When I was a senior in college, I had a psychology professor emphasize the importance of sleep as the foundation for all of life’s other processes. Without proper sleep, she warned, none of your other health goals would improve.

• But at the time, I was more concerned with sniffing out the best parties and making it into the bar before cover charges started than hitting appropriate REM targets for my age (ah, to be 21 again). Still, it stuck with me because it highlighted the importance of identifying the root cause of your problems, and not just addressing symptoms of them.
• Fast-forward to my late twenties, when I realized I’d rather feel like my “best self” all the time, and alcohol didn’t fit very comfortably into that vision. What do I do in a culture that’s obsessed with alcohol, when I’m feeling a little less enthralled with the idea? I wondered.
• A teetotaling experiment ensued, and it didn’t take long for me to realize just how wide-ranging the downstream effects were: mental, emotional, and yes, financial.

This week’s episode is a 20-minute lookback at the last 15 months, the role alcohol plays in our GDP and personal finances, and all the unintended positive benefits I’ve stumbled upon since switching out my New Belgium Fat Tire for Athletic Brewing’s N/A IPA.

Expecting a year-end bonus? This week’s Rich Girl Roundup reviews a few of our favorite approaches. Mine: If it’s truly unexpected money or tied to your performance on an above-and-beyond project, I like to indulge in a commemorative splurge. If it’s a bonus that I expect as part of my total compensation, I treat it the same way I treat it as though it’s normal income.

Poverty, by America is the latest from Matthew Desmond, the author of Evicted, which I plugged a few weeks ago. So far I’m only one chapter in, but man—it’s a comfort to be back with his immersive writing style. The premise of the book is identifying a “unifying theory” of poverty in the US: As in, we know a bunch of the disparate factors and consequences, but why does the country with the most resources have the highest amount of resource scarcity, too?

If you listen to The Money with Katie Show, you know we love Kim Davis, the Fiscal Feminist (she’s an attorney, wealth manager, and advocate for women going through divorce). I just grabbed a copy of Fiscal Feminist: A Financial Wake-up Call for Women because we—read: my editor and I—decided last-minute that my upcoming book needs a “woman’s financial guide to navigating marriage and divorce,” too. I figured hers would be the perfect hors d'oeuvre.

Last year, my husband and I started a new financial tradition (okay, maybe it’s fairer to say I strong-armed him into it) in which I tap into the small, shameful part of me that’s still in awe of management consultants despite their well-documented crimes against humanity and I churn out a deck like I’m getting paid $225,000 plus a bonus to do so.

Having been pretty #InTheWeeds with our finances throughout the year as the member of our household who fills out our joint Wealth Planner every month, I was skeptical that presenting this information to someone else would dredge up any interesting insights.

But as Nick Saban will remind you…trust the process.

Here’s the executive summary:

• Our net worth grew by 50%.
• Our most over-budget category grew nearly 3x this year (as in, we spent roughly three times what we had planned).
• We’re going to be financially independent in three years! Maybe! If I can stop inflating our lifestyle!

One of the major findings right away came from pulling a slide from last year’s report: In 2022, for every dollar we contributed to our assets, our net worth grew by just 67 cents. This is, of course, because the whole of our assets were getting incinerated in the worst bear market since 2008, and our new additions weren’t enough to compensate. Not exactly an encouraging environment for saving, but we stayed the course and pulled through—and this year, we were rewarded.

In 2023—a year in which the S&P 500 has returned an astonishing 24%—our overall assets grew by half. 66% of the asset growth was thanks to our contributions, and the other 33% was purely the market going up.

Seeing back-to-back years with wildly different outcomes is a little disorienting, but a word of feedback to the animal spirits: I much prefer 2023’s vibe, thanks!

Sticking to your investment plan—regardless of whether you’re seeing red or green in the markets—has always* paid off.

But that’s not all—just when you thought the entire reflection was about to be a KGT Victory Lap…think again! No, when it comes to the things I actually had control over (read: my spending), the grade was decidedly less glowing. Your honor, in my defense, I was having a good time.

And by having a good time, I mean…

• Moving our entire life 1,000 miles west to California, and only getting reimbursed for some of it by the Air Force.
• Paying for multiple surgeries and procedures for a dog with bone cancer.
• Going to see Taylor Swift…and the Taylor Swift movie…and then seeing the movie again…(I better have my own slide on her financial annual review.)
• Oh, yeah, and buying a Porsche Macan—understandably, the biggest item.

…and, I’m sure, approximately six other major things I can’t remember right now. Point is, we were living, baby!

Despite all the above hoopla, the majority of our spending plans actually went…well, according to plan. As in, we intended to spend that much (okay, not quite that much, but it wasn’t an order of magnitude above our goal).

It’s funny—as the year progressed and I lived the spending, Travel was the category that I expected would be heinously over-budget. But it was only 8% over. Not bad.

Where things really went off the rails was the lawless wasteland of the Miscellaneous budget, which encapsulates our respective “Guilt-Free” categories and Gifts. Turns out, we both need to feel a little more guilt.

This category represented 16% of our total spent for the year—we spent close to three times what we had intended (see also: Taylor Swift, moving cross-country, buying a car, etc.).

This, of course, presents a pickle for me, because unlike a food or gas budget gone awry, “Guilt-Free Spending” requires a little bit of deeper digging. It’s a category that, when you really get down to it, can only be shrunk by having a little more self-control. To quote that twenty-something in a TikTok I shared recently… “I need to (re)learn how to tell myself ‘no.’”

The best types of budget breakthroughs are the kind that leave you staring at yourself in the mirror, going, “It’s time to find some cheaper hobbies.” *Crosses “Porsche collector” off list....for now.*

To read the rest of the review, check out the full piece. It also includes my favorite picture from the Eras Tour, so…enjoy.

*Past performance is not indicative of future returns, but you knew that already.

Wow, I wish there were three more episodes of the HBO docuseries Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage & Reckoning. It told the story of the infamous 1989 Carol Stuart case in Boston, and I don’t want to spoil too much, but it’s one of those stories that leaves you going, Yes, this was a story about a particular incident in Boston…but in a bigger way, it’s a story about America.

The other day Henah sent me this podcast (titled, “Jack Welch is Why You Got Laid Off”) and it’s a pretty thorough, humorous-while-also-bleak deep dive into the long-lasting influence of former famed GE CEO, Jack Welch. His legacy includes prioritizing shareholders over employees, ranking employees and firing anyone at the bottom of the list, and just generally making the corporate world more cutthroat.

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If you know of a job opening that was made for #RichGirlNation, submit it for consideration here. Whether you use this section to actively job-hunt or to make sure you’re being fairly compensated, here are this week’s picks:

• Franchise Content Producer — Money with Katie: Come work with us! Up to $90k with bonus and unlimited PTO, hybrid in Sacramento (3–5+ years’ experience)
• Senior Manager, Business Development — Family Reach: Up to $75k with bonus, remote (5–7+ years' experience)
• ‍⚕️ Impact Manager — Julie: Up to $110k with bonus and stock options, hybrid in NYC (3–5+ years’ experience)
• Director, Release Strategy — Cineverse: Up to $130k, remote in NY or CA (3–5+ years’ experience)
• Staff UX Designer — Visa: Up to $162k, hybrid in Atlanta (5+ years’ experience)