Hi there,

I had a roommate who, at one point, was one of the most powerful assistants in Hollywood. She was 1 of 4 assistants and her life was chaotic, but when you’re in your twenties, you have the energy for it.

One day I remember coming home, walking into the kitchen and seeing several deli platters full of uneaten food. There were multiple loaves of bread and packs of cigarettes. My immediate thought was, “Score.”

“Where did all this come from?” I asked my roommate. She was standing in the kitchen engrossed in her BlackBerry. Yes, you read that correctly. This was the time when we had all just moved from our quaint Motorola Razors to BlackBerrys.

“Leftovers from Bill’s flight,” she said without looking up. He flew private, of course.

There was so much food, the trays were blanketing all the open counter space. I knew our household of three young women wouldn’t be able to finish it all before it went bad.

Naturally, I wondered, “How many people were on this flight?”

“Two.”

TWO!? It was Bill and one other person. And the bounty of leftovers made sense and also made no sense. It made sense because there would be this much left over if there were only two people, but also, why would anyone ever order this much food for only two people?

That was the moment my young, naive self realized that so many of us can live off the crumbs of the very wealthy. And we do.

But since the time of BlackBerrys, it’s only gotten worse. The Bills of today are offering less crumbs and we’re all just supposed to smile and be grateful and hope we can positive-mind our way out of the current state of America.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how our culture needs to shift from gargling the balls of billionaires, reading books trying to become more like them, to shamelessly calling them out for trying to fill a deep hole inside of themselves with money and power. In the same way we’d sit an alcoholic down and tell them their drinking has gotten off the rails, when can we start to tell the Bills of our world, that they’ll feel like they finally have enough when they finally feel like they are enough… so, why don’t you work on that instead, buddy?

It might not seem like a shift in culture makes a difference. But culture is the invisible force that shapes everything—our values, our dreams, and what we consider "normal." Culture tells us what to aspire to, who to admire, and what success looks like. Right now, our culture is telling us to worship at the altar of excess while we fight for the crumbs.

What if we redirected our collective attention to the people creating community wealth instead of hoarding it? What if we celebrated sufficiency over excess?

How can we practice small acts of cultural resistance? From supporting local businesses and talking openly about money with friends, to questioning narratives that equate worth with wealth and sharing resources instead of stockpiling them. How are you resisting and challenging the current status quo? And what would our world look like if we all did?

Take care,

💸 So you owe the IRS a lot of money? Here’s what to do. (Vox) This doesn’t mean you did anything wrong — and there are plenty of ways to dig yourself out. Featuring wise words from Hell Yeah Taxes’s very own, Lee Frisari.

⛔ I Am An AI Hater (Anthony Moser)

📲 Coding After Coders: The End of Computer Programming as We Know It (New York Times) “The reason that tech generally — and coders in particular — see L.L.M.s differently than everyone else is that in the creative disciplines, L.L.M.s take away the most soulful human parts of the work and leave the drudgery to you. […] And in coding, L.L.M.s take away the drudgery and leave the human, soulful parts to you.”

🧠 What Does Extreme Wealth Do to the Brain? (New York Magazine) “Maybe wealth isn’t transformative; it’s an amplifier. It turns up the volume on whoever you already are. When you don’t have money, your personality runs up against friction all day long. You might be generous, but your generosity has a ceiling when you’re living on a fixed income. You might be anxious, but ordinary life forces you to confront your stressors often enough to keep them manageable. Money removes that friction, and whatever it was holding in check is free to run. The generous person can give amounts that change other people’s lives. The anxious person can design a life without any of their old triggers and then fall apart when the smallest thing goes wrong because their coping muscles have atrophied. This might sound reassuring — You’re still you! — but how many people really know who they are when there’s nothing pushing back on them? Plenty of billionaires probably seemed normal when their eccentricities were still bound by everyday constraints.”

