Kitty, Author at Bitches Get Riches • Page 11 of 11

Whenever someone gives you financial advice, you have to ask yourself, "What is their angle?"

Bullshit Reasons Not to Buy a House: Refuted

September 5, 2016October 12, 2018 Kitty 6 Comments

Look, there’s a lot of terrible financial advice out there. I had to seek out a bunch of it to write this article, and I think my eyeballs rolled too far and are now permanently pointing into the back of my head. It is very hard to type. Are my fingers still on the home row? Everything is pink and dark. Please send help.

Recently, I’ve seen some advice against buying a home, and I really wanted to examine that. On the one hand, it makes some sense—in the wake of such a damaging recession, many traditional investment truisms proved to be overstated. Financial gurus were overconfident, and occasionally dead wrong. We are collectively wise to question everything.

But in the opinion of these Bitches, home ownership is right for most people. It can be done unwisely, even ruinously—but there are very few situations where renting in perpetuity is a great choice. Read More

I've come to think that's the ideal role for credit cards to play in a debt-free person's life.

Why You Might Not Need Your Emergency Fund

September 5, 2016November 14, 2018 Kitty 4 Comments

Excluding my mortgage, I’m a debt-free individual. That means my credit card is a pretty lonely lil’ guy. He doesn’t even get to live in my wallet. He’s entombed in my office with my library card, my old student ID, and that Best Buy gift card with only $3.52 left on it. He has a zero-balance and a $10,000 limit.

I used to keep $6,000 in cash squirreled away as part of an emergency fund—enough to make a few rent payments if I lost my job or had to cover an unexpected accident deductible. I was very lucky, and none of those things ever came to pass; but this meant my emergency fund sat in my savings account, slowly depreciating. Meanwhile, I was toying with the idea of closing my credit card altogether—after all, I never used it.

Buying something you don't need can be an act of defiance against your current situation.

Buying the $7 Chocolate Bar

May 7, 2016November 14, 2018 Kitty 16 Comments

Yesterday I watched a friend who was struggling with homelessness unpack her few belongings. Inside her purse was a large, rather expensive, luxury-brand chocolate bar. She held it up and twiddled it back and forth in her hands, letting the silver foil catch the light. “Sweetie, I’m homeless,” she said, very matter-of-fact. “You’d better believe I’m getting the good stuff.” And boy was she making a great point.

Asking to pay less is almost always a wearying and unwelcome question...with one very special exception.

The Magical Six-Word Question That’s Saved Me $1,140 in Three Months

May 6, 2016October 12, 2018 Kitty 3 Comments

I’m a little wary of asking for discounts, especially from very small companies. When it’s just one or two people running the show, it means those one or two people spend an inordinate percentage of their time doing things they don’t like to do. Nobody starts their own business because they love filing quarterly taxes—they soldier through it for the 10% of the time where they’re actually doing the thing they love.

And every small business owner I’ve known has lost sleep over their pricing. No matter what you’re selling, there’s local and global competition for it, and consumers have tools now that didn’t exist 10 or 20 years ago that allow them to find, compare, rate, and review similar services. The world is a buyer’s market, and it’s really hard to measure what you know your work is worth against what you know people are willing to pay for it. Asking to pay less for the same product is almost always a wearying and unwelcome question… with one very special exception.

If you think of quilted toilet paper as a small luxury, you are bad at thinking and should be punished.

You Deserve Cheap Toilet Paper, You Beautiful Fucking Moon Goddess

February 23, 2016November 14, 2018 Kitty 6 Comments

In my short lifetime, I have heard more than one perfectly sensible person tell me they “can’t do” single-ply toilet paper.

Rick knows how I feel.

I don’t know why people tell me these things. It’s like they want me to cry out to Father Dagon and Mother Hydra and bid them raise an army of Deep Ones from the many-columned depths of Y’ha-nthlei to sweep over the land and drown the humans in a cosmic flood as recompense for their innumerable and unpardonable follies.

Do you know what Cinderella did to get ahead? She planted a tree. And watered it daily with her tears. The point is that class mobility has literally been a fairy tale for most of human history.

“Poor People Are Poor Because They Are _. Rich People Are Rich Because They Are _.”

February 9, 2016November 14, 2018 Kitty 9 Comments

When Piggy and I first talked about starting a finance blog for Millennials, we spent a lot of time talking about how traditional financial advice had failed us. Some advice failed simply for being too old. It relied on outdated growth models, or it ignored a rapidly changing globalized economy, or discounted the possibilities of living in a world transformed by technology.

These failures were innocent. Others were not.
Read More

The truth is that salary secrecy does very little to benefit the employee, and quite a lot to benefit the executive class of old white jerks who've been setting American salaries for generations.

One Easy Thing Men Can Do to Help Close the Gender Wage Gap

December 27, 2015November 14, 2018 Kitty 3 Comments

If you’re a rad feminist guy who loves the women in his life and wants to make life fairer for everyone, there’s one incredibly easy thing you can do—right now—to close the gender wage gap. Are you ready? Here it is…

Tell your female coworkers how much money you make.

And be specific and honest: no ranges, no euphemisms, the exact number that appears on your paycheck. And don’t skip the bonuses and raises either. This is a tremendous boon to yourself as well as them. Here’s why.

"This project can be done in a weekend!"

Five Ways DIYers Lie About Their Budgets

December 27, 2015November 14, 2018 Kitty 1 Comment

Most beautifulest table.

Like the table? Of course you do. It’s beautiful as shit. I made it myself and it only cost me $29.

(…Or did it?)

I found this poor wretch on Craigslist. It had a crust of chipping chalkboard paint—because apparently there are people who like to dine to a soundtrack of plates scraping across a blackboard. Underneath, it was solid wood, sturdily constructed, fully disassemblable, and priced to sell at only $25. Like the conventionally attractive nerd in an early 90s movie, it only needed its glasses lifted off to become beautiful.

After sanding the old paint off, I took some glossy white paint I had leftover from another project and applied it to the legs. Then I stained the tabletop with a $4 can of Minwax stain obtained on clearance from my local hardware store. The result is a beautiful handcrafted table that you’d never know cost $29!

There’s only one catch… Read More