions a month where members can budget together or join group workshops led by Karnatz and other guest facilitators. For those who want something more intensive (and have the cash), there’s a one-on-one coaching program that costs $5,000 for three months, which includes bi-weekly meetings with Karnatz and WhatsApp support between sessions.

Christine Lewis Czyska, a self-employed business owner, turned to the Money Witch after nearly a decade of overwork, burnout, and financial whiplash. “I was looking for someone I could be honest with about my financial journey,” she says. “It’s been trial by fire.” After years of cycling through over-spending and debt, she wanted to understand the emotional patterns behind her habits. In their first session, Karnatz told her that “my financial life may be one of the places where I don’t have the same emotional maturity as other parts of my life”—a moment Czyska describes as “a light bulb.” She’s still early in the process but says she finally feels “supported and witnessed without judgment.”

It’s the kind of conversations you’re not going to have with a traditional financial planner, who can advise you on how much to save for retirement, but not why you can’t seem to stick to the plan. For many of Karnatz’s clients, especially women, that emotional excavation is the missing piece in a system built around patriarchal ideas of money as purely mathematical.

Karnatz sees the surge in financial mysticism as part of a broader reckoning with the stories Americans have long been told about money. She points out that many younger people have followed the traditional playbook: they get degrees, work hard, and do everything they’re told would lead to stability. Yet they still find themselves without job security, unable to afford a home, and “potentially six figures in student debt that the government does not care about.” She adds, “You’re having your existential crisis, and then you start seeking answers. That’s what mysticism, magic, religion all do: they meaning-make.”

It’s no coincidence that most of Karnatz’s clients are women and nonbinary people—groups that have always had to fight harder for financial footing. Women, for instance, hold just 12 percent of global portfolio-management roles, control roughly a third of retail financial assets in the U.S. and Europe, and still earn only about 80 cents for every dollar men make in the U.S.

On a gray Friday afternoon in October, I join one of Jeon’s final sessions with a client over Zoom. The woman on screen —a veteran entrepreneur who’s built and sold companies, survived boardroom betrayals, and is now trying to rebuild both her business and her confidence—has asked to remain anonymous to speak candidly about her career, financial decisions, and business relationships. Soft-spoken and visibly drained, she admits she’s “very exhausted” after years in a toxic partnership and is now facing another pivotal decision: whether to invest millions in a new venture.

Over the next hour, Jeon toggles effortlessly between mystic and strategist, pulling cards, referencing planetary transits, and offering grounded business counsel. She reads the client’s chart like a roadmap, noting that Pluto is “going through your first house,” a transit she says marks deep transformation and personal reckoning. She explains that a “second Saturn return” is pushing one potential partner toward “a fresh start in her career.” Then she draws another card: “I got the retirement card,” she tells the client, explaining that it suggests a turning point in the next six months: either the sense of having earned enough and being ready to slow down, or reaching a new milestone that brings real closure.

But her guidance isn’t only celestial. A self-described “Reflector” in human design terms (a system that blends astrology, chakras, and astronomy), Jeon sees part of her role as mirroring her clients’ energy back to them. Jeon gently reminds the client, “Your value is not tied to whether or not you can just dish out 10 million. I hope you recognize that.” By the end of the session, the shift is visible: the client sits taller, sketching out how she might re-approach her plans with newfound clarity.

That same blend of intuition and strategy is what ultimately led Jeon to this work. After years of watching both Wall Street and wellness culture miss the mark, she began to see a gap she could fill. “We’re all in an energetic enmeshment with these things around us,” she says, but traditional finance doesn’t account for the “unseen forces” that shape people’s relationships to money. Mainstream manifestation culture, on the other hand, can feel too vague to be useful. “‘Just think positive’?” Jeon says. “Well, if you have a very traumatic childhood or you come from a third world country, that just doesn’t work.”

Jeon views her approach as more of an evolution of traditional finance than a rejection of it. She’s quick to point out that Wall Street traders, too, will “think the market’s going this way, and then find evidence to support their gut. They’ll never admit that, but that’s how a lot of analysts operate.” She’s just made the process explicit and systematic. Her clients, many of them high-achieving women in business and tech, “want details, they want facts. They don’t like the generic,” she says. “Because of my experience, I can tangibly tell them: they want this percentage, this sort of leverage points or multiplier… that's something that other readers can't really go into as much because they can't really come up with the specifics of what to say. That's industry language.”

It’s a method that’s earned her a loyal following and more than a few success stories. Jeon says she has advised a founder to turn down a $20 million offer that later became $50 million, helped a YouTuber pivot into stand-up comedy and start touring internationally, and even nudged the creators of the viral Big Red Boots, MSCHF, to take the leap that landed them on Jimmy Fallon’s late night show. “Her guidance completely changed how I show up—personally, professionally, spiritually,” Manjari Kalia, a nurse practitioner who built her own concierge-care business, shares over an email. At the time, she was “floating through pandemic healthcare—doing the work but not really connected to who I was becoming.” Through Jeon’s courses, she began realigning her business with what she calls her “path of greatest purpose.”

The process wasn’t easy: “It was a lot of deep inner work—slogging through the mud, shedding old patterns, redefining what success looked like.” But the results, she says, were tangible. “Clients and independent clinicians who were in alignment with me started finding me naturally. Referrals increased, and the mission of the company expanded.”

Talk to a traditional financial expert and they have a different read. Many caution that while there is always a certain amount of risk when it comes to investing and making money, there are still safeguards in place. A licensed fiduciary is legally bound to act in your best interest. A mystic, by contrast, might be a leap of faith, especially since there are no certifications or qualifications to calling yourself one.

“If astrology or spirituality gives you an accessible entry point into something you might otherwise avoid, like your finances, great,” says Stefanie O’Connell, the author of The Ambition Penalty: How Corporate Culture Tells Women to Step Up — And Then Pushes Them Down. “If it helps you live, spend, save, and invest in better alignment with your values, great.”

The danger, she warns, is mistaking self-reflection for strategy. Manifesting can’t replace budgeting, and a moon cycle won’t rebalance your portfolio. “It might work as an addition to regular financial check-ins,” she says, “but it should not replace those fundamental practices of financial wellness.”

Natalia Benson, a Los Angeles–based astrologer and money coach, has leaned fully into that philosophy. After years of living paycheck to paycheck, she began merging her longtime spiritual practice with practical money management in 2018, teaching clients to read their birth charts as personal finance tools. She’s since built a six-figure business around that balance.

“When the world feels chaotic and frightening, people want to feel a personal sense of power,” she says. “And astrology, when it’s utilized in a healthy way, gives you that.” Through her membership program, Magical Women & Money, Benson helps clients map their “money blueprints,” studying placements like Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn to identify their values, purpose, and earning potential. Her clients are often “empathetic, sensitive, or creative people”—those who find traditional financial advice too “left-brain,” she says.

Still, she emphasizes that astrology alone isn’t the answer. “It can help you understand yourself,” she says, “but you also need sound, healthy financial practices.” That blend of intuition and structure, she adds, can “give you a sense of empowerment, and a sense of self knowing and connection that can help you weather challenging times in the world.”

Across the spectrum, each woman’s method points to the same idea: that understanding your money might start with understanding yourself. And according to them, that philosophy has transformed their own finances, too.

Jeon credits intuition for helping her sell stocks ahead of market crashes, time her exit from Wall Street, and buy two homes using her own numerology method. Karnatz rebuilt from divorce and eviction as a single mother, growing her business into a growing, self-sustaining practice by confronting her own “shadows around money.” And Benson, who once had “fifty bucks in my bank account,” says that when she finally started to “show money that I respected it and I was willing to take care of it and not be so avoidant,” everything shifted.

Jeon, for one, has stopped apologizing for it. “Following the rules didn’t really help,” she says. “So we’ve got to create and follow our own magic.” After all, fortune favors the bold. And betting on yourself? That’s just good business.

In Exit Interview, Marie Claire has a candid conversation with someone who has left their job. We learn all about their experience—both the good and bad—plus why they decided to leave and what life looks like on the other side. Here, we talk with Melinda French Gates about her new ambitions, the secret benefit of transitions, and the Monday morning tradition she's been doing for 30 years.

Tell me about your decision to move on from the Gates Foundation.

It was a difficult one. But I knew I could have more impact by stepping away to focus on other issues, many of which were outside the foundation’s scope. As I kept seeing women’s rights rolled back, I started to think differently about the last chapter of my career. I am simply not willing to accept that my granddaughters could grow up with less freedom than I did. And so I stepped away from the foundation because I wanted to devote all my time and resources to that fight. There are so many brilliant leaders committed to advancing women’s rights, but they don’t have as much support as those committed to reversing them do. My intention is to help even the playing field. I am going to spend the rest of my life trying to get more power in women’s and girls’ hands.

Whom did you turn to for advice as you prepared for your new chapter?

For the past 30 years, I’ve kept a standing date on Monday mornings to go walking with three of my best friends. We’re strict about it. If you’re in town, you’re there. I call them my truth council, because we consult each other about almost every major decision in our lives. That word truth is key. I have to be willing to tell them the truth about what I’m thinking and feeling. And then I know that they’ll tell me the truth, even if it’s a hard one I won’t want to hear. We all need people like that in our lives—people who know us deeply and will help us stay true to ourselves.

Can you explain what Pivotal Ventures is and why it was your next step?

I created Pivotal in 2015 to start working on issues that were important to me but didn’t align perfectly with the foundation’s work. We’ve built really strong relationships with organizations working on issues ranging from improving adolescent mental healthcare to supporting caregivers to helping women rise to positions of power. So it was a no-brainer that Pivotal would be the center of my philanthropy in this next chapter.

What’s a lesson you learned in your last role that you’re bringing with you?

When I first got started in philanthropy, I had a much narrower definition of what it means to be an “expert” in something. I sought out the people who had studied the issues we worked on, and only over time did I realize how important it was to be seeking out the people who were living those issues, too. When I traveled for the foundation and sat down with women all over the world, I realized that as much as I cared—and still care—about grounding our work in data, the stories behind the statistics matter, too. That’s why, at Pivotal, we’re trying a lot of things to invite in more perspectives. We have a deep respect for expertise, but also a much wider definition of what expertise means.

How do you feel about life transitions?

One lesson I’ve learned about transitions—and there’s a chapter in my new book, The Next Day, about this—is not to rush them. I didn’t always think this way. I have always been a dedicated planner. I kept lists for everything, and I did that because I had so many things I wanted to achieve. But gradually I started to see how limiting that approach actually was. If you’re always going from one thing to the next according to a preconceived plan, you never look up, look around, and see the world from a different perspective. Transitions force you to pause. And if you linger in that wide-open space between chapters and pay attention, they have a lot to teach you. I’m still in my current transition, so I’m still learning how I will grow this time. I want to meet new people, learn new things, stay open to new possibilities, and see what happens.

Does anything scare you about this next phase of your work?

The stakes are so, so high. Will women have the freedom to make decisions about their health? Will women get the support they need to care for their loved ones and earn a living? As AI continues to play an increasingly prominent role in our daily lives, will the technology be developed by people who understand women’s lives? The list of really important questions goes on and on. So, yes, it can be daunting, but I’m optimistic about our ability to make progress, because I see it happening every single day.

What advice would you have for someone who is looking to take a leap?

My book starts with one of my favorite stories, from the spiritual leader Ram Dass: There were two waves traveling through the ocean, one big and one small. As they get closer to land, the big wave sees what’s about to happen. The waves ahead of them are crashing on the shore. The big wave warns the small wave that the end is near, but the small wave says, “Don’t worry, we’ll be fine. You’re not a wave. You’re water.” I love that story because it captures what it’s like to experience an enormous transition without losing the core of who you are.

This article appears in the 2025 Changemakers Issue.

When Lauren M. and her now-husband decided to get married, they threw traditional rules out the window, including societal standards around who should buy her wedding ring. At the time, Lauren, a 31-year-old writer and editor, was making about $90,000 a year, while her partner pulled in $12,600 annually. That salary discrepancy led her to buy her own wedding ring, an understated $500 band that she loves; it felt more “her” than something flashy.

Lauren was fine with buying her own ring. Her family? Not so much. Her dad, especially, was skeptical. “The first thing he said was, ‘I just want to make sure he can take care of you,’” Lauren recalls. She knew he meant financially, and she felt like she had to defend their situation. She told him that her partner was the most caring person in the world; maybe he couldn’t provide for her monetarily at the moment, but he supported her emotionally—and that meant much more to her.

Still, her father’s comment stuck. It made her question her decision to buy her own ring. She says it fits her current lifestyle—as a nomad, she doesn’t want to wear something she’ll be anxious about losing while traveling—but she’s game for an upgrade in the future. Right now, she still feels like she has to downplay the fact that she’s the primary earner in her relationship, especially when introducing her husband to people she’s nervous about impressing.

Lauren is part of a growing number of young women who make more money than their male partners, and as a result, have taken on the role of engagement-ring-buyer and financial provider. While you wouldn’t know it from Instagram “we-did-a-thing” announcements, the number of women buying their own engagement rings has doubled from seven to 14 percent in recent years, with women spending around 33 percent more on their rings than men.

The wage gap is still a very real issue, but Gen Z and millennial women are narrowing it, with younger women in 22 cities making the same as or more than guys their age, according to Pew Research Center data. This is likely because women, in Gen Z and millennial generations especially, are getting college degrees at a higher rate than their male peers, which sets them up to earn more over their lifetime. Younger women are also forgoing or delaying having kids at higher rates, which helps keep their income steady.

All of this is great news for women’s financial independence, but somewhat-more-complicated news for those of us who were socially conditioned to believe that, in a straight relationship, the man should make more and be able to afford a nice engagement ring for his partner.

“I have feminist friends who are still like, ‘He needs to be the one to buy the ring and ask me,’” says Candice Maier, Ph.D., a licensed clinical therapist and associate professor in the Marriage & Family Therapy Program at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. “There’s this incredibly steeped patriarchal idea that women aren’t pursuers; they should be pursued, and the ring is part of that.”

On Reddit and Quora, posts with titles like, “Thoughts on brides buying their own engagement rings?” and “Has anybody bought their own engagement ring?” abound, with women nail-biting about whether it’s okay for them to make the purchase themselves and what it says about them and their partners. Most of the women who write these posts provide caveats about how their partners aren’t deadbeats—a defense that only needs to be deployed because of deeply entrenched beliefs around who should buy the ring.

To understand where these beliefs come from, it’s worth examining the history of engagement rings: They can be traced all the way back to Ancient Rome, where rings made of materials like bone and flint were worn to symbolize love and, unromantically, ownership, obedience, and business contracts, according to the Gemological Institute of America. In 850, Pope Nicholas I gave betrothal rings their more modern meaning, declaring that they represented a man’s financial sacrifice and intention to marry.

But the average engagement did not involve the exchange of an expensive ring until less than a century ago. As more diamonds were discovered in South Africa in the late 1800s, the stone lost its scarcity value and became commonplace. The British industrialists who owned the mines fixed this by creating De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., to control diamond supply and create a marketing strategy to reestablish the gem’s rarity and power. In the 1940s, De Beers launched their incredibly persuasive “A diamond is forever” campaign, running ads that made it clear that a successful, loving marriage was only guaranteed if a man spent one month’s salary (this later jumped arbitrarily to two, then three months’) on a diamond engagement ring for his fiancé. They loaned jewelry to movie stars—the OG influencers—and essentially birthed the first hellish installment of the wedding industrial complex.

Knowing the dark history and marketing-manufactured meaning of exorbitant rings can make the quintessential engagement seem much less appealing. But for a lot of people, the desire for a traditional proposal and money dynamic is somehow just still there. “Most of our parents modeled a relationship where the man made more, and that’s generally seen as socially acceptable,” says Beth Gulotta, a licensed mental health counselor, founder of NYC Therapeutic Wellness, and host of the podcast, Quiet the Clock. “Anything outside of that isn’t seen as normal, and there’s so much pressure for relationships to look and be a certain way. It’s baked into us.”

When Dana S. and her boyfriend were ready to get married, the fact that he couldn’t afford a ring was a major roadblock. Dana, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, wasn’t willing to wait until her partner was in a better place financially. She had a timeline—she was 27 and really wanted to be married before she turned 30—and she was determined to make it happen. Her then-boyfriend was 24 and making ten dollars an hour as an audio engineer; she was working as a researcher at a website and had a $45,000-a-year salary.

Trying to put together a classic proposal when she wasn’t in a textbook-gender-roles-relationship really stressed Dana out. Money was an issue all around; she wasn’t exactly making a ton, either, but she couldn’t let go of the idea of a traditional engagement. “Especially before we were married, I never felt like, ‘Oh, I have a job, I should pay for everything.’ I had an old-school mentality drilled into me that things should be split equally or taken care of by the guy, and I didn’t want to be taken advantage of,” Dana says. Stubbornness felt like the antidote to settling for an unconventional proposal. And she didn’t want to take away her boyfriend’s opportunity to make the gesture. “Even though he couldn’t get something expensive, I think he wanted to pay for the ring for me,” she says.

She and her boyfriend Googled “white sapphires,” which look like diamonds but are more affordable, and asked their parents about family stones they could use. "We were really looking at everything to check off traditional wedding boxes while doing it in a way that made it work for us,” she says. “You’re just so conditioned from a young age to want some ginormous ring. The finger-spread Instagram effect is a real thing.”

Dana ended up having a diamond of her great-grandma’s reset, her boyfriend paying for it on layaway for a year and a half. “I orchestrated it myself, and it wasn’t traditional or a surprise in any way, shape, or form,” she says. “I know how this sounds, but so many of my friends who waited until later to get married have much better rings than me, and I know so many people look at my ring and make judgments. It can make me self-conscious. My friends will make jokes that my husband got off so easy.”

Distress over an engagement ring purchase is just a symptom of the larger dynamics that come into play when women are the breadwinners in straight relationships.

“As men do less well structurally, that shakes the foundations of patriarchy, which increases the importance of upholding patriarchal roles personally through rituals like engagement,” says Laurie Essig, Ph.D., a sociologist, professor of gender, sexuality, and feminist studies at Middlebury College, and author of Love, Inc.: Dating Apps, the Big White Wedding, and Chasing the Happily Neverafter.

As society shifts toward gender equality, women and men fall into the trap of uplifting patriarchy within their relationships, mostly subconsciously, and it hurts them both. It’s incredibly hard to avoid this pitfall, especially for Gen Z and millennials, who are among “the first generations having to navigate it in real life,” Essig says. Examples of older couples thriving in flip-flopped gender roles are difficult to find. “Younger generations are being tasked with living out this shift.” Hence the hesitation many women have about buying an engagement ring even when it may logically make sense as the higher earner. We haven’t yet established new romantic aspirations, ideals, and fantasies to match up with the reality of many couples’ financial arrangements.

If cultural benchmarks, like the classic proposal, are meaningful to you, being unable to achieve them can feel terrible. They poke at highly sensitive and deeply ingrained aspects of identity. “These gender roles are deeply toxic, and they can sneak their way in even if a couple is otherwise super well-connected and able to communicate,” says Hanna Morrell, a financial coach who works with couples at Pacific Stoa Financial Wellness. “When men earn less, they can feel like their autonomy is taken away and they’re ‘less of a man,’ which often means they’ll respond with rebellion or resentment, and women feel like they have to downplay their success, and that somehow making money is a bad thing.”

Women who are breadwinners end up taking on the pressures inherent with supporting someone financially, while also protecting their male partner’s ego. They don’t want to emasculate them, a concept that only exists because we’ve tied money so tightly to what it means to be a man. “Why would it be embarrassing to have a female partner who makes more than you? That should be good for everyone,” says Essig. “But under the conditions of patriarchy, you can’t be proud because men should have control of women.”

When men don’t have that authority, they’re inclined to obtain power in other ways, notes Maier, which can range from being abusive to not picking up their share of housework and emotional labor. Even when women are the higher earners, they still tend to take on more domestic and caregiving responsibilities than their male partners, an unfair setup that leads to major burnout. This might be one reason why straight couples with higher-earning women are more likely to get divorced.

It may also be why a lot of women, despite feminist ideologies, still want a partner who makes more. They know that even if they’re the financial provider, their partners won’t become the homemaker or primary parent. In other words, being the breadwinner means double the work—holding down a full-time job and holding down the household.

Wanting a higher-earning partner doesn’t make you a “bad feminist.” You could think of it as a survival strategy in a patriarchal, capitalistic society. But for younger generations of women, it’s becoming less realistic to find a partner who makes the same as or more than them. Ultimately, though, if it’s what you want, that’s valid.

“The beauty of third-wave feminism is that it’s about choice. If you want to be supported as a stay-at-home mom or have your partner propose to you, that’s great. Nothing should be done purely in the name of feminism,” Maier says. “But nothing should be done in the name of tradition either.” Given that we’re socialized through the lens of patriarchy, it can be hard to determine what’s an authentic preference and what’s been shaped by misogynistic stereotypes. “You have to be intentional about your choices, and question them, and figure out what’s really right for you,” Maier says. Examining your attractions and desires, and uncovering their origin, can be incredibly freeing.

We have a long way to go before men and women stop feeling the pressure of gender roles. It starts with imagining what our lives could look like without them, and having the courage to live that way now.

Émilie Gille, a 28-year-old living in Nashville, Tennessee, split the cost of her engagement ring, which was roughly $3,500, with her husband. When they made the decision to get married, he was a Ph.D. candidate making about $25,000 a year, and she was working in public relations with a $55,000 salary. “It felt weird to say, ‘Here’s the ring I like, and I want you to buy it for me,'” says Gille. “It felt old-fashioned that he would have to buy it to prove that he wanted to be with me, when really, getting engaged is about a partnership.”

Gille and her husband have no regrets about splitting the cost of her engagement ring. He’s Korean, and in his culture, engagement rings aren’t really even a thing. Their cultural differences made the whole process easier, Gille says. It helped her realize that stressing over the size and price of a ring—and who pays for it—is a uniquely American anxiety. Lauren, who spends most of her time abroad, echoed that sentiment.

Still, Lauren says, unlearning traditional money dynamics doesn’t happen overnight. When she first started splitting her income with her husband, she caught herself wanting to police his spending. “Like if he wanted to get an $8 latte at the airport, I’d want to say you can’t have it, but if the roles were reversed, I wouldn’t think twice about spending his money,” she says.

Critiquing your reactions is difficult and crucial work, and talking about them with a partner is itself a big step. “Just having a conversation together about what it means to be a man or a woman is challenging social gender norms,” Maier says.

Liberation lives on the other side of that conversation. When Naomi Clarke, a 35-year-old from Austin, Texas, was deciding how she wanted her engagement to look, she simply took what resonated from the traditional model, and left the rest. She bought her own ring for about $3,000, as well as a watch for her partner. After they’d talked about marriage many times, she surprised him with a proposal.

“Having a ring was more about symbolizing our commitment rather than fulfilling a tradition,” Clarke says. “We both appreciate the meaning behind wearing something representing our bond, but it didn’t have to follow conventional standards. For me, it was about having something tangible to signify the next phase of our relationship.”

Clarke, who works in HR, makes slightly more than her husband, a software engineer. But she says that wasn’t the main thing that pushed her to buy her own ring. She simply wanted to take the lead in the purchase. “It was never about who should buy it, but about what felt right for us.”

We need to hear more stories like Clarke’s, where women and men push past the confines of gender roles. Showing them in the media is a great place to start. When I asked Marie Claire’s pop culture experts if there are any movies, books, or TV shows where a woman buys her own engagement ring, they couldn’t think of a single example. Women proposing has been normalized (for example, Monica on Friends and Miranda on Sex in the City) but we need to take it a step further. We should see women making more money than their partners, and feeling empowered to buy their own engagement rings.

For Gille, who also bought a set of modest promise rings for herself and her husband (a Korean tradition), splitting the cost of her engagement ring just made sense, no matter who made more money. “I liked the idea of us starting on equal footing,” she says. “We’re equals in this relationship, so why wouldn’t we equally invest?”

Lauren says she still goes back and forth on whether she “missed out” on a traditional proposal. Ultimately, having a partner who provides emotional security is her biggest priority, and her husband gives her that in a way no other guy has before. Male earning power has lost its sheen since they met, but the engagement ring she bought herself has not. She tells people the truth about it, too. And her family has come to love it, and their relationship.

“My ring represents how I've been able to break out of the wedding blueprint and do it the way that makes sense for my partner and me,” she says. “I don't feel ashamed about doing it differently.” Doing whatever works for you has a nice ring to it.

When it comes to her daughter, Katie Holmes won't stand for any false rumors or allegations being spread online.

On Sunday, Dec. 8, Holmes took to Instagram to deny a report that her daughter, Suri Cruise, had inherited a lucrative trust fund from estranged father Tom Cruise. "Completely false," Holmes wrote over a screenshot of an article. "Daily Mail you can stop making stuff up." She simply captioned the Instagram post, "Enough."

The Dawson's Creek icon also responded to negative fan comments about the post, writing (via Us Weekly), "But in the world today, I don't want a target on my child's back." She continued, "It's dangerous."

The Daily Mail had claimed, per their source, "It is part of the divorce deal that a trust fund provided by Tom Cruise be shared with daughter Suri Cruise when she turns 18, and it is substantial." The source further alleged, "She was allowed to access it when she turned 18 in April. The rest of the money will become available to her once she enters her thirties."

Earlier this year, Suri embarked on a major new chapter when she started attending Carnegie Mellon University.

In an interview with Town & Country, Holmes reflected on her daughter's big move, saying, "I'm proud of my daughter. Of course, I will miss the close proximity, but I'm really proud of her and I'm happy." She continued, "I remember being this age, this time of beginnings. It's exciting to learn about yourself, and I loved that time, so it makes me happy to think about it like that."

Suri Cruise was born on April 19, 2006. Holmes married Mission: Impossible star Tom Cruise in 2006, and filed for divorce from the actor in 2012. Holmes was awarded primary physical custody of Suri in the divorce settlement. It's been alleged that Tom last saw his daughter in 2013, and they've reportedly been estranged since then.

You've probably heard the jabs about being a millennial. Over the years, we’ve been called everything from lazy, entitled snowflakes to avocado toast-eating spendthrifts. But the most common label has been that of the “broke millennial,” perpetually behind in finances and therefore, life.

“Millennials have been squeezed in a lot of ways our parents weren’t,” says Jill Filipovic, author of OK Boomer, Let's Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind. “We went to college in record numbers—and took on astronomical student loan debt—only to graduate into a recession where it was difficult to find work. As a result, some of us took lower paying jobs, which had long-term effects on our finances.”

Indeed, the stereotype of the “broke millennial” has largely been true. But new data suggests a different narrative, one that claims the generation has money after all. Millennials are, in fact, wealthier than their parents were at the same age, according to a recent analysis of the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis analyzed SCF data and found that between 2019 and 2022, the median household net worth of older millennials (born in the '80s) doubled, and the median wealth of younger millennials (born in the '90s) quadrupled.

“We were really surprised by the data,” says Ana Hernández Kent, a senior researcher with the Institute for Economic Equity at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, who studied the data with her colleague, Lowell R. Ricketts. Previously, their analysis of 2019 SCF data showed that the wealth of older and younger millennials was 9 and 44 percent below expectations, respectively, based on earlier generations at the same age and adjusted for inflation. But just three years later, in 2022, the SCF data showed that the wealth of older and younger millennials rose to 37 and 39 percent above expectations—a significant increase for both groups.

The data makes it sound like millennials are thriving, so why doesn’t it feel that way?

Millennials’ net worth only looks good on paper

In Kent’s analysis, she found that real estate was the main driver of wealth gains for millennials between 2019 and 2022. The reason? Home values appreciated tremendously during this time. According to a report by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, home prices nationwide increased 47 percent (23 percent when adjusted for inflation) between 2020 and 2024. So if you were lucky enough to buy a home before the pandemic, chances are, your home equity—and net worth—increased dramatically.

That’s been the case for Melissa Bell, a 34-year-old who lives in Orlando, Florida. At the beginning of the pandemic, her home—which she purchased in 2015 for $190,000—was worth around $300,000; today, it’s valued at nearly $450,000. On paper, her net worth increased substantially but that doesn’t necessarily make her feel financially secure. “Having the house helps bring my husband and me peace of mind but it doesn’t impact our day-to-day spending,” she says. “At this point, the house is our retirement plan.”

The psychological disconnect between looking rich on paper and actually feeling wealthy in your daily life has been described as “phantom wealth.” The idea is that having assets like a house or a car increases your net worth, but because they aren’t liquid, they don’t make you feel better off in your day-to-day; they can’t help pay for essentials like gas and groceries.

The wealth gap among millennials is the largest it’s ever been

Millennials may technically be catching up financially but we also have greater wealth inequality than any previous generation, according to a recent study. “Millennial wealth is hugely unequally distributed,” says Rob J. Gruijters, a quantitative sociologist at the University of Bristol in England, and the study's lead author. “The top 10 percent of millennials hold close to 70 percent of the generation’s wealth. Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent of millennials hold less than 2 percent.”

Just like the rest of America, the wealth gap among millennials runs along racial lines. In an analysis of 2019 SCF data, Kent found that white millennial families had $88,000 in median wealth, Latino families had $22,000, and Black families had $5,000. In other words, white millennial families had four times as much wealth as Latino families and nearly 18 times as much wealth as Black families. There are many potential reasons for these disparities but according to Kent, a big one is the burden of student loan debt on millennials of color.

Brianna Gillard, a 33-year-old who lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, has more than $151,000 in student loan debt. She lives at home with her parents to save money. “Over the next two years, my goal is to pay off my consumer debt and student loans, build an emergency fund, and hopefully afford my first home,” she says. “I’ve made progress recently, paying off three credit cards within the past six months, which has been a big step forward.”

Public policies and programs are lacking

On top of student loans, millennials are dealing with rising housing costs, unaffordable child care and healthcare, and low-paying services jobs. To close the wealth gap, it’s crucial for lawmakers to create policies that address these issues, says Gruijters. For example, policies that make it easier for young people to buy homes can help those who started out disadvantaged begin to build wealth.

Whitney Hayes, 37, was able to purchase her first home in Roanoke, Virginia in 2022 in part because she qualified for a Virginia Housing Development Authority grant that helped cover her closing costs (she also received help from her father, who gave her the money for the downpayment). Though she still has student loan debt, she’s finally starting to feel somewhat financially stable. “I just emerged from feeling like I was financially struggling (like within the last few months), so I am on the other side of it—but barely,” she says.

So are millennials really better off than their parents? The thing is: It's complicated. The overall wealth of millennials has indeed increased but it’s more unequally distributed than ever, so if you don’t feel like you’re rolling in it, you’re certainly not alone. It’s also important to remember that numbers don’t always tell the whole story. As Kent put it: “There’s what the data says and there’s lived experience, and sometimes those things can feel conflicting.”

“Very demure, very mindful” is the latest TikTok trend sweeping the internet. And while the influencer who coined the phrase was talking about dressing for work, being “mindful” can be helpful in many other aspects of our lives—including finances.

Money mindfulness means being highly aware of the way you handle your finances, knowing the decisions you make today will impact your future. It’s about setting goals and implementing a plan to achieve them.

Financial advisers say money mindfulness has a less obvious benefit, too: reducing stress. And many consumers are stressed these days. In a recent TD Bank survey of more than 1,500 American adults, 67% reported that some aspect of their finances keeps them up at night.

