How many vacation days did you take this year? How many does your employer allow you to take? Did you work through illness and burnout because you didn’t have enough paid time off to rest and recuperate? Did you skip meaningful events with your family? When was the last time you took an actual vacation from your job?
Today we’re talking about vacation time, or paid time off (PTO). It’s the bitter controversy that launched a thousand memes about the difference between Europe and the United States.
In the past, I’ve worked for employers that offered anywhere from 6 to 10 vacation days per year. I’ve worked for companies that allow you to take comp time (i.e., if you work on a weekend day, you may add that day to your total PTO). Currently, I work for a company that “doesn’t have a vacation policy.” Other employers call this “unlimited PTO.” In practice, this means that I can take as many days off as I see fit, so long as I get my work done.
With that generous vacation time policy, you might be wondering how much time I took off this year. Welp…
I took 8 fucking work weeks of vacation time this year. That’s 40 whole days.
And I feel absolutely no remorse. In fact, I feel giddy. I feel like celebrating! Let’s unpack that!
Well here we are, fam. The 2024 presidential election has happened and the outcome was notgreat.
We took some time to be angry. To be scared. To grieve. We checked in on our community and practiced some highly necessary self-care. Then we spent several cathartic hours scrolling through r/LeopardsAteMyFace. We hope you did too.
Now we’re ready for the next step. For we have chosen to stay and fight. Part of that means embracing our calling as your beloved yet humble Bitches—your opinionated internet aunties—by sharing ideas on how we can prepare to weather the coming storm.
It might not be much of a storm! Could be anywhere from a little light rain to a Category 5 hurricane. But it’s our belief that you should prepare for the worst in such a way that even in the best case scenario, you’ll still end up better off.
This guide includes some instructions specific to a second Trump administration (three words I gag even writing). But some of it is just good practice no matter what happens.
What are we preparing for?
The Trump administration—including his billionaire buddies, cartoonishly villainous advisors, and all the grifters and sycophants in between—has all kinds of goals. Part of this plan is Project 2025, a policy wishlist funded by the Heritage Foundation and written by 140 former (and in some cases, future) Trump staffers (among others). Think of the Heritage Foundation as a real-life, conservative “deep state” with even deeper pockets, helmed by all the extremist nutjobs driving the Right Wing’s most regressive ideas since the Reagan administration.
There’s a lot of cooks in this oppressive kitchen. So for the purposes of this guide, we’re going to use “Project 2025” as an umbrella term for the policy agenda of the Trump administration and broader conservative party.
Change will not come at a consistent pace. We won’t enter The Darkest Timeline overnight, or maybe even at all! And there’s not even a guarantee that all the worst aspects of Project 2025 will come to pass. With any luck, this corrupt administration of toadies, conspiracy theorists, and inept, entitled conmen will get in its own way enough that they make zero progress towards their nightmarish goals!
But we can’t bank on that. Which is why we recommend the following steps before they start checking off items on the Project 2025 to-do list. Shoot for the moon of Suckitude! Even if we don’t reach it, you’ll land lightly among the stars of Things Are Slightly Worse Now.
Tradwives. Who are they? Where did they come from? What do they want?
To answer these questions and more, we’re going to dive deep into the bowels of anti-feminist history. Starting with a woman named Phyllis Schlafly.
She was the absolute fucking worst.
Schlafly dedicated her entire life and career to thwarting the causes of feminism. She advocated for women to give up careers and their places in society in favor of staying home, having babies, and nurturing their husbands and homes. She successfully campaigned against the Equal Rights Amendment (which is still not ratified as the law of the land to this day), headed a grassroots movement to convince women that equal rights were not only unattainable but undesirable, stood firmly against gay rights, and loved the idea of a white supremacist theocracy even more than she loved the sound of her own goddamn voice. Schlafly was staunchly anti-abortion, anti-contraception, anti-divorce, and anti-fun in all its forms.
But the infuriating legacy of Schlafly lives on. For while she was yammering on about uppity women knowing their place, this anti-feminist Babadook was decidedly not in her supposed place.
(Actually, this is an insult to the Babadook, who The Kids™ tell me is a bisexual icon and therefore someone to be celebrated and not denigrated. My apologies, dear sweet Babadook. It won’t happen again.)
Now, I don’t say this lightly, but… this book is giving me hope.
Green Money “shares a vision of how you can break free from outdated financial advice and live a fulfilling life that values community, sustainability, and financial well-being. Filled with real-world anecdotes, cutting-edge research, and hands-on money exercises, this book equips you with the tools needed to take immediate action towards a brighter, greener future.” Essentially, this is your guide to putting your money where your climate is—making financial choices to support a greener, more environmentally sustainable future.
For those of you squinting skeptically right now, I know what you’re thinking. But this is not another well-meaning finance guru offering individual solutions to systemic problems. Rather, Kara approaches the topic with the spirit of a community organizer and activist. Green Money is about our collective influence as much as it is our individual hopes for the future. It’s as optimistic and creative as it is ready to win this fight.
And I don’t know about you, but I will be putting on my thrifted boots and following this movement (via public transit) all the way!
Gather ’round, ye children, and I will teach you of an essential moment in Millennial cultural history.
