"If money and health insurance were not an issue, how would you spend your time?"
+ teens are mean
Hi and welcome to The Ladybird Purse, my weekly newsletter about women and money. I’m not a financial advisor and am in no way qualified to give financial advice.
I’m sorry to say that I still don’t really have anything to talk about, money-wise. A few bullet points…
I’ve made a note to list the payments I know are coming in this year (a couple of book advance instalments and… I can’t think of anything else right now, but hopefully I will when I actually make the list).
I also have to do my tax return, but that’s okay. (I actually quite enjoy it. Like a weirdo.)
My 15yo told me the other day that my business - being an author - is a failed business and I should probably find something else to do. Which was a) mean; and b) not wrong.
And I am working on doing something else, which is why I’m taking the Trauma of Money™ course. I’ve fallen a bit behind, but will hopefully catch up soon.
In general, I’m feeling pretty positive.
In other news, I wrote about my 2024 bests for In Moda Veritas and it was really fun:
This week’s interview is with another money Substacker, Lindsey Stanberry, who writes The Purse. Did you know that a US purse is a bag, whereas a UK purse is more like a wallet? (And if you’ve wondered about the name of my Substack, it’s explained here.) (Also a UK ladybird is a US ladybug.)
I wrote about the contents of my purse/bag for Lindsey towards the end of last year
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An interview with Lindsey Stanberry
Lindsey Stanberry is the founder of The Purse, a newsletter about the culture of women and money. She spent the last decade working for some of the biggest brands in digital media. As an executive editor at Fortune, Lindsey oversaw the launch of a number of initiatives to help the storied brand reach younger and more diverse audiences. Before joining Fortune, she was the deputy managing editor at CNBC Make It and CNBC Select.
At Refinery29, she launched the Work & Money vertical and ran Money Diaries, a franchise that garnered an international cult following. Lindsey is the author of Money Diaries: Everything You Want to Know About Your Finances…And Everyone Else’s. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.
What is your relationship with money currently?
Complicated, lol. For a long time, I was working my way steadily up the corporate media ladder, and I started earning a good salary and I had disposable income to spend how I wanted. I really enjoyed making that money, but I was miserable at my job. I ended up leaving, and now I earn significantly less, but I’m arguably happier.
The whole experience has left me wondering what is “enough”—and I still don’t have the answer. I want to make more money, but during this time in my life when I have a young son, I also really value my time and flexibility.
I’ll add that I’m incredibly privileged because my husband has a steady paycheck and provides us with health insurance, and that’s allowing me to spend time building my own business. We are also big savers, and we’ve been stashing away money for years, so we also have a decent savings cushion.
What’s your earliest money memory?
I can’t think of any interesting money memories from childhood, but I have a very clear early money memory with my husband. We started dating at the very end of college, and so we did a lot of early adulthood learning together: getting our first salaried jobs, renting apartments, etc.
Shortly after we moved in together after a few years of dating, he called me up while I was traveling to visit my grandmother and asked me if it was OK if he bought a new amp for his band. Even though we hadn’t yet combined finances, he was already thinking of us as a financial unit, and I found it so romantic.
It laid a good foundation for us to have honest and open money conversations—not always easy but totally necessary. Also, it helped me realize that he agonizes over big purchases more than I do. (He bought the amp; we still have it, but the band broke up more than a decade ago, LOL!)
What advice would you give your younger self about money?
Take the trips! We didn’t travel much when we were younger because we were always so focused on saving (also, we were young, didn’t earn much, and both had stretches of unemployment—it was the 2010s and we worked in media).
In many ways, I’m grateful we did save so much because we own our condo in Brooklyn, and we have enough of cushion that I can afford this career journey. But it’s also harder to travel now that we have a kid. I look at younger people who take amazing vacations to Europe or Asia, and I feel a twinge of jealousy.
What’s the biggest money mistake you’ve made?
I always let too much cash sit in savings that could be invested.
Also, so much money wasted by not tracking things more carefully and missing the chance to cancel a subscription, and that shit drives me crazy! For as much as I write and think about money, I’m not as personally organized as I would like to be. It’s sort of like me and exercise. I always think: “Tomorrow I will get started with a routine!” And tomorrow comes and goes with no changes.
What’s the best thing you’ve ever spent money on?
Our apartment. It’s arguably too small for three people, and I worry how we’ll all squeeze in here when my son becomes a teenager. But it’s such a special apartment. We have these beautiful floor-to-ceiling windows that look over Brooklyn and the lower Manhattan skyline, so it’s bright even on the greyest days. And our building manager is almost like an uncle to us, always popping in to fix things (including one time teaching my husband how to change a flat).
The apartment is always messier and more cluttered than I’d like it to be, but it’s also a wonderful refuge. And it doesn’t hurt that we have a low interest rate and by extension a fairly affordable mortgage. Low housing costs have allowed me to feel less stressed about this period of financial instability while I build my business.
Do you have a retirement fund? If not, do you have a plan?
Yes, we do. Or I should say, we have a bunch of different 401(k) plans floating around with different sums of money. But there should be enough there that I’m pretty sure we can retire one day.
The question is will we ever want to? We’re both a couple of workaholics, and I wonder what retirement will really look like.
What would you do with $10,000?
I love this question and have dozens of different ideas. I imagine this is “guilt-free money” that can be used anyway you want, right?
I’ve been reading All Fours by Miranda July, and I loved how the protagonist spent $20,000 to redo a hotel room in a super luxe, feminine manner. I don’t have an extra room that could be decorated in that way, but the idea of using $10,000 for a special decorating project would be divine.
My second idea was some sort of amazing trip, and I think if you budgeted properly, you could make it last quite a while. Wouldn’t a month in the South of France be wonderful?
What little luxury could you get with a tenner?
In Brooklyn, a tenner barely gets you coffee and a cookie these days! But there’s a wonderful little spot by my apartment—Cafe Nube—that has delicious tacos. You can get two and a Coke for roughly $10, and it’s such a nice place for a lunch break away from my apartment. I like to leave a tip, so it’s technically $12, but close enough. 🙂
If you were me, what would you want to ask women about money?
If money and health insurance were not an issue, how would you spend your time?
Oh, also, for the moms: What’s a service that you pay for that makes your life better?
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Married to a European, I very much understand the difference having some form of universal health insurance would make. Not having it tied to jobs would change everything. For most of us, that’s the big one, right behind housing.
And on the teenage opinions... I think they need to prioritise money because everything is so expensive and they can sew that the safety nets are awful or non-existant. When there are so many people sleeping rough and so many people needing to use food banks, how easy can it be to think in terms of doing what you love, rather than doing something that will keep a consistent roof over your head and food in your fridge?
I really hope that things will get more positive for them soon. Though not quite sure how massive investment in AI is the answer. 🥲