🛍️ The Highly Exclusive Way That Everybody Shops Now (The Atlantic) “Drops create artificial scarcity and manufacture novelty. They make underwear feel like a new iPhone, a coffee cup feel like a collector’s item. They turn inventory management into a cultural event and shopping into a game, even if it is one in which the prize is the right to spend $80 on a pair of Crocs that look like the Windows XP wallpaper. When the drop was first adopted, it was by scrappy, small-production streetwear companies that had been forced by necessity to create limited inventory and to mete it out over time—if they made too much, they risked having leftover T-shirts, but if they made fewer products, everything could get bought up immediately, and shelves would sit empty for weeks or months. But if the practice was meant to keep supply and demand in harmony, it really, really didn’t work. Soon enough, “drop days” were convening hundreds of people outside tiny stores. Anything that, say, the cultish brand Supreme stamped its blocky logo on—a brick, a voodoo doll, a functional fire extinguisher—and issued as a drop became an overnight fetish object. In 2019, the company MSCHF was founded to specialize not in any one product but in drops, the more absurd and attention-grabbing, the better: a malware-infected laptop that sold in 2019 for $1.3 million; Nike Air Max 97s injected with holy water. MSCHF claims to be an artistic project skewering consumer culture, but I’m not so sure what the people buying its stuff think is happening.”

This Week's Featured Story: A 29-year-old sales operations specialist navigating debt-free living, early investing wins, family financial responsibility, and the tension between saving aggressively and actually investing.

👤 Who: Female, 29, Senior Sales Operations Specialist

📍 Location: Maryland

💰 Income: $84,900

🏦 Savings & Investments: $50K in savings and $160K in retirement

💳 Debt: $0 — no student loans, car payments, mortgage, or credit card debt

💼 Net Worth: ~$239K

🛍️ Spending Priorities: Takeout food and secondhand natural fiber sweaters

💡 Biggest Financial Win: By 27, I was contributing to a 401(k), Roth IRA, and HSA all at the same time.

💎 Inheritance: No, and I’m not expecting any inheritance.

👪 Who I Support Financially: I may need to support my older sister, who has struggled financially. I’ve helped her start contributing to an IRA and increase her 401(k) contributions.

😬 How I Deal with Jealousy: Mostly around housing. Friends with intergenerational wealth often have a safety net — a place to land if something goes wrong — and that’s something I don’t have.

📉 Biggest Money Regret: Spending $2,000 on cheap Anthropologie polyester tops that I ended up donating three years later.

🏠 Money Lessons from Childhood: Having the lights shut off from an unpaid electric bill — and spending winters in a cold house — stuck with me. Once I had the bill in my name, I always kept a credit balance to avoid that happening again.

🤐 Ever Hidden Money? Yes — I hid a promotional salary increase from my mom and sister for about a year so I could keep living below my means and saving peacefully.

💰 Financial Windfalls: A $3,000 bonus at work — I split it between savings and investing in my IRA.

📚 Best Financial Advice: Best: Never be late with the “white man’s money” (credit cards, bills, rent).
Worst: Keep up with the Joneses, if you have the money.

😅 Quirky Money Habit: I probably keep too much in savings that could be invested instead.

🙃 Most Regrettable Purchase: Spending $1,000 on brand new tires — full price, no discount — from a national chain.

🧠 Biggest Financial Realization: That I may have to work twice as hard to get half as much.

💸 How I Talk About Money: I try to approach conversations with softness and a focus on mutual well-being.

🗣️ Money Outlook: I honestly don’t know what I’m doing. I follow money blogs and take advice from non-TikTok women in personal finance — and do my best from there.

If you'd like to share your personal story with us, submit it here! And if you'd like to share your business story with us, submit it here!

The Nerdletter is put together by my Editorial Assistant, Cole Kalin, of Ladies Talking About Money. Please consider several ways you can contribute to this important mission – an inclusive conversation about money, finances, and capitalism for Creatives. 💸 Hire Hell Yeah Business Management to work with your creative agency​ ☀️ File your taxes with Hell Yeah Taxes​ 🌟 Leave a review for the Weird Finance Podcast​ 👯‍♀️ Share this issue with friends​ 🤓 Tell us what you think of The Nerdletter​

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