The movies tell us one story about wealth and it looks a lot like white men playing golf and drinking single malt whiskey. But is that what we’re trying to build for our futures??? No thank you.

So, what’s a more inclusive vision of wealth, and how do we find our own definition? Could wealth actually mean something that’s achievable for a normal person?

Caitlin asks Sara what it is we’re actually talking about when we talk about wealth, and finds out, yet again everything about money is complicated - even our fantasies.

Oh! And do you have a passive income story? A success? A failure? Tell us about it in a voice memo and e-mail it to: [email protected]

Ask us your dumb investing and finance questions for Season 2 on our Ask Us page!

This episode was edited by our co-producer Kelly West. Music by Bad Bad Hats and Devmo.

What do you get when two women combine forces to figure out finance, share the mental load and build wealth together?

Money sisters!! That’s what you get!

In this episode, longtime friends Emily and Kelly (who happens to be our co-producer) share their long history of making financial decisions small and large, and their deep, abiding love for the Splitwise app.

Most of us are used to the awkward dance of trying to figure out how to fairly split a restaurant meal or a girls’ trip, but what about buying a freaking house?? They tell us!

So many women face financial decisions on their own and it can be paralyzing and lonely. Emily and Kelly help us see a creative alternative that can open up our investing opportunities and turn our friendships into a financial partnership. Get yourself a money sister!!

Oh! And do you have a passive income story? A success? A failure? Tell us about it in a voice memo and e-mail it to: [email protected]

Ask us your dumb investing and finance questions for Season 2 on our Ask Us page!

This episode was edited by our co-producer Kelly West. Music by Bad Bad Hats and Devmo.

So many of us want to invest in the stock market to make money for retirement, but feel pretty icky about where our money might be going. Do we just have to surrender to the greedy capitalists polluting our planet and perpetuating social inequities?

Listen to this episode to find out! (Spoiler alert: NO)

Sara and I grill sustainable investing expert Kacie Swartz about how to find funds that promote our values. And guess what?

They do just as well, if not better, as the traditional funds that have gotten away with regressive social policies and short-sighted slash and burn environmental damages in the name of profit.

Kacie explains how to find funds we can feel good about, without diminishing our returns, AND how this kind of activist investing is a very powerful way to change industries with our dollars.

Here are some of the resources Kacie mentioned that are good for researching sustainable, environmentally and socially-conscious funds:

Morning Star

Vanguard

MSCI

Green Money Journal

And here’s Kacie on LinkedIn.

Oh! And do you have a passive income story? A success? A failure? Tell us about it in a voice memo and e-mail it to: [email protected]

Ask us your dumb investing and finance questions for Season 2 on our Ask Us page!

This episode was edited by our co-producer Kelly West. Music by Bad Bad Hats and Devmo.

You can take that takeout pad thai out of my cold, dead hands. If budgeting means not being able to splurge on a stressful Tuesday anymore, then let’s go for broke.

But we’re supposed to have a budget, right?

How do we create budgets that take into account our mental health now and financial health later? We invited budget coach Kara Perez, founder of the finance education company Bravely Go to help us figure this out.

We talk about how to adapt a budget to the realities of your life without cutting out all of the joy, and making conscious choices about where your dollars go, and when.

Also, Caitlin tries to get Sara and Kara to square off on different money management approaches. Instead, they agree there are many ways to take on your finances, as long as you do something. Anything! (Well, not anything, but not get paralyzed by the choices to the point that you never start.)

For more of Kara’s financial wisdom, sustainable investing approach and budgeting tips, follow her on Instagram and YouTube.

Oh! And do you have a passive income story? A success? A failure? Tell us about it in a voice memo and e-mail it to: [email protected]

Ask us your dumb investing and finance questions for Season 2 on our Ask Us page of our website!

This episode was edited by our co-producer Kelly West. Music by Bad Bad Hats and Devmo.

Your credit score is one of those things that you don’t have to care about…until you really do. It’s a system that kind of makes sense, but also can be crazy unfair.

In this episode Sara and Caitlin (but mostly Caitlin) grill Lending Tree credit expert Matt Schulz on how credit scores are calculated and what it actually means. Do they stay the same for all of our lives? Can we make them better? Do they get worse if we check them every week?

He tells us some very bad news about how bad credit can cost you a ton of money over your lifetime, but also hopeful news about how to build up your credit score so you can get out of the cycle.

Here are some of the resources we mentioned in the episode:

The government’s consumer watchdog website: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

You can check your credit report at AnnualCreditReport.com - it’s a no strings attached website that you can trust.

The three big credit bureaus where you can check your credit score and freeze your credit so no one can open up a credit card or line of credit on your behalf:

TransUnion Experian Equifax

And to find out more financial tips from Matt, follow him on Twitter @matthewschulz and subscribe to his newsletter. And watch out for his book in 2024 that promises to help people pay less, earn more and keep more of their money by asking the right questions in everyday situations.

Oh! And do you have a passive income story? A success? A failure? Tell us about it in a voice memo and e-mail it to: [email protected]

Ask us your dumb investing and finance questions for Season 2 on our Ask Us page!

This episode was edited by our co-producer Kelly West. Music by Bad Bad Hats and Devmo.

Do you have a 4-year-old daughter or 15-year-old niece that you hope to help pay for college, but also would still like to have money for other things like toilet paper and health insurance, but feel like the two things are mutually exclusive ?

Stop freaking out - we just might be able to pull this off.

