
Money with Katie talks about her new book ‘Rich Girl Nation’
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Neal Freyman
Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neal Freyman.
Toby Howell
And I'm Toby Howell.
Neal Freyman
Today, a personal finance brain blast for the ages.
Toby Howell
We spoke with Katie Gaddy Tassen, AKA Money with Katie about her new book on achieving financial freedom. It's Monday, May 26th, Memorial Day.
Unknown
Let's ride.
Neal Freyman
Good morning on Memorial Day 2025. Hope you're all somewhere on a beach or at least far away from your computers or anything having to do with work. We have a very special episode for you today where Toby and I caught up with Katie Gaddy Tassen from Money with Katie, who is coming out with her very first book, Rich Girl Nation, about taking charge of our financial futures.
Toby Howell
Katie explains what the 4% safe withdrawal rule is, how hard it is to write a book, what the heck the hot girl hamster wheel is, and how to get off of it.
Neal Freyman
If any of those concepts sound intriguing to you, our conversation is just the tip of the iceberg. Right after you finish this episode. Run, don't walk. Run to money with Katie.com/Rich Girl Nation, where you can preorder her book.
Toby Howell
It's out on June 10th and makes for a perfect beach read. Neil and I both read it and man, am I fired up to reap the benefits of compound interest.
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Toby Howell
Visit planetoat.com for more. And now, more with Katie.
Neal Freyman
Katie, welcome to the show.
Katie Gaddy Tassen
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.
Neal Freyman
So maybe the best place to start this interview is right at the very start of the book with the acknowledgment you wrote to the anonymous guy who works in finance that used to relentlessly comment on my nascent website in 2018, urging me to quit writing about money and keep it to myself. I hope you're well. Elite Mic Drop. Tell us more about the story and how it's motivated you.
Katie Gaddy Tassen
Yeah, isn't that nice? Obviously, I'm really good at, like, forgive and forget. So I started writing about money informally online in 2018 after I had this very revelatory experience at a book tour for a book called Money Diaries. And I started writing about money on my personal blog. So I had maintained this blog in college, and I just kind of posted missives on it to, I don't know, like, the 15 or 20 people that bothered to check in, half of whom were probably related to me. And I became so enthralled with money and personal finance that, like, kind of overnight I stopped writing about personal things and started publishing content about about money and my relationship to money and all the exciting things I was learning and why I thought it was important that everyone should be talking about this. And from the very beginning, there was somebody who would comment on the blog posts anonymously and kind of badger me, be like, oh, you know, you shouldn't be doing this. Oh, you know, I kind of gathered from the way that they were talking or the things that they were saying that like, they had a series 65 and a series this and a series that, and basically saying, like, you're not qualified to have public facing opinions about personal finance. You need to stay in your lane. And so it just felt very fitting and very full circle because I don't think this guy has ever written a book about money. And now I have. So I thought, you know what, why not? Why not dedicate it to him?
Toby Howell
Yeah, I mean, look at the beautiful book in front of us now. It's behind you on the wall. You're on your Rich Girl Nation book tour. But I did want to ask, why Rich Girl Nation? And why not Rich Girl People Nation? What's behind your drive to write a personal finance book specifically for a female audience instead of a more broader audience?
Katie Gaddy Tassen
Totally. Well, at a high level, it is true that personal finance and investment best practices will be the same for everyone. But the majority of personal finance books have been written by men, which means that they have been shaped in subtle and overt ways by men's experiences, men's preferences, and men's priorities. And the reality is that women statistically face different financial challenges than men do. So first of all, you have an entire industry, beauty and personal care. This is what I cover in chapter one, that almost exclusively markets its products to women. Now, the average woman who spends money on her appearance as of 2017, was spending around $300 per month on beauty and personal care over a 40 year career. If you had invested that money instead getting average market market returns, we're talking simple index fund, nothing fancy. You're talking about around a million dollars in opportunity cost. So we're not just talking about costs at the margins. These are retirement supporting amounts. Then you have to consider the fact that women now negotiate just as often as men do. There is no longer a negotiation gap, which was kind of a popular talking point in the early 2010s, but they are still 15% less likely to get a raise when they do. And part of the reason that this happens is because the advice to be aggressive, the advice to demand your worth, that doesn't work for women the same way it works for men. Because women who pursue what we perceive to be masculine goods or who we perceive to be behaving in masculine ways, they are more likely to face pushback. Now, the same is true, by the way, for men who pursue flexibility or behave in more feminine ways. So basically, if you're behaving in a gender incongruent fashion, you are more likely to be penalized in the workplace for that. But it just so happens that that penalty for women means fewer material resources. So sometimes this manifests in what we come to think of as like the gender wage gap. Women do earn around 15 less on average. As like an aggregate group. This is a gap that widens as women progress in their careers. It's actually the largest for women in their 50s and like late 40s. And I talk about this in the book as a function of kind of the caregiving and unpaid labor gap. It's the opposite side really of what's happening at home. So we have to be aware of that when we're planning for our financial futures. And then finally, you have the simple reality that Women live around 6.5% longer on average than men do. So statistically speaking, women are more likely to be the ones who will bear the brunt of poor long term financial planning. So their portfolios need to last longer, they need to invest more aggressively, and they also need to know how to manage money alone. More than 80% of widows are women. So even women who never get divorced are going to have to know how to do this. So you look at all these factors, right? You expand that over an entire lifetime, and we can see that these disparities are compounding. Women retire with about 57% as much money as men do. So could a man pick up this book and get really rigorous, tactical, personal financial information out of it? Absolutely. But I wanted to tailor a book toward the statistical realities that women specifically face. So that's what I did.
