Season 4, Episode 11 Good with Money: Talking About and Paying Attention to Money to Stop Being Bad with It (ft. Gaby Dunn)

[00:00:00] Eric Brotman: Welcome to Don’t Retire… Graduate!: The podcast that teaches you how to advance into retirement rather than retreating. I’m your host and valedictorian, Eric Brotman and today’s guest is a comedian, a best-selling author, and an activist who turned being told they’re bad with money into a successful career in finance media. Gaby Dunn hosts the bad with money podcast, which talks about money in a way that is raw and honest.

She’s also the author of Bad with Money: The Imperfect Art of Getting Your “Blank” Together. Gabby, welcome to the show.

[00:00:34] Gaby Dunn: Hi, thank you for having me.

[00:00:37] Eric Brotman: I, I, you know, I have to keep this show clean because we it’s a family show. So I can’t even read the name of your, of your book. But let’s talk, let’s talk about sort of where your passion for personal finance came from and how this, how this work.

[00:00:50] Gaby Dunn: Yeah. In 2016, when I was starting the show, basically I had done a lot of work in the dating and relationship space, especially within the LGBTQ community. I was approached by a podcast network saying we want to do a show with you. What do you want to do show about? And at the time I was, I mean, I was the titular bad with money.

I never looked at anything, never opened my mail, never just researched anything to do with money. And I had been steadily gaining YouTube fame, but that didn’t equal money the way that people assumed. And so I have a history as a journalist. I went to school for journalism. And so I wrote an article for a website called fusion, where I called Get Rich or Die Vlogging, which was basically about myself and my other friends who were quote unquote, YouTube famous, but didn’t have any money and had worked day jobs. And I, at the time I was working Postmates and so, but, but that article went viral because people were shocked. They thought that everyone who was well-known on social media or on YouTube was a millionaire.

And none of us were. A lot of us weren’t. And a lot of us were struggling for money. And I in particular had posted a, a brand deal with a company where I had made, you know, peanuts and I was getting backlash for it saying, oh, these rich YouTubers, they just are selling out. But at the same time, that same day I was looking for quarters in my car so I could do laundry. And was like, I don’t, I, I don’t have any money. And I just got sick of it. And I was like, this is, this is not sustainable. And so I said to the podcast people, I want to do a show about money. And they were like, okay, that’s literally not anything you’ve ever talked about ever. What? And I was like, I, I want to do a show where I learned about money. Because, and so then they, they were kind of, they were kind of, you know, kind enough to be like, ah, okay. And so they hired, they connected me with a really amazing producer, Sam Dingman and we came, came together to make this show that initially was me call it, I mean the first season is me like calling my bank and asking questions, calling my student loan people and asking questions, having people on the show where I’m literally like, so what are stocks? And I had not heard of a personal finance show that was so basic. And so now the show’s grown where like, I, you know, I’ve grown with it.

And now, like in episodes, I’m like complaining about my, my stock market picks and stuff. So we’ve really come a long way. I just had not heard anything that spoke to the average person really at the time.

[00:03:52] Eric Brotman: It’s interesting. Cause it sounds like your show is one that almost like a Netflix show, you gotta binge, you gotta go back to the beginning and listen to the way it started cause it sounds like it’s more of a series, more sequential. You’re right. People don’t understand personal finance. They’re also very afraid of it. It’s taboo. And so I know that one of your first episodes, and I’m going to put you on the spot here for our audience, but I thought it would be fun. One of your first episodes had to do with you going to a local coffee shop and asking random people two questions.

Am I, am I setting the stage properly? This is what happened? You asked them two questions. And the first one, the first one was the less personal and less offensive of the two. Tell us about this. This is a wild story.

[00:04:42] Gaby Dunn: Yeah, for the the first episode of the show, my we wanted to make the point that nobody wanted to talk about money and That basically, that people were willing to talk about sex more than they were talking about money. So we went to this coffee shop and we had a recorder and we were saying, can we interview you to people. And we said, first question, what is your favorite sex position? Almost everyone answered. And then I said, okay, how much money is in your bank account? And only one person answered who was a girl I had actually met before.