So, if money mindfulness is something you’d like to try, here are five steps to get started:

1. Establish goals. “Taking a step back to become aware of your own financial goals and focusing on what is most important to you is an important first step,” says Courtney Mitchell, head of Consumer Deposit and Payment Products at TD Bank.

A suggestion would be to divide your goals into three categories: short-term goals to be achieved in less than a year, medium-term goals to be accomplished in one to five years, and long-term goals for further down the line. This will help you prioritize your spending and savings.

One goal that likely should be high on your list: “Pay off high-interest debt such as credit cards and personal loans,” Mitchell advises. “This will pay off in the long run and give you more flexibility with your money.”

Goals can seem overwhelming once you put a dollar figure to them. But they can be achieved over time by making small changes to your spending habits and gradually building your savings.

2. Know where your money goes. Start by closely tracking your spending for a few months. With this exercise, you can identify expenses you could cut—such as streaming services you no longer watch—which can free up money for your goals.

Next, use this information to create a budget. A popular budget is the 50-30-20 rule, which splits your take-home pay into three categories:

• 50% is set aside for necessities like groceries, housing, insurance, transportation, and utilities.
• 30% goes toward wants, such as dining out, entertainment, or vacations.
• 20% is dedicated to savings and repaying debt.

“Online banking and mobile apps allow you to track your expenses anytime, anywhere” Mitchell says. “That way, you’ll always know how your spending is aligning—or not aligning—with your budget.”

3. Plan for emergencies. An emergency fund is essential to any financial plan. This is money you can tap instead of using credit cards if you lose your job or have other surprise bills.

“Give yourself peace of mind by preparing for unexpected changes to your income and account for any unexpected expenses,” Mitchell says. “You never know what challenges the future may bring along.”

The standard recommendation is to keep three to six months’ worth of living expenses in an easily accessible—and preferably high-yield— savings account.

That can seem like a stretch, but you don’t have to build emergency savings overnight. Saving even small sums consistently can help you build a sizable emergency fund over time.

“One of the easiest ways to start consistently saving is to automate it,” Mitchell says. “You can either set up for a direct deposit to go to a separate savings account or set up automatic transfers from your checking to a savings account based on the frequency and amount that works within your budget.”

In the realm of personal finance, few tools have stood the test of time like the savings account. If you're ready to jumpstart your savings journey, TD Bank accounts such as TD Simple Savings and TD Signature Savings provide options to help you meet your individual savings goals.

4. Practice mindful spending. It’s easy to make impulse purchases, particularly now with sales promotions during Black Friday and the holidays. But just because something is on sale doesn’t mean you're saving money, especially when you don’t need the item.

Mindful spending is being intentional about your purchases and pausing before each to ask yourself: Is the purchase something you really need or value? Would that money be better used elsewhere?

This doesn’t mean you can’t have any fun. “If you decide to splurge, give yourself time to save for that purchase or create a plan on how to pay for it,” Mitchell says.

5. Don’t leave money on the table. Make the most of benefits or perks that can put more cash in your pocket—with little or no effort on your part.

For example, if your employer matches your contributions to your 401(k) plan, make sure you contribute at least enough to get the full match. That’s free money.

Take advantage of a high-yield savings account or certificates of deposit that offer higher interest rates and allow your savings to grow faster.

And if you’re in the market for a new credit card, look for a rewards card that offers cash back. It's important to know what rewards are most valuable to you, and to know how you're likely to use the card. If you like to set it and forget it, you'll often get the most out of a flat cash back card like, which allows you to earn a percentage on every eligible purchase without any further thought. If, on the other hand, you like to be very strategic around rewards, a card like TD Cash lets you choose your top spending categories each month to maximize your rewards on specific categories like groceries and gas.

Or if your goal is to pay down card debt, consider transferring your balance to a card offering a low introductory interest rate for 15 or 18 months and then aggressively paying it off before the promotional rate expires.

Lastly, money mindfulness is a journey—one that starts with small steps. These five can put you on a path that will reap financial rewards for years to come.

Even after I graduated from Stanford Business School, all I wanted to be was a mom.

So after my first child was born on New Year's Day 2016, I let myself dive into the experience. When I rocked my baby night after night at 3 a.m. (while endlessly scrolling Instagram), I was exhausted but content. I loved the sheer magic of watching a human grow and learning something new—in this case, the basics of how to take care of that being.

Five months later, I announced that I wanted to downshift my paid work to two days a week and spend the rest of my time at home enjoying said contentment. Everyone around me—from my husband to my mentors to my mother—had something to say about it.

My family worried I'd be bored. My friends thought I was turning my back on the Lean In rallying cry that was still in the zeitgeist. The internet served up working mom content with crisp blazer-clad power women. The inverse was the athleisure-clad women of the Real Housewives and the cultural depiction of overwhelmed mothers buried under laundry—a very slight upgrade from the apron-clad mothers of the 1960s serving cocktail trays to their husbands after a long day at the office.

Meanwhile, I felt more modern and ambitious than ever before. My husband and I had agreed to block and tackle housework. He made the meals; I held down the fort with the baby. Our relationship felt equitable, not traditional. Sure I was tired (caring for a newborn isn’t easy) but I was also inspired. Learning how to take care of my child and meeting my new, postpartum self reinvigorated me to explore what came next.

I was tinkering with a new idea online—which would eventually become Mother Untitled, the first community for women on career pauses to focus on family. I felt creative, not stagnant. The time I spent at home, away from my professional duties, allowed me to explore new ideas and engage in creative experimentation.

I was meeting women on the playground and in baby classes who occasionally wore athleisure—never aprons. None of us were confined to our homes. We talked about our former careers, new ideas that inspired us, and what we were learning about ourselves during this time. None of us fit the outdated caricature of the stay-at-home mom. But all of us felt judged—shamed, even—by someone in our orbit, who thought we were "giving up" on our drive, productivity, success, or worse, our feminism. Even for the most self-assured of us, that shame can cause us to question our choices or feel self-conscious when someone at pick-up asks, “What do you do?” Above all, that shame makes us generally enjoy this time in our lives a little less than we deserve to.

Fast forward eight years and little progress has been made. Stay-at-home moms still feel judged and shamed for their choice. Last year, when Mother Untitled surveyed 1,200 mothers in full-time stay-at-home motherhood or downshifted careers, more than half of them said they received negative feedback when they announced that they wouldn’t immediately be returning to work. In response to the question, “How do you feel others perceive your decision to become a stay-at-home mom?” the most common answers were “misunderstood, spoiled, and judged.”

Indeed, nearly 80 percent of our survey participants said they felt that most people don’t understand the work that goes into being a primary caregiver. This lack of understanding adds to the stigma of stay-at-home mothering, which only reinforces the shame.

The first step to gaining understanding and lifting the stigma around stay-at-home motherhood is realizing that all parents share more similarities than differences. There’s no need for there to be a divide between stay-at-home mothers and mothers who do paid work outside the home. Our survey results prove this: 1 in 3 mothers in the general population reported being extremely likely to pause their careers for family in the next two years, and half said they planned to downshift their working hours. Ninety percent of stay-at-home parents want to return to the workforce after time away from their careers.

All of this points to a unifying fact—our generation of women is ever-evolving when it comes to the work and family equation. Stay-at-home mothers will likely become working mothers at some point, and working mothers may become stay-at-home mothers. And more of us exist in the gray area between these categories than ever before.

We also need to reexamine the assumption that stay-at-home motherhood is a luxury, available only to the privileged. First, in defining the role in this way, we deny full-time caregivers the dignity and respect the essential work of raising kids demands. It's important to note, too, that for many families—62 percent, according to our survey—the decision to stay home with their children is often fueled by financial need. In the U.S., many families simply can't afford the exorbitant cost of childcare. When our culture can part with the idea that stay-at-home motherhood is a luxury, we can adopt a more nuanced view of every parent's choices and the immense work of parenting in all its forms—a view that lets us continue to find more common ground.

When we meet on that common ground, such as at the school drop-off line, I challenge you to ask a parent you may have overlooked as "just a stay-at-home mom" about her plans for the day. You may find that her response shifts your perspective. She may share a class, side project, hobby, or volunteering gig she's working on, alongside motherhood, as half of the stay-at-home parents in our survey reported. If she’s focusing on her family at this moment, it's important to recognize that constant caregiving entails more than packing lunches or folding clothes, as it's often portrayed. It demands endless research and real skills, from tackling sleep issues to managing big emotions—including your own.

These are shared issues for mothers, whether they work at home or do paid work (or something in between). For far too long, our culture has devalued the significant daily work of caregiving, viewing it as less important, easily outsourced, or mundane compared to the productivity of the workforce. This dismissive attitude often looks down on parents who dedicate their time to caregiving responsibilities. What we know now, from a variety of research, is that parenting is the most demanding it's ever been, with the advent of screens, a rise in bullying and mental health issues, and constant information overload. While these responsibilities belong to all parents, for stay-at-home parents, they take place against the backdrop of daily, minute-by-minute caregiving and can be an education in and of itself.

I was lucky enough to go to one of the best business schools in the world. But I got my greatest education—on who I really am and what I wanted to become—in my five years as a full-time, at-home parent. Maybe that was what I was yearning for when I applied to grad school in the first place.

Our culture around caregiving is ripe for reexamination. Much attention has been paid to how we can better support working parents. It's time to include stay-at-home mothers in the conversation—and end stay-at-home mom shame for good.

In Exit Interview, Marie Claire has a candid conversation with someone who has just left their job. We learn all about their experience—both the good and bad—plus why they decided to leave and what life looks like on the other side. In our inaugural column, we touch base with professional athlete Alexi Pappas. In 2016 Pappas represented Greece at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, setting the national record for the 10k. Now, you can still catch Pappas running for fun, but a “sustainable career in the arts,” as she calls it—a film director, author, and actress is what she’s pursuing next. Her first project is a show launching in August where she talks to people, including Matthew McConaughey, about their mentors.

Marie Claire: What was the reason for your sort of exit?

Alexi Pappas: I still love running. I guide for blind athletes, run marathons and ultramarathons, and am exploring myself in the sport outside of Olympic track running. I also have curiosities elsewhere. A curiosity and a growth that was reflected in a desire—not just to chase objective goals, but to pursue values and feelings. Telling stories, being around artists, seeing what kind of good chaos I could make by bringing my athletic experience into the arts.

I don't think I have even run the fastest 10k I could run, but I was very happy with my performance in Rio because it did feel like at the time my mind and body were peaking at the same time. It was a personal best. It was a national record. It felt like the experience that I hoped to have. I had the post-Olympic depression after that in a way that was life threatening. I actually had to stop at that point for a while. Then, developing this pursuit of the arts was when I found joy again in life.

When you're chasing that Olympic career, it's very objective and it is a moving target and it's hard. To not compete hard, meant that I could pursue the arts fully because it meant I didn't actually have to leave that old passion behind. I still run, it just looks different. You just have to leave the career behind as in the form that it was in.

MC: How did you decide what the next opportunity would be?

AP: My goal is to have a sustainable career in the arts. It's not a hobby for me. It's something that I want to do in a real way. I'm moving toward television for that reason because it's a lot of hard work. But if you happen to be able to work on a television show or create one, which I'm developing a couple, it's more like a sports season. For me it was like transitioning from juggling two careers to actually making them cohesive. I am a jock in Hollywood and it is a strength. A lot of the projects I'm working on are blending that old experience with a new perspective and a new medium. That has become a way to stand out and tell stories that actually are uniquely told by me.

MC: What did you love most about being a competitive athlete?

AP: I love the feeling that I was in a routine that I believed in and could count on and it was dictated by a coach who I trusted and admired. I felt that I was in the right place at the right time when I was there. I felt my time was well spent because I trusted in that environment. I loved the team. I trained with a lot of guys and knew they were going to be there at the track and knew that if I simply showed up, I would feel and try my best. I wasn't always going to be the best. I was going to try my best and that was a great place to try my best.

MC: What did you hate the most about being a competitive athlete?

AP: I hated feeling very high maintenance around a lot of people. Meaning if I was on a family vacation and I had to run 13 miles in an unreasonable place or make people wait for brunch I felt really guilty. I felt like I was being kind of lumped in— and it might have been my perception—with people who are high strung and type A when I was like, no no, this is just my job. You're unchill, you're fundamentally unchill, because it's a lifestyle. I'm really cool and chill but I'm doing a job, where you have to do your job all the time. I think the difficult part was the inflexibility. It's like a character trait that you don't assign to yourself, but you are proud of doing your job.

MC: How did it feel to make that decision to exit from being a competitive athlete?

AP: It was difficult because I didn't know exactly what I would be doing in the same vocabulary terms that I knew about chasing the Olympic dream. You asked me, what are you now? I'm like, do I say actor? Do I say director? Do I say I'm doing all those things? The answer is not as easy to feed people. It's not a sandwich, right? It's more like a plate of mushy food.

It was super hard because a lot of my income started out being dependent on performance. And so to abandon that as my number one narrative meant that I needed to create a future that was not dependent on that. It wasn't as much about what people will think of me, it was will I survive? That was scary. But then I realized that where I was going had never been gone before. I needed to stop trying to define what this was. I am completely feral. And so I need to go full on saturated in the direction that I'm in, whatever that is.

Sometimes I deal with it the same way that I deal with my changing body. I weighed 108 pounds at the Olympics. I'm much bigger now. My body changed and it was really hard for me at first because I looked bizarre in the clothes that used to look really good [in] and I felt bizarre. What I had to do was start to get comfortable with myself naked and be like, wow, I actually absolutely feel like the woman. I'm choosing this because I'm not running 120 miles a week. Once I got comfortable with the choice of lifestyle, I was like, they're just the wrong effing clothes. Change your clothes. If I can stand behind the life choices I'm making as a whole, how can I be upset about not running five seconds faster or…even five minutes even close to my PR right now? I believe in the life I'm choosing.

MC: Was there anyone who you turned to for advice during that time?

AP: I turned to advice from my mentor Janet Pierson, who encouraged me to find a supportive community in Los Angeles. I also asked for advice from another mentor, Chris Bender, who encouraged me to lean in and try the things I am afraid of doing, like writing on my own, and flexing other creative muscles, essentially encouraging me to learn-by-doing. And also, Richard Linklater, who I look up to and whose advice has helped me tremendously in my evolution as an artist and person.

I also have two physiotherapists. I'm admittedly doing things with my body that I am not as prepared for as I once was, like a hundred mile race. I still rely on these physio mentors almost like my coaches because I don't want to hurt my body. I also have had mental health support. My doctor saved my life when I was post-Olympic depressed. I talk to him every other week and he helps me.

MC: What is something that you learned in your role as a professional athlete that you've carried with you?

AP: That winners lose. Losing is normal, losing is part of it, it’s okay to have losses. Don't frame it into this negative thing, get used to losing.

MC: What advice would you give to someone who is looking to make an exit from the current career that they're in?

AP: When you are going through your exit, think about it as an evolution. The world will be here for it. The world will get on board with it, but you have to lead that ship. The other piece of advice would be: actions change first, then thoughts, then feelings, in that order. That's what I learned when I was going through my depression: actions then thoughts, and feelings. It's not gonna feel great to exit, it's not gonna feel great to evolve. Focus on your actions, which will guide your thoughts, which will eventually change your feelings. Lastly, give yourself a window of time. I think some people question the goal itself, when they're in the middle of an interval, if you will. That can really hamstring their ability to grow.

MC: In what ways do you think the competitive running space could improve?

AP: In running, contracts need to reflect the value system that we want you to compete in, but we also want you to be healthy well-rounded full people.. Two, I think if the running world could somehow—and this might be coming from the athletes—if there could be a spirit of true support for other athletes; this spirit of good competition. There's a word in Greek that means good competition. It means you wish everybody to do their best. And you will also try your best. It's like integrity.

For Renee Montgomery, it seemed obvious: 2020 would be a banner year. The superstar basketball player—who had been playing with the Atlanta Dream since 2018—was finding her groove on the team and commentators predicted the Dream would make it to the championship.

Then came a pandemic, an overdue racial reckoning, and personal transformation. Montgomery decided to sit out that season, heartbroken over the global health crisis and committed to doing what she could to boost the Black Lives Matter movement. But even from her perch on the sidelines, the unfolding drama was unmissable.

At the time, Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler was a co-owner of the Dream. While protests over the murder of George Floyd were raging nationwide, Loeffler was criticizing the WNBA’s public emphasis on social justice. Pressure mounted on Loeffler to sell her ownership stake as her team threw its muscle behind Loeffler’s opponent in the upcoming election. Raphael Warnock went on to win in a run-off contest. A few weeks later, Montgomery announced that she was part of a three-member investor group that the league had approved to replace Loeffler at the helm of the organization. With the move, Montgomery became the first WNBA alum both to co-own a team and to serve as an executive for a franchise.

Ownership had until that point not been on Montgomery’s radar. Her wife had encouraged her. How better to spend her retirement than immersed in the game? Plus, Montgomery could see the trendlines that were just starting to take off: The field of women’s sports was attracting new attention. This wouldn’t be some philanthropic second act. This was good business. “What made me start thinking about it was, ‘Wouldn’t it be really dope if we had somebody in the ownership seat that thought like us?’” Montgomery remembers now. She went for it.

Montgomery, who will tell her story in a new Roku Originals documentary titled A Radical Act: Renee Montgomery, knows what you likely do too: That interest in women’s sports has exploded since that summer. In 2023, Nielsen crunched the viewership numbers and characterized the growth in audience for women’s sports as “meteoric.” On the heels of blockbuster events like the Women’s World Cup in 2023 and the NCAA women’s tournament in 2024, Deloitte forecasted for the first time ever that women’s sports would surpass one billion dollars in revenue—a 300 percent increase compared to a similar evaluation in 2021. There have been women’s sports stars—and rivalries—before, but there is no question that the WNBA has minted a new class of bonafide standouts this season, with Caitlin Clark on the Indiana Fever and Angel Reese on the Chicago Sky driving not just fandom, but merch and ticket sales and obsessive online speculation. In June, ESPN reported that a rematch between the two netted 2.3 million viewers. It was a reprisal of their nail-biter faceoff in the quarter finals of the NCAA women’s tournament, and it became the most watched women’s professional basketball game in over two decades.

What has been less publicized however is the phenomenon that Montgomery herself exemplifies: Across leagues and from a diverse range of backgrounds, a growing number of women have taken their investment in the future of these leagues and made it literal. From soccer to basketball to football, women are pouring dollars into existing teams and founding new ones—not just to be cheerleaders to a nice cause, but to cash in on a big-and-getting-bigger business. Women are not necessarily more progressive owners (as Loeffler’s example proves), but the kinds of women who have flocked to ownership of late do seem to bring more than “representation” to their stadium suites.

Conscious of unequal training facilities, salaries, marketing spend, and media rights, new stakeholders are helping to drive the revolution in women’s sports that the rest of us are watching on TV and TikTok. That narrative? Well, these women are owning it.

Of course no one had to explain to Carolyn Tisch Blodgett what she might stand to gain from an investment in a promising sports franchise. In 1991, her grandfather Bob Tisch bought 50 percent of the New York Giants. She was six and grew up with the team, calling it the “anchoring point” of her childhood. The stadium was the site of innumerable memories, and the investment turned out to be a brilliant one. Forbes now values the team at 6.8 billion dollars. After college, Tisch Blodgett went to work in marketing, but kept a focus on athleticism and sports. She worked at Peloton. She got more involved with the Giants. She made it her job to see opportunities and to chase them. “I realized quickly that the world of sports was changing, and we had a chance to either watch it change around us or lean in and be part of that change,” she explains.

Jeanie Buss, the controlling owner of the Lakers and the co-owner and promoter of U.S. women’s professional wrestling league Women Of Wrestling, could see the shift too. Having inherited her love of sports from her father, Jerry Buss, who bought the Lakers in 1979, she has lived through several eras of increased awareness in women’s sports and then watched it drop off.

Buss vividly remembers when Ann Meyers became the first woman to sign a contract with an NBA team, scoring a $50,000 deal with the Indiana Pacers the same year Buss’s father acquired the Lakers. “She was my basketball idol,” Buss says. “It was a PR stunt, but she was being talked about.” Later, when the WNBA was getting off the ground, Buss and her father were some of the first NBA owners to put their hands up for franchise ownership in the new league. Buss has been a fan and booster of women’s sports since she watched Billie Jean King triumph in the infamous Battle of the Sexes tennis match in 1973, but she still chafes at the casual sexism she has endured as a leader and executive in men’s sports. After the Busses moved to launch the Sparks as the sister team to the Lakers, David Stern, the NBA commissioner who helped mastermind the WNBA, assumed Buss would run it. Buss’s father corrected him. “No, David, I’m grooming her to run the Lakers,” he told Stern.

Between the Lakers and Women Of Wrestling, Buss has more than one full-time job, but other women owners do reach out to her to talk shop, and it’s given her a sense of camaraderie she didn’t quite know she was missing. “It’s nice to talk to women who understand revenue streams, how to sell sponsors, how important it is to have the right venue,” she says. “It’s women making these decisions.” That was not the case when she got her start. Buss has followed with particular interest the valuations and sales of women’s soccer teams, noting that recent transactions prove “investors are getting paid” and that perhaps having women at the helm helps.

“My dad said that women’s sports would take off when women were the ones buying the tickets, when women were the ones investing in the teams,” Buss says now. “And that to me is what has happened. You’re seeing women invest in opportunities in sports.”

To capitalize on them, Tisch Blodgett pitched a venture fund to her mother and uncles devoted to the intersection of sports and culture. With their backing, she founded Next 3 and zeroed in onwomen’s sports. She theorized that after three decades, it was obvious that her grandfather’s bet had been a good one. Three decades from now, she wanted to be able to tout a similar return. She listened. She looked around. And in November 2023, Gotham FC—the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) team based out of New York and New Jersey—announced that Tisch Blodgett had come on as an owner and strategic investor in the team. About 72 hours later, it won the league championship.

Eight months after that, Tisch Blodgett insists her team—and the league as a whole—is just getting started. When she made the case to her family that she wanted to spend time and resources on Gotham, she identified three areas of potential growth: first, media deals to make games more accessible and visible to fans, second, investment on the part of not just owners, but brands with marketing dollars to allocate, and third—and Tisch Blodgett knows this sounds ridiculous given the past several months—cultural conversation and impact. She reasoned that if the status quo moved just “a few percentage points” in a favorable direction across all three vectors, the investment would prove worthwhile.

That’s a point that Clara Wu Tsai echoes. In 2019, Wu Tsai and her husband, Joe Tsai, bought the New York Liberty. The team was performing well, but then-owner James Dolan had overseen its move from Madison Square Garden to the Westchester County Center, where a grand total of 2,500 people could watch the team on the court. The Tsais—who also own the Nets—knew that the Liberty had been underinvested in. “It was pretty much a distressed asset,” Wu Tsai says. “So we thought, ‘Okay, let’s take a look at this.’ And instantly, we saw the business potential.” Wu Tsai especially liked “the fundamentals,” as she terms them: great players, the largest media market in the world in the Liberty’s hometown of New York, and a built-in fanbase.

With the ink dried, Wu Tsai and her husband—whose wealth was amassed from his role at the Chinese tech superfirm Alibaba—moved the Liberty to the Barclays Center, where the Nets play. The couple hired a performance staff, including multiple trainers and a nutritionist. Memorably, the Tsais decided to incur a $500,000 fine in 2021 so that the team could use private jets rather than travel commercial, as the league then mandated that all teams do. The gambit forced the WNBA to allow franchises to charter flights for select games during the regular season and championship, bringing the league one step closer to the conditions and amenities that NBA teams have come to expect.

Later, when it came time to build out the roster, Wu Tsai took an active role and followed Breanna Stewart to Istanbul to convince her to sign during the off-season. It’s impossible to know whether her husband would have been as successful in his own full-court press because Wu Tsai handled the final pitch herself—woman to woman. Within a matter of weeks, Wu Tsai had nabbed not just Stewart, but Courtney Vandersloot and Jonquel Jones. The bets paid off. The Liberty made the playoffs in 2021 and 2022. Its home games now draw a rabid crowd, with GQ declaring the scene at Barclays when the Liberty are on the court “the best party in NYC right now.”

With that momentum, Wu Tsai helped execute a media rights deal this spring that has made Liberty games free to watch in this season on local television. WNYW FOX5 is broadcasting the games throughout 2024 on FOX5 and My9, reaching a total of 7.5 million households. A party is nice; ratings—and the ad buys that come with them—are nicer.

Wu Tsai believes as Tisch Blodgett does that we’re just at the beginning of the movement to mainstream women’s sports, with millions of untapped fans and billions of untapped dollars out there for the taking. It doesn’t surprise her that it’s women who have rushed in to make the most of that potential. “We see opportunities more clearly,” Wu Tsai says. It occurs to her that perhaps women see challenges more clearly, too. “The WNBA is like the ultimate underdog league, isn't it? We deal with misogyny, racism, homophobia—it’s all there. And so I think it’s also that we tend to take that on.”

To those who doubt her commitment, Wu Tsai can only insist that she and her husband are “here for the long haul.” With a laugh, she notes that she’s in good company. She’s particularly aware that players themselves—Montgomery included—have started to see ownership as a viable retirement plan, “and they actually have the best perspective of anyone,” she points out.

It’s a sisterhood that includes Naomi Osaka, who in 2021 invested in the NWSL’s North Carolina Courage, WNBA champion Sue Bird, who joined Tisch Blodgett as an investor in Gotham in 2022, Angel Reese, who within weeks of the WNBA draft became a part-owner of the USL’s DC Power (along with other personalities like the actor Crystal Renee Hayslett), and of course at least a dozen former athletes like Serena Williams and Lindsey Vonn who are part of the ownership group that controls the NWSL’s Angel City.

“I think we’re in an age now where athletes are more aware that they are a walking business,” says Jemele Hill, a contributing writer for the Atlantic and a sports commentator, of the cascade of women players who’ve moved into ownership. She sees an exhaustion among female players and executives alike, who are “tired of being told they need to just be happy to be here.” The movement that has driven a rise in attention—and dollars—for women’s sports is happening “because women refuse to be told no, and they refuse to be placated and patronized,” she says.

“I do think there are issues that women intrinsically understand that men don’t, not because maybe they don’t want to, but mostly because it’s not their lived experience,” Hill continues. “And so while I can’t say this as a necessarily a blanket statement because you do have women who just want to emulate how the patriarchy works, I do think there is a different level of understanding for women who are involved in ownership in women’s sports because women understand innately what it’s like to have to fight for respect on the job, to have to fight tooth and nail for basically everything.”

Over and over, the idea of respect is one that the owners I speak to come back to. How can players in the WNBA and NWSL command the same respect as their male peers? What does it mean to invest in their game—with better facilities, better pay, and better opportunity? If previous—and more male—owners were ruminating on these issues, it wasn’t evident in the suburban, cast-off stadiums that women were made to play in or the shoddy equipment that went viral after players and couches called out the gaping disparities between the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments in 2021.

The prospect of addressing those inequities and turning a profit is part of what’s drawing even less likely owners to the executive pool. The actor Sophia Bush has always been an avid sports fan, but it was considering the patterns of impact investing that made her want to invest in Angel City. “We know that if you give money to or invest money in men in so many places around the world, men will spend upwards of 90 percent of that money on themselves,” she says. “And if you invest in women, women tend to reinvest nearly 90 percent of that investment in their community.” She didn’t hesitate, despite the fact that people told her it was a mistake to write a check. “And now there’s a bunch of people who wish they’d gotten in when I did,” Bush says, laughing. Meena Harris, an author and the CEO of Phenomenal Media, will soon announce her own stake in a women’s sports team and has made it a point of her career to see promise where others do not. “It was just a no brainer to me in terms of where I want to be.” she says.

Bush is proud to boost her team and women’s sports in particular, but no one owner can fix all the problems that plague women’s sports and continue to hold it back. “You see the greatest awareness and attendance in the WNBA that we’ve ever seen before,” she says. “The WNBA is absolutely crushing it, and women in that league are still having to educate men that they don't have the same kinds of deals that the men have.” Bush would like to see women command a percentage of revenue, as men do in the NBA, and be able to participate in profits that their talent and their likeness earn for others.

Tisch Blodgett has a long list of her own priorities. She is the first to volunteer that if the game is to be changed, risks must be taken. “It was a big bet,” she reminds me. And so while the success so far feels validating, she sees what must come next. Attention is vital. Increased coverage is great, although women’s sports still get far less of it than men’s sports do. But, she points out, “buzz doesn’t translate into revenue immediately. And so our challenge is to say, ‘Great, I’m so happy everyone is talking about this. But we need to get butts in seats. We need to sign sponsors.’ We have 13 home games. We just added a bunch of summer tournaments. We have a 25,000-person stadium.” Tisch Blodgett sees this moment as the first stage “of a transformational moment in sports.” When she talks to brands, she frames the chance she is offering them like that—get in on the ground floor, be part of this. Some refer her to their foundations. But others get it, and have poured their dollars into Gotham and the league.

As much as the owners themselves, Bush and others credit women like Andrea Brimmer, the chief marketing and public relations officer at Ally Financial, for helping to even the literal playing field. Brimmer, who is a former Division 1 athlete, wasn’t looking to make a donation when she pledged that Ally would allocate an equal spend on advertising between men’s and women’s sports within five years in 2022. She was looking at the numbers. Already, she tells me, the return has been extraordinary. Brand awareness and sentiment are up. Ally is one of four banking brands to have grown its trust over the past year. Brand value grew 32 percent, the highest jump in the last five years. “And while I can’t say a hundred percent of it is attributable to women’s sports,” she adds, “I would tell you that a big part of it is and that 65 percent of everybody who came to our storefront last year was female.”

Brimmer is proud of the record, but she has to admit it’s not just the math that moves her. A few years ago, Ally partnered with CBS to put the NWSL championship game in primetime. The game was held in DC, and it was almost completely sold out. The year before, Brimmer had stood in a half-filled stadium while top-tier players competed at noon. The contrast made her tear up. “I’m thinking, ‘No little girl is ever going to have to think they’re not worthy of primetime ever again,’” she says. “It was very emotional for me. You realize that the bet was right.”

Tisch Blodgett invested in Gotham with a business plan, but she concedes that there is a lens through which she sees its potential that a different owner might not have. Just as she grew up with the Giants, her own children are growing up with Gotham—two sons and a daughter. She has watched her sons become “as passionate about this women’s team as they are about a men’s football team,” which bodes well for the future of the sport. And she has watched her daughter, “who loves football and goes to all the Giants games, get to have that experience of seeing her own role models on the field.”

Tisch Blodgett credits her fellow women owners—the group behind Angel City, Michele Kang who owns the Washington Spirit, Jennifer Epstein, who is bringing an expansion team to Boston, Laura Ricketts, who led a 60 million dollar deal to take ownership of the Chicago Red Stars, and others—for understanding that the solution to marketing women’s sports is not just to “shrink it and pink it,” a tactic that generations of men have used to appeal to female consumers. It’s to design better facilities, push for better deals, and appeal to a new generation of fans eager for live events, the camaraderie of sports, and the drama that true, top-level talent bring to the game.

Are women better than men at monetizing women’s sports? In a decade or two, the data will decide. But for now, Montgomery doesn’t need to consult the metrics. Like the smartest plays, this one is simple, she says. “I don’t think it should be controversial to say that a woman in a leadership position in a women’s league just makes sense.”

The Cost of Starting Your Own Business talks to founders to get an honest look at what it really takes to create a company. Not just the financial, but the personal and emotional costs, too.

