On Worthwhile Side Hustles, Financial Tradeoffs, & Frustration with American Politicians

In today’s Rich Girl Roundup, we’re discussing a wide range of alternately nerdy and controversial (sometimes both) topics:

• 🩹 The role of insurance for neutralizing ambient fear of impending doom
• When side hustles are worthwhile (or just a low-ROI energy drain)
• How to calculate opportunity costs when you have both savings and loans as options on the table
• The theoretically rigorous case for wealth taxes (to prevent a cabal of, like, six dudes from establishing monopolistic dominion over labor power for societally worthless crap like gold-plated toilets and bowling alleys on yachts)
• Where the current economic discussion about Trump’s immigration policies is self-defeating
• Why my perspective on state-run universal services has become complicated by the last six months

…and more, including a temporary and especially thrilling new segment called “Airing Your Grievances.”

Enjoy this easy listen.

🛒 I must have missed this paper when it first came out in 2022, but there’s mounting evidence that “buy now, pay later” point-of-sale loans like Afterpay have increased both total spending levels and retail’s share of total spending. Translation: BNPL isn’t just changing the way people pay, it’s changing how much they shop and spend. I’m filing this one under “unsurprising and still satisfying to confirm,” and will take this opportunity to go all D.A.R.E. on you: Just Say No when Klarna propositions you.

For some reason, this Jacobin piece made me nervous—like I was about to encounter a surprise critical mention of “personal finance influencer Money with Katie.” Fear not, I emerged unscathed (though it wouldn’t be the first time I’d find myself in its radical pages). Gen Z is investing earlier in life and at higher rates than previous generations, Huda Awan points out, and because of wage distribution trends, The Youths basically have no choice if they want a shot at a dignified retirement.

Which country is richest? It depends. This recent Economist breakdown looked at GDP per person (feels like median income would’ve been a more instructive measure of access to resources, but I digress), then adjusted for price differences and hours worked. In other words, it isn’t just ranking how much money a country produces per person, but how valuable that money is compared to what it can buy and how long people have to work to get it. The results will not shock you, if you’ve been around awhile: our Favored Nordic Nanny State Norway was first, followed by Qatar, Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland, and then the good old US of A.

I fear I’m about to vanish for the next week to dive into what it means that the US government just took a 10% stake in Intel, making an $8.9 billion investment using funds granted by the 2022 Chips Act. My top-line intuition is that I prefer the American taxpayer benefiting from equity ownership to the mechanics of standard corporate welfare (i.e., writing a no-strings-attached check), but I’m also jumpy about concentrating even more power at the federal level right now.

️ Unionized workers earn about 17% more than workers who aren’t collectively bargaining as of 2025, a reality that convinced me supporting labor organizers is as worthwhile as penning my silly little missives. Last weekend, I canvassed for the Starbucks union (Starbucks Workers United, or SBWU), which is still fighting for its first contract. The experience was somewhat rewarding, mostly daunting, and only briefly sent me spiraling about whether some Americans really would trade democracy for a Frappuccino. Starbucks is a $100 billion nominally progressive company, in the sense that it pays lip service to whatever watered-down version of “woke” ideas corporations were rushing to endorse post-2020 while quietly firing organizers in the backroom. That’s what makes SBWU’s accomplishments thus far—unionizing one store, then dozens, then hundreds, all while facing illegal retaliation from a massive global firm—so impressive. Pulling off its first contract wouldn’t just be a win for them, but a huge shift in power for service industry workers nationwide. Increasing union density even drives up wages for non-unionized workers. The baristas may need to strike this fall, and if they do, you can signal your support by pledging to get your caffeine elsewhere while they’re on the picket line.

This interview in The Point with author Quinn Slobodian is a hair academic (“I first need to clarify that my method is quite doctrinal” was one hell of an opener), but if you’re interested in neoliberalism’s alliance with the far right, I think you’ll enjoy it. “Neoliberalism” has become a derogatory catch-all term to describe a naive faith in “the market” to magically transform political problems into economic ones, but this conversation added a little more texture and depth to the ideology’s history and how it functions today.

And finally, I leave you with this last bit of critical economic news:

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