And she said there, she, she said she had $9 and we were like, “you have $9 in your bank account?” And she was like, “there’s something romantic about chasing your dreams.” so she didn’t feel any shame about it, but everyone else was like, no, I’m not answering that.

[00:05:32] Eric Brotman: That’s an amazing thing, because I would think that that one subject would be more taboo than the other, but apparently I would be thinking wrong.

People don’t want to talk about money. They don’t want to talk about it with friends, with family with, with significant others. I mean, you know, you did, you did stuff on dating and relationships and one of the things when you’re dating someone, you’re also potentially hooking up with their credit limit, you know, their, their credit score and their, and their financial history.

And the last thing you want to do is necessarily start a, a household with someone who is saddled with enormous debt. So I think these things do go really, really well together. I love the idea that you did something called Get Rich or Die Vlogging. First of all it’s hysterical because two weeks ago we had a guest on the show, Marcus Garrett and Marcus wrote a book called Debt Free or Die Trying.

Okay, well, so he wrote Debt Free or Die Trying you’re doing Get Rich or Die Vlogging. And 50 Cent is going to come after me for bringing this stuff up on every show. I think I’m in real trouble here, right?

[00:06:33] Gaby Dunn: Yeah. He really, has cornered the market on that phrasing, I guess. Yeah, with dating stuff, you know, what’s funny with the dating stuff. A lot of people said with the bank account, a lot of people said, oh my heart, my husband would kill me. My wife would kill me if I said, if I told you. And I was like, but you just said, you know, like there’s been a few people that I’ve, I’ve asked guests to come on the show, friends of mine. And their response has been, oh, my partner would not want me to talk about that.

[00:07:06] Eric Brotman: You know, it’s funny, there’s so much baggage around money. People are embarrassed and I think they’re embarrassed. People can be embarrassed because they have so little, but they can also be embarrassed because they have so much. There’s also an incredible amount of shame about saying, oh, I have lots of money in the bank.

In fact, people want to then use that as a caveat and say, well, I’ve got all this money in the bank, but I’m waiting for this. Or I need a car or there’s a reason for it. Like they get very defensive as to why that’s there. And a lot of times it’s defensive because they say, well, gosh, I’ve got a bunch of money in the bank because I don’t know what to do with it anyway.

So it it’s really, it it’s really, I hate to say it’s funny, but in some ways it’s very funny how uncomfortable we are with something that is so transactional and so concrete.

[00:07:52] Gaby Dunn: Yeah. I mean I try to keep my show is very much like for people who are not super wealthy, but I try to push and keep the perspective of we’re not here to bash people that have money because the, the shame, all we want is for people to talk about money and not have shame. And we can’t do that if every time an article goes viral about someone making you know, six figures, we bash them. Like, that’s just that, that only causes further taboo about being true and speaking the truth about money.

I had a friend of mine, Jenny Yang on who’s a comedian who I had her on because she’s very good with money. And she mentioned that she bought a house and she said, the mortgage for her house. And I, and I appreciate anyone who speaks in direct numbers. Anyone who says the exact, you know, anyone who tells me what the numbers are on this show, we, we don’t say expensive or not expensive.

And so Jenny said, oh, well, my mortgage is $5,000. And the response in the comments were sort of like, oh my God, $5,000 mortgage, what kind of house does she have? Holy s***. And I was like, we’re not mad at her. Like. Th this is helpful, but she has told us this. And there’s, you know, when you’re talking about caveats there’s a really great book called Uneasy Street by Rachel Sherman, where she interviewed and talked to a bunch of wealthy people in New York.

And she said, one thing that they always said is they would go “well, we’re comfortable. We were not private jet rich.” That was the thing that was the, the one thing that everyone would say, “oh, we’re wealthy, but we’re not private jet wealthy.” Like the private jet was keeping them from being like a unbearable.

[00:09:40] Eric Brotman: You know, in the, in the book that I wrote Don’t Retire… Graduate!, I quote one of the great philosophers Chris Rock, who once said that if Bill Gates woke up tomorrow with Oprah’s net worth, he’d want to jump out a window. And that’s where I, that’s the way I described what wealth is. Wealth is relative. So for you to say, “we don’t talk about expensive or inexpensive.” That’s because what’s expensive to person a may not seem expensive to person B and it’s extremely challenging to to without concrete examples. And by the way, a $5,000 mortgage in Manhattan is different than a five, a $5,000 mortgage, you know, somewhere in Iowa.