For over a decade, Lin Tyrpien sought to identify her professional North Star. From creative roles at Ralph Lauren and Christie's to managing a guesthouse in Bali and learning to weld in Arizona, nothing quite fit—until she was recruited to New York's Chase Contemporary gallery in February 2023. As it turned out, running a gallery was Tyrpien's calling. "I had been searching for that 'aha' moment for 16 years," she says.

Exhilarated by the realization, Tyrpien decided to pursue a space of her own. In May 2024, she and her wife Magdalena opened Lyle Gallery, a name they came up with after two glasses of wine as they prepared to launch. Eclectic, wide-ranging, and wholly original, the Chinatown gallery seeks to spotlight the artists and businesses often boxed out of the mainstream art world. "We have zero interest in hearing from the same privileged groups that have dominated the arts scene for years," Tyrpien says. "At the end of the day, we want this to be an inclusive and beloved space."

Like their artists, the Tyrpiens come from nontraditional backgrounds for New York City's art scene. Both grew up working-class, Lin in rural Pennsylvania and Magdalena in Poland. They bootstrapped Lyle using their own funds, divvying up the nuts and bolts of gallery ownership: Magdalena handles budgets, project management, and contracts, while Lin oversees their artists, marketing, and exhibitions.

In the run-up to their debut show, which features artists' metal works—more on that in a moment—Lin emailed with Marie Claire about their leap into the gallery business.

I started thinking about this about a year ago, just a few months into working at a gallery in SoHo. Once I was in that world, I discovered that, yes, OK, I found the thing I want to do, so now I am going to learn as much as I can and open my own version of this. At first we were just going to do pop-up exhibitions; it seemed like an easier barrier to entry. Then something shifted, and almost unsaid, we started looking at permanent space options.

I went wide on locations, looking at spaces in Chelsea, Flatiron, Tribeca, SoHo, LES, Chinatown, Greenwich Village, even Midtown. I decided on the current location in Chinatown because it lends itself to experimentation, trying new things, failing, playing, and really discovering what Lyle Gallery is and who I am as a gallery owner. Traditional gallery hubs like Tribeca and Chelsea just felt too serious for me right now.

The inaugural show, which I started working on probably six months ago, opened in mid-May for NYCxDesign Week. It's a group show featuring works by artists working in metal (Jøna Maaryn out of Marfa Texas, Jamps Studio out of London, and “the city’s chainsmith," Johnny Valentine. out of NYC). Once I had my first artist on board, it really took shape from there and became real.

Magdalena worked really hard the last three years to facilitate a sale of the company she was working for. In doing that, we were able to put a small amount of money aside to get this up and running. I think it would have been unrealistic to try to do this without that sale happening first. Magdalena and I both come from working-class families, rather atypical to the backgrounds in which you typically see people opening galleries in this city. Magdalena immigrated from Poland as a child and I grew up in rural Pennsylvania. Odds were definitely stacked against us in that sense, but we’ve worked very hard in our professional careers to get to where we are now.

It’s a known fact that a lot of professionals in the art world come from a certain upbringing. But we’re proof that it doesn’t have to be the case, but it certainly doesn’t come without many obstacles and roadblocks. It’s been important to keep overheads like rent low. Right now, the salary from my part-time job covers the rent, which puts us in a good place. But we are definitely starting small and not jumping into a fancy space in a fancy neighborhood, and I am very happy with that.

Deadlines hit differently when it’s for your own company. It’s hard to justify a weekend or evening to relax and recharge when there is so much to get done. We’ve had to evaluate what in our life is propelling us forward and what is holding us back, and that can mean saying no more often. We have definitely outgrown our small one-bedroom apartment, but we made the decision to prioritize starting a business.

We were really scrappy about finding a location, contacting listings on Craigslist and Facebook, and walking around neighborhoods looking for “for rent by owner” signs and calling them up.

We ultimately found the space on Craigslist, which is just so fitting for who we are as people and as a couple. Aside from having good bones for a gallery space, we are most excited about this little secret room in the back in which we are scheming up an interesting use for the space that I can’t share yet.

Imposter syndrome (of course). Being OK with having uncomfortable conversations (I hate conflict). Learning to make quick decisions (I like to explore every option).

When I received the keys to the space, it was dark, cold, and pouring rain. I sat on the floor with the lights off, listening to the raindrops hitting the metal awning and watching the light come in from the street. I had imagined that moment for so long. I moved to NYC when I was 18 to attend design school at FIT and remember dreaming of that “one day” moment of having my own creative space. If I had planned ahead to bring a blanket and pillow, I definitely would have slept on the floor that night.

Visiting artists in their studios and having artists tell us that they are excited to work with us. Working towards something that is bigger than us, like bringing more voices from underrepresented communities and backgrounds to the front. The hidden lesbian poker room that we are building in the back of the gallery (I’ve said too much!).

“BE PUNK!” —Ella Fitch

“Walk into every room with the confidence of a mediocre white guy” —Magdalena Typrien

The Cost of Starting Your Own Business talks to founders to get an honest look at what it really takes to create a company. Not just the financial, but the personal and emotional costs, too.

Best-selling author and longtime Florida resident Lauren Groff couldn’t sit by idly as book bans became increasingly commonplace in her state over the past two years. So she and her husband, Clay Kallman, decided to open a bookshop in Gainesville to create a haven for all readers and uplift frequently challenged works. Named after the Florida native big cat, The Lynx, their slogan puts it best: “Watch Us Bite Back.”

Owning a bookstore had long been a dream for the couple, but when Governor Ron DeSantis passed legislation in 2022 that made it easier for individual books to be contested in public schools, they knew they needed to open up shop. Two years later, after renovating an old hair salon in downtown Gainesville into a store—fit with an event space, cafe, and children’s reading nook—The Lynx finally welcomed guests through its doors in late April.

The Lynx highlights historically banned books, as well as LGBTQ+ and BIPOC authors, whose work have largely become the focus of scrutiny in Florida—which has seen the highest number of book-banning cases in the past two years. Groff, who is a three-time National Book Award finalist, helped curate the store’s collection of 7,000 titles and hopes to turn the space into an integral part of the community with inclusive programming.

In the days before the store's opening, Groff emailed with Marie Claire about what this chapter of her life as a business owner has been like.

My husband Clay Kallman and I have dreamed about opening a bookstore in Gainesville since we first moved here in 2006. Clay is originally from Gainesville, and his family opened a bookstore called The Florida Bookstore in the 1930s, which they sold in the late '90s. Clay was raised in bookselling: his first job was teaching the point-of-sale system to new employees.

That said, our dream wouldn't have come to much had the state not started cracking down on freedom of expression, and had groups like (the oxymoronically named) Moms for Liberty not pressed forward on their campaign to ban books all over the state. We saw this happening and felt so deeply for the people whose voices and identities were being squelched by a loud and intolerant minority. We dreamed of a general-interest store that would have a special emphasis on banned books; that would celebrate and promote books by LGBTQI+ writers and writers of color; that would fill in the blanks that the Florida educational system is intentionally leaving in our students' education. We decided to meet the authoritarians on their own playground: private business.

The purpose of this store is to act as a lighthouse. To radiate warmth and brightness out to the people who feel as though the state of Florida is currently invalidating their lives and their history. To let them know that there are people here who love and accept them, who want for them to live happily as they are, and who will be fighting for them into the future.

We want to resist the simple story that has been told of what Florida is, to make the story more complex and interesting, to show how book bans are, in fact, deeply unpopular with nearly everyone in the state, and that, through book banning, only a tiny minority of people are trying to impose their political beliefs on the vast majority of Floridians.

We will be engaging in programming to encourage the dissemination of ideas that may be uncomfortable to those who are in power. We will encourage reading widely and well and make literature accessible to populations for whom books may currently be a luxury. We want this store to be a source of pride for Gainesville and for Florida, and for it to become a national beacon. If booksellers are the next in line to be attacked by the state government, we are prepared for this eventuality and have a very large microphone. A group of Lynxes is a watch; we want the bad actors to know that we're watching.

The majority of the startup money has come from the books I have written (thank you to everyone who has ever bought one!). We did want to invite all who wanted to be a part of the store to help us out with the Indiegogo, for which my beautiful writer friends have donated so much: from superstar agent Bill Clegg donating two manuscript critiques to people like Hernan Diaz, Kaveh Akbar, and Cheryl Strayed giving Zooms to book clubs. The public responded with great gusto. We made 116 percent of our goal! And will be fulfilling the perks and blessing the generosity of people from all over the world for a few months to come, as well.

Nothing is really a sacrifice if it's done out of love, I think. I haven't read nearly as many books since November as I normally would have—from this, it's apparent that I have so little time at the moment, and when I do have time to wind down, I usually just fall asleep! But beauty can be found in these things. My children are stepping up and taking responsibility for themselves admirably. Maybe taking a break from reading is all right at the moment, because I'll be reading between 400 and 600 books in the next six months in my role as judge for this year's National Book Awards. Everything can be an opportunity if you look at it from a different perspective.

It's extraordinarily difficult to learn a brand new set of skills in one's mid-40s, and I have never started up a business, done all of the necessary paperwork, hired people, managed the money, figured out point-of-sale systems, or dealt with contractors before. It's all hard! I haven't been able to see some of my favorite people in months, because I'm working such long hours trying to get this airship off the ground.

When I emailed Ann Patchett to tell her I was starting up a bookstore, and she emailed back, "You fool. I'm so proud of you."

Everything is worth it. I am so moved every day to see the goodwill that people are extending in our direction, as well as the hard work of our contractors and landlord and our two spectacular managers. Jackie and Gina are among the best people on the planet, and it's a joy to get to spend time with them. I also discovered how deep and powerful the love of books is in my adoptive hometown, and how hungry people have been for a more diverse slate of literary events. Also, to be honest, there are things that I have pretended to not be able to do in my home life because my husband both likes doing them, and because I wanted to protect my time and didn't want to be yoked into doing them (taxes, insurance, general household operations), and it's a little bittersweet to watch my husband begin to understand that I'm pretty competent in these things, actually.

A friend of mine owns a local bakery, Vine, and she told me not to sweat the delays that are inevitable when building out a store. "In five years, you won't even remember the date you opened," she said. She helped me see reason when I was being unreasonably strict about our timeline.

How’d You Get That House? speaks to people across the country who are navigating a complicated housing market. Here, a family of five in rural Maine who considered homes in multiple states before landing on a farmhouse fixer-upper that left them mortgage-free.

Erica Craig (interviewed here), a human resource executive at a health care center who also writes fiction on the side
Annual salary: $228,000

Adam Craig, a stay-at-home dad who homeschools the family's three children and renovates their home
Annual salary: $0

A four-bedroom, two-bath, 6,000-square-foot, early-1800s farmhouse with two barns—and lots of potential—in rural Maine

Initial budget: $100,000

Actual amount spent: $76,600

Monthly mortgage: $0 (paid all cash)

The couple, along with their three children, moved from a three-bedroom, two-bath rental with 21 acres in New Jersey.

We had been renting for about five years while we saved up enough money to buy a house with cash. At that point, we were sick of renting and ready to make our move.

We began seriously looking in the spring of 2017. We bought our home a little over one year later in May of 2018. We were looking for something cheap; my husband is a talented carpenter and taught himself how to do electrical work and plumbing, so were up for renovating.

We looked in Maine and Vermont because we had family ties to those states and spent our summers there, and we also looked in Virginia and North Carolina. We had previously lived in Virginia and loved it, and there were some good prices in those states, as well.

We looked at hundreds of places online and visited about six homes in person—that was mainly due to the travel from New Jersey each time we wanted to see something.

We really enjoyed looking. I loved envisioning ourselves in the home, planning out the things we could do to the place and how we would reimagine it if it was ours. The process was a bit cumbersome, because looking for a home in a different state than you currently live is tough, but we mostly didn't mind. I think my husband was less patient and just wanted to pick something, but our price range was so low and the places we saw were in such disrepair that we really had to be critical.

We had a few musts: Most importantly, the home had to be in a place with high-speed internet for my work options. We wanted an old farmhouse style; we'd lived in 200-year-old homes before and really liked the charm of something with history. We also wanted a safe neighborhood or town.

Prior to buying this place we signed a contract on another place, then got spooked by the home and the work needed (bad vibes!) and backed out. Our real estate agent helped tremendously in that process and was able to get our deposit back and smooth it over so we had no loss there.

We picked our current home because of the location. We liked that it was less than an hour from my grandmother's home in Maine and our family summer home on Chebeague Island. It was one of the places that we saw with quality high-speed internet, which in rural Maine, Vermont, Virginia, and North Carolina is actually difficult to find. Many of the places we considered had to be ruled out because they only offered satellite internet.

We liked that the home was large and had some unusual features for the time it was built, like high ceilings and tons of exposed beams, two original mantels, tin ceilings in one room, and original floors in a few rooms.

We compromised on land, this home only having about one acre; we wanted more space and were used to expansive properties, but were unable to get that here. But it is in the heart of an adorable Maine village, and I was not expecting how much I would love walking to restaurants or the coffee shop, or even just having sidewalks and crosswalks and a community that I have grown to know and like.

I bought my first home alone when I was 20—a condo in New Jersey that sold it three years later very easily; I had multiple offers over asking price in the first week. My husband and I bought our second home, also in New Jersey, in 2006 before we were married. In 2008 we were severely underwater in that home, were in a bad financial situation, and completely stuck. We waited it out, but nine years later were still not above water. We had two bad mortgages and had to file bankruptcy. We lost that home after nearly a decade of never making a late payment.

That changed everything for me and we decided we never wanted to borrow money again, ever, for anything, even a house. We primarily used Dave Ramsey's program as a guide and spent the next four years paying off all our debt and saving cash for a home.

We rented at that time. We had three children by then and rented nice homes in suburban neighborhoods in Virginia, Maryland, and New Jersey, as I moved around for work often at that time. My income grew at that time with all the moves and we repurposed relocation bonuses that I received to pay down debt, opting to do all the moves on our own and bank the cash. We also sold things on Ebay and scraped money from all sorts of places to accelerate the process.

Being debt free and buying this house in cash was the singular best move of my financial life. The peace and freedom that I have knowing I own my home outright is immeasurable.

I will say, we grossly underestimated the time and expense of renovating. My husband, even with his vast knowledge, really missed the mark on how long it would take to renovate, so that has been slower than anticipated and something I wish I'd have known. We've been renovating for nearly six years and have a few more years to go, so there is ongoing cost to that, but it is completely in our control as to how and when we spend money. That has slowed other investing goals that we have, like buying rental property and a summer home.

When we bought the home, it was a complete mess—no kitchen, no mudroom, no working bathrooms, no finished spaces, more than half the house had no electrical wiring, no furnace, no fireplaces, no insulation or walls in most places. We have tackled some of the major renovations, including the kitchen, two bathrooms, four bedrooms, library, and den. When we are complete it will be close to 6,000 square feet, six bedrooms, four full bathrooms, and some extra rooms like a library. Anytime I get slogged down with renovations, or annoyed that a section is not complete, I think, well, at least I have no mortgage. That helps me feel comforted.

The road is a little busier than I might have wanted—the speed limit is 25; people go faster—but we have managed that too.

We don't have any immediate plans to move, but I also know that we won't retire here, the home is too large for just two people and there is a lot of maintenance involved in a 200-year-old home in Maine with weather and upkeep, plus the barns! But the good news is that we have options and a huge financial investment on our hands. We bought for $76,600 and believe that we could sell, even now, for over $500,000, and when our renovations are done, for even more.

This was a great move for us, even in its imperfect ways. This home has helped set my family up for larger savings and investing for retirement and the growth of assets that will take us in a very short time from bankruptcy to a million dollar net worth and I need to thank our old house for being a huge part of that. What's fun about perfection anyway.

Taking the time to file your taxes every year is hardly anyone's idea of a good time. In fact, according to the Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans dislike doing their taxes; a reported 32 percent take it one step further and say they're actively dreading them, according to a recent survey by Credit Karma.

Whether you're laboriously looking over a year's worth of financial statements or carefully imputing deductions, it's relatively common for people to make more than a few mistakes when doing something as universally disliked as filing your taxes.

"The most common mistakes people make when doing their taxes are usually the most simple ones," Courtney Alev, consumer financial advocate and head of Tax at Credit Karma, tells Marie Claire.

"And these mistakes can be costly," Alev adds. "A mistake can lead to getting a smaller refund than what you’re owed, paying more than you owe, or a delayed refund."

From making simple math mistakes to providing incorrect bank information, here are some of the most common mistakes people make when filing their taxes—and how to avoid them.

1. Not Talking or Asking Questions About Your Taxes

"Talking about finances openly can help ultimately reduce the stigma around money for many people, whether that means discussing with friends and family, or following along with strangers on social media," Alev explains. "The more common it is to hear others’ lessons learned or helpful tips, the more attention people may pay to their own financial health."

According to one 2023 survey, 62 percent of respondents say they don't talk about money, including their own spouse. According to Alev, refusing to learn or talk about money creates a "ripple effect" that can have "lifelong consequences."

"Not asking for help or guidance around your finances can lead to often unintentional poor choices with money, or the inability to reach your financial goals," she adds.

2. Filings Your Taxes Too Early

According to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) website, while people should make sure not to file their taxes too early, "they also should not file prematurely."

"People who don't wait to file before they receive all the proper tax reporting documents risk making a mistake that may lead to a processing delay," the site continues.

"The IRS opens tax season in last January.  If someone is using personal tax preparation software or the IRS Free File system, it may accept the return, but it won't be processed until the season opens," Jill M. Flinton, a certified public accountant who has helped individuals and small businesses restructure their finances for over 10 years, tells Marie Claire.

"Anyone with Earned Income Credits (EIC) or Advanced Child Tax Credits (ACTC) will have refunds held up for extra processing until at least mid-February, due to laws requiring those to be held for longer," Flinton adds. "The risk of filing 'too early' is that another document arrives after you have filed your tax return."

3. Entering Key Information Incorrectly

Alev tells Marie Claire that one of the most important steps a person can take when filing their taxes is taking the time to "get yourself organized."

"Gather all of your tax-related documents before you sit down to file your taxes," she says. "It may sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how much time you can save if you have all of the necessary paperwork in front of you when you go to file."

According to the IRS, the error rate for tax returns that are filed on paper is 21 percent, so if you do make a mistake you're not alone.

“There’s no need to panic,” Laurie Kazenoff, a partner and co-chair of the tax department at Moritt Hock & Hamroff, told CNBC Make It in 2019. Most "small issues" can be fixed quickly, she added.

4. Making Math Mistakes

Look, not everyone is "math minded." (Hi. It's me. I'm "everyone.") So it's more than understandable that when tallying deductions, income, expenses and other taxable items, people will make a math mistake or two (or 10).

"The best way to avoid math mistakes is to use a tax software program," Flinton says.

"If you really want to do them by hand—really not recommended—use a calculator with a paper tape that prints out," Flinton adds. "Also, do the calculations several times to make sure the results are the same."

5. Providing Incorrect Bank Numbers

Choosing direct deposit when filing your taxes ensures that you will get your refund as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, it's not uncommon for people to use incorrect routing and account numbers, which can cause a significant delay.

If, again, you're not much of a numbers person, you can always ask the help of a local certified public accountant (CPA) or other financial adviser.

"You should definitely use a CPA when your tax situation becomes more complicated than you feel comfortable doing yourself," Flinton says. "Those with gig jobs or small businesses should use a CPA, EA, or other tax professional to ensure all the gig or business activity is being appropriately recorded." 

6. Correctly Identifying Proper Credits or Deductions

Tax credits and deductions exist for the benefit of the taxpayer, but they can also be confusing and lead to mistakes when you're trying to figure out things like the Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit and more.

According to the IRS website, the Interactive Tax Assistant can help taxpayers determine if they're eligible for specific credits and deductions.

"Tax software will calculate these credits and deductions and include any required forms and schedules," the website states. "Taxpayers should Double check where items appear on the final return before clicking the submit button."

And again, as Linton states, if you're feeling overwhelmed or like you are unable to take advantage of all the credits and deductions you're owed, don't hesitate to reach out for help.

"There are many deductions that small business owners can take, but many don't know about them," she adds. "Partnerships, Corporations, and Fiduciary returns—like trusts or estates—should always use a CPA or EA to prepare their tax returns."

7. Not Signing All The Necessary Forms

"Don’t rush through the tax preparation process," Alev says. "It’s important to give yourself plenty of time to minimize stress and reduce the risk of errors. The best strategy is to create a focused, uninterrupted environment so you can concentrate while you file."

More often than not, mistakes can be avoided by slowing down, taking your time and double-checking all of your paperwork, whether it's physical or electronic. And as Alev notes, there's nothing wrong with reaching out to an expert and asking for help.

"There is no shame in asking for help on your taxes. You may be surprised by how few people feel confident filing their taxes on their own, and end up hiring help from a CPA, using expert assistance provided alongside tax software, or enlisting help from a friend or family member when filing," Alev continues. "Asking for help can help give you the confidence that you’re filing accurately."

How’d You Get That House? speaks to people across the country who are navigating a complicated housing market. Here, a woman in her late 30s who left New York City for Gainesville, Florida and stuck to her budget.

Erin Leigh Patterson, 39, vice president of marketing
Annual salary: between $150,000 to $200,000

A two-bedroom, two-bath, 1,200-square-foot cottage in Gainesville, Florida with an attached garage

Initial budget: $300,000

Actual amount spent: $257,000

Down payment: $12,850

Monthly mortgage: $1,800

Erin Leigh moved from a one-bedroom apartment in New York City's Upper West Side to her hometown of Gainesville, Florida.

"I never planned on leaving New York, but after the pandemic it was really different for me. I had the chance to keep my job and be near family so I decided to move back to my hometown. 

I was single at the time—it was just me and my dog Poptart—and I wanted to take advantage of the market if I could. The interest rates were still low (it was February 2022), and since I had a chance to save money during COVID while I was living with my parents, I didn't want to "wait" until I had a partner.

I was totally okay with it if buying didn't work out, which I think helped me have patience for the process. I was ready to rent if that was going to be the best option."

"I wanted a two-bedroom, two-bath place that was move-in ready, low maintenance—assurance I wouldn't need to be fixing a lot of things right away—and a space to work since I work from home.

I didn't want to go from a small NYC apartment to some sprawling suburban estate I would have to care for—I don't want to own a lawnmower! I started looking for condos and my realtor convinced me to look in the neighborhood where I ended up buying. The neighborhood had an HOA for a lot of the maintenance, and the lots are small so I'm close to neighbors' houses; I don't feel so isolated, which was a fear of mine.

I only spent one real day looking—though I had been driving around and planning finances for weeks. Also, at that time you had to make an offer basically immediately before the house was off market, so I had to decide quickly which was a good thing for me since I tend to stew on decisions if I'm given too much time. 

I had a great realtor (a family friend) who told me about a house in my now-neighborhood going on the market. We went and looked at it and it was definitely my style and the size I wanted. I saw another one on Zillow in the same neighborhood having an open house which I also saw."

"I put in an offer on both of the homes I saw—and both offers were actually accepted. That felt wild to me because each house had gotten multiple offers. I ended up choosing the house I found on Zillow because I knew I liked the neighborhood, the list price was a little lower, and it had some updates which I appreciated—a newer roof, new A/C, and a new deck. But it also could use some updates, like new kitchen cabinets and countertops, which meant it cost less."

"Before I even started looking, I got approved for a mortgage. I let the lender know how much I wanted my monthly payment to be, including HOA fees, property tax, and mortgage insurance. That let me know my budget was about $300,000. I told my realtor I did not want to look at houses over that amount so I wouldn't be tempted to spend more. I was lucky to be buying in an area and at a time when that was realistic.

Where I bought, you really only need to put five percent down. If you can do 20 percent it's a little better because you can avoid mortgage insurance. However for me, it made more sense to put five percent down and pay the mortgage insurance because the equivalent amount in an investment account can make more money than I would save.

I had money for the down payment because (again!) I am very lucky—I want that to be very clear. Yes, I have worked hard with what I've been given, but I know many people aren't given as much as I was. When the pandemic hit I went to my parents' house to isolate with my family. This was the better option for me than working from home alone in NYC. I acknowledge that my parents are safe people and we get along well, and they had space for me to be comfortable and not everyone has this. I didn't pay rent for an entire year. I was able to save that money which gave me cash to use for the down payment."

"I did have a situation with the plumbing after I moved in and had to pay $700. If I had been paying a higher mortgage payment, or needed to pay a bigger down payment, I would have been in much worse financial situation when that came up. I also had to buy a new washer and dryer, and a good bit of furniture due to gaining a lot more space than I'd had previously. While I could have afforded a little "more" house, I am glad I stuck with what I really wanted—a smaller mortgage payment.

I love owning my own home. It's fun to know that what I do to it is what I will enjoy—or profit from. I started to do renovations at first and got overwhelmed so decided to revisit that in the future. I also enjoy the fact that I'm not relying on a landlord to possibly change rent year over year. That said, I think renting is a great option for a lot of people and it was for me for many years—I only bought in my late 30s. If I couldn't have comfortably afforded what I have, I would have not bought and would advise the same for anyone thinking about it. Yes, rent can be "sunk cost" but so is property tax. I would always advise to prioritize the type of life you want to live versus "homeownership no matter what."

Move over, girl math, you’ve had your moment. There’s a new trend on the block, loud budgeting—and it’s taking TikTok by storm. 

Consider this: Your friends suggest dinner and a night out. You tally the cost in your head, and, in the name of fiscal responsibility, you decline, explaining you would rather stay in and save the money. This is loud budgeting. The trend is making it more acceptable to be vocal about personal finances—and it’s a good thing, especially in a time where it has never been easier to mindlessly scroll social media and doom-spend along the way. 

“This trend will help Gen Z change their relationship with money for the better, because it puts them in control,” says Courtney Alev, consumer financial advocate at Credit Karma. “By saying, ‘I don’t want to spend,’ or ‘I don’t want/need these things,’ you’re making a deliberate choice based on what’s important to you, and you’re spending within your limits.”

In a society where money conversations have long been taboo, loud budgeting has emerged as a way to unapologetically celebrate fiscal responsibility. It prioritizes a person's unique financial goals, setting smart spending boundaries, and encouraging open and authentic conversations about money. 

Behind trends like loud budgeting is the financial pressure facing younger generations. A Deloitte survey reveals over half of Gen Z worry about living paycheck to paycheck and are considering taking on a second job.  

In addition to swinging the pendulum away from “stealth wealth” overspending, loud budgeting fosters camaraderie around spending less. A ton of humility and vulnerability comes with publicly admitting you can’t afford something. But loud budgeting rebrands the concept of frugality for Gen Z, giving it an empowering spin. 

“For younger generations dealing with rising living costs and higher house prices, they are getting more serious about improving their financial literacy and preparing for the future–making budgeting cool,” says Brent Reinhard, General Manager of Chase Freedom. 

“It’s almost more chic, more stylish, more of a flex,” says Lukas Battle, who first coined the term last December in a video that has since garnered almost 1.5 million views.   

Others have taken to TikTok to share exactly how they're loud budgeting in 2024. “Dinner OR drinks…not both,” says one user; another commits to only borrowing clothes this year. Some users provide financial education by way of money-saving and wealth-building tips, and others heap praise on the movement. Loud budgeting transcends frugality; it’s about stewardship and intentionality. As Battle explains, “It’s not ‘I don’t have enough.’ It’s ‘I don’t want to spend.’ 

Loud budgeting could also help save friendships. Intuit Credit Karma recently found that 36 percent of Gen Z and millennials had a friend who caused them to overspend, causing 47 percent of Gen Z and 36 percent of millennials to consider ending those friendships altogether to avoid spending beyond their means. 

“The sooner people feel more comfortable talking about money with their friends, the sooner they can set realistic financial boundaries for themselves,” says Alev. “When conversations about costs happen before events like a vacation or a group dinner, you aren’t left with that sense of sticker shock in the end, or that sense of resentment toward friends who cause you to overspend.”

There is one caveat. Spending less is fine to a point, but financial experts caution against overly restrictive approaches that can undermine long-term success. “I think anybody who puts themselves on a new routine that is initially too strict will fail," says Reinhard. "They don’t learn their way into it."

Ultimately, though the trend may be new, the theme is intergenerational: Being smart about money deserves to be celebrated.

It’s probably come up in your group chat. Someone talking about freezing their eggs, debating whether they should do it, or if they have, detailing down to the prick of that first needle what the procedure was like. Maybe that someone is you. 

No doubt, that’s not the only place you’ve heard about it. The Kardashians—Khloé and Kourtney to be specific—have spoken out about freezing their eggs. So have Paris Hilton, Chrissy Teigen, Rita Ora, a Real Housewife or two, and quite a few athletes, including players in the WNBA. 

Then there are the numbers. According to the Society of Assisted Reproductive Technology, there was a 400 percent increase in the number of people freezing their eggs between 2012 and 2020 in the U.S. While egg freezing was once seen “as a last-ditch effort to preserve fertility,” says Lauren Makler, cofounder of Cofertility, a tech platform that helps people through their egg freezing journey, “now we see it as something for someone who wants to be empowered to live life on their own terms.” 

Mostly, that’s a good thing. Much like birth control did for women in the ‘70s, egg freezing is poised to do the same: give women more agency over their bodies; allow them to call the shots on if—and when—they want to start a family. And the messaging around egg freezing is often just that: a positioning of the procedure as an investment in one’s future. 

But is that totally true? Because while giving women more control over their reproductive choices is a good thing (and damn, we could certainly use more of that), it belies the reality that egg freezing is expensive. The cost for a woman to freeze her eggs is as much as $20,000 (that doesn’t include the “invisible” fees, keep reading—we get to that). And unlike birth control, which is often free or low-cost under health insurance plans, egg freezing is seen as an “elective” procedure, meaning it’s rarely covered by insurance. Meanwhile, healthcare providers recommend women freeze their eggs before they turn 35, often when they can afford it the least, and when they’re most likely to be single, meaning the cost isn’t shared with a partner.

To freeze their eggs, many women are finding themselves in precarious financial positions. According to a survey conducted by Market Cube, 70 percent of respondents incurred debt from fertility treatments. Angela Rastegar, a former director at Circle Surrogacy, part of one of the largest fertility and surrogacy companies, saw it all: One woman sold her engagement ring. Countless others liquidated their 401(k)s. Twentysomethings signed up for big loans before they’d even purchased a car or a home. “People were making desperate financial decisions,” she says. “Some even selling shares in businesses they owned.” 

The affordability gap has given rise to a cottage industry of fertility financing. Many egg freezing clinics send women without the ability to pay to banks, where their only option is to take out a personal loan. “This route will likely be the most expensive financing option, as they are unsecured loans and usually come with high interest rates that can be in the double digits,” says Cameron Rogers, a financial advisor at Ellevest, an investment and wealth management platform for women. Double digits can mean as high as 36 percent. Other clinics offer in-house financing options with partnering lenders and financial institutions that specialize in fertility financing available on the spot. 

The risks of large interest rates and long repayment periods are compounded by the fact that many women report they aren’t given the full picture of what egg freezing actually costs—and that even after taking out a loan, it’s not enough. That’s because of “invisible” fees, like: the yearly cost to store eggs, which averages about $700 annually (a study in Science Direct shows that the majority of women keep their eggs in storage for more than five years). And according to a report in the Washington Post, fertility clinics continue to hike up their storage fees as demand for space increases. Then, if you ever want to use your eggs, you’ll need to go through IVF, which is between $15,000 and $30,000 for each round (multiple rounds are frequently needed). 

