The Leisure Gap, Princess Treatment, and Other Hard Truths About the “Soft Life”

There is perhaps nobody in the financial education space who knows her way around the National Bureau of Economic Research quite like Stefanie O’Connell Rodriguez, author of the forthcoming book The Ambition Penalty. If Chapter 2 of Rich Girl Nation (including citations) were sentient, it would probably sound a lot like Stefanie. Today on the show, I’m picking her brain about the current state of what she calls “the ambition penalty.”

Here’s a sneak peek:

Katie: One common refrain in this conversation about work-life balance, for women in particular, is that there’s really no way to win. No matter what you choose [full-time caregiver, full-time work], you’re going to get burnt out, so there’s a nihilism that plagues this dilemma. What does the data say?

Stefanie: What the data consistently show is that burnout affects far more women than men. But it also shows that this burnout doesn’t have anything to do with “not being in your feminine” or any other manufactured claim of “natural gender differences.” Instead, what this burnout reflects is the vastly unequal demands women still face in the process of working to realize their professional and personal ambitions.

For the purposes of this discussion, I think we should talk about one of the most under-recognized aspects of it, which is the gender leisure gap. We often talk about paid work and unpaid work, but if you really want to understand why debates about burnout or “having it all” and “work-life balance” (and whether they’re even possible) are almost exclusively had among women, the gender leisure gap is the one to study.

According to an analysis of 2022 American Time Use survey data, the free time gender gap holds in men’s favor across race, ethnicity, education, marital status, employment status, age, and children in the household, and leaves women with an average of 13% less free time than men. Between the ages of 35 and 44, that rises to 23% less free time. They say, “For full-time workers, it’s as if men get a month more a year of vacation compared to their women peers. And that is on top of men maintaining their outsized access to professional rewards and public power.”

Listen now.

As of November 3, SNAP benefit payments may be restarting, though only at 50%, and with a weeks-long delay. “Two federal judges ruled last week that freezing payments for the country’s largest anti-hunger program is likely unlawful.” The flood of stories online in the last week of people realizing their EBT cards are funded by SNAP has been sickening. (If you need support or want to offer it to someone else, “Find Help” is an interesting site that can match you with what you need by location.) (NPR)

Really appreciated Nick Maggiulli’s analysis on gold and the reminder that a glittering rock outperforming productive businesses is sort of outrageous, if you think about it for too long. I looked into this after we answered a listener question about whether I personally own gold (I do not) and found that Data Daddy came with the receipts: A gold position between 2% and 10% in a portfolio increases the cumulative return while lowering overall volatility, so the data suggests it’s a rational holding. Still don’t think I’m going to buy any, but that’s due more to complacency than a lack of conviction. (Of Dollars and Data)

The most useful chart in Nick’s post, in my opinion—20-year lookback for 0%, 2%, 5%, and 10% gold allocations. Do with that information what you will.

Income growth in the US has slowed to a decade low. If you’re feeling lowballed in the job market relative to years past, you are not alone. (Financial Times)

Ultra-high net worth families are hiring “executive housekeepers” for $100,000 or more per year, professionals who clean high-stakes spaces filled with things like $500,000 coffee tables and other shit you can only find at a Sotheby’s auction in Palm Beach. The obvious observation to make here is that rich people officially have too much money, but also, this is a valuable skill set, and it’s fun to think about Olympic-level housekeeping. I even picked up a little dusting tip: “You wet your hands, you give them one shake, and then you wipe them off in the cotton cloth, and you now have the perfect humidity to be able to dust with.” (Bloomberg)

I wasn’t joking about the coffee table.

This advice column—about drinking too much and getting gossipy with current coworkers after an overconfident job interview elsewhere—gave me a perversely pleasurable, vicarious “work situation” panic, enjoyable only to the extent that I am no longer in danger of such a faux pas given my total lack of alcohol consumption. Sharing before the office holiday party season begins, just in case… (The Cut)

I gained a lot from (and will be re-listening to) this 2019 conversation on working-class conservatism that I stumbled across recently, which reflected on the conservative talk radio the hosts listened to as kids in the backseats of their parents’ cars (relatable). The part I keep returning to is the idea that conservatism’s emphasis on individual responsibility doubles as a vote for individual agency, and that as working-class people, they never wanted to think of themselves as victims in a system they had no control over. Put differently, an ethos of individual responsibility can feel empowering in a way that emphasizing structural oppression does not. The story about the guest’s parents losing their home in 2009 and internalizing it as a personal failure, rather than a single pixel in a much larger picture of global structural catastrophe, is a great example of the psychological shortcomings of that outlook. (Dissent)

Kyla Scanlon crafted an accurate snapshot of the moment we’re in, with the public sector pulling back from its role as stabilizer at the exact moment the private sector is swooping in as gambler. Did not know that the size of AI’s total market capitalization is 17x the dot-com bubble and 4x mortgage-backed securities. (New York Times)

‍🩹 Seeing some genuinely nutty reports in the r/healthinsurance Subreddit (that the algorithm began serving me health insurance posts the day after I announced my upcoming shift to self-employment does not feel random), like premiums going from $1,000 per month for a family to $2,400, overnight. “Some of the biggest increases, in dollar terms, will hit people who make slightly over 400% of the federal poverty level, which is about $62,600 for an individual. Many of those people qualified for a subsidy this year, but they won’t get any help at all next year because enhanced federal payments are set to lapse.” Comments section is deranged, per usual. (Wall Street Journal)

🪫 This piece explaining what AI data centers actually do cleared up a lot of confusion for me, while at the same time somehow introducing more. I said last week that the downstream economic effects of AI will ultimately be a continuation of the trends we’ve seen since the 1980s, but the scale does feel different, if only because “[t]he money spent to develop it, and others like it, represents one of the largest deployments of capital in human history.” It sounds as though the computational power required to keep this party going will multiply exponentially, and it’s clear that the limiting factor is energy, which the US has not yet solved. Meanwhile, China has 26 nuclear reactors. Remember last December when Google’s “Willow” quantum chip solved a computational problem so fast that the researchers believed (and put in the press release!) that it “lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse”? Maybe we can borrow some energy from another universe. That’s how that works, right? (The New Yorker)

Babe, what’s wrong? You’ve barely touched your $3.3 billion Microsoft data center. (Wall Street Journal)

If you know of a job opening that was made for #RichGirlNation, submit it for consideration here.

• Accountant (Account Manager), Captive Insurance Management — Willis Towers Watson: Up to $100k plus potential bonus and pension, remote or hybrid in select cities across AZ, NC, SC, TN, TX, UT, and VT (3+ years’ experience). Reply to this email to connect with Rich Gal Kirsty for a referral!
• 🪩 Conference & Events Producer — Institute of Management Accountants: Up to $100k, remote (5+ years’ experience)
• Senior Technical Program Manager, Ads — Pinterest: Up to $247k, remote or in San Francisco, CA (5+ years’ experience)
• Public Partnerships Manager — Zipcar: Up to $120k, hybrid in Los Angeles, CA; San Diego, CA; San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA; Chicago, IL; or New York City, NY (5–8+ years’ experience)
• Content Manager — Cubby Beds: Up to $123k plus bonus, equity ownership, and unlimited PTO, hybrid in Denver, CO (5–8+ years’ experience)