[00:10:17] Gaby Dunn: Right.

[00:10:18] Eric Brotman: It is a very different beast. There are some expensive places to live and you’re in San Francisco. That could be your rent.

[00:10:25] Gaby Dunn: Yeah. Chris Rock also had, we did an episode about this maybe in season one or two, Chris Rock also had a really interesting stand up bit at one point where he was talking about how in his neighborhood, a very wealthy neighborhood, the black people that live in that neighborhood are him, Mary J Blige, like Denzel Washington, like the top of their field. Very famous. And then the white people that lived in his neighborhood were dentists. And so he was saying that…

[00:10:56] Eric Brotman: I’ve heard that bit.

[00:10:58] Gaby Dunn: Yeah, he was saying that. He, you know, to be a person of color to succeed, you have to, and to be in this, this bracket you have to be like top of the top and to be white and be in this bracket, you just have a job.

[00:11:15] Eric Brotman: I think he might, that might be hyperbole to some extent although, you know, that’s not to disparage the dentist to the world.

[00:11:21] Gaby Dunn: No, but it was really eye opening in terms of like the wealth gap, you know, and in terms of the ways that people reach economic mobility by, you know, by becoming, changing brackets into a higher wealth bracket. A higher economic bracket. Only to be met with people who I think had it a little, a little easier had it, you know, obviously there’s historical problems with black people receiving fair mortgages and and you know, the sort of creation of Levittown, which basically invented the suburb in order to like keep people of color out. So it was, I, I think he. We did an episode, a little bit centered or, or at least talking about that bit. And so I think he he’s got a lot. I mean, I think he’s got a lot of really good insights into the experience of a person of color who’s like shot up into a different economic bracket.

[00:12:25] Eric Brotman: Comedy can be a very, very productive medium. Because it behind, behind a comedic message, there’s often a bigger underlying message that is very much serious, but it, it reaches an audience differently because people are more receptive to it. And certainly there are comedians who get in hot water for some of those various things but for the most part, I think a bit like that is, is really eye-opening. And I think Chris Rock is brilliant. I do, I love his, his, his work. I, I think it’s brilliant in its simplicity and in the way that he’s able to describe something that never would have, I never would have thought of that. Yeah, I never would have, that’s not my experience.

I would never have thought, Hey, you know what? That’s, that’s kind of an interesting dynamic in that kind of situation. And by the way, for the record I am not a private jet wealthy. Though, I’d like to be, so I’m willing to try. But but so, so in your, in your background, tell me an experience if you can, if you can come up with one, an experience where you were able to use humor to get a point across that may be was difficult to, to swallow otherwise.

[00:13:35] Gaby Dunn: Yeah. I mean, a lot of the show operates like that, although we do get serious, but a lot of the show operates on sort of humorous, laugh-so-you-don’t-cry, disbelief at the way things are set up. I’m just thinking regular, like a recent episode we did about multi-level marketing schemes and you know, these people that have been drawn into them and have been financially abused by them are traumatized and really like, you know, suffered a lot. But they, they have a lot of humor about it. And they had a specifically, a woman who was taken in by an MLM called LuLaRoe. She, it was, the episodes are serious, but there’s a lot of, sort of like funny, you have to laugh at the whole situation otherwise you’ll just be beat yourself up about it forever.

I mean, in terms of money stuff, you know, even most recently on an episode I was saying I’m not perfect and like making fun of myself a little bit because I downloaded a blackjack app and I was like, this is going to solve everything. At this stage of my life! I’m 33. I literally have a money show I’ve been doing for nine seasons. Like, and I like saw an ad and I was like this, oh, I’m going to, I know most people don’t do well on this app, but I’m going to game it. What? Like it’s you know, I only lose, I lost like 15 bucks and I was like, you gotta, you gotta cut your losses. But like, you know. Still happened!