Recognizing the need for better financial support, there are clinics that are trying to help. Kindbody, a family-building clinic with locations across the country, employs a team of “financial navigators” tasked with ensuring “that patients are well educated about the financial and insurance aspects of their care,” according to a job posting. 

Some fertility financing companies are adding transparency to the process, too. Future Family pre-negotiates with clinics and doctors to make sure there are no surprise costs when it comes to clinic visits, lab work, or medications. Their plans run for about 60 months, and range between $300 and $475 a month. 

It’s impossible to overlook the emotion laced throughout all of this, though, especially when egg freezing doesn’t seem optional for everyone, including those undergoing the procedure for medical reasons or for same sex couples who rely on it for family planning. 

“It can be an incredibly isolating and emotional process that many women feel shame about,” says Whitney Santos of Tucson, Arizona, who went through the egg freezing process. To do so, she went beyond her limits, physically, emotionally, and financially. “I used the totality of my 401(k) in part for IVF medications and the monthly egg freezing fee,” she says, which equated to about $20,000. 

Santos adds: “[Fertility care] is a business, like anything else. Even the best, most empathetic clinics are still there to make money. Women shouldn’t be pushed into a decision that isn’t right for them.” 

Rastegar knew there needed to be a breakthrough. And so, in 2022, she launched Sunfish, a company focused on making family building more financially attainable for those facing fertility challenges, including by connecting customers to discounts and grants. 

For those who still need to take out loans, Sunfish designed The Gold IVF Success Program to create radical transparency around the costs. It uses an algorithm to adjust to your unique bio data. The company will guarantee the cost is accurate or up to 90 percent of your money back. “It’s crazy that we could buy insurance online for a Peloton, a car or vacation, but there’s no financial protection for going through the process of egg freezing and IVF,” says Rastegar. 

There are other disruptors. Cofertility has brought together egg freezing and egg donation at scale for the first time by creating two digital platforms that allow qualifying women to retrieve, freeze, and store half their eggs for free when they donate half of their eggs to a family who can't otherwise conceive.

Employers are stepping in, too, with companies like Disney, Apple, and Spotify offering health insurance plans that cover fertility treatments, including egg freezing. 

But even that has its problems. “Employer benefits are rarely robust, and not enough to get to the finish line,” says Makler. It also opens the door for employers to have access to intimate details about health issues and family planning decisions.

At Amazon, family-planning benefits, including egg freezing, kick in on the first day of employment. So far, about 30,000 people have leveraged these benefits, according to the company. But there’s been backlash after The Cut reported that women were working graveyard shifts and strenuous jobs just to pay for fertility preservation. 

To get to the kind of systemic shape-shifting that’s needed for real change, will require something even bigger. Starting with state mandates that require insurance companies to cover fertility care. Says Rastagar, “Fertility treatments should not just be for the one percent.”

How’d You Get That House? speaks to people across the country who are navigating a complicated housing market. Here, a couple in their late 30s from Queens who recently came into money, but still felt squeamish about the nearly $1 million price tag for a historic fixer upper. 

Larisa Courtien (interviewed here), a director of marketing at a reproduction tech start-up
Annual salary: about $185,000

Michael Courtien, a director of systems and sports financing at a sports and entertainment venue
Annual salary: roughly $150,000

A three-bedroom, 2.5 bath, 2,000-square-foot 1930s detached, single-family home with a fully-finished basement in Forest Hills, Queens, a suburb outside of New York City.

Initial budget: $800,000

Actual amount spent: $900,000

Down payment: $80,000

Monthly mortgage: $6,000

The couple moved from a three-bedroom, 1.5 bath, 1,500-square-foot rental home in Forest Hills, Queens, a suburb outside of New York City. 

“We were outgrowing our space. It was our pandemic home and served us well—it felt gigantic when we moved in; one friend even called it ‘cavernous’ when he visited. But after having our second child, we needed more room. My two-year-old had a significantly-smaller bedroom and the house only had one full bath, which made it hard to host my family who often visits from out of state. Also, I work from home, but only had a tiny corner in my bedroom. I needed an official office space.”

“We've lived in Forest Hills for four years and can’t imagine being anywhere else. The school system is one of the best in New York and we have made so many strong friendships here.   

Skyrocketing prices in the area led us to believe that home ownership was just not going to be in the cards for us. But after seeing some of our peers buy around here, and knowing their salaries and their general monthly income and expenses, my husband and I revisited the idea. 

I was also given the “I AM” manifestation journal, which introduced me to the law of attraction, and the “I Am a Mom Boss“ book that talks about mindset and how you need to be open to possibilities and not set in your ‘predetermined story.’ Once I realized I needed to be more open about home ownership, I started writing, We own a beautiful home in Forest Hills. A big part of manifesting is writing something as if it has already happened. Suddenly things started moving.

I looked for money in places I didn’t realize I could look, like retirement accounts with minimal penalty for taking out funds, and because we were more open, my husband's family shared they would contribute financially. 

After three months of looking at online listings, we toured three houses. In November, we saw a home on a Monday and had an accepted offer by Friday. The inspection showed that unfortunately it needed more work than we could handle. There was evidence of brown mold.

A week later we saw two more homes. We put in an offer for both—I actually used ChatGPT to write the offer letter—and got one accepted offer.”

“I married someone who luckily has generational wealth. We pulled 50 percent of our down payment from our retirement accounts and savings, and the other 50 percent came generously as a combination of an inheritance and a cash gift from his family. I felt a little guilty, but overall so grateful. Without that generosity, owning a home in this neighborhood of New York City, where my in-laws have lived for years, would not be possible. There is a ton of privilege in our story, but I think that is how home ownership is—family is always helping. Not that many people acknowledge it. But receiving the money was definitely eye-opening about how difficult it is to buy a home without help.”

“We were not madly in love with the home because it needed a ton of updating. I wanted a house that was move-in ready. We also wanted to live within a very specific section of Forest Hills, and the home was one block outside of it and further from the train than we originally wanted.

But we looked at it as an opportunity to stay in the community and make the dated home our own. That ended up working in our favor. The home was listed at $930,000, but needed a decent amount of work, so we saved almost $30,000 off the asking price.

It wasn’t all compromises. We knew we wanted a basement and two full baths—and the house had both.

Most importantly, it's a chance to build equity and generational wealth for our children. As the child of immigrants, I'm always worried about the amount of money we’ll be able to leave behind.”

“Our mortgage is high and the biggest monthly expense we’ve ever had as a couple. Our goal right now is to build up our savings account to prepare for emergencies, so I’m back on my buy-nothing craze. Putting down the $3 bread for the $2.49 bread kind of craze. 

We’re also saving for repairs. We’d like to update our kitchen in a year and the bathrooms in two years. Eventually we’d love to add an outdoor deck and pool, as well as redo the basement and finish the attic. Lots of big dreams here, but one step at a time.”

The Cost of Starting Your Own Business talks to founders to get an honest look at what it really takes to create a company. Not just the financial, but the personal and emotional costs, too. 

Being a self-starter is in Meg Strachan’s blood. In addition to her father, almost every member of Strachan’s extended family runs their own business. “I grew up around a lot of people who own companies, who worked every single Saturday,” she says. “I had a pretty informed idea of what it takes—I’ve seen it all.” It seemed only natural she’d launch a venture of her own, and in 2019, she did: founding Dorsey, a lab-grown jewelry brand offering contemporary yet vintage-inspired heirlooms.

“I was at this little Parisian market where this older French woman was selling vintage jewelry,” she says. “I picked up a pair of earrings with a 1920s deco feel. They reminded me so much of my grandmother, Dorsey, who collected costume and fine jewelry. She wore her pieces in a way that I had never seen on anyone else. That was how I decided to start Dorsey: with this love for jewelry and connection to my grandmother.” 

Plus, Strachan had found her niche: "Lab-grown was, and still is, a disruptive category." Manufactured entirely by humans in controlled laboratory environments, synthetic stones are marginally less expensive than mined diamonds. Strachan recognized the fringe industry's potential—and profitability—and wanted in. "It's giving the diamond market a run for its money and will continue to do so,” she says. “Lab-grown will be the dominant stones one day."

But despite Dorsey feeling somewhat destined to be, and Strachan's insight into the back end of business-building, the journey has been far from easy. On a Zoom call from her home in Los Angeles, the founder reveals the candid details of getting her brand off the ground, from all-nighters to self-worth spirals—and why making her first million didn’t feel like she thought it would.

I held two full-time roles for the first two years of the business. I did my day job, and then at night, on weekends, and in the very early morning hours, I was building Dorsey. For a long time, I couldn't afford to hire an employee, so I did everything myself—the graphic design, everything for the website, all the emails; all the packing, shipping, and customer service. I shipped over a million dollars in orders by myself from my house. Dorsey was all my free time.

I went out to investors in 2019 to raise money. I got my foot in the door and, naively, thought I would be able to fundraise for Dorsey because of my previous career successes at other companies [as the Vice President of Growth for the Girlfriend Collective and the Chief Marketing Officer for Anine Bing]. But I couldn't raise a dollar of funding. Literally—not a dollar. Nobody would invest, so I had to move forward with the business by bootstrapping it.

I started the company with between $600 and $1,000 [of my own money]. I would take the money from my paychecks and put it directly into [Dorsey]. I’m in a double-income household. At the time, I didn't own my house, so I was paying rent. I had an 18-month-old daughter, so I was paying for babysitters and nannies.

If you raise money, it's a totally different experience because you can take some type of salary and have capital for the business to run off of. But starting a business by putting your money into it each month is a very different way to start and run a company. You're personally feeling the exposure every month. It's a constant reminder of the financial risk that you're taking.

I'll never forget: I was in a meeting with the partner of a very prominent venture fund. He looked at me, and his exact words were, ‘You have the exact pedigree of someone we would invest into. [But] we don't really know about the lab-grown market. We asked a couple of girls around the office who like jewelry, and they’re unfamiliar.’ That fund turned me down.

All of [those investor meetings] were so devastating. You get dressed up. You hype yourself up and work with whatever self-esteem you've manufactured for that hour or two meeting. You’re ready to pitch, you have your deck ready. And then they reject you. That was the main emotion I had for the first two years of Dorsey: rejection.

Starting and running a company takes an unspoken toll on your life. I call it a tab that comes due, and the tax on it is very high. There are a lot of personal sacrifices. You have to be ruthless with your priorities. You miss a lot of things—that's the truth. I missed the first four years of my daughter's life. I missed all of preschool. Even if I was physically there, I wasn't mentally there. I basically put my head down, ran Dorsey for the last four years, and when I looked up, my daughter was five. 

I've had to reconcile with myself that, okay, I built this business, and it's had an amazing trajectory. But as a parent, I missed some pretty critical years. I did my absolute best and was there as much as I could be. And it was necessary [for Dorsey]. But was it worth it? I went through a grieving process about that because I'll never get that time back with her.

For me, [jewelry] really comes to life in how it's worn and who it's worn by—the zhuzh of a sleeve, the way the pieces are stacked, or the actual person you're shooting on. So, our best investment was finding the budget for great models and photographers. It was a very big stretch, financially—the model fees, agency fees—but it was my first investment.

I had this conversation with my dad a few years ago. He called and caught me in a moment of feeling scared. I said, ‘The business is doing well, but I'm afraid, Dad. This is getting bigger, and the financial stuff is building.’ He asked me what my worst-case scenario was and it was that I would fail. ‘Can you handle that?’ he asked. I thought about it for a minute and said yes. ‘Then you don't have anything to be afraid of,’ he told me. ‘If you can get comfortable with failing, which may happen, then my advice is to go full steam ahead.’ I realized that if you can accept failure to some degree, you’re unleashed from its shackles, otherwise it will stop you in your tracks and hinder your growth.

[Running a business] is an incredibly lonely and isolating experience. The mental piece is so much bigger than people talk about. One of the hardest parts of starting and staying in a company is the mental fitness you have to have in order to keep yourself moving. There is only you who's motivating yourself. You’re up against yourself day after day for years—that's something that you have to commit to getting really good at.

Some of the darkest moments of my life have been running this company.  A lot of self-worth things came up—a lot of anxiety, depression, and self-doubt. What's weird is that it was unrelated to the company and our success. We've had an incredible trajectory. We did 600 percent year-over-year growth in 2022, and 100 percent last year. We’ve had a journey that I could never have dreamed of. 

It's counterintuitive that you would have some of the hardest, truly most difficult moments of your life, while it looks to the outside world that everything is great. As a founder, you're on a journey that's very integrated with your business, but also separate and apart from it. Those can be mutually exclusive, very layered experiences.

Being able to pay for health insurance for [my employees] was big. The small and seemingly mundane things are the most exciting, like customers who buy from us and come back and buy again. But the truth is, I have never felt that we've made it. I used to think it would be when we hit $100,000 in sales, but the goalpost is always moving. It moved to five million. Then 10. And so on. As a company, I don't look at us and think we've made it—and I don't think I'll ever feel that way. I have worked for many companies that are no longer in business; I know too well how quickly the tides can shift. So, have we made it? From the outside, perhaps. Internally, we are working really hard to make it every single day.

When you combine the financial risk with how you're feeling mentally and all the rejections, the thing that keeps you going—and I can't minimize it—is how your product is received out in the world. You get fueled by people who actually love your product. The people who send us emails about how much they love our products. When I was packing and shipping orders literally in the middle of the night for all of our holiday sales in 2020, that’s what kept me going. We're here because of our clients and our customers. That’s a very easy thing to forget at three o'clock in the morning when you're overtired and financially scared.

My dad said that when you're an entrepreneur, you walk this plank carrying an invisible weight on your shoulders. In the beginning, it feels like a massive weight and only gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Eventually, you learn to put blinders on and do it despite how you feel. You're running on empty, but you just keep going. All of a sudden you're carrying [that weight], but you feel it a lot less. One day, you realize that you've built those muscles and it doesn’t feel as heavy anymore.

For fun, here’s what “new” money looks like: Cardi B. Latto. Alex Cooper. Greta Gerwig. Selena Gomez. Rihanna. Beyoncé. Taylor Swift. Shonda Rhimes. Shay Williams. Alix Earle. America Ferrera. The Williams’s, Serena and Venus. Those are just a few notables, but there are plenty of self-made women in tech, fashion, and business, running multi-million companies, as well. They didn’t come from generational wealth but still managed to make it big. Yet, among some antiquated societal systems, they’re still being challenged for it. 

One would think that wealth equals wealth, but systems designed to gatekeep continue to perpetuate a stigma around new money; namely that it’s somehow lesser. You can’t say that. You can’t act like that. One doesn’t wear that. People who come from money (you know who we’re talking about) are largely interested in keeping the rules the same. A shift in the status quo is a challenge to their power and affluence. 

It’s why wealth gaps persist. They perpetuate race and gender-driven inequalities that prevent people from striking it rich in the first place: Women still earn only 82 cents on a man’s dollar (for Black and Brown women, that number is even less). According to the Federal Reserve’s latest Survey on Consumer Finances, Black and Hispanic Americans have accumulated more wealth in recent years, but their median net worth still lags far behind that of white Americans. In 2022, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reported that Black families have just 25 cents for every dollar of wealth held by a white family. 

Meanwhile, “old” money somehow still affords more opportunity. Look at legacy college admissions: According to the New York Times, children from families in the top one percent were 34 percent more likely to be admitted than the average applicant, while newer-monied celebrities risked jail time by offering bribes to get their children into elite schools through crooked sports recruitment.

Society still perpetuates stigma around new money, and it can bring on a wave of personal issues, too. In the immortal words of The Notorious B.I.G., those with more money can suddenly find themselves with more problems. 

People with old money are practically bred to navigate wealth culture. Brad Klontz, PsyD, an expert in financial psychology, likens old money to a “tribe” and to be raised with it brings an innate understanding of how that tribe operates, like how they gather resources and keep resources. “If you're growing up in a different ‘tribe,’ you're not aware of any of those tools and you have to learn them on your own,” he says. This abundance of cash can bring a shifting array of pressures, stigmas, and challenges around maintaining psychological equilibrium—especially with those around you. It’s an extreme example, but think about the Saltburn of it all.

“We desperately want to belong—that is a fundamental human need,” says Klontz. “If you suddenly have a lot of money, you are very quickly going to start to feel like you don't belong because your family and friends are going to start looking at you differently. You can lean on your history to a certain degree and it's nice to be around people who knew you when, but if you're not sharing a lived experience it's difficult to relate. All of a sudden, you have 100 times the money that your friend has. Are you going to pay for lunch? How is that going to feel for you? How is it going to feel for your friend? Let's say that you have some stress in your life because you have a huge tax bill. Are you going to share that with your friend, when your tax bill is more than they made last year? There's all of a sudden this stuff you can't talk about.” 

To avoid drifting apart from friends and family, some with “new” money might find themselves subconsciously squandering their money to “get back to belonging” with the people they connect to the most. Or, they might feel pressure to share the wealth by putting some of those people on their payroll. 

Yet, psychologically, being self-made carries some really important benefits. Those who manage to achieve financial success often have higher self-esteem and a stronger sense of hustle and motivation than people who come from old money. Says Klontz: “Being underestimated hurts and stings but not having a safety net makes you work that much harder.”

Fortunately, what we think of old money and new money—and who gets to have each—is rapidly changing. “There’s been a shift in the way people think about these groups because of the negative portrayals of old money and the glorification of the portrayals of new money,” says Nicole Lapin, host of the Money Rehab podcast and author of Miss Independent: A Simple 12-Step Plan to Start Investing and Grow Your Own Wealth. “The rise of the term ‘nepo baby’ is this rejection of old money and culture and systems.” 

Consider how Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wore a gown plastered with “Eat the Rich” to The Met Ball—an event that used to cater to old money but now opens its arms to new monied celebs, like the Kardashians and Cardi B. New money, new rules. 

Amanda Clayman, a financial psychologist based in Los Angeles, says the meaning of old money is now in dynamic tension with how much we want and how much mobility we want in society, and this is reflected in what we read, what we watch, and what we listen to. “Culture gives us a way to understand our place in the world, and money is such a significant part of culture,” says Clayman. “The different attachments that we make to that prescribe the way that we identify what our available paths are, the kind of people that we can be, and the kind of relationships that we can have with each other.” 

It just goes to show, as Lapin says, money is “a mind fuck,” and both new and old money come with their share of internalized stigma that can affect how you feel about it and what you do with it. “Any kind of money is good,” she says. “You can be generous with people and causes that you care about. You can cut relationships off that don't serve you. That's the benefit of this idea of aspirational new money, that you can leave a toxic situation because you have your own money.” After all, a dollar is a dollar when it means you can buy choices.

When I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in my 20s, I rented a room from a couple in a two-bedroom apartment. The space had big windows, purple walls, and soft pink carpets. On the other end of the apartment lived Tracy* and Andy. They were practically a cliche: both worked in tech, loved silent discos, and hung with a Burning Man crowd. They were also in their early 50s, and used my rent to subsidize a rental home on the California coast, where they enjoyed spending time.

Despite the age gap, the arrangement worked. I didn’t mind the AARP advertisements that showed up in the mail. Andy didn’t mind giving me career advice, including how to negotiate a promotion in my underpaying journalism job. 

That was years ago. When I called and spoke to Tracy recently, she told me that the spare room was currently sitting empty—but perhaps not for long. Their finances had changed. Tracy decided to leave her job at a credit card company to pursue her lesser-paying passion: being a clairvoyant. To help bolster her reduced income, they're considering finding a roommate again, this time through a traveling nurse program she heard about from a friend. The extra money would help, but having someone around is also just nice. “I like my space, and I like to share it,” she tells me.

While there’s a belief that roommates are for the young, it’s becoming increasingly common for those in middle age—and beyond—to choose to live with someone who isn’t family. According to a report from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, nearly one million older adults in the U.S. have roommates, a number that has nearly doubled over the past 18 years.

That this is overlooked is perhaps, in part, intentional. Getting roommates is a rite of passage for adolescents; losing them is a rite of passage into adulthood. Solo living, especially in cities, is aspirational; it communicates a degree of self-reliance and financial stability. But while middle-age money problems may come with a stigma, they’re normal—and not always a marker of poor financial planning. 

As they say, in this economy, buying a house, or even coughing up a rent payment, is no longer viable for many. Unaffordable housing feels like a tenet of American life, and that isn’t unique to Millennials or Gen Z. The average sales price of a new single-family home in the United States is $488,900, according to the United States Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development. In some places, like California, that number nearly doubles. The latest U.S. National Home Price Index, released in December, shows that the price of homes continues to rise. Meanwhile: while mortgage rates have dropped they are still relatively high, incomes haven’t kept up with the cost of living, everything is expensive. And the crippling costs we often associate with younger generations, like the price of college tuition, impacts The Olds, too, many of whom are paying for their children to go to school.

It started off as a financial boon for Allison Cook. The 57-year-old has lived in her four-bedroom house in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood for 30 years. She began renting her current home in the early ‘90s, eventually purchasing it for about $200,000 with her then-husband. In 2012, after her divorce and her only daughter’s departure for the University of Vermont, Cook started looking for roommates to defray costs.

She found that her two-story house was conducive to guests. Nestled along the slope of a hill, the home resembles a wooden ship with its hidden nooks primed for reading or napping. Cook has privacy—the sanctuary of her bedroom converted out of a garret—and so do her housemates. 

Over the years, Cook has had 16 roommates, whom she often refers to by nickname: Hannah the Baker, Connor the Sculptor, Anne from Copenhagen. She recalls playing cards until late at night on a double date with a former roommate. Sharing a Clinique lipstick with another. Telling one that her collection of driftwood was becoming a safety hazard. There was that time her housemate took too many edibles.

Many of the roommates have been international students attending one of Boston’s many universities or colleges; Cook’s found most of them via Craigslist, Airbnb, or word of mouth. She gravitates towards intellectuals: “I don’t feel like they need to occupy much [physical] space. They have space in their head.” The $900 monthly rent, while substantial, is a third of the average price for a one-bedroom in Boston. This supplements Cook’s income from an art and furniture restoration studio, where she estimates pricing for customers trying to restore their favorite things.

But for Cook, and others, there are benefits to having a roommate that go beyond the money. Middle age can be a sea change: marriages end, kids grow up and move out, careers shift or sputter. It can be lonely, and is only compounded by the long-held assumption that one must power through it alone—or find a romantic partner. Roommates can be a welcome balm to that malaise. 

When a roommate hosted a party at Cook’s house, she took the backseat. “I kind of liked just being an attendant,” she says, “I like someone else enjoying the space and not feeling responsible for it.” The experience also feels deeply meaningful, she adds. “I like learning from people. I think it’s this notion of solidarity with the human race.”

For some, the advantages are even greater. Linda Williams lives with housemates at the beach in Sarasota, Florida. Something she’s done for the past 17 years.

She’s 76.

Since starting house sharing, Williams says her quality of life has improved. “I have more to look forward to,” she says. “My health has improved. I feel companionship and connection.” Plus, the extra money helps. Williams says she uses her savings for preventative medical services, like massages and acupuncture treatments, and can go on vacation without feeling the pinch.

Finding the right roommate can be complicated no matter your age, but for older adults, that can prove especially true. By midlife, most people have established routines, and often potential roomies are decades younger, which can create a natural divide.

This was something Gale, 71, who owns a three-bedroom house in Los Angeles has encountered. She’s had eight roommates over the last 10 years, charging them a rate of $800 to $1,000 a month. It all started with a friend of her son’s, who wrote asking if she could stay in one of Gale’s spare bedrooms. “We were real roommates,” she says. “The friendship sort of shifted from my son to me.” The pair even went on a Serbian diet together, which involved trying complicated recipes and unusual meal replacements, like red wine for lunch. 

When she moved out, Gale stayed the course; she needed the money. But she made the mistake of posting for roommates on Craigslist. A musician looking for a crash pad wandered in. It wasn’t a fit. 

To be fair, Gale doesn’t consider herself a great roommate, either. “There’s a lot of clutter,” she says. Most points of friction come down to the refrigerator. Gale abides by the one-a-week grocery shop while her Millennial housemates fill the fridge with styrofoam takeout. COVID was also a stressor: her then-roommate still worked in-person, meanwhile Gale was more isolated. And at times, she feels unsure about her living arrangement. Now that she’s retired, she’s home more, and her family comes over for weekly visits. “It’s not like I’m going to ask my roommate for permission to have my grandkids over,” she says.

To help ease roommate drama, a cottage industry of matchmaking services has emerged to pair compatible homeowners with home seekers. Jayne Ehrlich—who calls herself a Boomer-in-Chief—is working on one called Boomer Roomers. The goal of the service is to match Boomers and seniors from all socioeconomic demographics by housing preferences and lifestyle, so they can age in place together. Compatibility is based on a 25-question survey. “I've talked to so many people, some offering their homes and some needing homes,” says Ehrlich. 

As Ehrlich sees it, the service isn’t just a nice-to-have, but a necessity: The amount of accessible, affordable housing is inadequate to support the fastest-growing homeless population: seniors. In Los Angeles, one of eight counties studied, nearly half of unhoused people are over 50. 

By making it easier to find someone to shack up with, the chances of older adults being able to age in place also becomes a greater possibility. HomeShare Vermont, a non-profit organization, facilitates home sharing that matches homeowners with roommates who provide varying degrees of service, such as help with household chores, driving, and meal support, in exchange for affordable housing. “The data is very clear,” says Connor Timmons, the executive director of HomeShare Vermont. “Aging in place is a healthier choice. Individuals do better when aging in place. Neighborhoods do better. It’s an opportunity for people who still want to get everything they can out of life.”

Last year, the organization facilitated 70 matches in Vermont. In 2023, their homeshare applications increased by 35 percent. One of their clients, Marian Wright, 88, has hosted several housemates over the past year, including two teachers and a nurse working at a nearby retirement community. Wright had two housemates over the summer: a professor at a nearby college and an opera singer. 

Wright first considered a roommate when her husband became sick and she was faced with the sudden prospect of living alone. “I’m hoping to stay in my home for as long as possible,” she says. “I’ve had it for almost 30 years. It’s filled with memories. It’s my family.” 

She currently hosts an adjunct Middlebury College professor from Nepal, who pays $500 a month and helps Wright with cleaning and cooking. Wright says she greatly enjoys the company though she’s adjusting to her housemate’s aquarium, which now lives in the home, too. Some roommate dynamics, it seems, are evergreen.

*First names are being used to protect privacy.

When my parents came to the United States from South Korea in their 20s, they had to learn English and acclimate fast. They settled in the Koreatown section of Los Angeles, where many fashion brands do business in the garment district. My mom basically worked in a sweatshop, sewing clothes in one of those factories. When she became a mother, it was hard for her to continue.

My dad was a truck driver whose job eventually moved us to Arizona when I was in grade school. He would give my mom $200 every month to buy groceries, cover school fees, supplies, and clothes. I vividly remember sweating in our hot apartment because it was too expensive to keep the air conditioner going, which was crazy in the desert heat. Sometimes I ask myself, how did we all grow up in that little two-bedroom apartment when there were five, sometimes seven of us, if relatives stayed? My school meals were comped by the state under a low-income plan. I was embarrassed to use it in front of my peers. 

When I was 13, my dad passed away and my mom was on her own. She started her own flower shop and we got by on government assistance and food stamps.

Neither of my parents graduated high school and my mom always viewed higher education as “the way out.” When it was time for college applications, I always thought I would go to the University of Arizona. It was close to home and affordable; I was my class valedictorian and they had awarded me scholarships. On a whim, I applied to NYU, Pepperdine, and The University of Chicago. I got into all three but high tuition made going to any of them unrealistic. 

The week I was submitting paperwork for the University of Arizona, my mom called me into her bedroom and told me Pepperdine is where I belonged. It felt wrong. How could I go to this beautiful school by the beach when my family still lived where we started? It felt borderline selfish even though my mom gave me her blessing. 

The true wealth gap didn’t cross my mind until college in California where I studied marketing and communications. All of a sudden I was surrounded by kids in fancy cars and designer clothes. I saw a level of wealth I never knew existed. I mostly hid my past for fear of being judged because it didn’t fit the wholesome Pepperdine mold. I remember one summer I was dating this extremely wealthy boy. Think Crazy Rich Asians. I learned he told one of his close friends he couldn’t be with me long-term because I came from a single-parent, low-income household. I got drunk at a bar that night and called my mom bawling, thanking her for everything she had done for our family. That comment lit a fire in me.

My first real job was at the cosmetics company Colourpop in 2014. ( It was part of Seed Beauty, the incubator that helped launch KKW Beauty and Kylie Cosmetics.) I started out at $17 an hour, but I advanced quickly. I became a marketing manager earning $80,000 a year. By the time I left, I was supervising the entire creative department making $120,000, which was a lot for me to wrap my head around. 

In 2018, beauty investor Kevin Gould approached me and former ColourPop colleague Jordynn Wynn, to help him launch INH Hair, a haircare startup featuring vegan extensions, hot tools, and more. I invested my own savings for a minority stake.

It was a huge risk. But in our first year in business, INH pulled in $3 million in sales, then in 2020 we hit $17 million in net revenue. After debuting in Ulta in August in 2021, we exceeded $20 million in sales. I made the Forbes 30 Under 30 list that year. I haven’t reached Fuck You levels of money just yet, but at the age of 32, I have reached a point of financial stability where I am not stressed. My home is calming with lots of plants, and a huge upgrade from the apartments I grew up in. I paid off $200,000 in school loans. I gifted myself the latest Audi. I grew up watching my mom struggle, so for me, wealth is having peace of mind. I definitely have that.

Becoming successful and wealthy is different for those of us who don’t come from money, especially for those of us who are children of immigrants. But no one talks about that. I’ve always had an unhealthy relationship with money. It was too scary to understand how it worked. I grew up with a scarcity mindset, and in a hide-your-money-under-a-mattress type of family. I had to learn the ins and outs, from overspending, to quickly learning my limits. I was jealous of friends who had people in their family and networks who taught them how to manage it from the start. I’m still learning how to invest. 

In my case, there was so much sacrifice from the previous generation, so there is always an inner tension of wanting to do more. I am honestly uncomfortable giving my mother the full snapshot of my finances. My mom gave me so much selflessly but I am still in the wealth-building process where much of my net worth is still tied up in the business. I hold back what I have and where I am. I don't want to equate me not going out of my way to financially support her to me not loving her. I want to give my mom the world. Eventually my goal is to buy her a home. 

My success is my family’s success. I bought my mother a Lexus and bought my brother a Jeep. My mom is a fashionista so I love to buy her Chanel handbags. There are other payments and cell phone bills I gladly cover. Each year we go on a family vacation, something we never did when we were young. This year we went to Maui and I love that my mother gets to experience leisure in this chapter of her life. 

Meanwhile my cousins and aunts see me as the bright star of the family and there’s a lot of hope riding on my success. To a certain degree, there’s this underlying idea that if I make it, I’ll be everyone’s ticket to never having to worry the way we did when we were young. The pressure is on but I signed up for this. I want to do this for her, for them. It’s that inner burden but also my inner pride.

