Cheyenne: Thank you for joining us for this episode of What the Finance, there are a few things we like to mention at the top of each episode.
Rachel: First, if you want to get in touch with us, you can email what_the_finance@protonmail.com or join the What the Finance discord server.
Cheyenne: Second. It would mean a lot to us. If you could support our show through Patreon starting at $3 a month, you can get episodes, shout-outs, access to topic polls, and get to listen to some pretty hilarious out.
Rachel: And third, as we seek it to be a more inclusive show, we want to acknowledge that colonialism is an ongoing process, and capitalism, which we regularly decry is part of this process. We are recording this episode on the ancestral land of the Dakota and Ojibwe people, and we recognize our sovereignty and express our gratitude at being here. So Diane and I, I think have both been noticed me this trend in the personal finance space where suddenly everybody is talking about, like, if you just work hard enough, you can be a millionaire. You can be financially independent. And I think it's fair to say that this trend is troubling to both of us.
Cheyenne: Yeah. I think that. We've talked about a lot, how we both believe that there are, there are systems in place that are truly built to keep people kind of, okay. I, I, my brain is not working at this point in the week. They're built to keep people poor. Right? Certain corporations want that. That's just like it industries, certain industries want that.
Better for their business model.
Rachel: Right. I think the other thing, though, we both recognize and talk about a lot, is that at least like in the United States, our entire legal system is set up in a way to marginalize most people. And actually to that point, I was, uh, earlier today I was browsing the, What the Finance Twitter feed.
And there was a tweet that came from. That said what to wealthy people all have in common. And most of them, the replies were ones that I thought were pretty pithy. They were funny. One person though said, uh, wealthy people. Aren't worried about pronouns all the time. And I think that this person's intent.
Was to say, like, if you're wealthy, then you're not worried about quote-unquote stupid stuff But the point I think that this person actually successfully made was that wealthy person or people who are not consistently marginalized by society at large. Right. So. I would, they were meant to be like righteously outraged.
And I think they're just righteously outraged about completely the wrong thing.
Cheyenne: Right. Uh, something, something similar had just come up. I don't remember what exactly, but I, I, it was in reference to something that somebody said, and I, I said, essentially, we agree. Um, we just don't agree on this. We're just not talking about the same thing.
Rachel: Okay, shoot. I remember you talking about this too, and I don't remember.
Cheyenne: I think it was also on Twitter in reference to someone's tweet, but . . .
Rachel: What a place. Twitter. Yeah,
Cheyenne: I think that there has been a lot of conversation around this, this specific problematic mentality of anybody can. Become quote, unquote successful. If they just work hard enough, there there's been a lot of conversation around that over the last, I would say four or so years. However, the flip side is happening more, which is where people are disagreeing significantly more.
And so that conversation is happening a lot. And I think that from my perspective, I just want to. I just want to put out there and verbalize some of the reasons that that's not necessarily realistic for everybody in a setting that's not argumentative and somebody is not already defensive and hopefully, hopefully can take from that, something that makes them go.
Oh, okay. Yeah. Maybe that's not actually possible for everybody because that, that belief is super dangerous. Holding that belief that, that somebody remains in the situation that they're in because they want to, and, and not because, and because they're just not working hard enough is super dangerous. It's very early.
And so my brain is working in mysterious ways. And one of the ways that it's working right now is it's just, it's interesting to me that however long ago, when we started this. It's like two years almost. We started, I mean, some of our first episodes were talking about like how to budget and now we pretty consistently talk about like policy issues that need to change.
Our society can be better. Like, it's just, it's wild to me. How, how much we've grown. It's true.
Rachel: Like, all those early episodes I think are still important, right? Like it's important to know how to budget, but yeah, I think like more and more, we are both realizing like, I mean, and I thought this previously, too, so it's not like new knowledge, but you can't like how true it is that you can't budget yourself out of pocket.
Right. If we see this narrative all the time, like, oh yeah, just like, just go get a job. Uh, okay. So what's available in my area, right? Like I will not McDonald's gets thrown under the bus, like all the time. So I will say I have worked at McDonald's. That is the hardest I've ever worked in my entire life professionally.
It was hard work. A job at McDonald's is not going to pay your bills. You were working your ass off, but you still couldn't like live on your own or support family. Right. So it's not just about how hard you work.
Cheyenne: Right. You know, and I think that that's, I mean, that's been a huge conversation for. Pretty much my whole life is that argument that, that minimum wage be enough to make a living wage. And that's, I think, I think one of the counterarguments that I hear when it comes to that is, and I don't know where this came from, but the belief that if we raise the minimum wage to a livable wage, That somehow inflation will make it impossible for the rest of us who are currently making a living wage to exist.
I don't understand this, but I hear it a lot. I hear it. Inflation get brought into that conversation a lot. And I don't maybe, maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand how those two have been connected. Right.
Rachel: Well, cause I think people are very, like, we understand what's right in front of us in the moment, right?
Like. We of course everybody who's been listening to the show for a while. Those I have a toddler and I'm kind of in that toddler phase of life. So like with toddlers, you talk about object permanence all the time and how like a developmental milestone is that like children can understand. That things are there even when they're not right in front of their face, but the more I go along, the more I realize we're all just basically toddlers, um, just with increasingly complex outsets.