[00:15:17] Eric Brotman: You say game it, but you say game it it’s interesting that what financial marketers have now done is gamified investing. It’s a very, it’s a serious problem. Why anyone should be on an app to invest real money, to pick a stock and then get some kind of badge for being a day trader is alarming. Like how is that okay? Because people do look at it like some kind of, some kind of video game. It’s not. And that, that to me is.

[00:15:43] Gaby Dunn: It’s gambling.

[00:15:44] Eric Brotman: Well, it is. It is. And it’s not even educated gambling. I mean, I don’t want to hear, “oh, I researched it.” Those same people are researching vaccines right now, or other things. I don’t want to have researched it. You know what I mean? Like you didn’t research this, this in any material or professional way. You made a decision and you did it to get a badge on your app. Like that’s nuts. And it happens all the time.

[00:16:07] Gaby Dunn: Yeah, and those apps have a lot of power. I mean, the way that Robinhood put a stop on, you know, GameStop at stocks when it was being when it was being bought a lot in in the sort of game stock situation that was going on. You know, the, on any other platform, you would just be able to do what you want. And so, yeah, I don’t really use those apps. I think like, you know, the, the, the, the, like premise is that, oh, you can invest only $5. So you know that that’ll you do micro investing, but at a certain point, like it, it’s not going to, you’re not really going to gain that much from that. But I don’t know, I I’m, I’ve never used I’ve never used that sort of micro investing thing.

I’ve I only gathered, you know, my little $200 and opened my little TD Ameritrade. But I keep it separate, you know, I keep it separate from, I have a retirement account and, and that is completely separate. And I have my business account and that is completely separate. And then I have money in the stock market, which is as much as I can, you know, handle losing and completely separate. I’m not like day trading with my retirement account. That just sits in ETFs and mutual funds. The money that I’m playing with in the stock market, which I’m brand new. I’m literally taking classes. I have a friend who’s willing to like teach me and go over stuff with me. And I’m doing and I’m like current, I’ve been doing it for maybe like two months. I’m like currently probably doing a bad job. But I, but I have to, you have to do trial and error a little bit. And so, and learn and learn as much as you can and not get greedy and not up top and not get, not solve, like w not solve the problem of losing a little bit of money by just adding more money in and not get taken in by trends. Tesla or all that stuff.

But then, you know, there are people that really make that work. So I just, you have to like, I’m learning how to decide if I’m, if I’m okay with volatility or not. You know, I hear a lot of advice from people who have a lot of money that says, “oh, you can’t get emotional about the stock market.” But if you don’t have a lot of money and you’re sort of playing with money that, you know, you’re okay to lose, but historically in my family and in my life and in my history of living, that was kind of at some point in my life, a lot, quote, unquote, a lot of money.

I get emotional and my partner’s like, “you cannot open yahoo finance, look at the stock market and have it ruin your whole day or other otherwise you’re my dad.”

[00:18:54] Eric Brotman: Wow. You know, that. Yeah, no, I’m not going anywhere near the you’re my dad thing. I think we should probably steer clear of that. So, but, but, but I, but you’re right. If there is a, if, if you’re one of those people who checks it every day, it will become an obsession. It will become a problem. It can be an addiction. Like anything else. I mean, the difference between online blackjack and online day trading of equities is that the division there is not significant. It really isn’t.

In fact, I I’ve often told people if what you really want to do is gamble and you have a small amount of money or whatever your budget is for gambling. You’ll have a heck of a lot more fun in Vegas than you will on some financial website. Treat, treat your serious money seriously and, and have fun with your fun money. And that’s okay. To me, that’s just logical. Let’s shift gears a minute because I know you’re going to have an opinion on this, and I hope it’s a PG 13 opinion. Can we talk about student loans for a minute?

[00:19:51] Gaby Dunn: Yeah. So when you were talking about, when you were talking about marrying someone with debt, I think ha marrying someone with student loans is pretty different than marrying someone with intense credit card debt.

[00:20:02] Eric Brotman: Okay, and how do you delineate the difference?