Word on the street is that young Americans’ financial standings are negatively impacting their social lives, and it shows. Misalignment of financial priorities among Gen Z and millennials is causing friendships to disintegrate across the board and driving a phenomenon known as “FOMO spending,” aka spending money you don’t have in order to keep up with your friends. According to a recent survey, More than one-third (36%) of Gen Zers and millennials have a friend who drives them to overspend, which can understandably take a hefty toll on friendships. Luckily, our friends at Credit Karma have done a deep dive into this dilemma and are here to assist. We tapped Courtney Alev, the consumer financial advocate at Intuit Credit Karma, to get the scoop on how to combat this issue. Her role is rooted in helping Credit Karma’s members make sense of their full financial picture and make progress against their financial goals. Our first question for her: What is the biggest issue with FOMO spending, and how can one resolve it? Her answer was lengthy but insightful. “Spending money you don’t have in order to keep up with friends—or worse, strangers online—can lead you to take on debt, which can cost you a lot of money in interest fees and prolong the time it takes to reach your financial goals,” she said. She also referenced some pretty staggering data: “A recent Credit Karma survey found that 76% of Gen Z and 69% of millennials have gone into debt as a result of FOMO spending, which is a dangerous consequence.” Read the rest of the interview below.

MC: Do you have any tips for how to set financial boundaries?

Courtney Alev: Be open and honest about your financial situation. It’s no secret that talking about money can be awkward, especially with friends and family. We’ve all been there—it’s easier to keep your concerns to yourself when you’re in the moment and everyone is having a good time. But in order to avoid overspending or potentially resenting your friends, these conversations can be necessary. Other friends might even be feeling the same way you are and appreciate the opportunity to set expectations as a friend group. It’s better to have these conversations before you RSVP for that group dinner or that bachelorette trip so you don’t overspend or feel pressured to pay an amount you’re not comfortable with. 

Set a limit for yourself. In addition to having a larger conversation about money, it’s okay to speak up about your spending limits. For example, if your friends are planning a trip, let them know the maximum amount you’re willing to spend before they start booking flights and hotels. The more prescriptive you are, the better. Sharing your budget with your friend group can also make it easier to opt out when you don’t have the funds.

Don’t be afraid to say no. It’s easier said than done, but try not to feel pressured to participate in expensive outings just because your friends want you to. At the end of the day, it’s more important to do what’s best for you and your finances. Aim for quality time and quality experiences rather than taking part in every single costly event. 

Factor your social life into your budget. It’s all about balance. You’ll have to say no to some things, but not everything. The key is to avoid spending money you don’t have, and if you can put aside money for entertainment and travel, there’s no reason why you can’t enjoy those experiences periodically. Take a look at your budget to see what you can move around to set aside money in the “fun” category. It’s also always a good idea to plan as far in advance as possible so that you can save up more over time. If you’re not sure where to start with budgeting, we recommend allocating 50% of your income toward your needs (such as rent and groceries), 20% toward your financial goals (such as saving an emergency fund or paying down debt), and the other 30% for discretionary or fun expenses.

MC: How do you recommend using Credit Karma to help you spend and save wisely?

CA: Changing how you save may help change how you spend. Start by creating a dedicated high-yield savings account with Credit Karma Money, where you can save for specific items and experiences with friends and where your money can earn interest and grow over time. You can also track your transactions via Credit Karma’s Net Worth feature to reflect on your recent purchases, determine if they were “worth it,” and use those insights to make smarter spending decisions. 

A dedicated savings account can help you avoid spending money you don’t have, and it can keep you honest about how affordable something actually is. Let’s say you’re saving for a weekend away with friends. If you realize that you don’t have enough money saved by the time you’re booking your travel, that may be a warning sign that a vacation isn’t the best move financially at the moment and that you need to keep saving.  

And as you’re saving for something specific, name each of your savings accounts. Instead of putting money into “savings,” you’ll be contributing to your “fun fund” or “vacation account.” Knowing you’re working toward something specific may make it easier to contribute regularly and will help you avoid withdrawing from that account for anything else.

You can supercharge your savings by keeping your cash in a high-yield savings account. Interest rates have been relatively high for the last several months, and your savings can earn interest and grow over time. Accounts like Credit Karma Money are free and secure. 

AI can make your selfies look flawless; be your virtual assistant, digital therapist or algorithm-fueled fitness trainer; spread misinformation; perk up your resumé and perfect your cover letter; write your emails, write your wedding speeches, write your novel—and perhaps steal and plagiarize that novel; be very fun; be very wrong; create playlists, grocery lists, and deepfakes; and, perhaps most of all, AI can cause you to question how much you should be using AI.

How much you should be using AI becomes even more paramount when it comes to something else AI can do: manage your money. According to a Bloomberg report, the AI fintech industry is expected to grow to $1.3 trillion dollars over the next decade.

But already there are robo-advisors that can text you trading tips, chatbots that can help with financial planning, even AI apps that can handle awkward money conversations, like negotiating rent with your landlord. All being used to help grow your money in a more straightforward and easy way.

At the same time, you can lose money, too, because as with all things AI-related: It's complicated. Sure, the idea of having a financial planner in your pocket sounds nice. It's just that the technology is new, which means it's not always accurate; so-called "experts" are still figuring it out. And as we learned with chatbot therapists, it's hard for machines to understand people's irrational, nuanced, and contradictory selves. The same goes for our financial wellbeing.

Which is why we talked to a few humans—and tried out a few robo-advisors—to find out whether all of these futuristic tools can actually prepare you for, well, a solid financial future.

Banker Bots Worth Considering

Cleo

Billed as an "AI assistant dedicated to personal finance," this app will help you "sort your shit out." That means calling you out if you spend too much on takeout or splurge on another vintage bag—and hyping you up when you meet your money goals. It also has a tool that will help you negotiate away rent increases, credit card fees, and help you get better deals on recurring expenses, like car payments.

Wally

The personal finance app helps you track your spending, savings, and overall financial wellness. It includes WallyGPT, which you can ask hyper-specific questions, like: Am I saving enough of my monthly income? How have my expenses changed over the past four months? How much do I need to save each month for a week-long trip to Greece? It can also explain financial terms and trends and give recommended investment advice.

SoFi's Robo-Advisor

The app promises to "help you do less guessing and more investing." You can get started with just $1 and its automated investing tool will put together a plan according to your risk tolerance, time horizon, and financial goals. It will automatically give everything an adjustment every quarter, too.

Magnifi

Designed to look like a text thread, this app allows you to chat with an AI-investing assistant about everything from what to do with your bonus to how to find sustainable investments.

Acorns

An app that uses AI-driven algorithms to round up your purchase to the nearest dollar, and then, through its robo-advisor platform, invests that money for you.

A Few Things to Know Before You Download the Apps

You shouldn't get too personal

Read and understand how your information will be used and if it will be shared outside of the service you're signing up for.

The AI overlords won't judge your finance questions

The shame, anxiety, and stress around money can be paralyzing. It can be hard to tell a dude in a stuffy suit that you're in your 30s but don't have a savings account yet or that you don't know what a Roth IRA actually is. AI services come sans stigma, which can make it easier to seek out advice.

But it can also be sexist and racist

The technology that powers artificial intelligence is prone to machine-learning bias, which means it has a tendency to mirror human prejudices that exist in society. When it comes to money, that shows up in several ways: Algorithms that determine who should get loans have been shown to discriminate against people of color. Those very same algorithms are responsible for telling those very same people how to invest their money. There have also been cases where men and women with the same credit scores, incomes and expenses, are approved for varying credit limits—the men always receiving more (in one case, 20 times higher).

Robots aren't sad about losing your money

AI is not a fiduciary. That means it's not obligated to act in your best interest.

Wait, what exactly is a robo-advisor?

Technically, it's not a robot at all. It's technology that provides automated financial information and guidance. If you've ever chatted with customer service "bots" online, it's a similar experience. But with robo-advisors, the conversations often appear on your phone like you're texting with a financially savvy friend.

Different services offer different things. But, generally, you answer a few questions about your money goals, income, age, and financial situation. From there, you can ask your robo-advisor anything, from the general (What's an ETF?) to the specific (How can I pay off my credit card debt in three years while not giving up my love of travel?). What would perhaps take you hours—days!—to calculate, takes the algorithm mere seconds.

When it comes to investing, AI scrapes through existing data to help find investments that make sense for you and your specific scenario. No appointment required.

It's Cool to Use AI For...

• Generating personalized negotiation letters to help you lower monthly expenses, like rent, car insurance, or credit card fees
• Assessing your spending patterns—whether you're planning for a wedding or aiming to spend less on eating out—and providing insights to improve your budget planning
• Detecting fraud for credit card transactions by analyzing typical spending patterns and spotting unusual transactions

But Maybe Not For...

• Answering super-personal finance-related questions that can’t be based off pre-existing data
• Any financial decisions that involve more than $1,000 (find yourself a good old-fashioned human for that, as it’s good to have a gut check)
• Helping with any emotion-based budget planning money decisions, like experiences you should or shouldn’t spend your money on

Will Robots Replace Human Financial Planners?

"We're not convinced it can replace the responsiveness, empathy, and complex thinking that humans are capable of. While a good deal of AI tech does exist to make our lives easier, we don't think it can take the place of a living, breathing, ever-evolving humans when it comes to financial planning." —Sallie Krawcheck, Ellevest founder and CEO

"The answers provided by AI are not always 100 percent correct, and a human financial advisor is needed to interpret the results and provide actionable suggestions. You can think of an AI financial planning system as the assistant that empowers the human advisor to do more. AI lacks the human touch, emotional intelligence, and ethical considerations for financial planning. AI and human advisors will more likely work in tandem, with AI handling data-driven tasks while humans tackle the more subjective, complex aspects of financial planning." —Professor Daniela Rus

"I think it's possible that some of the more routine work that financial planners do could be replaced with AI. If you could talk to a bot that elicits from you what your priorities and preferences are—and has your financial information and retirement or other plans—it could potentially help you plan ahead." —Professor Cynthia Rudin

"No, we don't believe human advice will ever go away. The machines do a great job synthesizing and organizing insights and knowledge, but it takes humans to create those ideas in the first place. Machines regurgitate what they are taught, and it takes humans to teach them, so with that in mind we can't see a world where machines take the place of human insight." —Koren Picariello

The vibe at the ketamine ceremony is more business casual than Burning Man. Of the 20 or so people gathered at the airy loft in New York City, there’s an even split of women and men, most of them white, ranging in age from their 20s to their 70s. They all look professional, like they could be minor characters on Succession, with their quarter-zip sweaters and Prada sweatpants. 

Everyone has congregated for “an evening of self-discovery.” Which means five hours of sound healing, breathwork, Qigong, guided meditation, acupuncture, and intention setting. But the most anticipated part of the evening is the ketamine journey.

When the time arrives to partake, it’s dark outside. There’s some small talk as everyone settles onto plastic sleep mats arranged in a circle; to the side of each one is a journal, a face mask, and 400 ml of ketamine in the form of a pink lozenge. 

One participant, Lisa Evia, a blonde-haired, 48-year-old venture capitalist, was in town from Chicago and had some previous experience with ketamine. She’d come away from prior experiences that altered some of her personal relationships, like with her mother, for the better. That evening, as she placed the lozenge on her tongue, she had a different set of intentions: She wanted to be a different kind of leader at work. Someone more compassionate, less intense. How could she bring empathy and connectivity into leadership?

That many in the room have work on their mind makes sense. The workplace is in crisis, with employee malaise hovering like a cloud over everyone’s cubicles. It’s even spawned movements: Quiet Quitting. The Great Resignation. The Anti-Ambition Era. At one point, there was something about a “quitagion.” Which speaking of, an estimated 25 million people left their jobs at the end of 2021; about 50 million quit in 2022. Unconvinced that traditional solutions can help, some business leaders are looking for the type of wide-open thinking that psychedelic substances can provide. 

Psychedelics slipped into our collective consciousness as of late through the mainstream. Perhaps it began with Michael Pollan’s bestseller How to Change Your Mind about the benefits of psychedelics or when psilocybin retreats were covered by everyone from Anderson Cooper to Goop or when mushroom-laced chocolates began popping up in Insta ads. Whatever it was, somewhere along the way, psychedelics began to be seen as not quite a drug, but as something more powerful—a kind of ritualized path to understanding oneself in a deeper way; a gateway to thinking and seeing things differently. 

But psychedelics aren’t new. Indigenous communities have found incredible healing and connection to plant medicine long before Western culture came around to them (even if only after criminalizing the substances, which disproportionately affected people of color). What is new is a demographic of people who are psychedelic-curious: business leaders.

“For executives, when you’re under a lot of pressure, you can pass down your feelings of anxiety, fear, and frustration to your employees,” says Sandra Statz, 47, the founder and CEO of A.P. Chem, a skincare line, and one of the ketamine ceremony participants. “I don’t think it’s always about being more creative. Rather, it’s about being less risk averse and more open-minded—maybe even more daring with the strategy and tactics you wouldn't otherwise have the confidence to pursue to help you achieve your business goals.”

A certain progressive slice of the corporate world, especially the tech-y type, has always been obsessed with psychedelics. Steve Jobs said that taking LSD was a “profound experience” and had a professional breakthrough while on it around creating great things instead of merely making money. More recently, Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps have started to offer their employees the benefit of ketamine-assisted therapy. 

The idea that psychedelics can not just heal the corporate crowd but open them up to new ideas and maximize their potential has trickled into more conservative business spaces, too. Last year, at the World Economic Forum's annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland, Energia Holdings Incorporated, a venture capital firm that invests in alternative health companies, hosted a “medical psychedelic series” guiding executives through, “sessions curated to engage all six senses and give an unforgettable heart-opening, mind-stimulating, experience of human connection through sound meditation, breathwork, and conscious leadership workshop.” Some attendees dubbed it The Psychedelic House. 

To meet the growing interest, there has been a rise in psychedelic retreats aimed at executives. Some retreats, like the one I attended, last just a few hours and are mostly hosted in big cities. They offer ketamine, which is legal in the United States (although use of it for anxiety, depression, and hopefully for some big professional insights is considered off-label). 

Others are more intensive and can last days or weeks, like Beckley Retreats in Jamaica and the Netherlands which offer multi-day programs in a setting where psilocybin is legal. Many of these places offer virtual options, too.

There are also psychedelic coaches. Those with taglines that promise to train “heart-centered leaders for a new era.” Two of the most well-known are Kaia Roman and her business partner Mike Zapolin (he goes by “Zappy”), who led the New York City retreat. Zappy bills himself as “the psychedelic concierge to the stars,” and has worked with well-known actors, athletes, and executive teams from all over Silicon Valley. Their clients come exclusively from word of mouth. “Once we’ve established the ideal approach, which might begin with breathwork or Qigong or a series of ketamine treatments, a client may choose to work with me for weekly coaching support to maximize their experience,” says Roman. 

Roman and Zappy trademarked the word “ketatation,” a portmanteau combining ketamine and meditation. “It’s like going into the wilderness for the night to turn your supercomputer on and get back to our original frequency,” says Zappy, who is a former Wall Street guy himself, although with his trademark white sunglasses perched on his bald head, you might never think it. 

For those raising their eyebrows, Roman elaborates: “I worked with a group of quantum physicists who wanted to see what breakthroughs they could achieve. Coming out of the ketatation, they were madly taking notes and writing codes.” 

It’s worth noting that while the woo-woo is spiritual, it is also scientific. Researchers at the University of Maryland’s school of business are studying the role of psychedelic experiences on executives. And there’s already an ever-growing body of research illuminating the benefits of psychedelic substances in general, including helping with anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and addiction. The FDA is expected to approve MDMA for PTSD treatment.

The clients Roman sees are often dealing with those very things. “They’re looking for relief from those symptoms and ketamine provides relief very quickly, so they can nurture peak performance and new insights that they’re trying to come up with,” she says. In that way, executives are able to fix workplace problems because they’ve fixed themselves. 

Everyone attending the New York City retreat had all been cleared with a medical intake form and then a call from a Florida-based doctor who prescribed the drug. There’s also an onsite anesthesiologist. Everyone had presumably followed the instructions for the day, which included not using any mind or mood-altering substances; no eating for four hours before the journey; wear comfortable clothes; and start thinking about personal intentions.

People go around the circle introducing themselves. Some ramble about anxiety, feeling stuck. Others say their names and move on. Shyness and a little aversion to saying too much about yourself and your job can be pretty common at these kinds of events, explains Statz, the skincare CEO. “It can feel contradictory to be a leader or an executive while seeking to improve yourself.” 

Some participants have done a lot of work with all kinds of psychedelics, others haven’t used any at all. There are feelings of excitement, trepidation, and eagerness. “My intention was to manage my ability to juggle my workload and all the responsibilities that come with having multiple roles, from wife and mother, to business owner,” says Statz. “I wanted to feel calmer, more at ease, and better able to prioritize and accomplish my goals without feeling frenetic or stretched too thin. We put so much pressure on ourselves to achieve, if not excel, at everything we do.” Could a happier boss lead to happier employees? It tracks. 

After the stretching of bodies, sound bath, and acupuncture needles were removed from everyone’s scalp and ears, Roman instructured the group to place the pink ketamine lozenge on their tongues, swish it around—but not swallow the foul-tasting liquid (it can cause nausea)—for about 10 minutes as music played. After the time passed, everyone spit the liquid out into a cup, put on eye masks, and set sail. 

An hour later, it was over, and the fast was broken with fruit as participants went around the room and shared what happened for them. “People often say that when they communicate with each other as they come out of it, people get insights from one another,” says Roman. “It’s a group consciousness people are tapping into.”

People spoke about feeling confident again, gaining clarity around their lives and careers. A woman said she communicated something psychically to her husband. No one shared any groundbreaking corporate revelations, but many did share that they felt something. Let’s call it a shift. Which maybe is the point. That we’ve all existed in a system and way of doing things for so long it feels impossible to see a way out. But it’s the unburdening from the norm which will ultimately reveal the path to real change. Not rah-rah boardroom speeches or cheap corporate perks. 

At least, that’s how it worked for Statz. “After the session, I felt a renewed sense of clarity and purpose,” she says. “When you don’t feel the weight of all the burdens you often put on yourself, you’re able to identify and say to your team: These are your priorities, rather than tasking them with a million things just to check a box.”

This is where I should tell you: I tried it, too. Although my intentions were less corporate restructuring and more work-adjacent. 

How to describe the experience? I was coming off a couple of the most busy but satisfying work weeks of my life. I had published a book (Glossy if you’re curious) and had just received news that it made the New York Times Best Seller List. I was open to whatever insights the universe brought me. But in some ways, what I wanted from that night was to get away from work and into my much-neglected personal life. 

That’s sort of what I got. As I emerged cold and hungry from the 60 minutes of ketamine-assisted meditation, I scribbled some notes in my journal to remember what I had felt. What I wrote down is entirely embarrassing but I’ll share part of it here anyway: “My main takeaway is that I am a queen on my queen shit and I deserve all the bliss I am feeling right now. People love me and care about me. I can find bliss anywhere when I need it.”

Lisa Evia also had a mild evening, more a deep meditation than any profound psychedelic insight. (When I call Roman a few days later, as she’s driving to San Francisco to a full moon women’s circle, she agreed that the group had an overall mellow reaction, which she attributed to the space; it was lovely, but cavernous, with the echo of street noise not creating ideal conditions to stay focused on the journey.) Still, Evia believes in the power of psychedelics, even if she also has concerns. Her company, SeedFund Capital, invests in cannabis and psychedelic companies that are women-led, but she holds a certain cynicism towards the way the corporate world is cashing in on them, especially for video-supervised at-home use. “I’m not the biggest fan of telemedicine or the direct-to-consumer aspect happening in this space,” she says. “It worries me a little about misuse, though I try to be open minded.” In other words, psychedelics shouldn’t be seen as a business opportunity, but an opportunity to change how you do business—at the office and at home. 

There’s also the issue of price. Everyone in that cavernous New York City loft paid $500 per person (offered at a reduced rate) for their mild experience. Similar retreats can go for double or triple that. The longer, out-of-country options can be $4,000, $5,000, $10,000 dollars. So who really has access to these super-charged insights? Who gets the benefits?

And also: What’s the core purpose? If the world of finance and tech and other industries are using psychedelic retreats to ultimately better performance, output, and optimization of their employees, isn’t that missing the point? When you wrap up the sacred ceremony of psychedelics in corporate jargon and goals, the wonder of mushrooms begins to feel more like a line item in a business plan. 

That’s what I’m thinking about when Roman sends over a text message she received from a client after the ceremony. “I feel really good today. I am implementing new habits regarding my finances/filing/paperwork/mail/organizing and I feel calm about it as opposed to overwhelmed. I'm always doing creative thinking, but this morning while I was teaching I had so many great ideas running through my head I wanted to stop to jot it all down. Ha!”

Not exactly the kind of enlightenment that seems like it would solve burnout or pay gaps or insert any of the other not-great things we encounter in the workplace. But then again, maybe the solutions aren’t meant to be flick-of-the-switch, but something closer to a process. After all, taking psychedelics is called a journey. 

Throughout her impressive career, which has seen her pivot from epidemiologist to fashion influencer to venture capital investor and best-selling author, serial entrepreneur Kathryn Finney has always stayed true to her “why.” As founder of the Genius Guild, she’s building a venture firm that is investing in diverse entrepreneurs who are building exceptional companies in the health and sustainability spaces.

Fittingly, in 2021, Finney was one of the recipients of PayPal’s inaugural Maggie Lena Walker Award, named for the pioneering tour de force who became the first Black woman—and the first woman period—to charter and lead a U.S. bank. Finney recently sat down with PayPal CEO Dan Schulman for a conversation about the most important things they’ve learned through their journeys, Finney’s tips for women looking to take their careers to the next level, and how they built careers with purpose. 

KATHRYN FINNEY: What inspired you to found the Maggie Walker Award?

DAN SCHULMAN: I remember this so distinctly. I was in my office, and my wife runs in. She’s got The Wall Street Journal in her hand, and she goes, “Have you ever heard of Maggie Lena Walker?” And I was like, “No, I haven’t.” And she said, “You need to read this article.” I read the article, and I was blown away and so inspired. Here is this Black woman in the post–Civil War era who is the first woman to charter a U.S. bank. She is a civil rights activist, a newspaper editor, and a businesswoman, and she goes on to be an inspiration in her community, building and helping underserved communities in the face of tremendous pressures and barriers. I thought to myself, “Nobody knows who she is, and she’s incredible. She broke barriers. And we need to figure out a way of celebrating and honoring her legacy.”

DS: Kathryn, you won the award in 2021, and I remember being so inspired by your journey. Out of all your accomplishments, what is the one that you’re most proud of?

KF: The Maggie Walker Award is up there. To receive an award that’s named after a person who made it possible for me to even exist in this space and do what I do is an amazing honor. When I think of honors and what’s most important to me, I think about a talk I had with a group of students in Fargo, North Dakota, where a student asked me this same question. I have a 20-year-old nephew who drove in a snowstorm to come hang with his aunt [that day]. So I said, “What I’m most proud of is that not only have I had a successful career, but my family still loves me, and that my nephew—who is 20 and has a lot of things he wants to do—drove to hear his aunt speak.” At the end of the day, what we do is important, but the impact we have on those around us is very, very important. 

KF: Dan, on the same note, I know you’re winding down your time as PayPal’s CEO. What legacy do you want to leave behind?

DS: I get asked that question a lot because I am winding down one chapter and beginning another.  And to me, a legacy is the cumulative total of everything you’ve done up to that point. Some people measure success in terms of how much money they made or how much shareholder value they created. But I think your legacy is so much more than that. What impact did you have on the communities you were serving? Did you show respect to people along the way? Did you bring positive energy to people’s lives? Did you make a difference in the world? I hope my legacy is about showing respect for people and making whatever difference I could make in the world to help others.

DS: As I look to the future, one of the things I’m thinking about is helping entrepreneurs and helping others. That is something that you do all the time. What financial tips do you have for women who are trying to start their own business?

KF: One tip is to make sure you have a support network, especially when it comes to caregiving. For women entrepreneurs, many of us are mothers and/or caregivers. When I moved to Atlanta, I couldn’t find good childcare for my son, and I was so frantic. I called my mother and was like, “I don’t know what I’m going to do.” And she said, “Do you want me to come?” I’m thinking she’s coming for a week or two, and I was like, “Sure.” She’s like, “No, no, do you want me to move to Atlanta to help you?” Sometimes we try to do everything ourselves. We try to take on the world. And I said, “Yes, I actually do need you to come.” 

She lived with us for four years until my son went to kindergarten. I can’t even calculate how much money it saved us because my son’s father and I were both traveling and trying to work on our careers. If our plane was late, my mom wasn’t going to be upset. We didn’t have to pay extra. The economic impact of having her be able to provide childcare was quite significant. So one of my big financial tips is really to lean on your support network. They might not be able to write you a $50,000 or $10,000 check, but there are other things they can do that save you money.

KF: One thing we share is helping others build the financial wellness and resilience needed to reach their goals. Throughout your career, you’ve advocated for more transparent financial products to help the underserved. And more recently, you developed a financial health program for PayPal’s employees that has been scaled with your partner JUST Capital. What inspired you to dedicate your career to helping the next generation gain financial independence?

DS: CEOs serve multiple constituencies, but the number-one constituency for me is our employees—if they’re passionate and healthy, you’re going to be successful. A lot of people think about “healthy” as being physically healthy, but during the pandemic, we saw that mental health was just as important. And financial health is an essential element of being able to live a productive, fulfilling, and happy life. What I found is that a large portion of PayPal’s employees were not financially healthy. They were having to make choices between healthcare and putting food on the table.

I just felt that wasn’t acceptable—we needed to look at our employees’ financial health, and we raised wages. We slashed the cost of healthcare, gave every single person equity in the company, and surrounded all of that with financial education. The amount of disposable income they had left over after paying for essentials went from 4% or 6% before this program to almost 20%. So now people finally get to save and think about their future. And because they’re living a physically, mentally, and financially healthy life, they come to PayPal and give it everything they have. This is the thing I’m most proud of. I think that managing and moving money should be a right for everybody—not just a privilege for the affluent. So I’ve dedicated a large part of my career to acting upon that vision.

DS: I’m curious, Kathryn—we talked about ambition and what that looks like for you. How would you encourage young female entrepreneurs to find that ambition within themselves? 

KF: At Genius Guild, we’re focused on investing in diverse entrepreneurs building exceptional companies in the health and sustainability spaces. It’s a tough time with some of the challenges we’re facing in our country, and I find it’s important to connect your ambition with purpose. We’re raising our next fund, and there’s a reason for that. It’s not just to make money for our limited partners but to be able to invest in founders that people just can’t see—people and companies that the current system can’t identify because of its own blind spots.

That, to me, is the definition of true ambition. I encourage young entrepreneurs to really think about the “why” of what they’re doing. We have a lot of stories of what happens when you have ambition for ambition’s sake, and it hasn’t necessarily served anyone well. I also say, particularly to women entrepreneurs and women entrepreneurs of color, that you’re going to find yourself at a time period where no one’s going to get what you’re doing. Having a vision that’s connected to who you are as a person is going to give you the foundation to help you get through it and see around the corners.

DS: Yeah, I love that answer because a lot of people think profit and purpose are at odds with each other, and I believe that profit and purpose are fundamentally aligned with each other. When those two things can come together, that is what ultimately drives and maximizes profit. 

KF: I think we’ve been conditioned to think that if I win, you lose. And I just don’t subscribe to that. How do we create a world where we all win? To use a venture capital term, maybe not everyone gets 10x or 2x, but we all get some sort of return from what we’re doing. I think that’s what you built at PayPal—with your employee financial health program, everyone is winning, and as a result, you’re seeing this improvement on the business end as well. I think if more companies and investors had that view, we would see ourselves a lot further along in our world.

Welcome to Power Picks, a monthly series on the things that help us navigate our lives, step into our personal power, or simply get us through our day-to-day. Our hope is that by sharing what makes us feel great, we can help you feel great, too.

Money has long been an opaque subject for many people—it’s not taught in schools, and many of us have to rely on how we were brought up by our parents and guardians. Their money habits, whether good or bad, seep into the way we handle our finances. 

For my part, I've been managing my finances quite well on my own. But with occasional freelance work, managing my 401(k), supporting my family members, and wanting to live my life on my terms, I realized that at some point I'd need to seek out expert advice—and this isn't a bad thing! Often, women tend to feel pressured to carry the whole world on their shoulders, attempting to balance all aspects of their lives in perfect sync—the age-old problem of "having it all."

Ellevest looks to resolve these issues. It's an investment platform aimed at women to help them manage their money better via articles, workshops, well-designed modules, and one-on-one financial planning. It was created by Sallie Krawcheck after a 25-year stint on Wall Street, after she grew tired of the callous ways investors treated their clients, shutting them out from the knowledge of what their own money was doing. Instead, Ellevest takes the realities of women's lives (like the fact that women live longer than men) into account when looking at and formulating goals.

I started using Ellevest two years ago, after I left my last job and decided to transfer my retirement money over instead of leaving it with my previous company. I didn't know when I would work full-time again, and didn't want to leave my money hanging in limbo with an employer I wasn't with anymore. I knew that money meant autonomy—it's what gives us the freedom to live how we want—but I also knew that I couldn't manage it alone. Seeking financial planning helps a person prepare for unexpected expenses and take steps toward financial empowerment. I recently turned 34, so the thought of an unexpected expense shouldn't scare me.

One of my favorite things about Ellevest's offerings is that it's extremely user-friendly and well-designed—an important factor for an art director. In addition to their one-on-one sessions, they also have weekly Zoom workshops and talks, and even worksheets, if you want to tackle the work on your own. Personally, I use Ellevest Plus, which is $100 per year and provides access to two investing goals: a 401(k) retirement account and general financial guidance. The Full Financial Package, on the other hand, is $2,000 after the platform's membership discount, which is 30 percent off.

The various modules and tools on your personal account page can be broken down into three categories: 

• How's My Money Doing? breaks down the potential of your money if you stay at the same savings rate and shows the various potential over time.
• How Much I Need and When I Need It breaks down financial goals into accessible language (i.e. how much money you're aiming to save, your goal age, and whether or not your current saving habits put you on track).
• What Am I Invested In? features a portfolio breakdown in a pie chart with interactive elements, and each portion of your investments features a drop-down showing what companies your money is invested in.

When I started, I was matched with Samantha, a senior planner with 15 years of experience, and given a link to a financial module to link my accounts and explain my goals ahead of our meeting. I chose the standard retirement age of 65 and added a goal of a cash reserve of $15k for emergencies. Samantha and I had two hour-long conversations—one for her to get to know me and my lifestyle, and another to walk me through my financial plan.

She started our first meeting with a single question: "Why now?" 

The question cuts to the heart of a person's motivation. Is it fear? Is it reaching the next chapter of your life? Is it wanting to live a non-traditional life and figuring out how to fund it? 

It's a big step to open up your accounts to a stranger. I had anxiety about someone looking at my money habits. Some of my habits are noble (like saving 30 percent of each paycheck), but I felt embarrassed that this person was going to see much I spend on consumables, like taxis and dinners out, and that there are some weeks I get down to $100 or so of fun money near payday. I'm a single woman and have no kids, but somehow my money had been gobbled up by shifting expenses or a lack of cognizance of what was flowing in and out. 

However, that's what Ellevest is here for. I was honest about my apprehension, and Samantha was quick to emphasize that she had no preconceptions of how I had to act or behave, and that it's important to turn the stress of feeling out of control over my finances into a vehicle that drove me to do better for myself. 

Self-care is not just bubble baths and face masks, it's also doing the hard work and discipline to set yourself up for success. Autonomy is success; being an adult in charge of her future is success.