We know - we already did an episode about saving for college last season. But this time we invited a real life college finance mastermind!

Our guest expert Ann Garcia is so expert that she actually wrote a book called…wait for it…How to Pay for College. Not only does she blow through all the myths about college saving making tuition more expensive, she explains what a list price is, and how what they say college costs is different than what college actually costs (in a good way).

Also, all the programs and scholarships and other things we never knew about that lower tuition costs and help students choose the right school.

After you listen, check out all of Ann’s wisdom and resource-sharing on her website howtopayforcollege.com. And, to get even more of her specialized strategies, take her College Financial Plan Masterclass. Women on the Verge of a Financial Breakthrough get a 10% discount!! Just enter promo code: WOTV10

Ask us your dumb investing and finance questions for Season 2 on our Ask Us page!

This episode was edited by our co-producer Kelly West. Music by Bad Bad Hats and Devmo.

We’re back for the real Season 2!

When you get a hot tip about individual stocks, can’t you just buy a bunch and get really rich and then laugh at all the people that weren’t as clever?

But, wait, you have to sell them in order to get all those riches… So, can someone please just tell me when they’re about to go down so I can sell them then? No? Wait, what?

In this episode, we discuss how Sara’s stupid rational advice about buying Airbnb stocks prevented Caitlin from buying a Corvette, or losing a bunch of other people’s money, depending on how you look at it.

Sara makes it clear what her professional opinion is about borrowing money to invest (a hard pass) and Caitlin makes it clear how it’s possible to get emotionally attached to a losing stock (it may suck, but it’s mine).

Human psychology and an insanely unpredictable market seem to conspire against all of our fantasy get-rich-quick schemes when it comes to buying individual stocks.

Also, we discuss this article that says that women retire with a quarter less wealth than men. WTF and how can we change this?

Ask us your dumb investing and finance questions for Season 2 on the Ask Us page of our website!

This episode was edited by our co-producer Kelly West. Music by Bad Bad Hats and Devmo.

This week Sara and I pepper student-loan specialist Danika Waddell with questions about two different student loan programs: the Biden $10,000 debt relief program, which you’ve probably heard of, AND the Public Student Loan Forgiveness program, which you might not have heard about.

The Public Student Loan Forgiveness waiver is a temporary rule change for a program that lets people who have worked in public service (in government, certain non-profits, school districts, public health, etc.) for ten years to apply for loan forgiveness.

***This is DIFFERENT than the $10,000 Biden student debt relief plan.***

Do you have student loans? Have you ever worked as a teacher at a public school? Have you worked as a social worker? Have you ever worked in an under-served health care setting?

It doesn’t matter that you haven’t worked in a qualifying institution for ten years yet, you can still apply and have all of your additional years and payments start counting for future forgiveness.

If there’s any chance you might qualify, please investigate and APPLY NOW! The temporary waiver expires on October 31st, 2022.

We also discuss the latest information about the Biden $10,000 program, and where to keep up-to-date.

Here are the resources we talk about in the episode for learning more:

- This NYTimes summary is fantastic.

- Details on the actual Public Service Loan Forgiveness program (PSLF).

- Trying to determine who your loan servicer is? Student aid is the place to go.

- You can sign up for notifications about your loan forgiveness here.

- Tool for calculating the best repayment plan.

- Free advice about student loans.

- PSLF program announcement.

- PSLF waiver explainer page with FAQs and explanations.

- PSLF application with explainer tool.

- Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program Support Facebook group.

Many thanks to Danika Waddell, founder and president of Xena Financial Planning who answered all our student loan forgiveness questions with patience and humor, and provided this great list of resources.

So get going and get applying! Remember, you don’t need all of your forms and information right now, the most important thing is that you submit an application by October 31st, 2022.

Ask us your dumb investing and finance questions for Season 2 on our Ask Us page!

Transcripts for this episode also available on our website.

This episode was edited by Kelly West. Music by Bad Bad Hats and Devmo.

What do you do if you actually have money to invest in the stock market but the constantly sinking numbers are scaring the shit out of you?

Are you really just supposed to pour perfectly good dollars into a sinking (market) ship?

And what about that whole “buy low, sell high” thing?? Is now the low?? But can it go even lower??

And, and what the fuck are iBonds and why is everyone talking about them?!

Sara explains to Caitlin, again, what risk means when it comes to investing in the stock market, and how we get the reward for taking so much risk. Which is supposed to be the whole point.

(Spoiler alert: In order to get the reward you have to stay on the (stock market) boat, even during the lows. Especially during the lows?)

And there’s more set it and forget it for the lazy, I mean wise, investors!

Ask us your dumb investing and finance questions for Season 2 on our website!

Full transcripts for all episodes on our website.

This episode was edited by Kelly West. Music by Bad Bad Hats and Devmo.

Are we really supposed to stay in the stock market even when it does a bunch of scary shit and our account balances are going down instead of up?

Do we keep pouring more money into our retirement accounts when we’re not sure we’ll have rent money for the next six months?

Can’t our precious investment money just take a little drama-free holiday in a savings account until the shitstorm is over?

Sara tells us how to adapt our financial goals and strategies to meet this moment, without throwing in the towel…and Caitlin tells her she should really come up with some new advice.

Ask us your dumb investing and finance questions for Season 2 on our website!

Transcripts for this and every episode are also available on our website.

This episode was edited by Kelly West. Music by Bad Bad Hats and Devmo.