The year was 2012 and a white boy with an egregious undercut was topping the charts rapping about your granddad’s clothes. Not only was this chart-topping song a banger (in fact, it slapped). And not only was the music video a cultural zeitgeist that would define a generation’s visual aesthetic. But the whole moment of “Thrift Shop” was a lovingly earnest ode to what we, the post-Great Recession generation, valued.
It was tacky. It was fun. It was simultaneously both anti-consumerism and materialistic. It was juvenile and absurd and it loved a goddamn deal. Did I mention that it slapped?
Anyway that’s how I remember it and I will not be accepting alternate historical interpretations at this time!
The point is that I am still living inside of Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop.” And that makes me kind of an expert on secondhand shopping.
But there is cheap treasure yet to be found if you know where to look. It just requires a little extra time, wisdom, and elbow grease. Here are our five best secrets to secondhand shopping like you want to make an elder Millennial proud.
I’m sometimes surprised about what people find controversial around here. Our articles about abortion and reproductive rights are met with pretty universal agreement. While one of the most controversial things we’ve ever written was about the American tipping system:
You should read it. But if you don’t want to bother, here are the highlights:
Our tipping system is whack by design. Employers are allowed to pay servers below minimum wage with the expectation that customers will make up the difference in tips. This means tipping is not, as the word would suggest, a reward for good service. Rather, it is pretty fucking mandatory if you want to qualify as a Decent Human Being.
So if you don’t tip at all, your server is being criminally underpaid. This isn’t your fault, but it is your responsibility. Which means diners should factor the cost of tipping into their budget when dining out since employers are passing off the cost of their payroll to the customer.
The solution is to automatically fold service charges into the bill, which more and more restaurants and bars are doing. But it’s by no means universal quite yet. So in the meantime your options are to cook at home or tip your server at least 20%.
The number of comments on that article that don’t simply complain about the necessity of tipping, but completely disregard the humanity of servers is staggering. The contempt and disrespect from these trolls is, uh… super gross! Here’s a sample:
Damn. I did not order a side of ableism with this comment. Please take it back.
It’s the day after Labor Day. So I’m spending this article on the dignity of labor: what it is, why it’s deserving of respect and fair compensation, and why disrespecting labor is a massive dick move.
Years ago, when I worked for a publishing house, I went out to happy hour with my coworkers at a whiskey distillery. One thing led to another and I found myself drunkenly badgering three of my female coworkers about their income (if this is shocking to you, you must be new here at BitchesDrunkenlyBadgerYoutoGetRiches.com).
At issue was the fact that none of them had ever asked for a raise. Ever. At any job they’d ever had. And as I listened to their pathetic excuses I felt the worst kind of déjà vu. All of their reasoning and fear sounded frighteningly similar to my own personal experience.
For I too had once waffled and procrastinated over asking for a raise! It was a massive, embarrassing, and expensive mistake. I asked my boss for a raise and he sheepishly gave me 25%—even more than I asked for!—because he realized he forgot to give me a raise with my last promotion and I had been underpaid for literally years. The whole miserable experience was basically designed in a lab to be my supervillain origin story.
Since then I have never hesitated to ask for a raise. I set calendar reminders and keep a running tally of the reasons why I am fucking worth it.
I’ve also become a raise-seeking evangelical. Because if my old coworkers still struggled with all the same hang-ups about asking for a raise that I once had, then chances are some of you do too. And it is my sworn duty as a Loud Internet Woman to type words at you until you get the hell over it!
In honor of Disability Pride Month, we’ve published a whole month of content related to the intersection of disability and personal finance. Read the first article here!
More than anything else in the personal finance sphere (perhaps save taxes, which I have notoriously, uh… fucked up), the social safety net for disabled people is complicated. The idea of researching it thoroughly enough to provide useful resources for our disabled followers is daunting, to say the least. Even beginning that research has been wildly disheartening. Because it rapidly becomes clear that the social safety net for disabled people is straight-up broken.
But it’s time to rip off the band-aid. Today I’m exploring the brokenness of it all: how it currently works and whether there’s any hope of change. I hope you’ve enjoyed past episodes of JessGetsRighteouslyAngryaboutanInjustice, because you’re about to get more of that!
It’s Pride Month! The most gayest time of the year! The month when corporations release rainbow-embossed merch and proclaim themselves Down With the Gayness. Yet here at Bitches Get Riches Incorporated, we’re not just LGBTQ+ community spokespeople… we’re also members!
And so it is with zero hypocrisy and a whole lot of enthusiasm that we come to you this week with a very special message. And that message is: personal finance media is gay as hell.
Much ink has been spilled in the personal finance arena about how to reduce your spending. After all, the more money you save on stuff, the more money you get to keep for… other stuff!
But frugality has a limiting factor: namely, you can only save so much. The amount of money you save is directly tied to the amount of money you make. It’s a lot easier to save $20k a year if you make $100k than if you make $40k, ya feel me?
So today I want to round up our best and brightest advice not on reducing your spending or saving your money… but on how to increase your income. Get that bread. Make it rain. Get us the lettuce. Stack them stacks. Bring home the motherfucking bacon.