After hearing a bit about my life circumstances and goals, Samantha created a financial roadmap for my life over the next 30 years and gave me steps on how to build a sturdy financial foundation. Some of the scenarios included if I decided to stay in New York for the rest of my life, if I decided to move back to my hometown to be closer to family, or if I bought a home property in my hometown to live with my mother. Also, if early retirement was in my future ("early" meaning age 55, with freelance gigs on the side—after all, once a creative, always a creative). Samantha laid out each "lever" I'd have to pull to make each of these a reality, with dollar amounts and the timeline needed for each.

One of the biggest advantages of this session was a professional telling me what to focus on while taking my life into account. I have a bit of credit card debt from the period in between freelancing and starting at Marie Claire, and have built-in paranoia about future emergencies so I hoard money to the detriment of paying down debt or even buying nice things for myself, like vacations or upgrading my professional wardrobe. Lots of spending decisions in a week lead to fatigue, and Samantha emphasized that it's important to spend with your values and set up accounts in a way that's aligned with the way you live. For example, I have multiple accounts that are automated—a certain amount goes into a separate savings account each paycheck, and I have a separate account for bills, but that's it. Those are both nebulous amounts of money not being put to work, so Samantha suggested I open up more accounts to turn into non-monthly goals, such as saving up for gift-giving during the holiday season. 

Automating everything and letting one account just be for fun money is very much in alignment with who I am, as I mostly want to have a good time and spend freely. I love a long night of holding court with my friends at a restaurant—and that's okay!

Ellevest is offering 15 percent off a financial planning session for Marie Claire readers. Use the code POWERPICK.

If you think you need to earn a certain amount of money or hit a particular age to start investing, think again. There are plenty of options for new investors, including index funds. 

Index investing was created by Jack Bogle, founder of Vanguard, in 1975 and has become the most popular passive income strategy when it comes to investing in the stock market. Wall Street history aside, it’s important to know this: index funds are actually pretty easy and don't require a lot of money to get started. They're designed to replace a human at the helm while attempting to beat the market and keep your costs as an investor to a minimum.  

What are index funds?

An index fund is essentially a mutual fund or exchange traded fund (ETF) that tracks the performance of a particular index and takes the guesswork out of selecting individual stocks for your portfolio. When you invest in index funds, it's a way to passively invest in all of the companies that are in that index. That way, your portfolio has built-in diversification, with relatively low expenses.

How are index funds different from mutual funds?

Like mutual funds, index funds give investors the opportunity to buy a chunk of the market in one transaction. But because index funds take a passive approach to investing by tracking a market index rather than using a professional to take an active approach to building and managing the investment, index funds tend to carry lower fees than mutual funds. 

Are index funds safe?

Investing always carries risks. There is no surefire way to guard your funds against investment losses with index funds. The stock market is volatile year to year (with wild fluctuations day to day). However, if we zoom out by 10 years, the stock market has increased in value. That’s why it's best to take a long-term investing approach with index funds in order to allow your investments to grow over time. Buy when the market is low or during recessionary times to maximize your profit once the market returns to its healthier seasons.

What's the difference between index funds and stocks?

Stocks are publicly traded shares of a company that provides you with ownership in one particular company, such as Amazon, Apple, or Target. Investing in one company exposes your funds to increased risk, should the company’s stock take a tumble or become insolvent. As a beginning investor, a good rule is to limit individual stocks to about 10 percent of your overall portfolio. Be sure to do your research, proceed with caution, and choose your individual stocks wisely. 

If investing in a single company is not your thing or you don’t want to put the energy into researching the company, then investing in an index fund may be the next best thing. Index funds are a collection of stocks that allow you to diversify across industries, company sizes, and geographic regions, just to name a few. Index funds also have low expenses, since there isn’t anyone behind the curtain buying and selling shares of companies without you knowing about it. It’s all done automatically.

What about index funds and ETFs? How are they different?

Index funds and ETFs can look almost the same on the surface—they both allow for passive investing, mirror an index, and are low-cost forms of investing. But they’re more like sisters when it comes to an index investing strategy. Index funds have been around since 1975, where ETFs hit the stock market scene in the 1990s. This has given index funds a slight edge when it comes to funds under management, but ETFs are the second most popular passive investment vehicle and continue to gain ground. Here’s how they are different.

1. Liquidity: The biggest difference between ETFs and index funds is that ETFs can be traded throughout the day on the stock exchange like stocks. This can be attractive for active investors who like to chase price movements during the day. However, for new investors, this can be an attractive feature if they want to cash out on an uptrend or stop their losses if the ETF begins to take a dip. This may not be a concern if you are investing for the long term and simply have your funds invested for the ride. Index funds can only be bought and sold for the price set by the market at the end of the trading day.
2. Minimum Investment: With ETFs, you can buy one share or a fractional share to invest in the fund, making the barrier to entry much lower than an index fund. Many index funds come with a minimum investment amount by the broker that are higher than the price of one share of an ETF. However, there are index funds that come with no minimum investment requirements to join the fund.
3. Dividends: Index funds automatically reinvest dividends, which maximizes the growth of your investment through compounding. ETFs stockpile the dividends until the end of the quarter and then distribute them as cash to investors or as additional shares in the ETF. This distribution becomes a taxable event to the investor.
4. Fees: Both ETFs and index funds are low costs options to investing, with many ETFs coming in at a hair less than index funds. But ETFs can come with additional fees such as trading commissions—if your online broker charges for trades—and costs associated with the bid-ask spread.  Although these fees are relatively small, they can add up over time if you buy and sell frequently, eating away at your returns.
5. Taxes: ETFs are more tax-efficient than index funds because if you decide to sell your shares, you will be responsible for the capital gains tax. With an index fund, any withdrawal request from another investor in the fund triggers a sale of shares and the capital gains tax is spread across all the investors in the fund. You can pay taxes, even if you don’t sell any of your shares.

How do you invest in index funds?

To purchase shares of an index fund, you will need to open an investment account with a discount broker, such as Fidelity or Merrill Edge. Index funds can be purchased in a brokerage account or an IRA account. Once funds are transferred and available, you can select to purchase the index fund with a fixed dollar amount or by the number of shares you would like, depending on your budget. For example, if you have $1,000 available and each share of an index fund is $100, you can purchase any amount up to $1,000 or you can purchase anywhere between one and 10 shares of the index fund.

Investing in index funds can be easy if you’re a beginning investor or if you want to keep your investing strategy fairly simple. If you’re looking to invest and forget over the long term, then index funds should be taken into consideration as a part of your overall investment plan.

Weddings are fun. But the financial cost of attending all of those celebrations is not so fun. There’s the international bachelorette parties and black-tie attire and accommodations and wedding presents for the couple and, well, you know. Then there’s your date, which can bring another layer of stress and confusion around wedding finances. Who should be paying for what? It’s no wonder that according to a recent study, one in five Americans say they have declined a wedding due to the expenses associated with attending.

To help navigate awkward money talks, here's what a financial expert says about paying your way through wedding season as a couple. 

• Set up a strategy session

As the invites start to pile up, sit down with your date to discuss which ones you will attend as a couple. “Similar to all other aspects of a relationship, communication is key when it comes to meeting your savings and budgeting goals,” says Mia Alexander, a budgeting expert and vice president of member success at Dave, a digital banking service. She says looking at all weddings on the horizon helps couples realize the expenses associated with each one and the bigger picture of the financial commitment. “Since money is one of the leading causes of relationship stress, carving out a detailed plan around weddings can be a great way for couples to start breaking the ice on communicating important joint life decisions,” adds Alexander.

• Talk cost before you RSVP

Ultimately, there is no one rule for how couples should split their wedding expenses. There are a number of factors that come into play, including how long you’ve been dating and how much each person can afford. “Some couples like to split it 50/50, others like to contribute a certain amount based on their annual income, and others weigh it differently based on whose friend or family member is getting married,” says Alexander. The important thing is to be upfront with what each of you is willing to spend.

• Be open to getting creative

Everyone’s budget is different. Instead of each person feeling guilted into spending more than they’re comfortable with, think up ways to cut down on costs, like staying at a cute Airbnb instead of the pricey hotel at the wedding venue. You can also plan to spread out expenses, so you aren’t having to dish out a chunk of cash at one time. One idea: Wedding etiquette requires you gift the couple with something, but you also have up to a year to do it.

• Stick to the plan

If you and your plus-one have agreed that you’ll split the cost of a rental car, but then you decide you’d rather fly, it’s on you to cover the added expense. On the other hand, surprise expenses can—and frequently do—pop up, like a long taxi ride back to the hotel because the complimentary shuttle bus has stopped running. So be sure to have a discussion on how you’ll handle unexpected costs, too. And then, once you both have finalized your plan for handling wedding season expenses—maybe have a glass of champagne to celebrate. 

Investing always starts with a plan that factors in things like your earnings, savings, and debt. Once you determine how much you want to invest, as well as your financial goals, you'll come across an array of options to put your money in. One of those options: Mutual funds.

You can buy mutual funds directly from an investment firm or invest through your 401K. But often, the packet of info you get to sign up for your 401K offers little to no guidance. And by the time you get to the list of mutual funds, your eyes are likely glazing over. While it may not seem thrilling, once you self-educate yourself on investing, building your wealth can actually be exciting. Here's how to get started. 

What are mutual funds?

Mutual funds are pooled investments that consist of stocks, bonds, or a mixture of both, along with other investment securities that are managed by a professional investment manager. In other words, millions of investors bring their money together to invest in a diversified portfolio. Since a money manager is selecting the investments for that fund, it allows you to invest at a lower cost. 

According to the Investment Company Institute’s 2022 Research Report, between mid-2000 and mid-2022, assets held in mutual funds increased from $7.1 trillion to $22.2 trillion. The sheer number of participants in mutual funds allows for greater purchasing power when it comes to buying stock in companies that may be considered expensive to purchase on your own.

Having an investment manager takes the guesswork out of selecting individual stocks, too. You can put your money in the mutual fund and let the market work for you.  

Mutual funds come in different classes, most notably A-shares and C-shares, that come with varying fees. But there are mutual funds that are "no-load," which means there are no fees to purchase and to keep your money in the fund.

How can you invest in one?

You can buy mutual funds directly from the investment company itself. When you buy direct, there are no commissions or brokerage fees. However, your selection may be limited to only the funds the company has invested in. 

Want more options? You can also purchase mutual funds from online discount brokers such as Charles Schwab or Merrill Edge. That will give you access to a buffet of mutual funds that align with your investment objectives and make it simple to get started. Many of these types of brokers will waive fees and have no commissions if you elect to open and maintain your account online. 

How do they work?

Mutual funds pool money together from investors and an investment manager makes decisions on the stocks, bonds, or other securities to purchase for the fund. Unfortunately, as an investor you do not have a say in the selection process—only in purchasing the mutual fund. Nevertheless, each fund has an investment objective—a distinct goal to increase your investment. This investment objective gives you a preview on the strategy that the investment manager intends to use to grow the profits of the fund.

When you buy a mutual fund, your purchase request is filled at the end of the day based on the fund’s daily share value, meaning that when you purchase the price you will pay is determined at the end of the trading day.

Once your purchase request (or buy order) is accepted and executed, it takes the trade date plus two business days to finalize the sale.

When should I invest in mutual funds?

Dollar-cost averaging should be used when purchasing mutual funds, whereas you should be consistently purchasing more shares when the market is down and purchasing less shares when the market is high. 

The longer you are able to invest and make consistent contributions increases the potential for your investments to grow over time in a mutual fund. Mutual funds perform well when the overall stock market is running high, but many mutual fund investors may have invested during times when the market may have taken a dip.

Bottom line: If you're overwhelmed by the world of investing, mutual funds may be the way to go if you’re seeking a diversified, convenient, and low-cost way to join other investors in getting started on your investment journey.

Many of us drag our feet when it comes to filing our taxes. In fact, according to IRS data, 29 percent of tax returns were filed in the last three weeks of tax season last year. If you’re panicking that this year's deadline is approaching and you're not sure where to get started, the good news is that you still have time. As a certified financial planner at SoFi, a personal finance company, I can help you navigate the tricky ins and outs of the IRS. Let’s start by gathering the documents you need, identifying important tax advantages, and learning how you can put your tax return money to good use.

Know When to Ask For Help

The first decision you’ll need to make is whether you’ll want to file your taxes on your own through an online platform or work with a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). If you have a more complicated tax situation, working with a CPA might be the best option for you. Their job is to help you navigate and understand the tax code. Working with a CPA will come with an additional cost. You can often find a great local CPA through your network or word of mouth.

Gather Your Paperwork

Compile the documents you’ll need to file online or give to an accountant—half the battle is organizing what you already have. When working with SoFi members, I tell them to first start by taking a plain manila envelope and write the tax year plus taxes. That folder should be where you start to drop in all of your important documents to file your taxes. 

In most cases, you’ll need income documents such as a W-2 for salaried employees, or a 1099 if you’re self-employed. You may also need to provide investment documents, student loan interest forms, or IRA contributions. You can find more info on all of the forms you might need on the IRS website. As these forms come in the mail or email, keep them in a labeled folder so you stay organized and ready during the tax-filing season. It is important to keep these documents even after you submitted your return in case you are audited (you must keep them for at least three years).

If you're filing jointly with your spouse, you will need copies of their documents, too. There could be other documents you need for specific circumstances like alimony, selling a business, or if you have rental properties.

Take Advantage of Ways to Lower What You Owe

It’s not too late to contribute to an IRA for the year. You have until the tax filing deadline (April 18, 2023) to make a 2022 IRA contribution up to $6,000 which is a deduction as long as you meet the requirements. These requirements are: If you participate in a retirement plan at work, you must have a gross income of less than $68,000 if filing single or less than $204,000 married filing jointly. If you do not have a retirement plan at work, there is no income limit to be eligible for the deduction.

Look For Ways to Save Money Next Time

While your current focus may be on 2022 taxes, there are also some things you may want to keep in mind that could help reduce your tax burden when filing your 2023 taxes. Keep in mind the following tax benefits that you can leverage to maximize your return or reduce your tax liability in future years.

• Tax-Loss Harvesting: This is when you sell an investment at a loss and then use that loss to offset against other gains you had in the year. It is important to keep in mind that there is a “wash sale” rule, meaning if you sold an investment at a loss and repurchased it (or a substantially identical investment) within 30 days you cannot claim that loss for tax purposes. However, cryptocurrency does not currently have a wash sale rule, so if you had losses in crypto, you may be able to leverage those losses to offset taxes.
• Inflation Reduction Act Tax Opportunities: Last year, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, which features sweeping tax reforms. The package includes new “green” tax credits, which encourage taxpayers to lean into renewable energy options, like solar and wind. Homeowners can, for instance, collect a 30 percent tax credit, or up to $1,200, for installing residential solar panels. There is also the high-efficiency electric home rebate, where low and middle-income families can get a 50 percent rebate on electrification projects of up to $14,000 (heat pumps, electric stoves, breaker box, wiring, and weatherizing). Vehicle owners can also recoup up to $7,500 for new qualified clean vehicles and up to $4,000 for used qualified clean vehicles.
• Increased Retirement Contribution Limits: For 2023, contribution limits have increased to help consumers combat inflation and play catch up when it comes to saving for retirement. The 401k contribution limit increased to $22,500 (up from $20,500 in 2022). Individuals over age 50 can now make an additional $7,500 (up from $6,500 in 2022) as a catch-up contribution. IRA contribution limits increased to $6,500 (up from $6,000 in 2022). If you haven’t contributed to your IRA for the 2022 tax year, you can still do so by the tax deadline of April 18. Lastly, HSA contributions increased to $3,850 for individuals and $7,500 for families (up from $3,650 for individuals and $7,300 for families in 2022).

File on Time

Make sure you’re submitting your taxes by this year's deadline of Tuesday, April 18, 2023. Failure to file and pay your taxes on time can result in various penalties that can cost you up to a maximum of 25 percent. If you are nervous you can discuss with a CPA who can best guide you to avoid these in the first place.

Think Twice About Spending That Refund

Maybe the government is sending you a check this year, hooray! But before you book an exotic vacation or splurge on a new wardrobe, consider using that money to improve your personal finances by paying off any bad debt (high-interest credit cards, for example), funding (or replenishing!) your emergency savings, contributing to your retirement account, or investing in other financial goals you may be working towards. If you’re not sure where to start, a financial planner is always a good option to set you on the right path for your individual needs.

Understand the Baseline Tax Vocabulary

Last but not least, know the lingo. Taxes are complicated. If you’re just starting out or want to get a better understanding of the process, there are five key terms to know:

• A tax deduction reduces the amount of your income that is taxable
• A tax credit reduces the amount of taxes you owe to the government, dollar for dollar.
• Standard deduction is a specific dollar amount that the IRS lets you deduct from your income. This amount for 2022 is $12,950 for single filers and $25,900 for those who are married and jointly filing. For most people, this may be a larger amount than itemizing and is simpler, but it can be worth looking at both.
• An itemized deduction is an expense that is subtracted from your income to reduce your overall taxable income, and thus, reduce the amount of taxes you owe. Itemized deductions are only available if you forgo the standard deduction and instead itemize such expenses. These can include things like mortgage interest, state and local income taxes, property taxes, medical expenses, and charitable donations. If you have many of these items it may be worth calculating both types of deductions to see whether itemizing or the standard deduction would be a better move for you.
• Capital gains occur when you sell an asset such as stocks, bonds, or real estate for more than you paid for it. Long-term gains (an investment held longer than one year) are taxed at capital gains tax rates which can be found here. Short-term gains (held less than one year) are taxed at ordinary income tax rates (like your wages).

Disclosures

Kendall Meade is a Registered Representative of SoFi Securities, LLC and an Investment Adviser Representative of SoFi Wealth, LLC

Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc. (CFP Board) owns the certification marks CFP®, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™, CFP®, and CFP® in the U.S., which it awards to individuals who successfully complete CFP Board's initial and ongoing certification requirements.

SoFi doesn’t provide tax or legal advice. Individual circumstances are unique. Consult with a qualified tax advisor or attorney about your specific needs.

©2023 Social Finance, Inc. All rights reserved.

Being a leader is a coveted role, but it comes with major responsibilities and often no road map. Throughout my career, my leadership journey has come with ups and downs, including a fair share of difficult conversations. But what sticks with me the most are the pivotal moments from which my colleagues and I emerged with lessons learned and a path forward. 

For business owners, great leadership can lead to stronger relationships with customers and employees, new opportunities, and a healthier and more stable business environment—ultimately, leadership can tilt the scale toward success or failure. For women who face unique challenges and barriers in the workplace, the stakes of leadership are even higher. 

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to leadership—in my role, I’ve been fortunate to experience a wide range of effective leadership styles—but the key elements of being a great leader never go out of style. As we head into Women’s History Month, I’m proud to share my four essential leadership tips for women business owners:

Develop a vision with one common goal that everyone on the team can follow.  

When I came to Bank of America in Los Angeles and became the small business region executive, the first thing I did was chat with each of my team members individually. This allowed me to get to know them on a personal level and understand what their expectations were of me as their leader. 

While it’s important for you to set clear goals and expectations for your employees, it should also be a two-way street. The expectations they have of you are equally as important, and I’d encourage you to engage in honest, open communication with every person on your team. Once those expectations are clearly set, together you can develop a vision for the team to all work toward.

Inspire commitment and followership.

Every day, I set aside time to call associates on my team to chat with no agenda, so they know they’re cared about and their opinions are valued. This connection is great for all of us—my teammates and I gain greater insight into the ebbs and flows of our day-to-days, and as a result, they’re committed to providing their best work to reach the goals we’ve created together.

With every team you manage, it’s important to create a culture of caring, where they know their feedback is important to you. It’s easy to say their feedback matters, but it’s another thing to make them feel like they can approach you with questions or concerns. Your people are your most important asset, so make the effort to foster that connection.

Lead by example and remember to teach, not give orders.

I’ve always kept this quote in mind: “The speed of the leader determines the rate of the pack.” As women leaders, we cannot be afraid to lead by example. If I’m hesitant to jump in and try something new, my team matches that energy. But if I demonstrate confidence in my decision-making, my team tends to follow my lead.

While it could be an easier choice to forget your mistakes and try to move on, it’s beneficial to share your pitfalls with your team and teach them how to learn from your mistakes. Sharing moments of weakness is just as important as sharing wins and best practices.

Find a support system.

Although I’m supporting a full team, leadership can often feel lonely. That’s why it’s so important for me to have a group of people, personally and professionally, that I can count on during difficult times. I sit on the board of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) in Los Angeles and have made invaluable connections at the various events and annual galas they host. I’m proud to be part of an organization that prioritizes resources for women business owners, such as the Bank of America Institute for Women Entrepreneurship at Cornell, an online program designed to help women entrepreneurs develop their leadership skills. Organizations like these provide great opportunities to share with and learn from other like-minded women to informally broaden your network.

Mentorship is one of the top components of success for women in business. Research shows 80% of CEOs have had a mentor. Additionally, the Small Business Administration cites 70% of mentored businesses stay in business for more than five years. To help connect women small business leaders with mentors, Bank of America partners with the Cherie Blair Foundation and has matched over 1,000 employees with mentees in developing and emerging countries. Women face unique challenges in the workplace, so finding a support system or mentor is especially important for those on the path to leadership.

Putting yourself out there can feel intimidating, or maybe you don’t know where to start. Next time you’re at an event or in a meeting and someone makes a comment that catches your attention or resonates with you, introduce yourself. Let them know you’d love to chat further, and follow up on that introduction with a meeting. Most importantly, come prepared. I’d recommend bringing an agenda of topics you want to discuss and learn more about. It doesn’t need to be formal or lengthy, but coming to the table with two or three ideas can help your conversation flourish, leading to a more meaningful relationship.

Becoming a strong leader is not accomplished overnight and can feel overwhelming when you’re starting out, so remember to be kind to yourself. Be patient, lean on your support network and be vocal with your team about your concerns and celebrations. 

Resources for Women Looking to Grow Their Leadership Skills

• The Bank of America Institute for Women's Entrepreneurship at Cornell
• National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO)
• For more inspiration, you can read the stories of successful women entrepreneurs here.

Investing in your thirties is not that dissimilar from investing in your twenties, but this decade does tend to come with some more twists and considerations. Let’s start with a refresher on the most important thing to continue doing from your twenties: maxing out your retirement.

Invest in Retirement

The biggest investment priority in your thirties should remain your retirement account. As of 2022, you can invest up to $20,500 in a 401K and up to $6,000 in an IRA. That means you can set aside up to $26,500 each year, invest it, and allow it to grow in a tax-advantaged way. This limit applies to individuals, so if you’re partnered, that’s $53,000 your household can save annually for retirement. Here’s how to get started:

• Check if your employer offers a 401K match. If you’re not sure, check in with HR. Match programs vary greatly, but many employers will either match up to a percentage of what you contribute. (Note that matches are sometimes on a vesting schedule, meaning that you have to stay with the company for a certain period of time to actually redeem your match dollars). The best news here is that employer matches do not count toward your overall 401K limit, so, in other words, you can invest up to $20,500, and your employer match is on top of that. To encourage employee participation in 401Ks, many companies now auto-enroll employees in plans and automatically increase the percentage of employee contributions. Ask HR what your company’s policy is and make sure your personal settings are in line with the contributions you actually want to make.
• Look for Roth options. Both 401Ks and IRAs come in two main flavors: traditional and Roth, two terms that refer to how they’re treated by the IRS. When you invest in a Roth IRA or 401K, your contributions are post-tax dollars, so when you withdraw funds in retirement, you’ll take them out tax-free. Roth accounts are a smart option in your twenties because you’re making the bet that your current tax burden today will be lower than a few decades from now as you near retirement. If you don’t have access to a 401K through work, you can set up an IRA quite literally anywhere that you have an investment account, like Charles Schwab, Fidelity, or Vanguard.
• Check out target-date ETFs. Contributing to your retirement account is not the same as allocating your retirement balance into investments. Double-check that you’re not leaving a cash balance there but you’re actually setting (and forgetting) these funds into target-date ETFs, which update their risk levels depending on how far you are from retirement. In your twenties, you still have decades of work before retirement, so you have time to take on more risk now. These ETFs are often labeled by anticipated retirement date, so if you’re 35 today, you’d be a good fit for a “Target Retirement 2055” fund. (Not sure where to find these? Just use the chat feature on your financial institution’s site.)
• Let your retirement funds grow. As soon as you contribute money to a retirement account, consider it off-limits until you actually retire. The IRS has early-withdrawal penalties in place, so if you take money out of these accounts before age 59 ½, you’ll be hit with a 10 percent penalty. (There are some exceptions, like first-time home purchases, but taking money out of retirement should always be a last resort and one you discuss with a tax advisor first).
• Don't delay the rollover. Last but not least, one challenge of 401Ks is managing old accounts as you move around between companies. It’s recommended that you consider rolling over old accounts into current ones, so you get a better snapshot of your retirement savings all in one place. Doing a rollover can have tricky tax implications, so consult an expert or explore a tool like Capitalize to make it easy.

Next, Invest in a Proper Financial Plan and CFP®  

Once you’re on track with maximizing your retirement savings, it’s time to invest in a financial plan. Simply put, a financial plan is a roadmap that every single person should have around their financial life. A holistic financial plan covers some major topics: your budget (where your dollars are going each day, month, and year); your future savings goals (think: buying a car, buying a home, children—yes, they are expensive!); insurance (from renters and homeowners to auto to life); investing (how to diversify your portfolio beyond retirement), and finally, estate planning (wills and documents to protect your family). 

At its core, the process of creating a financial plan pushes you to think about all of the goals you’re working towards this decade and ensures you’re allocating each dollar that comes in to the best spot. To create your plan, consider working with a Certified Financial Planner ™. I think of CFPs® as “doctors” of money – they are fiduciaries who can help you map out a financial game plan. The CFP® board has a great resource, called Let’s Make a Plan, that can help you find a fee-based financial planner to work with. 

Invest in Your Home (but within your means!)

The final big place to consider investing in your thirties are your core assets – things you  will hold onto for the next decade. For many people, investing in a home is a good place to build your assets up over the long-term. A few ground rules if you’re considering buying a home:

• Save up so you can commit to at least a 20% down payment.
• Ensure that your all-in mortgage costs, PITI (which stands for Principal, Interest, Taxes and Insurance) are less than 35% of your household’s monthly take-home pay. To use easy numbers, let’s say your household takes home $10,000 each month after taxes. Your mortgage costs should not exceed $3,500.

One of the best financial pieces of advice I ever received from a mentor was to always live beneath your means when it comes to your home. Housing costs are typically our largest monthly expense, so giving yourself more room here in your budget will give you extra flexibility to save and invest in your other goals. And, if you work from home, remember that this can be tax-deductible as well, so bring it up to your accountant during tax season.

So to recap, your first priority is to continue to invest in your retirement. Second, invest in a full financial plan so that you understand how all of your finances fit together. At LearnVest, where we built financial plans for people across the country, I saw firsthand how safe and secure people felt when they knew what they needed to do with every dollar. And third, invest in your home and wherever you live. Happy investing!

How to Invest in Your 20s

Your twenties are the perfect time to lay the foundation for a strong financial future.

Your Complete Guide to Investing

The secret’s out: You can’t save your way to wealth. To build true wealth for yourself, you need to invest.

Retirement Planning for Your Future, Fabulous Self

Whether you're a Millennial, Gen-Z, or even a Gen-A employee, one day you'll retire from the workforce. The hope is that our younger selves have saved appropriately so we can live out our golden years comfortably—and perhaps more fabulously and worry-free than you ever imagined.

Men in suits with banker bags. Jargon for the sake of jargon. Ninety-eight percent of funding for people with a Y chromosome. When it comes to traditional finance, women have not only been left out of the conversation, but completely dismissed and excluded. And Silicon Valley has been, historically and notoriously, a tech bro’s world—a shame since the industry has been among the fastest growing and most lucrative for decades, dating back to the dotcom boom of the 1990s. The ultimate result: major obstacles for women when it comes amassing wealth and attaining leadership positions. 

We hate for history to repeat itself but, unfortunately, we’ve got deja vu. Cryptocurrency, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and the Metaverse are getting all the hype. And all are part of Web3, which is, in short, the next iteration of the Internet. Similarly to how social media and e-commerce changed the way we live, work, and shop, Web3 will affect everything from your investment portfolio, to your future job prospects, online security, and more. McKinsey predicts that by 2030, the metaverse’s market value could skyrocket to $5 trillion. Yet, about 43 percent of men ages 18 to 29 have invested in, traded, or used a cryptocurrency, compared to 19 percent of their female peers, according to Pew Research. Out of 121 of the world’s leading crypto companies, only five included a woman founder. Even women NFT artists are outnumbered in the space; research shows that 77 percent of NFT sales go to male creators, and women make up less than 20 percent of the market.

Yes, the industry is moving at a rapid—and, it seems, intentionally confusing—pace. But instead of sitting out on this defining shift in tech, finance, and art, we’re here to help women learn the basics and understand the risks and rewards. Even if you never buy bitcoin, knowing what it is (and the world that surrounds it) has benefits for investors, businesswomen, creators, and, frankly, anyone with a bank account.

Bringing Your Brand Into the Metaverse

For many companies, moving into Web3 aligns with marketing’s golden rule of “meeting your customers where they are.” Savvy millennials and even savvier Gen-Zers are open to it—so much, in fact, that Facebook underwent a high-profile rebrand last year. Now called Meta, the tech company has invested $10 billion in its metaverse division, betting on the rise of crypto optimism. 

But early Web3 builders have been working on crypto, NFTs, and the metaverse since far before Mark Zuckerberg joined the party. Until recently, most experts expected that augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and virtual worlds would have to be commonplace before mainstream consumers would be excited about the idea of the spatial web. But after two years of adapting to Zoom calls, the idea of living in a parallel virtual reality doesn’t seem that far-fetched.

Given this cultural shift, software developers and engineers are creating technological infrastructures to enable true digital ownership. If they pull it off, “buying” a digital item will mean actually owning it the way we do physical items, like clothing, houses, and cars. And that equals business opportunity. 

It’s all very innovative. But when you’re an entrepreneur or an employee tasked with making strategic decisions about allocating your company’s budget, it’s also stressful. “There's so much innovation constantly happening,” said Alexa Lombardo, founder and head of strategy at Atomic No. 8, a creative studio for Web3 storytelling. “A lot of the companies don't even know how to look inward and ask, ‘But what are we doing and why?’ because they're just so focused on what the guy next door is doing.”

No other designer has delved fearlessly into the metaverse quite like Rebecca Minkoff. The founder of her eponymous label and serial investor in women-owned brands often collaborates with NFT marketplace Mavion to drop digital fashion and accessory lines. Here, she offers a meta-career mentoring session. 

• A Web3 strategy is going to take repetitive and consistent communication and messaging—you won’t convince people with the first email or the first tweet. 
• Strategic partnering is everything. We purposefully partnered with companies that had Web3 audiences already. That's why we partnered with Mavion, because we know we're talking to an entirely new customer and they're the ones that already get it and are excited about it.
• See it as a chance to expand your existing customer base. Our brand has gotten to the eyeballs of an entirely new, mostly European audience from our first two drops.

Is Now A Bad Time to Invest in Crypto?

