We’re back this week for a particularly spicy Rich Girl Roundup, this time covering the absolute barrage of feedback on…

• Our episode with JL Collins, “Student Loans, 50% Save Rates, and Being a Capitalist” (You were not happy! And you made it known!)
• An interview with Amanda Holden, “How to Use Today’s Economic Uncertainty to Get Closer to Your Dream Life,” our most popular episode in this batch that still generated a worthy follow-up discussion
• And the Rich Girl Nation Ask Me Anything, where Henah and I talked through book-related questions like why everyone has a ghost writer, and evaded extremely direct ones like, “How much did you get paid?” Take me out to dinner first!

Listen now.

For Business Insider, I shared an excerpt from Chapter 3 about my first time ever speaking with a pair of insurance salesmen financial advisers who couldn’t answer what was, to me, a simple question: How much should I aim to save? The experience was the first crack in the bug-covered windshield of my Discover card-fueled ignorance, an unavoidable fissure that declared, Nobody’s going to learn this shit for you.

I also spoke with Charlotte Cowles for The Cut about how women can earn more money without working even harder than they already are, drawing on the advice I outlined in painstaking detail in Chapter 2. The best career advice I’ve ever gotten—simple yet insufferable in its honesty—is that perception is reality. TL;DR: Privately chronicling a list of your accomplishments for a one-on-one negotiation conversation is good, but making sure everyone knows about them while they’re happening is better. In short, the art of corporate bragging will take you far.

This article from Kate Manne about “value capture,” or the tendency for flattened, easily quantifiable metrics to first act as proxies for—but then eventually replace—your values (e.g., weight usurping the more nebulous “health”) reminded me of one of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned from my coach, Elizabeth: Earning more money ≠ becoming a better writer. For certain personality types (read: the extra credit-wielding middle schoolers who grew up to be adults who run marathons for fun), I think this is particularly relevant in the realm of becoming too attached to your net worth (not speaking from experience or anything!).

Are you a Wealth Planner user with opinions? We want to hear from you.

🪖 Can’t believe I’m out here in these mean streets earnestly quoting a Cato Institute piece, but when those cold ‘n calculating conservative libertarians are cooking? Magic. The report says that the expansion of ICE and other deportation-related expenses as outlined in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will cost approximately $1 trillion more than previously estimated. Even before this increase, Congress already allocated 36 times more money to border enforcement than to pursuing tax and financial crimes. “Most importantly,” it adds, “it neglects the more significant cost of removing immigrants who would have paid more in taxes than they received in benefits,” a boost it estimates would have reduced the deficit by $897 billion over the next 10 years.

If you’re curious about the people flocking to ICE agent recruiting events right now—a position that costs the government $200,000 per year, per person in compensation—this N+1 essay is illuminating. Turns out a lot of Americans feel tired, bored, and underpaid, and think becoming a plainclothes law enforcement agent tasked with busting fifth-grade graduations is a good solution to their existential career woes.

A recent profile of New York state representative and mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani contained a quote that stopped me in my tracks: “His moral clarity has the aura of privilege.” Beyond seeming generally squeamish about Mamdani’s charisma, the writer was referencing his (alleged) tendency to draw hard lines within policy negotiations. I’ve been thinking about the concept of “moral clarity” a lot lately, and whether following your compass is a product of luxury. The piece drew the foil of poor folks, who one interviewee suggested must constantly compromise on their values and make hard choices for the sake of survival. One observation is unavoidable when reading much of the Mamdani coverage, particularly the anti-endorsement published in the Times: We reserve the most stringent purity tests for politicians who support progressive economic policy. Regardless, if for some reason New York mayoral politics interest you more broadly, don’t miss this other feature from Current Affairs about how breathtakingly gross Andrew Cuomo is. (Is not voting for someone because they’re a sex pest an example of moral privilege or just common sense?)

The primary statistic I used in the Hot Girl Hamster Wheel chapter of Rich Girl Nation to roughly approximate the average woman’s beauty spending was from 2017: around $300 per month. Since then, usage of Botox and filler—“non-surgical” cosmetic procedures—has risen by more than 58%. Jessica DeFino, whose insight about the industry has informed my perspective over the years, wrote for Vogue recently about her theory of the “Aesthetic Index”: that beauty routines expand and accelerate in direct proportion to political (and, consequently, economic) upheaval. She captures a crucial element of the decision to individually opt out, and what, exactly, keeps people opting in: not joy or whimsy or self-expression, but fear of social and financial fallout. Relatedly, the only two comments I had the displeasure of viewing on my Wall Street Journal guest essay (via nonconsensual screenshot) were from two women who took exception to my ideas because, they assured me, it would adversely affect a woman’s ability to land a successful man. *slowly lowers face onto desk* Not enough word count left in this newsletter to unpack that one.

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

• Product Development Manager — cocokind: Up to $125k plus bonus and unlimited flex time off, hybrid in San Francisco, CA (5–6+ years’ experience)
• Director, Social Media — Audubon Society: Up to $160k, hybrid in New York, NY or Washington, DC (10+ years’ experience)
• Manager, Account Management — Upwork: Up to $275k OTE plus unlimited PTO, remote (2+ years’ experience)
• SVP, Member Experience — Fetch: Up to $275k plus potential equity, remote in New York City, NY (12+ years’ experience)
• Accounting Manager — Legacy.com: Up to $140k plus bonus and flexible PTO, hybrid in Chicago, IL (3–5+ years’ experience)