[00:20:05] Gaby Dunn: Because people with student loans, they, they have tried, they have gone to school, perhaps they’ve tried, they’ve tried to better the situation of their job. You know, what sucks about student loans to me is, and I’ve heard it put this way and I, and I really relate to it. Is that it’s a punishment. It’s punishing people for trying to have economic mobility. Because oftentimes it’s people who I have to take out all these loans are people who are like, I need to go to college. Maybe I’m the first in my family. Maybe I’m, you know trying to strive for more. And then we, and then as soon as they start striving for more and they leave school, they’re punished. And I think it’s because also schools have become businesses where they’re luring you in and they’re saying, “oh, look at our gym. Look at our, you know, you look at our cool facilities.” whatever. And you know, I, there, I hope, and I’m seeing this more and more that the smudge against community colleges is sort of lifting. A large in large part due to Dr. Jill Biden, who is Joe Biden’s wife who, you know, say, politics aside who, whatever.

She is a very big advocate for community college and she teaches at a community college and free school, I think is starting to look more appealing rather than sort of throwing a Yale sweatshirt on. But yeah, I mean, I think with credit card debt, there’s some element of like, okay, you know, this is, this is a little bit different to me than somebody who is trying to pay off student loans.

[00:21:39] Eric Brotman: It’s interesting because I think there are a lot of different ways to get in those, those scenarios. I would agree with you that taking a student loan on to try and create upward mobility is different than having a spending spree at, at a department store. So I, you know, I’m not going to convey that they are the same.

[00:21:57] Gaby Dunn: But the problem too is if you have a lot of credit card debt, you know, oftentimes I have found that it’s medical debt, which is…

[00:22:05] Eric Brotman: Yes! And that’s different than bad spending habits.

[00:22:07] Gaby Dunn: And it’s different and it’s super different than, and that, you know, is where universal healthcare perhaps could come in. But medical debt, I would say student loans and medical debt are two things that I would love to see wiped out.

[00:22:22] Eric Brotman: Well, well this is going to become a political debate. No, it’s not, I’m not doing it. I’m not doing. If you ever want to do that, we’ll do it over like a very strong brown liquor. Okay? We can have, we can have, anytime you want, we can have a political debate over single malt scotch. I’m buying. Deal?

[00:22:40] Gaby Dunn: Yes.

[00:22:40] Eric Brotman: And I’ll do that. I’ll do that until one of us either, either loses an appendage or passes out right. One or the other. So, so in terms of, in terms of what people can do to educate themselves about money. Let’s let’s, you know, and specifically, I know you talk to gen Z and millennials who are really they’re facing something that the generations before them didn’t. They’re facing a scenario, I think for the first time where a generation’s likely to be less prosperous than their parents. That’s new in the U.S. I think they’re facing a situation where there are less safety nets. There are less pensions. Social security feels less secure. And so it’s very much they’re on their own.

There are lots of lots of signs out there that basically say, “you’re in this for yourself. And you’re going to have to not just work one job, but have a side hustle just to get by.” And life is expensive and it’s expensive without inflation. It’s only been 2021 that we’ve started to see inflation. The generation you primarily speak to has never seen inflation, yourself included.

I’m going to pick on you for being, you know, I’m your elder I’m allowed. But, but you know, you guys have never seen this before. And when suddenly buying a loaf of bread on Wednesday is cheaper than buying it on Friday. And maybe it’s not quite there. We’re not Venezuela at present, but that is still kind of a, that’s a scary thing.

[00:24:06] Gaby Dunn: Yeah. I think millennials are worse off than gen Z because millennials were still sort of sold the idea of, you know, pull yourself up by our bootstraps and all that. And I’m speaking of, of middle, largely middle class and upper middle class millennials. Because I think I, and I’ve talked about this on the show that I think generations are built by the middle to upper-class people in that generation. And then poor people are just consistently poor the same way. And so they get overlooked a bit in terms of generational conversations. But gen Z, sadly, I think for many reasons, student loans, possibly their parents lost money in the housing crisis in 2008, you know, the pin, the pandemic, like all kinds of, of stuff and I in the rising cost of college, I think gen Z is perhaps positioned to be a little bit more pragmatic and logical. Whether, you know, that is sad or comes with tinges of depression. They the ones that I’ve spoken to have less stars in their eyes about going to big expensive colleges.