“Women are seeing cryptocurrency and Web3 as this new mechanism. They’re thinking, Oh, I get to be a part of this change. Like, forget stocks, let me just focus on Web3,” says Kat Garcia, cofounder of Cheres, an investing app. But we are (as of our press date) in a bear market. And just because something is trendy, doesn’t mean it’s smart. “It's important to know both [traditional stocks and cyber opportunities] because we're still in this transitory space. You need both economies to be able to thrive.” The cryptocurrency market has fallen from a peak of nearly $3 trillion in November of 2021, to less than $1 trillion at several points this year. Bitcoin, basically the Kleenex or Coke of crypto, lost more than 70 percent of its value in 10 months. 

Still, a bad market doesn’t necessarily equate to a bad time to invest—and that includes in the traditional stock market. Some compare it to a sale at your favorite store. One wealth advisor put it this way: “If LIVELY had a 20 percent sale off all of its store items right now, you’d be curious. Investing during a bear market is an opportunity to invest when stocks are on ‘sale,’ especially if you believe in those companies or that the technologies will recover in the long-term.” Others say it may also be a chance to get in on the ground floor. “I think about when Amazon stock was at $6. Like, I'm not buying this weird book company that sells books online, but man, I wish I did! Right?,” says Michelle Cordeiro Grant, founder of Lively and a Web3 enthusiast. “This is like our chance not to look back and say, ‘Whoa, we missed it.’ This is our chance to say, ‘Let's understand it and get on the roller coaster so that when it does start coasting, we have the tools and information in terms of what to do next.” 

No matter what, don’t even think about investing (whether in NFTs or ETFs) unless your basic finances are in order. No emergency fund and not maxing out your 401K? Forget about putting your money in the Metaverse.

So You Want to Work in Web3

These careers will be in-demand as a result of the next evolution of the web.

Developers and designers. Companies that plan to launch metaverse activations will either need an in-house dev team or talented freelance digital designers to code virtual spaces and avatar wearables. 

Marketing pros. No matter how tech-driven, a Web3 initiative cannot exist in a silo; it must be incorporated into a comprehensive marketing strategy.

Community managers. Think of this “customer service” role as less about fielding complaints and more about moderating a 24/7 conversation among users and stakeholders. Companies will need pros to lead NFT drops, manage community perks, monitor polls, and keep a pulse on the “vibe.” Brush up on those Discord skills—this platform is by far the most common among NFT projects and crypto startups.

Social media strategists. Instead of posting shallow Facebook announcements and Instagram carousels to gain likes, Web3 companies are obsessed with finding a smaller, but more loyal, band of followers.

Legal Counsel. Yep, companies will have to lawyer up to protect themselves from very real regulatory repercussions. The SEC is cracking down on NFT projects and companies that launch crypto tokens without disclosing that they could be considered, as many argue, unregistered securities. NFTs themselves raise multiple questions about artwork and intellectual property law. And as the legal concept of “ownership” extends to video game items, we need the brightest legal brains to help us sort out how exactly that’s going to work.  

Just as conscious consumerism has led shoppers to question what kind of companies they’re buying from, impact investing is prompting investors to be more intentional about where they invest. According to The Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment, there were $17.1 trillion in responsibly invested assets in the U.S. at the start of 2020, up 42 percent from $12 trillion just two years prior. PwC projects the market could soar to $33.9 trillion by 2026. No doubt, the unprecedented events of the last two years—including the pandemic, Black Lives Matter, the Time’s Up movement for workplace equality, rampant gun violence, and climate change—have contributed to the boom of ESG investing, defined as an investment strategy that considers organizations' social, environmental, and governing choices.

But women and their rising wealth trajectories are also key factors in the shift. A recent survey by RBC Wealth Management clients found that “female clients are almost twice as likely as their male counterparts to say it's important the companies they invest in are integrating ESG factors into their policies.”

No matter your salary level or knowledge of investing, you can incorporate ESG investing into your wealth strategy. Here, how one female founder entered into ESG, plus a breakdown of what exactly ESG investing is and how to get started.

An Entrepreneur’s Quest to Invest with Intention

When Adette Contreras was in her 20s, “investing for the future” meant contributing to her 401k—but mostly, it meant reinvesting in Tinsel, a Brooklyn-based experiential events company she cofounded in 2011. She and her two partners have since hired hundreds of full- and part-time workers to execute artsy, immersive events for companies like Squarespace, GQ, and L’Oréal. She wanted to fuel growth for Tinsel for the next 20 years. 

Now in her 30s and awaiting the birth of her second child, “investing for the future” has taken on new meaning. Instead of securing wealth for herself alone, Contreras now considers her family of four, two aging parents, and the well-being of the world in which her children and potential grandchildren will grow. She’s thinking of not just the next 20 years, but the next 200 and beyond. 

“As a minority woman and daughter of immigrants, generational wealth is a big topic of discussion, and we come at it from a place of privilege because our parents had to work, work, work,” says Contreras, whose family is from the Philippines. “But as a second generation, I want to be able to enjoy my money and provide a safety net for my kids, without raising spoiled brats. That’s where the need for estate planning comes in.”

Prudential’s Financial Wellness Survey estimates that “nearly half of American women are the primary household breadwinners, an almost fourfold increase since 1960.” Women control a majority of the wealth, too. The number of high-net-worth (HNW) women is growing twice as fast as the number of affluent men, according to the National Association of Women Business Owners.

While both Contreras and her husband are earners, her spouse grew up in Sweden with infrastructures like paid leave, free daycare, universal education, and universal healthcare. So when it came to planning for retirement in the U.S., Contreras took the reins. She wanted to focus on ESG—a subset of impact investing that uses Environmental, Sustainable, and Governance as criteria for selecting companies to invest in—from the start.

When it came to a desire to learn more about ESG, Contreras was in good company. Her CFO had already built a spreadsheet of 75 ESG financial advisors, categorizing them by strategy and values, be it a focus on environmental causes or a firm exclusion of companies involved in weapons or oil. 

Contreras' priorities centered on investing in sustainability and minority and women-backed enterprises. She narrowed her CFO’s list down to 10 based on her criteria. After interviewing them, she landed on The Lily Group, a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley. Contreras liked that it had the research resources of a large firm, yet took a personalized approach to tailoring her portfolio. Its founder, Lily Engelhardt, is considered an OG of impact investing. Its three all-women partners have been dubbed “The Lionesses of Social Responsible Investing.” 

Engelhardt immigrated from Israel to the U.S. in 1980, then landed a job at a New York City brokerage firm that managed union pension funds. At the time, gold funds were all the rage on Wall Street, a majority of which came from South Africa which was plagued by racial segregation. The firm chose to divest from South African gold to take a stand against apartheid. 

Engelhardt then joined Morgan Stanley in 1987, where she and partner LiliAnn Stafford took this activist approach and formed The Lily Group. Before warm and fuzzy terms like “socially responsible investing” or “ESG” were ever coined, the two were among the first to proactively invest in progressive companies, and skip those that were harmful to social or environmental agendas.

“It wasn’t called impact investing or ESG yet, she just came from a social justice perspective. And she was at the right time, the right place, and had the right clients to take a stand,” says Engelhardt’s daughter, Natalie Lazar, who joined the firm in 2014 and is now the third partner.  

Lazar says roughly 70 percent of their clients are women, most of whom are self-made like Contreras. 

Although ESG can get overwhelming, Contreras believes that being mindful about who manages her money is a first step. “Yes, I care about all the things that fall under ESG," she continues, "but the little capitalist in me says the end-game is still about generational wealth and creating a safety net for my kids and my parents.” 

Says Lazar: “My generation and the next generation, we don’t think of doing good as only charity or volunteering. We think of doing good through the jobs we take, the clothes and products we buy and now in the investments we make.”

ESG 101

What is ESG investing? ESG is a method of applying non-financial factors, usually based on an investor’s values and beliefs, as part of their investment strategy. ESG investing falls under the umbrella of Impact Investing, and breaks investment risks and opportunities into environmental, social, and governance metrics. 

What does that mean in practice? Ellen Kennedy, Contributing ESG Editor at Kiplinger, breaks it down:

• Environmental. This metric assesses the environmental impact of a company and how well it manages that impact. Does it monitor direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions? How does manufacturing affect local natural resources and wildlife? Is it associated with climate change or related risks, such as flooding or wildfires?
• Social. Healthy employee relations are universally important for retention and reputation. But this category also considers supply chain labor, supply chain partners, customers, and communities impacted by company operations. This is especially important for companies that manufacture in developing countries that might lack environmental and labor standards.
• Governance. Think of ethics and transparency. This emphasizes how an organization is led and managed and recognizes companies that demonstrate clean accounting, executive compensation, and shareholder rights.  

How is ESG measured? There is no standard approach to scoring or measuring ESG. Companies typically rely on independent reports and ratings from organizations like the Global Reporting Initiative and the Sustainable Account Standards Board. 

Companies are also issuing policy disclosures, annual reports, and statements. Some disclose their climate policies and board diversity.

How can an investor make sure they're investing in a legitimate  ESG company or fund? ESG is broad. It encompasses companies that have both entered the market to help solve certain issues as well as companies that adhere to certain standards, but did not enter the market to necessarily solve environmental or social issues. 

Because of this wide range, an investor can include or exclude certain companies based on these factors—the metrics simply give insight. Every investor has different goals and risk tolerances, and it is the advisor’s job to not only incorporate the clients’ values but also meet their financial goals. 

Is ESG just for seasoned investors or can young/new investors also incorporate ESG principles? You do not have to be a seasoned investor to invest in a way that aligns with your objectives, but it helps to develop a financial plan with an advisor. The financial plan will give insight into how the inclusion of certain companies and investments will affect returns.

Risks and Criticisms

Research has shown ESG portfolios can outperform traditional funds. Which makes ESG seem like a no-brainer, right? But before you invest, consider the criticisms of ESG investing.

• Backlash. The Washington Post wrote: “Some progressives think the term ESG has become so broad as to lose much of its meaning…Even the man who coined the acronym, Paul Clements-Hunt, who now runs an advisory firm called Blended Capital Group, says the finance industry has sprinkled ‘ESG fairy dust’ on products that don’t merit the label.”
• Greenwashing. Many accuse companies of greenwashing, which is when they exaggerate the environmental and social benefits of their actions.
• Political pushback. Just following the controversy around ESG can make your head spin. Bloomberg Law reports that Republicans are working overtime to block ESG with legislation, citing “underperformance, high-cost energy expenses, and harm to the oil and gas industry.”
• A lack of standardized metrics, and therefore, a lack of transparency. There is no single definition or standardized method for measuring ESG. 

A Beginner's Guide to ESG

Due to skyrocketing demand, high-net-worthers can easily invest in ESG via venture capital, private equity, and family offices, as these options have the scale, bandwidth, and budget to accurately monitor ESG. 

Entry-levelers can explore mainstream offerings like money market funds, single stock opportunities, and ETFs. But are these enough? “ESG takes a lot of work and research, it’s not just picking an index fund,” says Erin Hadary, Moneta Group. She shares practical ways green investors can get acquainted with ESG:

Research: You can set weekly Google Alerts or use screening tools like Morningstar, and punch in search terms like “sustainable investing,” and “ESG.” This is a free and practical solution for beginners wanting to learn more about ESG, says Hadary. 

Robo-Advisors: Robo-advisors like Betterment, Ellevest, Wealthsimple, Sustainfolio, Earthfolio, and OpenInvest offer ESG-oriented portfolios. But Lazar says robo-advisors aren’t enough: “It lacks the personalized, comprehensive financial planning that should drive the investment choices.”

Find a Financial Advisor: Hadary says financial advisors with a track record in ESG is the best way to align your investing values with your financial goals. A better place to find a fee-only fiduciary financial advisor is on NAPFA website. “This site lists Certified Financial Planners who are not focused on marketing and IPOs, but on listening to client goals, and building portfolios in line with a client's goals,” says Hadary. 

Take It to HR: Another way entry-level workers can get ESG into their portfolio is to ask their 401k provider or human resources department. “Employees could go to HR and say ‘hey, I do not see enough options that represent my values, and I'd like to add more ESG funds in the lineup,” says Hadary. 

“Imagine if every employee in the world did that? It could change investing and change the world.”

The Bottom Line

• Are ESG metrics perfect? No, but we have come a long way over the last decade. 
• ESG investing is not one-size-fits-all. It can include or exclude certain categories, and we have many ways to continually monitor adherence to different modalities.
• As more investors and shareholders continue to demand transparency from companies, the more ESG could develop and flourish.

With the holidays approaching, the opportunity for travel is on the horizon. Whether your plans include going home for a family-filled winter break or setting off on a far-flung adventure (or both!), there’s never been a better time to start packing your bags. That’s where the United Family of Cards from Chase have you covered: For over 30 years, Chase and United have partnered to bring their shared customers the best services and perks around, thanks to United credit cards, like the United Explorer Card, and the United Business Card. Now, to make your travel dreams a reality even faster, Chase and United are proving that these two cards are better together to add more miles and benefits.

The United Explorer Card from Chase helps aspiring world travelers get out the door faster, with two times the miles on United purchases, hotel stays, and even dining and eligible delivery services. Not only do you earn miles toward future trips on the purchases you make every day, but the United Explorer Card offers perks on every flight. When cardmembers fly United, they get their first checked bag for free on flights purchased with their card, an invite to Priority Boarding, and the ability to earn 25 percent back on in-flight beverage, food, and Wi-Fi purchases made with their card. Plus, eligible new cardmembers can earn 60,000 MileagePlus® miles, after spending $3,000 on qualifying purchases in the first three months. 

With the United Business Card from Chase, managing your business has never been more rewarding. By getting two miles for every $1 spent on gas, dining, office supplies, and local commuting and transit, you’ll start earning your next vacation. And with Chase and United, you’ll get the best available travel benefits, including a free checked bag on flights purchased with your card, two United ClubSM one-time passes each year, and a $100 travel credit after seven qualifying flight purchases each year. To make it even sweeter, new eligible cardmembers can earn up to 75,000 MileagePlus miles, after spending $5,000 on qualifying purchases in the first three months.

And if you already have either a United Business Card or a personal United Card like the United Explorer Card, there’s never been a better time to add the other card to your wallet. Together, these cards will stack up your earnings and get you even richer rewards to use toward your wanderlust. Plus, when you couple both cards, Chase and United can get you out there faster with a 5,000 miles better-together anniversary bonus. 

When you combine a personal United Card like the United Explorer Card with the United Business Card, you’ll be rewarded for the purchases you make every day with the best travel perks and even more miles. So why wait until the new year? Apply today and start earning that next vacation right now.

To find out more, check out the United Business Card and the United Explorer Card now. 

When President Biden announced targeted student loan debt forgiveness on August 24, 2022, millions of federal borrowers heaved a sigh of relief. Assuming every eligible person takes advantage of the forgiveness, roughly 20 million people will have their federal student loans discharged. That’s great news! But, there will still be millions of borrowers left with a remaining balance. If you fall in this category, it is important to think about what comes next, because there is still work to do. That’s why we reached out to personal finance company SoFi, asking for a CFP’s take on when to refinance your student loans.

“Refinancing is a common approach to make paying back your federal or private student loans more efficient,” explains Brian Walsh, Senior Manager of Financial Planning and Certified Financial Planner at SoFi. “Over the years, millions of borrowers—including my wife and me—have refinanced their student loans to save money on interest, pay off their loans sooner, or lower their current monthly payments. These benefits are amazing, but that doesn’t mean that refinancing is a magic solution or the best choice for everyone.” As a certified financial planner at SoFi, Walsh’s goal is to help its members reach financial independence and create a financial game plan that they feel good about. 

In this article, Walsh walks us through the basics of refinancing student loans, when it makes sense, and more importantly, when it doesn't. 

What Is Student Loan Refinancing?

When you refinance a student loan, whether it's federal or private, you are taking out a new student loan with a private lender that is used to pay off some or all of your existing student loan debt. Essentially, the loans that you refinance are gone and replaced with your new student loan. Ideally, your new loan aligns with your goals by having a lower interest rate or monthly payment. 

"It is important to keep in mind that this is a private student loan,” says Walsh. "This means that it does not come with federal benefits such as income driven repayment options, public service loan forgiveness, or future forgiveness.”

Making the Decision to Refinance Your Student Loan

On the surface, this is a simple decision. If the benefits of refinancing outweigh the costs, then it makes sense. The challenge, according to Walsh, is that it can be tough to understand the costs and benefits of this decision. “I generally use a simple framework and answer three questions to decide if student loan refinancing makes sense or not," he says.

1. What is my goal?
2. What type of loan is it?
3. How does each option align with my goal?”

1. Goals

A great first step is thinking about your goals. Do you want lower payments for extra room in your budget for everything else? Do you want to pay off your student loans as quickly as possible to save money on interest or be debt free sooner? Do you want to keep payments the same and just make sure you are getting the best deal on your interest rate?

There is no right or wrong answer, explains Walsh. “This is your goal, but there are trade-offs between these goals.” Generally, if you pay less now, you will pay more over the long term and vice versa. If you prioritize a lower payment now, it will make your current budget more comfortable but will typically result in paying more interest for a longer period of time. If you prioritize a shorter payoff, it will typically mean paying less interest for a shorter time, but will come with higher payments right now. Start by thinking about what matters most to you so you know what to look for when making a decision.

2. Type of Loan

Next, you should understand whether your existing loan is a federal or private student loan. 

• Federal student loans are made by the federal government. The interest rate is set by the government based on the year you took out the loan, so your income, credit score, and other financial characteristics do not influence your interest rate. This could be a bad thing if you are a well qualified borrower because it means you aren’t getting as low of a rate as you could in the private market. Federal student loans also come with federal benefits, such as the COVID-19 temporary emergency payment pause, income driven repayment, and potential forgiveness for those who qualify. Sometimes these federal benefits are extremely valuable, whereas other times, they might not be worth much to people.
• Private student loans are made by private lenders. The interest rate is based on your financial situation when you took out the loan, which could be good or bad, depending on the circumstances. They do not come with federal benefits, which makes them easier to evaluate in the context of refinancing.

3. Comparison

The last step of Walsh’s framework is comparing your existing loan with a new loan, while keeping your goal in mind. 

• If your goal is to minimize current payments: the main focus would be the current monthly payments, but it is also important to keep the total amount paid in the back of your mind as a potential tie-breaker. If your existing loan is a federal student loan, you may also want to review income driven repayment plans, including the new option announced by President Biden. Income driven repayment plans can be a powerful way to keep payments low for certain borrowers, since payments would be limited to a certain percentage of your income. If your existing loan is a private student loan, the comparison is pretty simple considering you do not need to worry about federal benefits.
• If your goal is to minimize the amount you pay back: the main focus would be the total interest paid, but it is also important to keep the current payment in mind, so you are confident you can fit it into your budget. If your existing loan is a federal student loan, you may want to review potential loan forgiveness, especially if you work for the government or a non-profit that could qualify you for public service loan forgiveness. As mentioned above, if your loan is a private student loan the decision is simpler.

Next Steps

As you consider all of these factors to develop the best plan for your student loans, it is important to understand some next steps and best practices. 

First, if you are eligible for federal student loan forgiveness announced in August 2022, take advantage of it and be sure to keep an eye out for the online application that is expected to be released in the coming weeks. 

Second, keep an open mind and explore your options. If you receive forgiveness and still have a balance left over, refinancing the rest could align with your long-term financial goals. Many people underestimate the savings from small changes especially for larger balances. For example, someone with $50,000 in student loans would save nearly $1,500 over ten years with a 0.50 percent lower interest rate. 

Third, it is fairly easy to shop around and check your rates without experiencing a hard credit inquiry that would ding your credit score. As you think through next steps, you hopefully now have a better understanding of how the refinancing process works. 

“Now it’s time for you to put this into practice and create a financial game plan to pay off your student loans that works best for you,” says Walsh.

When Lorine Schaefer worked in finance, she spent a lot of evenings trying to make sense of intimidating wine lists at client dinners. She wanted to learn more, so she took some wine classes at the International Wine Center in New York City. She figured out what she liked, and started collecting bottles of fine wines to pop open with friends and family. 

Over a conversation with her husband about their family’s own financial planning and investment strategies, Schaefer's husband brought up the idea of investing in wine. The couple wondered, “Do people ever think about wine not just as a drink, but also as something for the portfolio to perform?”

Turns out, wine is a real asset. And you don’t have to have a state-of-the-art, temperature-controlled wine cellar or a sommelier certificate to make this alternative investment work for you. After learning more about wine investing for herself, Schaefer took her interest a step further by working in the business, taking a job at Sotheby’s Wine, a global retail store and auction house for wines and spirits. Today, she’s Vice President of North American Sales at Cult Wine Investment, advising clients on wine investing and active portfolio management. 

Thanks to a handful of companies including Cult Wine Investment and startup Vinovest, investing in wine is much easier than it was decades ago, when the world of wine investing was older—and limited to the very wealthy. For years, the average wine investor was a man in his 60s, while today that average is closer to 40, according to a 2021 study done by Areni Global, a research institute focused on fine wine.

And more women are investing in wine, too. 

“Investing in wine is so interesting because it’s speaking to a bigger trend for a lot of investors who are gravitating towards things they are passionate about or know personally,” says Katie Perry General Manager of Investor Relations at Public.com, a fractional investing platform, meaning you can invest in any asset with any amount of money. “There’s an initial spark of curiosity which helps people dig deeper and it can be an onramp into their journey as an investor.”

Right now is a particularly good time to think about wine, as the U.S. economy slows and we inch closer to the possibility of a recession. Experts refer to wine as an uncorrelated asset—meaning its performance isn’t very tied to the fluctuations of traditional markets. So, in 2008, when the stock market saw a jaw-dropping plunge of 38.5%, the Liv-Ex 1000, which measures wine performance, saw just a 4% dip. 

“Wine is a more established market. It’s seen incredible growth since the start of the pandemic and wine generally benefits from having a broader global appeal,” says Keith Marshall, GM of Alternatives at Public.com. “An uncorrelated asset can generally be seen as a hedge against a changing economy. It depends on your particular portfolio and risk appetite, how long you can invest, things like that, but with wine, the market itself is growing. It is a legitimately liquid asset class now—pun very much intended. There’s been a huge emergence in Asia of new buyers and that’s brought change to the wine market itself making it more liquid—easier to buy and sell.” 

Here’s what you should know if you’re thinking about taste-testing wine investing for yourself. 

Figure out your investing goals and timelines. 

You know that old saying, “It ages like fine wine”? Investment-grade wines generally get better with age, which means you’ve got to give them time to appreciate in value. Wine investing might not be for you if you’re looking for a quick turn-around. It’s a better option for someone looking to diversify her portfolio and aiming for slow and steady growth. 

Schaefer of Cult Wine Investment recommends thinking about your investments in three to five year increments. Anthony Zhang, the founder of wine investing platform Vinovest, suggests thinking even longer term. “Because of that aging aspect, we usually do recommend five or 10 years,” he says. “If you're looking for a quick flip, this is definitely not the right place to put your money.”

In addition to the fact that many wines get better with age, a scarcity comes with time, creating more value. Unlike, say, collectible baseball cards, which can stay in circulation forever, once a bottle of wine is consumed, it’s gone for good. You can’t take a time machine back in time to make more of that 2009 Bordeaux. 

Do your homework.

Like we said, there’s no need to sign up for a sommelier intensive. But you’ll be more confident in the world of wine investment if you know the basics—even if you’re relying on an investing platform or an advisor to do the heavy lifting. And as Kiplinger warns, be wary when investing in the unregulated sector, which has seen a number of high-profile scams. Always work with reputable platforms that have a proven track record and client base. 

To start, familiarize yourself with Liv-Ex Fine Wine Indices, which track global wine prices—think of it as a Dow Jones for wine. Spend some time reading up on Liv-Ex to get the most up-to-date trends and sale prices. You’ll see, for example, that some of the most reliable wines are Burgundies and Bordeaux, and that Italian wines and Champagne are having a big moment right now. Wine-centric publications like Wine Spectator will also help you understand the lay of the land—they review wines as well as report on changes in the wine industry, like how weather may be affecting crops in a particular region. 

“Always do your research. Never just trust the expert,” Marshall says. “Age is really important in wines—not just how old it is, but the particular year the wine is from. Differences in weather in any given year can affect things. Age and year are two very important data points to know. Regions have good and bad years, and that’s easy information to find online.” 

The other nice thing about beefing up your wine knowledge for investment purposes is that you can impress your friends the next time you’re ordering a bottle for the table at dinner. 

Consider online services.

Services like Cult Wine Investment are digital trading platforms which make trading easier. These services do charge a fee (Cult Wine charges a 2.95 percent annual management fee for a $10,000 investment)—but they deal with everything from studying the wine market for the best investment opportunities to securing the bottles, storage, and selling them off when you’re ready. Vinovest, which just launched in 2020, uses an algorithm created with the input of sommeliers, and finance and data experts to create diversified wine portfolios for its users. 

Cult Wine Investment has a $10,000 minimum for investing—Schaefer says this is so their team has enough money to diversify your portfolio with a variety of wines. Vinovest, however, has no minimum. For both services, you can log into your account, which has an interface that looks a lot like E-Trade or a Schwab account to see which wines are in your portfolio and how they’re performing. You can cash out at any time, and those wines you’re seeing on the interface are actually your bottles of wine. If you really wanted, you could have any of the bottles sent to your home to taste test. Though, the experts we talked to recommend thinking about those bottles as the investments that they are—and not your own personal wine shop, as tempting as that may be. 

“Once you take [a bottle] out of bonded warehouse, it becomes outside of the protection of the temperature and the humidity control,” says Schaefer's, who talks about wine in terms of head and heart. The heart thinks about wine as that drink you love to savor with friends, while the head thinks about it as an investment. She says, “I would say I'm probably 75 percent head and 25 percent heart. I keep wine I want to drink in professional storage nearby me so I can pull these wines and take them out to dinner. But I have an investment portfolio which has an objective as performance.”

Think about the extra costs. 

Storage is the biggie here. As any wine-drinker knows, you can’t just toss a bottle into the back of your closet and forget about it until you’re ready to pop it open. You have to think about temperature and humidity control. 

Unless you’re really planning to go all in, you should think twice before taking on the wine storage yourself. Building a custom wine cellar in your home starts at about $15,000 and can go up to the hundreds of thousands. You also have to take into account the cost of insurance and temperature and humidity control. And when it comes time to sell, wine auction houses aren’t keen on trusting the storage skills of amateurs. Some wine merchants work with a warehouse supplier to store bottles on behalf of their clients for a fee. Or you could do the legwork to find a well-respected warehouse on your own—but that comes at a cost, too. And each time a bottle of wine is transported, it introduces the possibility of bruising the wine and reducing the value. 

A benefit of a service like Cult Wine Investment or Vinovest is that they take care of storage costs, which are included in your fee. And they have relationships with buyers like auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s as well as high-end restaurants—and these places trust that their warehouses stored the wine appropriately. 

Curious but still not totally sure? It’s OK to start small. 

As a general investing rule, Marshall says, “I wouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket, no matter what it is.”

Big picture, putting more money into wine lets you diversify your wine portfolio—investment-grade wine is expensive and it’s not the best strategy to put all your savings into a single bottle. But thanks to platforms like Public.com or Robinhood which allow for fractional investing—meaning you invest in a portion on a bottle—you can get a taste for the world of wine investing. 

“When you just put $10 into something, obviously there’s limited economic upside to that, but there’s a lot of educational upside which comes with actually learning by doing,” Perry says. “When you bring down the entry point and it becomes a more manageable amount of money that isn’t cutting into somebody’s cash flow or net worth, they have the experience of actually doing something without so much skin in the game. There is an upside in terms of education.”

Your Complete Guide to Investing

Whether you need a 101 on investing or action plans to elevate your current portfolio, money up with Marie Claire to boost your net worth.

What Are Alternative Investments?

From wine to Birkin bags and Banksy NFTs, entry-level and seasoned investors alike must be familiar with these factors to determine whether they should invest in the ever-changing world of alternative investments.

Your Guide to Picking Fashion and Beauty Stocks: How to Invest in Retail

When it comes to fashion and beauty brands, it is our own income—our very own hard-earned dollars—that fuel these industries. Women could and should be profiting from the success of these multi-billion dollar companies through stock investing. Here's how. 

When it comes to facing financially turbulent times, millennials have seen it all. Events like the global recession of 2008 and the global pandemic of 2020 have left lasting impressions on how they save, invest, and prepare for the future. 

This age group is also responsible for driving the explosive growth in ETFs over the last few years. As Kiplinger reports, ETFs make up nearly one-third of millennial investors’ portfolios. With typically lower fees, ETFs are a cost-efficient way to create a broadly diversified portfolio. 

First, let’s sum up what an ETF is: An exchange-traded fund (ETF) is a collection of investments that trades on a stock exchange, such as the NYSE or NASDAQ. You can buy into an ETF that includes stocks, bonds, commodities, or a combination of all three, making it a good way to diversify your investment portfolio. 

How do ETFs differ from mutual funds?

ETFs differ from mutual funds in three key ways.

• ETFs charge lower annual fees.
• ETFs have no initial investment minimums.
• ETFs trade like stocks—meaning you can buy and sell shares throughout the day. Mutual funds, meanwhile, can only be traded at market close.

How Do ETFs Work?

A fund provider owns the assets, creates a fund to track the performance of those assets, and sells shares in that fund to investors. The investors own a portion of the fund, but not the underlying individual assets in that fund. 

In other words, with a click of a button, you can buy shares of an ETF that owns tens, hundreds, or thousands of investments in various industries (like an S&P 500 ETF), within a particular industry (like technology), or a specific sector (like U.S. industrials). 

Why Invest in ETFs?

Some of the benefits were listed above when we compared ETFs and mutual funds. But let’s dig deeper.

• You can easily diversify your portfolio instead of buying each stock or bond individually; and it’s a simple and fast way to buy a combination of stocks, bonds, and commodities.
• You can typically pay a lower operating expense ratio (the fee the fund company charges to run the fund) than actively managed mutual funds.
• You only pay capital gains taxes when you sell the investment, whereas in mutual funds, you often need to pay annual capital gains taxes on your interest, making ETFs a more tax-efficient investment. 
• You often pay lower average costs since you don’t need to buy each individual stock, bond, or commodity. 

What Are the Downsides of ETFs?

ETFs often have low expenses because they are passively managed funds, and will therefore usually perform the same as the index or “market” they are designed to track, be it technology or real estate.

An actively managed fund, meanwhile, gives investors the opportunity to make strategic moves, offering a potentially greater opportunity to outperform benchmarks during down markets. 

While ETFs boast lower fees, make sure to thoroughly evaluate these products and how they overall fit into your overall strategy. 

How Do You Invest in ETFs?

Eager to get started? Follow these four steps:

• Step 1: Choose a brokerage trading platform. Your first step is to choose a brokerage trading platform such as Vanguard, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, or Robinhood. You may want to consider factors like the commission and fees, the services, the types of investments offered, and whether there is an account minimum. Look into whether the brokerage offers passively or actively managed ETFs or a combination. Passively managed ETFs track an index, sector, or commodity, whereas actively managed ETFs are managed by a portfolio manager and generally charge higher management fees.
  
• Step 2: Research ETFs. Next, you’ll look into the ETFs your brokerage firm offers to decide what you want to buy. You may want to consider the share price, asset class, and performance. If it’s relevant for the fund, consider the industry outlook and whether it’s an income or growth fund.
  
• Step 3: Purchase. Next, you’ll follow your brokerage firm’s instructions for buying shares.
  