Uh, and so like when I think when it comes to like talking about wages and the price for services, like to some people that totally make sense, like, okay, if the cashier. That is ringing out. My diapers at target is making more money than the diapers are going to be more expensive,nobody is thinking about, and I'm sorry, I'm using Target as an example because I shop there all the time. But as a company, I think they're great.
Cheyenne: Yeah, this is a company that whose name we will say.
Rachel: But nobody is thinking about. Like how much money is the CEO of Target making, right? Like why it's stead of, uh, like the reason by cashier can afford to live, not the fault of the CEO. Who's making 300 times their wage.
Right. Right. And like, we don't see the CEO, right? Like the CEO of Target is not wandering around my local store and doing work. Right. So I think that that's where like people forget because we don't see it, how many human beings and very, very highly paid human beings. It takes to run a company. And those people.
Would benefit from a budget because they're already making a living wage. It could probably weather a pay cut, right. Or in quotes pay cut. Right. Like maybe you don't get raises for a while or something like that.
Cheyenne: Okay. So I, I did, I was missing something like, I, I knew that that was the other side of the argument, but I forgot about that for a while, because in my world, when I talk about that, I only.
That, that would mean that like outrageously paid leadership in companies would not get pay increases and potentially would get pay cuts. I know that that's not a popular opinion, but I also, like you can only spend so much money. Like that's only like you get to a point where it's just accumulating because you literally cannot spend enough that.
Right, but nobody needs billions of dollars. No one person needs that much money. So for that, not even to be part of the consideration is just wild to me. Right.
Rachel: Like, exactly like that amount of money is not going to do me any one family.
Really any level of good.
Cheyenne: So getting back to the topic, there we go. I had to think of that word of that toxic positivity. So, so many self-help finance people are out there saying if you just budget follow a strict budget and get. Seven jobs. You can also dig your way out of debt and then make a living a, a livable amount of money and build wealth.
And then you can also, um, somehow in all of this get better jobs. So you have to have fewer and fewer jobs. And that is true for some people, I suppose. I think it depends on what jobs you can find. As we've said, what's accessible to you in the area that you live in and what technology is accessible to you to find side jobs because fewer and fewer jobs are posted in the paper. I mean, there's still jobs in the paper, but there are significantly fewer of them because it's expensive to post jobs on the paper.
Rachel: Not that many people read the paper.
Cheyenne: Right. Companies put them online. Now, if you don't have access to get online. . . Not going to be able to find those jobs. Another piece I have I've started to notice is many jobs are becoming remote. And so if people don't have equipment at home, it's harder for them to even apply and interview for those jobs. Because some of them, a majority of them, I would say provide you equipment.
But if you don't even have technology to apply for that job, that. That becomes an issue.
Rachel: for me, it really is summed up in great, like while hard work is important, right? Like rightly you should strive to be a productive member of society. We also live in a society where like the volume of labor that you can produce is all really, almost never.
Going to be enough to like make you a million dollars a year.
Cheyenne: Right. And the expectation that somehow someone is defined as quote-unquote successful based on how much money they make is bullshit. Just going to say that that's like, we could just end that there, but I forgot the other one. But that piece and itself, like you don't, you can do whatever you want and make however much money you are okay with making and still be considered successful.
If, if that, if you're doing, if you're truly doing what you want to be doing and you are happy, that is successful. Yes. We, as a society have this. Push the strive. I don't know what it is or what, what it came from, but we have this piece of us that constantly has to be looking for the next best thing, even when it comes to jobs.
And I'm not saying that that's always bad, but sometimes you just need a break and sometimes good enough is good enough. I just. I ended up not saying a lot in these episodes because I'm trying my best not to offend or piss people off because they want them to still listen so that they get at least a little bit of the message that we're trying to put out there.
Um, so with that said, depending on, you know, your approach, I will usually share more about my opinions in a much less. . . .
Rachel: On air environment
Cheyenne: Yeah. So discord is a really great place to catch Rachel and I before and after I'm recording episodes pretty much always put in the chat, what we're going to record on for a week.
And we get input from the people on our server, which has been great. Um, definitely challenges, some of. My thought processes sometimes, but also, uh, we just have some really fun conversations. So if you like the things that we talk about and you want to talk more about them, or you want to tell us how wrong we are, feel free to come there, or you can tell us how right we are too.
We love that as well, but we already have an echo chamber.
Rachel: So yeah, if you want to add to it, that's fine. But if you want to respectfully disagree, that's fine too.
Cheyenne: Yeah. We do take that quite well, actually.
Rachel: Yeah.
Cheyenne: You wouldn't be surprised. I mean, sometimes it takes a little bit for us to respond back to things cause we're kind of chewing on it, but I mean, I think that, uh, we both definitely are willing to listen to perspective perspectives outside of our own.
I mean, I think that's hopefully evident by. The conversations that we have and the amount of research that goes into the episodes that we make. I think that that's something that we've never really talked about before, but it makes sense to prepare for the, I was just going to say it makes it seem like we just come in here and ramble, which we do. But part of the reason that we can ramble is because we've spent hours researching. I mean, reading, listening to other podcasts, that kind of stuff. So. If you have, do you have something that you want to listen to us? Ramble about? Let us know too.
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