They have more worry about student loans because some of them have seen their parents suffer with student loans. And I did an interview for my book, Bad With Money. I interviewed a bunch of high school students at a college in in Chicago, in gage park, in Chicago. So largely low income kids, and they were really aware of that kind of thing. This was pre pandemic. I interviewed them in like 2017 and a lot of them were like, “I’m not going to go to college and spend all this money. I’m going to a trade school. I’m going to community college.” You know, one girl was like, “I’m going back to my home country to go to medical school there.”

Or, you know,” I want to be a photographer. So I’m going to start an Instagram and then start shadowing wedding photographers so that I can become a photographer and get contacts” and all that stuff. And that girl, I talk about her a lot because she, at the end of the meeting at the end of the interview, I was interviewing a bunch of them. At the end of the interview. She slipped me a business card with her Instagram on it and said, follow me. And I was like, see, that’s the hustle. I think like the gen Z people that I’ve come across are slightly more aware of the circumstances and and are going to try to avoid the same mistakes that millennials made as much as possible. And so, and also they have more resources, I think, to learn about money and people are, people are being more vocal, so it’s not just like they’re, if their parents talked about it, if their parents didn’t. It’s that they can hop on Instagram and see me and see, you know, Dasha Kennedy, The Broke Black Girl, and see queer financial advisors, and see people that are young talking about this stuff.

And. It’s not just like, if their parents talked about them, if they didn’t. If they went to, you know, a financial advisor, if they didn’t. They have a bit more access, which is, which is hopefully good. Although it does lead them to be hyper aware of the pitfalls of that kind of thing.

[00:27:18] Eric Brotman: Well, I think gen Z, I, I, I agree with you. I think gen Z has something else on there. And that is an enormous amount of time. You know, when I, when I think about the folks who, who really got clobbered in the, in the real estate collapse in ’08 and also, you know, in other other market collapses of different kinds over time, it’s almost always the folks in their fifties and sixties who get clobbered. Because the folks in their twenties and thirties for the most part will dust themselves off, take it as an opportunity and grow from it. And the folks in their seventies and eighties ideally have already positioned themselves to, to not have, to not be in harm’s way from that. But the folks who are, you know, the folks that I spend a lot of time with people who are say 45 to 65, and in that group, the closer they get to that moment of financial independence… and I know you’re aware of the fire movement and people who want to be financially independent at 27 or 37. And I think that, I think that’s largely wonderful. I think financial independence is a great goal at any age, but for the folks who’ve done it sort of the traditional way for better, for worse who are three years, five years, seven years from that moment where work becomes optional for them, they can’t afford to get clobbered. They can’t afford a mistake.

[00:28:33] Gaby Dunn: Right.

[00:28:33] Eric Brotman: You know, if you’re going to make mistakes, make them young and make them grandly. I mean, make, make mistakes you can laugh about for 50 years. But you can’t make mistakes when you get older. There’s no Mulligan when you only have a few more years in the tank where you can actually make money.

[00:28:46] Gaby Dunn: Yeah. They have time.

[00:28:46] Eric Brotman: So that’s, that’s where I think, yeah. I think gen Z is going to be okay. I think the millennials are, I’m going to keep picking on them because they’re easy targets and because I’m a gen X-er and gen X-ers have no power ever. We’re just going to do what the boomers say. And then we’re going to do what the millennials want.

And we’re just going to come along for the ride. You know, we’re like a saddlebag on the horse of two generations, so we’re just going.

[00:29:07] Gaby Dunn: True.

[00:29:08] Eric Brotman: That’s why our, our, oh, tell me, tell me. No, no. Tell me about us. I want to know, tell me about Gen X.

[00:29:15] Gaby Dunn: I was going to say, you guys were sold the American dream a little bit harder off coming off the backs of boomers, like you were told, get married, buy a house. That’s how you’re happy. Have a office job. That’s how you’re happy. And then millennials came along and were like, “no, we want to spend a ton of money on college and we want to work at a startup.” Or whatever, you know, like I think gen X got the short end of the stick in terms of promises.

[00:29:43] Eric Brotman: Well, well, thanks. I’m trying to overcome that every day. You have just sent me, you’ve just set me back about 18 months in my own personal therapy. So this has been a very painful experience for me, Gaby. And I’m sorry it happened.

