Category: Goals & Mindset

Advice I Wish My Parents Gave Me When I Was 16

Piggy 13 Comments

My parents meant so, so well. And they were so, so right about some things (the relative unworthiness of all teenage boys, for example). But there is some parental advice I’m kinda pissed they didn’t tell me about when I was sixteen. Sixteen, and on the cusp of making serious decisions about finances and the next several years of my life.

It’s not that they told me nothing, or even that they gave me horrible advice. But I feel like my time as a sixteen-year-old was the last year of my life before I was expected to make monumental decisions. Decisions that would affect my financial future in really, really big ways. And that future could have been drastically different (and potentially better). If only they’d told me some key things to influence my decisions about college, a career, and investing.

I brought receipts.

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Stop Undervaluing Your Freelance Work, You Darling Fool

Piggy 13 Comments

Like many Millennials, I’ve got multiple income streams, including freelance work. At my day job, I work for a salary that I negotiate upwards every so often. But as a side-hustlin’ freelance editor, I set my own rates and negotiate directly with individual clients for each new job.

This means I’m in a position of awesome power with every freelance customer. Like Ursula the Sea Witch, I can name whatever price I like. And if the client wants both legs and a hunky prince, they’re going to have to give up their beautiful singing voice or THE DEAL’S OFF.

Ursula the sea witch knows the value of her freelance services.

But what if the client can’t afford my price? What if they find my freelance rates completely unreasonable and expensive compared with industry standards? Or what if they’re bargain hunting and willing to work with someone less qualified for a steeply discounted rate? What if they’re really nice and I feel uncharacteristically sorry for them?

What if instead of their beautiful singing voice, they’re only willing to part with the sound of their burps? Or the noise they make right before yakking up last night’s vodka tonic? Their impression of Marlon Brando in The Godfather? What then?

When you set the price for your own work, there are innumerable reasons you might be tempted to lower it. This is a way of undervaluing your own work, and trust me my beauties, it is not worth it.

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The Latte Factor, Poor Shaming, and Economic Compassion

Piggy 39 Comments

There’s a piece of conventional financial wisdom called the Latte Factor. It goes like this: if you’re looking to save money or pay off debt, start by skipping small luxuries like lattes and instead put that money toward your financial goals. The single digit savings will add up to a significant amount over time. All because you had the fortitude to practice a little self-control. It’s a simple, effective way to find some wiggle room in your budget and a great first step toward living a frugal lifestyle.

The Latte Factor is both virtuous and practical. It gives its frugal practitioner a sense of self-righteous superiority over those who continue to waste their money on overpriced, over-sweetened, caffeinated beverages every day. And because it’s such a simple solution, those preaching the gospel of frugality peddle it like a magic elixir. Can’t seem to save money? Just skip the latte! It works miracles!

Yet to those who truly struggle with systemic poverty, getting advice about the Latte Factor feels horribly condescending. In fact, being told that skipping a small luxury here and there will raise you up out of your low-income status feels downright cruel and deliberately ignorant. Because in cases of economic disenfranchisement, a lack of frugality is not the root of the problem.

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On Financial Discipline, Generational Poverty, and Marshmallows

Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 3 Comments

What’s your methodology for eating a bowl of Lucky Charms? And in a related question: how’s your financial discipline?

RESIST.

Do you peck the marshmallows out first, like a marshmallow-loving chicken? Or do you eat around them, creating a cereal-free pleasure palace of marshmallows, swimming together decadently in their milk? Or do you dig in holistically, indiscriminately, with marshmallows and cereal intermingling freely, devil-may-care, eating whatever ends up on your spoon?

The answer could reveal a whole lot about your life, your personality, and the health of your personal finances. We know this thanks to a fascinating series of studies conducted on children eating marshmallows.