Neal Freyman
One of the more intriguing concepts you talk about in the book is this hot girl hamster wheel. So I would love if you could explain that in more detail and also explain how you got off the rich girl hamster wheel or the hot girl hamster wheel. Toby, you can answer to.
Toby Howell
I'm still on the hamster wheel. This is all Katie.
Katie Gaddy Tassen
Okay, so the hot girl hamster wheel is how I describe the litany of recurring rotating expenses that are necessary to uphold what I will jokingly call the capital a capital F acceptable femininity. So I call it a hamster wheel because the nature of these purchases are such that you cannot just do them once. Like, each dollar that you spend functions like a commitment to spend more money in the future. So the particularly insidious thing about a lot of beauty treatments and personal care treatments is that they will actually leave you, quote, unquote, worse off than you were before. So, like any woman listening to this who's ever gotten acrylic nails knows what I'm talking about. They look good for like two weeks. And then when you finally either like yank them off or soak them off, your natural nails underneath are going to be brittle and discolored. And so you kind of get into this cycle where you have to keep spending. Women are taught from a young age to value the social capital of beauty kind of above everything else. This is a very insidious, you know, socialization that, that all women experience is like, the way you look is the most important thing about you. And you probably receive signals every time you leave your home that this is the case. But the problem with this is that investing in beauty is kind of an inherently losing proposition. For reasons that are probably obvious, it's an inherently depreciating asset. As you get older, it will take more and more cash flow to serve that master. That is not a good roi, and obviously the the counter to that is investing in real capital. Because if that's invested wisely, it's going to grow, it's going to get better with time. So in chapter one, I really tease apart some of these forces and talk about the process that someone can take to, in a very cur curious and exploratory way, figure out how much of your take home pay you're spending on these things and then really reassess your relationship with them and figure out where you are getting a worthwhile return on investment and where you are maybe upholding systems that are not good for you or anyone else.
Toby Howell
And I do remember reading that first chapter and one stat that just absolutely blew my mind was approximately half of the women serving as CEOs for S&P 500 companies have blonde hair. How does blonde hair specifically play into this idea of the hot girl hamster wheel?
Katie Gaddy Tassen
So less than 2% of the world's population has naturally blonde hair, but around one third of women in the west will bleach their way there. And to your point, roughly half of CEOs of S&P 500 companies, women CEOs have blonde hair. Anyone who has ever bleached their hair and Toby, I'm looking at you, babe. I know you know this struggle.
Unknown
I'm guilty.
Toby Howell
I'm guilty.
Katie Gaddy Tassen
Knows that this is a very impractical aesthetic choice. It is extremely time and capital intensive to have salon quality blonde hair. It requires a lot of upkeep. I had friends in college who dyed their hair blonde who were in a salon every seven weeks getting their roots touched up for hundreds of dollars. So when you get highlights, as I have for many years, what you are really signaling, whether you realize it or not, is what you actually possess in absence of blonde hair, which is time and money. Now this is all, this is how all modern beauty standards work. So it's not like blonde hair. The only place that we see this, you can think about any popular trend and you can pretty much trace it back to these same factors. But it's a, it's a particularly pernicious one just because of how time and capital intensive it is. And so I find it to be quite an interesting example and I made it kind of a focus in that chapter for that reason.
Neal Freyman
We'll be back with more Katie right after this.
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Toby Howell
Shifting gears a little bit from the hamster wheel, you've also talked about this feeling of being a corporate cog in your early career. So maybe to anyone else listening who is early in their career, maybe first or second job out of college, who are dutifully reporting day in day out, but are looking around and saying like damn, is this it? Is this really the rest of my life? Give them maybe some soothing or some not so soothing words about how to confront or maybe quell some of their anxiety.