[00:29:55] Gaby Dunn: This is based solely on the movie Reality Bites.

[00:29:59] Eric Brotman: Yes, that was, that was the real, that was really our that’s our generations thing. That, and the breakfast club, you pick it. Those are, those are our movies and pretty much any, any kind of John Hughes movie. So we’re, we’re running out of time. I wish we weren’t, but we are. And so the first thing I need from you and you’ve given us such, such good stuff already, but I need an extra credit assignment. And for our listeners and our listeners really are across the spectrum. We have listeners in their twenties and listeners in their seventies and, and it’s very, very cool that we’re reaching such a broad audience. What, what, what kind of takeaway would you give? What extra credit assignment would you give them that folks could could wrap their head around right now?

[00:30:40] Gaby Dunn: In terms of the title of my podcast, Bad With Money, people seem to think that that applies to low income or broke people. And it doesn’t. It applies to anyone who is not paying attention. So you can be wealthy and ha and be bad with money. You can be, you know, low-income or broke and be bad with money, but generally bad with money to me does not equate with poor. It equates with not paying attention. Letting things slide, not looking at your bank account. Not realizing that, “oh, I actually got overcharged for this,” or, oh, they actually, you know, there’s a lot of talk about just calling and negotiating medical bills or, you know, obviously it’s a lot of work to realize that you got to hop on the phone or to realize that, “oh, you know what, I’m going to, I, this item didn’t work out for me. I’m going to go return it.” And you know, maybe make $50 back rather than eating that $50. I think. I also like being aware of what’s happening in your, in your bank statements, which I know like what’s going in, what’s going out, which I know, again, sounds tedious, but I think just like the biggest thing that you can start doing and it, and it is perhaps the hardest step and for me, it was the hardest step because it involved a lot of tears, which is just start paying attention. And I know you don’t want to pay attention because the reality of a situation is always hard to swallow. But starting to pay attention is really like the first step. Open your mail look at, “okay. What actually is my, I have it on auto pay, but what actually does it cost to keep the lights on in here?” You know, I think you set and forget a lot and, and you end up losing.

[00:32:21] Eric Brotman: Good advice, practical advice, difficult assignment. But for people who aren’t paying attention, I think it’s a great idea for them to start. Where can folks check out your show and your resources and learn more about you?

[00:32:33] Gaby Dunn: Yeah. My show is Bad With Money. And I am @GabyRoad. G A B Y R O A D. Although most of the money content is at on Instagram, this is all Instagram. @BWMPod. Where I post a lot of about the show and some money memes. And then I also have another show called Just Between Us, which is more of a comedy show, but for money stuff, it’s all, it’s all Bad With Money. And my book is called Bad With Money

[00:32:59] Eric Brotman: Very good. Well, thank you, Gaby, for being on the show. I hope I get a chance to guest on one of your shows. Maybe I’ll do the comedy show and then we can have our political debate because it’ll be funny if we do it well. You know,

[00:33:11] Gaby Dunn: I, yeah, I think so. My co-host might be very confused.

[00:33:17] Eric Brotman: Listen. I aim to confuse as often as possible, so. Thank you so much for being on the show. It was great.

[00:33:23] Gaby Dunn: Yeah. Thank you for having me.

[00:33:25] Eric Brotman: I’d like to thank all of you for listening. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to our podcast and leave a review on apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Please also check out our books, workbooks, and online financial literacy resources at Brotmanmedia.com. We’ll be back next week with another installment of office hours and in two weeks with another engaging guest. For now, this is your host, Eric Brotman, reminding you: don’t retire. Graduate!

[00:33:50] Narrator: From this day forward, let us begin changing the way we view retirement. Today, I implore you: don’t retire. Graduate! Visit our website at brotmanmedia.com to subscribe and please like us and post comments on social media. Securities offered through Kestra investment services, LLC. Kestra IS. Member FINRA SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through Kestra advisory services, LLC. Kestra AS, an affiliate of Kestra IS. Kestra IS or Kestra AS are not affiliated with Brotman financial or any other entity discussed.