• Step 4: Follow the fund. Check the fund’s performance to decide if you want to hold or sell. If you have a “sell” price in mind, you may be able to sign up to receive alerts if the shares hit or go below your target price.
  
  Remember that just because ETFs are cheap doesn't mean you should buy them. Evaluate them based on which sectors or themes they focus on, how easy it is to buy or sell them, and whether it fits with your long-term investment strategy.

Your Complete Guide to Investing

The secret’s out: You can’t save your way to wealth. To build true wealth for yourself, you need to invest. Whether you need a 101 on investing for beginners or action plans to elevate your portfolio, money up with Marie Claire to boost your net worth.

Alternative investments, or “Alts” as they’re sometimes abbreviated, are exactly as they sound—a different asset that doesn’t fall into the three most common investment categories (stocks, bonds, cash). Alternative investments are typically categorized as "fancy" investments for high-net-worth investors, (private equity, hedge funds, real estate, commodities, etc). But the world of Alts also includes collectibles, including art, handbags, watches, wines, and, yes, crypto. 

“The categories could include anything from fine art and music royalties, to NFTs and luxury items, to collectibles like sports cards and sneakers,” explains Leah Smith, a director at investing app Public.com, where she oversees the acquisition of alternative assets. 

As with any investment, the goal is to grow the asset’s value over time, adds Magdalena Johndrow, financial advisor and managing partner at Johndrow Wealth. But that’s about the only similarity between alternative and traditional investments. Johndrow highlights four significant differences between them: liquidity, risk, who can invest in alternatives, and fees. 

Whether you want to start investing in real estate investment trusts, a Banksy NFT, or a rare Rouge Hermès Birkin, would-be alternative investors must understand these four factors to determine whether they can benefit.

Liquidity

An investment with high liquidity means that you can usually find a willing and able buyer of your asset, and quickly turn your investment into cash, perhaps in a few days, says Johndrow. Since alternative investments typically don’t trade in primary markets (like the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ), you must go through a secondary market, like an auction house or a specialized online marketplace like The RealReal, where there are typically a lot less investors participating and thus can’t be turned to cash as quickly — the goods are considered a low liquidity investment. 

For example, buyers of luxury art are a smaller group compared to those who purchase stocks or bonds, so you must purchase through personal relations, galleries or an auction house, which lowers the liquidity. 

Risk

Alternative investments tend to carry higher risk than traditional investments because they are often more complex. This is because Alts don’t act like stocks or bonds, and, again, aren’t traded on primary markets. “Furthermore, Alts tend to be less regulated, or sometimes even unregulated when compared to traditional investments,” adds Johndrow. 

Who should invest in Alts?

Due to the differences in liquidity and risk, not everyone is able to invest in alternatives. “In many cases only ‘accredited investors’ can participate in alternative offerings,” says Johndrow. 

An accredited investor is a person with an annual income of at least $200,000 to $300,000, or an investor whose net worth exceeds $1 million. “Wealthy individuals have been using alternative assets to diversify their portfolios and hedge against risk for as far back as investing goes,” furthers Smith. But read on below to learn more about alt opportunities for newer investors. 

Fees

There are typically higher fees associated with alternative investments. Johndrow provides the example of hedge funds, which can charge up to 20 percent of their profits. This last difference furthers on why alternative investments aren’t for everyone. 

Understanding the differences between traditional and alternative assets is simply part of deciding whether this investment route suits your current financial status and future goals—because as with the risk of alternative investment, also comes reward. 

The Bright Side of Alternatives

A safe way to protect your portfolio from risk, including the risks associated with alts, is diversification. “By diversifying amongst asset classes, you are less likely to find all of your investments down or up at the same time,” advises Johndrow. When evaluating how alternative investments can serve investors long term, Smith points to the current volatility of the stock market.

We don’t need to remind you that stocks and even cash and crypto are depreciating because of high inflation, however, Smith emphasizes other markets that have been performing well. “We have seen the high end of art and collectives market hold up relatively well in the current climate. This market behavior is exactly why we advocate for portfolio diversification, including with alternative investments.” 

Smith references some other high-end physical collectibles in established categories that have held up best, including trading cards and the broadest index of global fine wines. “We’ve continued to see impressive sales across many categories this year." 

Just last month, the first comic featuring Wonder Woman sold for more than $1 million. Just this past weekend, a Muhammad Ali Title belt became "one of the most expensive pieces of sports memorabilia of all time," says Smith. These outliers aside, most newbies or younger investors are exploring more accessible options, such as fashion NFTs (which could be worth $50 billion by 2030, according to Morgan Stanley) or the sneaker resale market (which is worth an estimated $10 billion). 

“Because many of these asset classes tend to be uncorrelated to the latest market volatility, they can help investors get stronger risk-adjusted returns and hedge against down and irregular economic cycles.”

This is particularly true when it comes to the double-edged sword that is liquidity. “While lack of liquidity is often seen as a negative for alternatives, sometimes it can be a positive as it allows the time needed for your investment to ideally grow in value,” says Johndrow. 

How to Get Started with Alts

When it comes to choosing the best Alts category to invest in, the answer is personal and must be tailored to one’s current finances and goals. One’s knowledge of a certain market can also play a role. For example, a fashion aficionado will likely be well-equipped to delve into the world of investing in handbags. A sommelier has good reason to research wine investments. Johndrow encourages investors to assess their overall portfolio, and perhaps work with a financial advisor to determine how much should be allocated toward alternative investments (we’ve heard too many crypto horror stories this year). 

From there, she recommends potential investors explore the category that seeks out to achieve that goal, then compare investments within that category against each other to decide on the right Alt for your wealth-building strategy. 

When I started the financial planning company LearnVest back during the Great Recession, I spoke with thousands of people across the country to understand their biggest questions about money. Without fail, learning how to invest always topped the list. Whether you’re just a beginner to investing, trying to wade through the jargon of ETFs and Bitcoin, or are optimizing your strategy, it’s always smart to take a step back and ensure that you’ve got the best plan in place for your age and stage. 

Your twenties are the perfect time to lay the foundation for a strong financial future. Why? The earlier you start compounding interest, the better. I always say: it’s not magic; it’s just math. There are a lot of free resources you can use to build out a financial plan for yourself, from money tracking apps like Digit or Mint, to retirement calculators (like this one from Nerdwallet). If you have a complex financial situation or are going through a major life event (getting married, buying a home, going to grad school), consider talking to a Certified Financial Planner for guidance. This designation is critical because it requires extensive testing and a fiduciary duty to clients, which makes CFPs® the best type of financial advisors to speak with. (Here's how to find a local one.)

Let’s dig into the places you should invest today—both literally and figuratively—to set yourself up for long-term success.

Max Out Your Retirement

In your twenties, the best place to start investing is in a retirement account, specifically your 401K or IRA. As of 2022, you can invest up to $20,500 in a 401K and up to $6,000 in an IRA. That means you can set aside up to $26,500 each year, invest it, and allow it to grow in a tax-advantaged way. Here’s how to get started:

1. Check if your employer offers a 401K match. If you’re not sure, check in with HR. Match programs vary greatly, but many employers will either match up to a percentage of what you contribute. (Note that matches are sometimes on a vesting schedule, meaning that you have to stay with the company for a certain period of time to actually redeem your match dollars). The best news here is that employer matches do not count toward your overall 401K limit, so in other words, you can invest up to $20,500, and your employer match is on top of that.

To encourage employee participation in 401Ks, many companies now auto-enroll employees in plans and automatically increase the percentage of employee contributions. Ask HR what your company’s policy is and make sure your personal settings are in line with the contributions you actually want to make.

2. Look for Roth options. Both 401Ks and IRAs come in two main flavors: traditional and Roth, two terms that refer to how they’re treated by the IRS. When you invest in a Roth IRA or 401K, your contributions are post-tax dollars, so when you withdraw funds in retirement, you’ll take them out tax-free. Roth accounts are a smart option in your twenties because you’re making the bet that your current tax burden today will be lower than a few decades from now as you near retirement.

If you don’t have access to a 401K through work, you can set up an IRA quite literally anywhere that you have an investment account, like Charles Schwab, Fidelity, or Vanguard.

3. Check out target-date ETFs. Contributing to your retirement account is not the same as allocating your retirement balance into investments. Double-check that you’re not leaving a cash balance there but you’re actually setting (and forgetting) these funds into target-date ETFs, which update their risk levels depending on how far you are from retirement. In your twenties, you still have decades of work before retirement, so you have time to take on more risk now. These ETFs are often labeled by anticipated retirement date, so if you’re 25 today, you’d be a good fit for a “Target Retirement 2065” fund. (Not sure where to find these? Just use the chat feature on your financial institution’s site.)

4. Let your retirement funds grow. As soon as you contribute money to a retirement account, consider it off-limits until you actually retire. The IRS has early-withdrawal penalties in place, so if you take money out of these accounts before age 59 ½, you’ll be hit with a 10 percent penalty. (There are some exceptions, like first-time home purchases, but taking money out of retirement should always be a last resort and one you discuss with a tax advisor first).

Last but not least, one challenge of 401Ks is managing old accounts as you move around between companies. It’s recommended that you consider rolling over old accounts into current ones, so you get a better snapshot of your retirement savings all in one place. Doing a rollover can have tricky tax implications, so consult an expert or explore a tool like Capitalize to make it easy.  

Invest In Your Career

The second big place I want people to invest in their twenties is in their careers. While this might seem removed from personal finance, your career plays a massive role in your financial picture. Most people think the biggest asset they’ll own in their life is a home, but the truth is, it’s your earning power. I believe the biggest asset you have is your future earning stream. 

In your twenties, I want you to seek out jobs that enable you to learn as many skill sets as possible, where you're setting yourself up for constant increased earning power. Ideally, you have a role where you develop new skills and build strong relationships with mentors who can help over the course of your career. That’s why the most valuable thing that you can do for your wallet early on is to invest in your career today. 

Understand the Basics

And finally, the third place that I want everyone in their twenties to invest in is to simply learn the basics of finance. Back in 2013, I wrote my first book, Financially Fearless, to help empower Americans everywhere to learn the basics of finance. The more that you truly understand your wallet (inside and out), how to tackle debt, understand what goes into a credit score, how your student loans work, etc., the better off you're going to be. 

I'm certain everyone reading this is more than capable of being really empowered in their wallet. And the sooner that you understand the basics of finance, the better you're going to feel. 

Investing for Beginners: Learn the 4 Types of Investments

It all starts with understanding the basic asset classes.

How to Pick Retail Stocks and Invest In Your Favorite Brands

When it comes to fashion and beauty brands, it is our own income—our very own hard-earned dollars—that fuel these industries. Women could and should be profiting from the success of these multi-billion dollar companies through investing.

What Are NFTS — and Should You Buy Them?

NFTs offer more substance than just a profile picture, and can provide benefits for creators, brands, and consumers. But know the risks and whether you're in the right place to invest.

You may think an NFT is a .jpg image or digital art. (Or you may think NFTs aren’t really anything, depending on what you've heard.) But NFTs offer more substance than just a profile picture and can provide major benefits for creators, brands, and consumers. We’re demystifying NFTs and breaking down how you can benefit from the space—and showing you how to get started if you’d like to learn more and join the NFT community. But you must be aware of all the risks before taking on this alternative investment. 

What's an NFT?

NFT stands for non-fungible token. An NFT is not a cryptocurrency, but, like cryptocurrencies, uses blockchain technology to assign ownership to digital (and physical) assets. Think of NFTs and cryptocurrencies as trains that run on a track (the blockchain). The blockchain provides the security and infrastructure that keeps the trains—NFTs and cryptocurrency—safe, without needing to be governed by a central figure or bank. 

What makes NFTs special is that each NFT carries a unique numerical identifier, which allows for the tokenizing of real-world items. (That means the ability to securely buy, sell, and trade assets on the blockchain.)

Let’s break it down. If you purchase a film on Amazon Prime, you can only access that film on the Amazon Prime platform. You don’t "own" that film; you merely have permission to access it. However, if you purchase a film as an NFT, you have complete ownership of that file—without needing access to the platform you purchased it from. Your ownership of that file cannot be disputed, removed, or cancelled.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of NFTs?

NFTs are a blockchain-based tool that allow digital ownership for the first time in our lifetime. Digital ownership means that we can access, use, and share our funds, data, digital files, collectibles, and more without needing a third party. NFTs offer the ability to prove ownership, give ownership, control scarcity and supply, and be paid and rewarded for the content and creative materials we put into the world. 

NFTs are often art, but NFTs can also be connected to any asset—digital or physical—including music files, restaurant and hotel reservations, experiences, merchandise, real estate, and even voting records. NFTs can also be used to verify products or objects for counterfeit protection: a record of ownership that confirms authenticity. 

For creators, the ability to distribute their work on the blockchain as an NFT offers the potential to create more wealth than if they use a third-party centralized system—such as Spotify, iTunes, or a traditional art agent—that take a commission and cannot offer lifelong royalties.  

Should you invest in non-fungible tokens (NFTs)?

Art, digital and physical, is the most publicized type of NFT right now, but NFTs offer additional utility. NFTs can give access to community opportunities and clubs. One NFT can grant us access to self-care tools and events, from sound baths to yoga sessions to remote cooking classes. 

Other NFT projects offer the opportunity to gain access to IRL events and experiences, the same way a membership card might. Other NFTs can be musical albums, like Imogen Heap’s collection of six audio visual album NFTs. Not only can she distribute her music as she wishes, but she can benefit as an artist from royalties, setting scarcity, and creative control. 

Many NFTs also create impact IRL, from projects that donate to the worldwide education of women (like Flower Girls NFT) to the rebuilding of coral reefs (such as SUPERCOCO-NFT). Other NFTs can be used as vouchers for unique experiences, where you can redeem the experience and keep the NFT as a souvenir afterwards. 

Before you invest, understand how crypto and NFTs are taxed. NFTs are also subject to capital gains taxes and, typically, the cryptocurrency used to buy NFTs might be taxed as well. 

Know the Risks

As with most alternative investments, there's an extra layer of risk when it comes to NFTs. Dave Nadig, Director of Research at ETF Trends, says he's bullish on the technology over the long term but does not advise people to invest more than they can afford in the asset. "That's not investing in securities ... but collectibles," he told Kiplinger in 2021.  

In the same article, Kim Caughey Forrest, Chief Investment Officer of Bokeh Capital Partners, also expressed skepticism: "People are asking themselves, is this the next Bitcoin?... Right now, I don't think anybody should invest in NFTs. It's too new." She adds that the boom in NFT prices in 2021 was driven by simple "FOMO," or fear of missing out.  

The NFT hype in 2020 and 2021 was impossible to resist, especially after some NFTs sold for millions, making headlines. Research firms L'Atelier BNP Paribas and NonFungible.com found that NFTs were a $250 million market in 2020, with investments up 299% year-over-year. 

But the hype has since cooled in 2022. CBS reported that global NFT sales fell 47 percent during the first quarter compared to the previous quarter. More recently, OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace, saw its trading volume drop more than 45% over the past 30 days and the number of traders decline 13 percent, according to Marketwatch.

How do I find and purchase an NFT? 

While it may seem complicated, the process is not so different than buying a digital good (like an album from iTunes or a sewing pattern off Etsy). Here’s how to get started.

1. Look on NFT marketplaces and begin researching projects that resonate with you. (We like OpenSea as a place to start.) Log in with your cryptocurrency wallet to begin browsing. If you don’t have a crypto wallet set up yet, you can download MetaMask, a software wallet.
2. Select three projects and begin following the community on social media. (Discord is a popular channel for NFT projects.) See if the community and benefits NFT holders receive suit you.
3. Once you decide to purchase an NFT from a marketplace, ensure you have enough of the required cryptocurrency to purchase both the NFT and cover the gas fee (a transaction fee required to move NFT to your custody).

What to know about NFTs

• When you select a cryptocurrency wallet, ensure it is compatible with the NFT you are purchasing. (MetaMask, mentioned above, is compatible with Ethereum-based NFTs and tokens.)
• NFTs can run on many different blockchains. Gas fees, aka transaction fees, vary by blockchain. Ethereum is the most popular network for NFTs, but tends to have very high gas fees. If you are in search of low gas fees for your NFT purchase, look for NFTs that run on alternative blockchains, like Polygon or Solana. 

Need an introduction to cryptocurrency? We’re serving up the basics of blockchain and Bitcoin, what you need to know before considering investing in crypto, what the heck cryptocurrency is, and exactly how it works.

What's a blockchain?

By definition, a blockchain is a decentralized ledger that allows transactions across a peer-to-peer network. 

So, what does that mean? It’s a growing list of records. Each block contains information and together, these blocks form a chain that cannot be altered or corrupted—like a Google sheet with view only permissions. 

You can also visualize the blockchain as train tracks. These tracks are the foundation on which cryptocurrencies (and NFTs) run on. The blockchain provides security and infrastructure that keeps the trains—crypto and NFTs—safe, without the need to be governed by a central figure or bank. There are many blockchains, and even more cryptocurrencies, that run off these blockchains. 

What’s the benefit of the blockchain for me?

• With decentralized finance (DeFi), you can act as a bank—borrowing, lending, and earning interest on your cryptocurrency holdings.
• Proof of ownership for creators, artists, and brands means lifetime royalties on future sales and control over supply and scarcity.
• Blockchain can support consumer safety, store medical records, and increase transparency between consumers and corporations.

What is cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency is decentralized, digital currency that runs on the blockchain. Different cryptocurrencies have different purposes (referred to as utility). Crypto utility can range from gaming to supply chain management to payment processing. Some crypto run on their own blockchains (like Bitcoin or Ethereum). These cryptocurrencies are called coins. Some crypto don’t have their own blockchain, and instead run on another coin’s blockchain. These are called tokens. 

Cryptocurrencies tend to be less regulated, or sometimes even unregulated, when compared to traditional investments. Because crypto is laden with risk, it is typically not an ideal option for novice investors. Understand the risks associated with this alternative investment, especially in the current economic environment. 

Understanding Cryptocurrency Exchanges

Cryptocurrency exchanges are platforms where you can buy and sell crypto. Some crypto exchanges are centralized, meaning they are run by a company. Other exchanges are decentralized, meaning they are built on a blockchain network and use smart contacts to facilitate transactions. For those just getting started, we recommend Coinbase or Gemini Exchange. These are trusted centralized exchanges that offer customer support and coin education. 

Cryptocurrency Wallet Basics

A cryptocurrency wallet is a physical (hardware) or online (software) device that stores your public and private keys. These keys give you access to your crypto. Without your private key, your crypto cannot be accessed. Having your funds in a wallet means you have full custody and ownership. You should always store your crypto in a wallet, and never leave it on an exchange. It’s important to know that not all wallets are compatible with all cryptocurrencies. For beginners, we like MetaMask as a software wallet and Ledger Nano S as hardware wallet. 

What To Know For Your First Purchase

• Do your own research on the cryptocurrency you choose to invest in.
• Know that you can purchase crypto fractionally—you don’t need to purchase a full Bitcoin to invest in it. Try starting with just $20.
• Plan to hold long term. Crypto can be very volatile.

How To Get Started

1. Sign up for a cryptocurrency exchange.

2. Select three projects to research from their available crypto projects.

3. After your research, select the coin/s you want to purchase.

4. Download or purchase a crypto wallet that’s compatible with your coin/s.

5. Transfer your crypto to your wallet to keep it safe.

Evaluating whether an organization embraces environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG)—or simply choosing to invest sustainably—has become more popular and more rigorous in the past two years in particular. More and more, investors are putting their money where their mouth is, but it can be challenging to do research on your own.   

At Domini, ESG priorities are not new. As a woman-led mutual fund firm that specializes exclusively in impact investing, they have two main goals: ecological sustainability and universal human dignity. As part of their standards, they don’t invest in companies doing business that they deem to be harmful—their funds are fossil fuel-free, nuclear weapon-free, and firearm-free, among other exclusions. 

It's not just about reducing greenhouse gas emissions; the firm's investment and research experts look for data on companies that are working to lower their climate impact via energy efficiency, renewable energy, recycling, circular economy initiatives, and more. By identifying social and environmental leaders across the globe, Domini invests in companies that provide long-term value for people, planet, and profit.

“The impact investing movement has momentum now—finally everyone is realizing: what’s not to like about linking your values and your money?” explains Amy Domini, founder, CEO, and chair of Domini Impact Investments, as well as author and world-renowned expert in socially responsible investing. Early in her career, she wondered: Can you do good by buying stocks? She's proven over and over again that the answer is an emphatic yes.

More than 30 years ago, Amy Domini created the Domini 400 Social Index, the first socially and environmentally screened index. An investment tool designed to identify the more socially responsible companies on the stock market. Amy Domini has long believed that corporations are the dominant social force on the planet; she focused on ESG way before it became popular, and doing so earned her many honors. Barrons named her as one of “The 20 Most Influential People in ESG Investing” and Time magazine called her one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World.”

As detailed in the Domini 2021 Impact Report, just in the last year the firm has communicated with over 300 companies, helping inspire positive change on a wide range of environmental and social topics—from diversity in the boardroom to supply chain transparency and the use of sweatshops. As part of their advocacy work, they also supported several dozen investor and NGO statements on environmental and social issues, and voted on behalf of their shareholders at over 800 companies' global meetings. Domini’s assets grew to $3 billion in 2021, and their founding fund, Domini Impact Equity Fund, celebrated its 30-year anniversary.

The impact doesn't stop there; the firm helps investors align their money with their core values. “Why wouldn’t someone want to participate in helping to make finance part of the solutions to today’s social and environmental issues?" Amy Domini explains. "You can take the tool that is being an investor and use it to cast a vote for affordable housing, social justice, and other causes that you care about.”

Amy Domini believes that the urgency of this moment is the climate crisis and is an opportunity for investors and companies to work towards a more sustainable future. For example, as of September 2021, the Domini Impact Equity Fund’s  portfolio was 61 percent less carbon intensive than its benchmark (i.e., standard against other funds), with 71 fewer tons of emissions per million dollars of sales, according to the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures’ (TCFD) Carbon intensity metrics. 

By seeking investments that promote long-term positive environmental impact as well as universal values of fairness, equality, justice, and respect for human rights, Amy Domini and her firm are inspiring a greater and greener world, one investor at a time. Discover Domini and learn more about the Domini Impact Equity Fund here.

An investment in the Domini Funds is not a bank deposit and is not insured, is subject to certain risks, is subject to principal loss, and is available only to U.S. investors by prospectus offer. Call 1-800-225-3863 for a prospectus containing this and other important information. Please review full legal disclosure here. DSIL Investment Services LLC (DSIL) distributor 4/22.

Like many Americans over the past two years, I’ve started to seriously consider purchasing real estate. While the current inflated market may not be the ideal time to actually buy, dipping my toe in the home-buying waters spurred me to get in sturdy financial shape and to understand the process of putting in an offer. While examining my personal finances and assets, a realtor’s eye roll–inducing question loomed in the back of my head: “What else can you do to sweeten the deal?” What she meant was: How much more could I offer? Or would I be able to cover closing costs on the seller’s side? After crunching the numbers (yet again), I threw my hands in the air and said, “What else can I do?! Offer the seller their choice from my handbag collection?” 

And then I thought: Maybe I could. While I didn’t go as far as printing out a PDF of my options, I did take a look in my closet to see if there was anything I could get reappraised for possible resale. My eye went straight to one of my luckiest finds: a '90s-era Chanel backpack in black and gold, which I purchased from TheRealReal in 2012.

A special bag like this, of course, comes with a special story: A friend had just started working for the company and invited me to a launch party in their new office. As a guest, I received a $250 credit as a party favor. (Generous! For context, it was common for early members to receive a $100 credit for referring friends.) Credit in hand, I was encouraged to check out the inventory on display. I stopped in my tracks at this bag. My job then was assisting a celebrity stylist, and '90s Chanel was a major source of inspiration in our work, which made it all the more covetable. I checked the tag with a lump in my throat: $700. I was floored! It was in excellent condition! Clutching her like a baby in my arms, I went straight to the checkout. Call it luck or call it fate, the total amount I paid for my first Chanel bag was $539.00—about the amount I had in my checking account at the time.

I spoke to Liz Sennett, senior valuation manager at TheRealReal, to find out what my lucky find is worth now, nearly a decade later. The conversation felt part Antiques Roadshow, part Pawn Stars, but I shook that icky feeling off right away—this is Chanel we’re talking about. And a Chanel bag is a serious investment. “Even if we had this conversation a year ago, it would have looked different today [based on] how Covid has impacted the manufacturing timelines,” explained Sennett. “People are turning to the secondary market to keep up with demand, and we’re seeing prices totally skyrocket from that. You’re looking at a list price from $4,500 to $5,000. Your consignment value—or what you take home—would be $3,150 to $4,000.” Whoa, talk about a plot twist. “You’re looking at a 450–500 percent return on your investment, which is pretty incredible,” Sennett told me.

If I was in a hurry to turn a high-ticket item around, like, say, trying to “sweeten the deal” on a real estate offer, TheRealReal enables me to do so. For certain high-demand items, like Chanel, watches and fine jewelry, or collectible sneakers, TheRealReal has a “Get Paid Now” option for sellers; it can be sent in the form of a direct deposit or store credit within 48 hours, which cuts out the waiting time of traditional consignment, but also cuts your take-home amount by about 20 percent. “If it’s that super classic Chanel, it’s selling really well right now. Whether it’s from 2021 or 1992, it’s selling really well,” says Sennett. With Chanel's recent price increase of their classic flap style, the return on the investment of a new bag may be even higher than expected. But, according to TheRealReal’s 2021 Luxury Resale Report, the piece doesn’t necessarily have to be straight from the boutique. Gucci’s 2020 re-release of the Jackie bag invigorated vintage sales of the same style—with prices up more than its modern counterpart.

I don’t see myself as a fashion collector. It goes without saying that as fashion editor—with access to sample sales, brands’ holiday gifting, and a general enthusiasm for shopping—I have been lucky to accumulate a great collection of designer accessories and clothing over the years. But when I think of fashion collectors, my mind goes to sneakerheads who wrap their shoes in plastic or fashion archivists who keep their vintage purchases in storage for museum shows. I love to wear and enjoy my pieces, but also keep them in great shape.

eBay’s vice president of fashion, Charis Marquez, acknowledges eBay’s OG history as a collector’s resale haven, but debunks the idea that this collecting club is limited to a certain kind of shopper. “We really are about collectors and enthusiasts. And now with Gen Z, it’s really about investing. Not like when I was younger, when I just liked a bunch of purses, so I got a bunch of purses and didn’t really care about what happened to them and just wore them when I wanted to show off,” says Marquez. “Gen Z is really thinking of [resale] as an alternate asset class.”

Admittedly, eBay was never my first choice when it came to shopping fashion. It felt like a destination to find something very specific (a friend’s eBay score of Phoebe Philo Celiné runway sandals come to mind), or, at times, the offerings seemed too widely spread, leaving room for price discrepancies or inauthentic product. In 2021, the company launched Authentication Guarantee in an effort to assuage skeptical shoppers. Says Marquez, “To just ensure and take out all of the drama, go with the authenticity guarantee. You can do your research, but we’ve already done it for you.” Ok, eBay, I see you.

The platform’s legacy as the pioneer of online resale gives it clout among collectors, but in the last decade, major comparison shopping options have arisen for savvy fashion investment shoppers. The competition arms them with negotiation ammunition—or the option to take their business elsewhere. Sarah Davis, founder of resale platform Fashionphile, says it’s easier now to invest in designer fashion than ever before. The barrier to entry is super low, thanks to the resale boom. “There is literally no brand that you can’t get for under $500, which is such an exciting thing. Something at that level has been carried a few times already and can still have a full life.” In 2012 when I purchased the aforementioned Chanel backpack, consignment and resale were not nearly as widespread as they are now. And, frankly, it was still quite intimidating. Online platforms like TheRealReal, Fashionphile, and ReBag have made it much easier for first-time designer shoppers to research without the pressure of in-person interactions. It begs the question, Where were these sites when I was the fashion intern on a budget?

I also believe my youthful mind wasn’t programmed to think about long-term fashion investments; the Chanel deal was a happy accident. Disposable fashion like Uniqlo, Zara, and American Apparel were ways for me to “look the part” on set as a stylist’s assistant with simple but trendy silhouettes—perfect for blending into the background. However, I probably spent $500 on such clothes, which never carried me further than a year or two, instead of thinking about how that money could have been spent on a better fashion investment. Here, there is a generational divide. Davis notes this trend in her customer data. “Our average order value for the 18–24 age group is $1,675 right now. These folks are not in their final careers, they’re still in college or in entry-level careers. The sustainability [aspect] is important,” says Davis, referencing Gen Z’s motivation for shopping consignment, “but the fact that it’s something they can get their money out of and there’s resale value is an important factor.” Damn. I really slept on that at the time. But, it’s not too late for any shopper to switch gears. Davis encourages a more mindful approach. “The number one question when buying a car is: What is the resale value of this? I’ve seen more and more in our world that people are buying what we sell with resale in mind. I think that’s even truer for the younger customer.”

Watch enthusiast Brynn Wallner agrees. The Sotheby’s alum was charged with creating content for the watch sector of the famed auction house as a way to draw in first-time collectors at that entry-level category. The experience sparked the idea for Dimepiece, an Instagram account and online journal celebrating women who love and wear watches. Since starting the account, Wallner has noticed younger followers becoming “first-dimer-s” (as Wallner lovingly calls those new to watch owning). “Kudos to the younger generation in general for being more sustainability-minded. When I was their age I was just wasting money buying stuff at Forever 21 and Zara, because I wanted something cute to go out in,” says Wallner. “Thrifting wasn’t as in vogue as it is now, and I was just wasting money on things I would throw away six months later.” Same, girl. What was I doing back then? “This generation is already equipped to look at items as investments, especially when it comes to watches. They have the consumer mindset that [watches] are made with care and that there’s a reason why these items are so expensive and it’s a precious item that you can keep forever and you can give it to your kids one day.” Like a classic watch, my Chanel bag feels like one of those pieces. It’s nearly as old as me and I don’t see it ever going out of style—or out of value.

Serena Morris, founder of another fashion fanatic Instagram account @shes__underrated, a compilation of “fantasy looks inspired by our most underrated muses,” focuses primarily on Y2K fashion and says that nostalgia is a major factor in investment fashion purchases. “I think the investment is based on heartfelt, meaningful moments, because [shoppers] are identifying [the items] with the people who helped shape them as individuals,” says Morris. “It’s an investment because those things are timeless and the moment is timeless. There’s a reason we keep going back to specific eras. It’s fashion nerdism.” She’s right. As my first Chanel bag, this backpack from the '90s gives me the warm, fuzzy feelings brought on by images of iconic supermodels prancing down the runways, dripping in an excess of gold and leather chains. For my younger self, that was fashion heaven! A friend pointed out that Naomi Campbell carried this exact bag in the cult classic fashion documentary Unzipped. “Maybe it was hers!” he teased. Maybe. The thought added a layer of mystique, but also a nagging personification to the bag that makes it even more difficult to part with.

Will I sell the bag? I honestly cannot decide! The design holds cultural significance as well as personal nostalgia for me, and I do try to wear it often. There aren’t many other assets you can say the same about. While I find comfort in knowing the bag is there for me as a source of financial assurance, the thought of parting ways with it does make me sad. Sennett, my valuation expert, gave me a glimmer of hope about that: “It’s not like you’re saying goodbye forever, if you want it a couple of years down the road, you can always find it again on the secondary market.”