"You can spend $50 on shoes or $5000 on shoes and it's still just shoes."
+ not delaying gratification
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.
For a while I’ve been meaning to write about my Stripe payments. These are the payments I get from paid subscribers (thank you!) on Substack and I have it set up so I get paid weekly.
(For the first couple of years, it was set to daily pay and I was so happy when I felt financially able to change it to weekly. One day I hope to make the shift to monthly, but that doesn’t look like happening any time soon.)
Anyway, as part of my morning money routine, I check my Stripe payments dashboard. I do this first, before checking my bank account, because there’s almost always a payment showing and it reminds me that money is coming and makes me feel more positive before I open the banking app.
Even so, sometimes I open the banking app and my heart sinks at the balance. Or sometimes I’m already in my overdraft or can see that I’m about to be. Even though Stripe is set to pay weekly, I can access the funds sooner if I want to. And yet I used to struggle to do that. When I originally planned to write about this, I was still struggling; over the past few months, I’ve stopped.
I think the issue was that I felt like I should wait until the pay date. Even if I needed the money. Even if I was about to go overdrawn. I used to tell myself I could manage. It was only another couple of days. It’d be fine.
I suspect this was - as per usual - about perfectionism. About doing the right thing. About being a good girl. About delaying gratification, even when there’s literally no need to do so. (Also I’m generally not about delaying gratification at all. Have you seen the state of the world?)
I was going to write more - about how my bank account is like a fancy biscuit - but I’m going to save that for next week because this week’s interview is with one of my absolute favourites here on Substack. Pretty much everything I read on Anne Kadet’s Café Anne makes me feel better about the world. People are so funny and fascinating, creative and kind. And that goes for Anne herself too.
Anne also becomes only the second ever interviewee to say “I love money”.
The first was Lynette Reed back in February 2022:
Read Lynette’s equally inspiring follow up post
If you’re not a paid subscriber already, I’d love it if you’d consider upgrading. Paid subscribers receive a second weekly post - this week’s will be the last post in the money and divorce series and I’ll be talking about my own divorce, the mistakes I made, and where we are now - along with access to three (3) years of archives.
If you would like a paid sub, but can’t swing it right now, email me and I’ll sort it.
An interview with Anne Kadet
Anne Kadet got her start in journalism writing for community newspapers in Buffalo and Queens. She spent a decade writing a weekly column covering NYC business and consumer trends for the Wall Street Journal’s city section, which won her a National Press Club award for humor writing. She is now the creator of CAFÉ ANNE, a Substack newsletter with a focus on New York City that takes a fresh look at the everyday, delights in the absurd and profiles unusual folks who do things their way. She lives in Brooklyn.
What is your relationship with money currently?
I love money! It's very funny. Eggs cost $3 one day, $12 the next. The stock market goes up and I make a lot of money, and the next day *poof* it's gone. Did it ever exist? You can spend $50 on shoes or $5000 on shoes and it's still just shoes.
Despite this, I have a very trusting relationship with money. I feel that as long as I live within my means and treat others well, I'll always have enough.
And I don't need much! I don't care about fancy clothes—I wear the same exact thing every day. I don't care about travel or owning a car or eating at nice restaurants or going to shows. I just want to walk/bike around NYC and read books from the library and drink coffee with my friends. Outside my mortgage, I've never borrowed money, and I don't use a credit card.
What’s your earliest money memory?
Mom gave me a weekly allowance of 25 cents. And because I loved money so much, I never spent it. I just wanted to play with my quarters. I saved up a lot of money for a five-year-old.
What advice would you give your younger self about money?
In 2013, I bought $100 worth of Bitcoin. Now it's worth $13,000. I should have bought more Bitcoin! I also should have saved the password because now I'm locked out of my Bitcoin account.
What’s the biggest money mistake you’ve made?
I bet an ex-boyfriend $1000 I could quit smoking. Wrong!
What’s the best thing you’ve ever spent money on?
For my 40th birthday, I went to piano showroom on 57th Street in Manhattan and bought a beautiful upright to replace my old piano that had a bunch of missing keys. I think it cost $12,000. It was a huge splurge and it still makes me happy every day.
Do you have a retirement fund? If not, do you have a plan?
After a college, I worked for a series of tiny community newspapers, earning roughly minimum wage. I didn't get my first "real" job with a 401(k) until I was 30. But I earned a decent salary during the dozen years I worked in corporateville.
Because I was super frugal, I invested most of it—and I picked some good stocks! It's grown a lot and now I pretty much have enough saved for retirement.
I recently heard you on a podcast and you talked about creating your own dream job. What made you decide to do this? And what was the first step?
I've been a journalist my whole life. The last ten years, I had a freelance job writing a weekly column about NYC business and consumer trends for the Wall Street Journal. It was a great gig, but I always felt frustrated that I couldn't cover the stories that most interested me, or write in my own voice.
In the summer of 2021, the WSJ folded its NYC section. I considered what to do next and had to concede that no mainstream publication would ever publish the stories I wanted to write. And who could blame them?
As I was about to turn 50, I decided that if I was ever going to try doing things my way, now was the time. That same summer, Substack was starting to gain notice. Bari Weiss and several other writers I admired were making the jump and launching their own newsletters. I decided to give it a try.
I promised myself that I'd do exactly the kind of writing I wanted to do, with zero concern for whether it would find an audience. I gave it three months and launched the newsletter with a mailing list of 72—all friends and family. Today I have more than 15,000 subscribers.
Did you set a savings target before taking the plunge? How close are you to breaking even? And I hate to ask this, but what happens if you don’t?
I'm about halfway to breaking even on the newsletter, so every month I take some $$$ out of my retirement savings to help the bills. It's okay! The stock market has been great, so I'm still way ahead where I was.
If the market tanks, or if my newsletter stops growing, I'll have fold the newsletter and get a real job. But I'll never regret the years I spent writing CAFÉ ANNE. It's the most fun I've ever had, and the work I'm most proud of.
What would you do with $10,000?
I'd love to take my newsletter on the road for a few months and report from random small towns across the country. CAFÉ ANNE Nebraska!
A few of my favourite Cafe Anne posts:
I Spent 24 Hours Straight On the NYC Subway!
Daryl Sherman, Night Life Mainstay, is Loving Her First Day Job
Meet the Karaoke King of Bay Ridge!
America's Oldest Strip Mall is PERFECTION!
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THE LATEST POST ON MY AUTHOR SUBSTACK, HAPPY ENDINGS…
…is about picturing yourself in the past.