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You Don’t Have To Have Kids

Piggy 15 Comments

I’ve spent a lot of time with kids over the years. I babysat in high school. I was a nanny in college. Now I look after my friends’ children on a regular basis, and I’m the proud auntie of the World’s Cutest and Smartest Nephew (he blew the competition out of the water). In fact, I have so much childcare XP that babies magically stop crying the second I pick them up. I can prevent small children from smearing spaghetti sauce on the wall with barely a glance!

All of this time spent with other people’s children has made me absolutely certain of one thing. I don’t want to have kids.

Fortunately for me, I don’t have to. And neither do you.

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A Dungeonmaster’s Guide to Defeating Debt

A Dungeonmaster’s Guide To Defeating Debt

Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 8 Comments

Let’s talk about D&D&D! That’s Dungeons & Dragons and debt. Strictly 5e. Live in the now.

Guys. I don’t mean to brag, but I run a fourteenth level wizard that I’m pretty damn proud of. She is a cold-hearted bad-ass lawful-evil murder-machine.

My steed is a magic broom with a fifty-foot move-speed. My staff turns into a friendly giant constrictor snake on command. And my Contingency spell is set to Polymorph me into a T-Rex if my hit points drop below 20%. I know, I know, it’s basically a massive free heal! And I’m a resourceful motherfucker. I once used a level one Disguise Self to convince two-dozen hostile Kuo Toa that I was Blibdoolpoolp, lobster-headed mother deity of the sea. I ordered them to pray until they died of exhaustion. #lawfulevil

If you play Dungeons & Dragons, you already know the best way to handle enemies depends on your class strengths. A barbarian has no business casting spells. A wizard has no business grappling. (And a warlock has no business in any campaign, period. Come at me in the comments, you short-rest dependent motherfuckers.)

Life, as I have so often found, mirrors games. Here is some wisdom for humans and demi-humans of all alignments on defeating debt.

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Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying: Finance Philosophy Explained by The Shawshank Redemption

Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying: Finance Philosophy Explained by The Shawshank Redemption

Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 11 Comments

What you are about to read is pretty graphic.

I’m sure it’s hard to read. At times, it was hard to write. It’s not an easy thing: to torture a metaphor to death.

I was almost at the point of walking away from this article when I heard John 3:16 ringing in my memory: “For Kitty so loved the world, that she gave one of her favorite movies, that whosoever believeth in her should not go broke, but have eternal cash.”

If you have not seen The Shawshank Redemption, I have two questions and one command.

  • The first question: are you some kind of Alexandreeey Dumbass?
  • The second question: how did you get from 1997 to the present without watching cable television during daylight hours?
  • The command: go watch The Shawshank Redemption! Only after you’ve done so are you allowed to return here and continue on.

One hundred and forty-two minutes of narration by Ellis “Red” Redding (Morgan Freeman) is the necessary prep work you need to open your heart and expand your mind.

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The Dollar Bill Game, Part 1: If Money Were No Object

Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 11 Comments

“If money were no object, what would you do with your life?”

Did you get asked this hypothetical question a lot? Especially around high school and college graduation? I did. And it was frustrating as hell, because I was so overwhelmed by my choices that I had no idea how to answer.

This question requires you to have a deep knowledge of yourself and your place in the world—deeper than many young people will have adequate experiences to inform.

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Status Symbols Are Pointless and Dumb

Status Symbols Are Pointless and Dumb

Piggy 9 Comments

You guys. I just learned about a thing so utterly ridiculous it defies belief: investment purses.

What is this mysterious and logic-defying item? Well, according to the Interwebz, it’s a grossly overpriced handbag. It gets to be grossly overpriced because a famous designer’s name is plastered all over it. And it’s called an “investment purse” because you buy it with all the money you’re not investing in your future financial well-being. I’m assuming. Because what else could possibly be the explanation?

An investment purse, as it is so loftily known, is similar to a luxury car or a gold-plated Rolex watch. In other words: it’s a status symbol, a way of keeping up with the Joneses.

And status symbols, my beautiful, badass, budgeting butterflies, are fucking dumb as shit.

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