Katie Gaddy Tassen
Totally. So let's start soothing first. If that is a feeling that you are experiencing, good news. You are the perfect candidate for getting really serious about your finances. I remember the moment where I had that realization where I liked my job, I liked my coworkers, I Liked my company. But I felt absolutely trapped in that two week cycle of working for a paycheck and coming to the end of every cycle and being like, what do I have to show for that? I just spent 80 hours working. They gave me my paycheck, I spent it all, and now I'm back to square one. That was an incredibly claustrophobic experience and realization. And what ended up happening is that spurred me to go become interested in personal finance because I thought, there has to be another way, there has to be another path. I discovered the financial independence, retire early movement through that soul searching and here we are. So I think if you are feeling that way, the good news is that rejiggering your financial life can be a step toward more optionality, more freedom. So you can really take chances with your career and pursue things that you're actually interested in. So I would say like, as much as you can embrace that mantra of life is a video game. And at any moment you can be like, this isn't what I want to do. It's never too late, right, to pick a different path, to start over. And that was partially why the dedication to the book is what it is. Because I think it was that sort of force saying you're, you're not a money person, right? You're not qualified to have opinions about this. You shouldn't be talking about budgeting on the Internet to just be like, oh, actually, yeah, I didn't study that before, I can study it now, who cares? You can always make that change.
Toby Howell
Still, confronting this idea of focusing more on your personal finance is a daunting task for a lot of people. And one of the things that you ex. You'd say people experience is that you say, oh, I know I should budget, or I know I should save, but I don't know how much to save, I don't know how much to budget. But then a lot of things started to crystallize around this idea of the 4% safe withdrawal rate. And I'm sure a lot of people do have that abstract sense of the importance of saving. But how can that 4% rule really crystallize and guide their financial habits?
Katie Gaddy Tassen
So I spend all of chapter three digging into the 4% rule and understanding how you are spending and your income taken together can essentially tell you how long it's going to take for you to reach financial freedom. So why is this important? Because you're probably gonna get some like, outrageous number. It's probably gonna be over a million dollars, right? It's important for a few Reasons. Number one, it really connects the dots between how your lifestyle choices and spending and expenses impact the top of the mountain where you're trying to go. And so what you'll notice if you play around with this is that as you spend less, that number goes down. If you can live on less, if you can really live beneath your means and invest more of your income, you will get there infinitely faster. So a really nice example of this and something that I talk about a lot in the book. I have this chart where I show you, depending on the percentage of your income that you're saving, here's how long it will take you to go from $0 invested to total financial freedom. Now I really can see what's on the other side of that now. It's not just, well, if I don't spend this money, I save it and then who knows what, who cares? It's well, if I can save and invest this money, that directly means fewer years of working. And oh, by the way, I can see exactly how many fewer years. So for me personally, that information was very impactful and it was what enabled me to transition from working in sort of a corporate 9 to 5 setting to entrepreneurship and some variations of self employment and getting to take more risks with my career because I wasn't dependent on a paycheck.
Toby Howell
It's very cool that you have written this book. It's not often we get to talk to an author who just, you know, put two years of her life into making this thing a reality. So we wanted to ask you some questions about just the process that goes into creating this amazing book that you have. Is there something that you changed your mind about as you were going through the process of writing the book? Because it's a long time. Like two years is a, is a long period of time. Is there something that you started with like, oh, this is definitely going in that you maybe changed throughout the writing process?
Katie Gaddy Tassen
Well, I think my, my philosophy and my thinking more generally evolved a lot over the two years in ways big and small. But there was a chapter that we ended up having to cut that I had spent a lot of time writing. And it's a, it's a topic that I feel very strongly about, which is the decision to rent or buy your home. It's a topic that I feel strongly about because I think it's one of the most misunderstood decisions in life and finance, particularly in the United States. And I think a lot of people go into it with the wrong information. So there is a cut chapter that we were not Able to. To keep in the book about rent versus buy and how this decision actually is different mathematically for women. Some of the data around it's very interesting. So we ended up using that as it's like a free bonus. If you pre order the book, we will send you that chapter so you could read. You could read a chapter today that should have been in the book and.
Neal Freyman
Didn'T make it in Hollywood Plug. The last time we talked to you, Katie, we talked about that rent, verse, buy.
Katie Gaddy Tassen
Yeah.
Neal Freyman
Question. So you can either read Katie's supplement or potentially go to our previous conversation in our previous podcast because, Toby, I remember you were like, I'm facing this decision right now, Katie. Walk me through it. And you did a great job.
Toby Howell
And I did end up on the renting side of the equation. Oh, you spoke a little bit. Yeah. Because, I mean, it is. It does come down to numbers at the end of the day is like, what does make more sense for you financially? So I'm sad it didn't make us in. But also another plug to go listen to our previous conversation with you because we did hit that topic.
Neal Freyman
All right, so here's maybe a unique question about writing a book in 2025. Did you use AI to help at all?
Katie Gaddy Tassen
So I didn't use AI to help with the writing of the book, but one of the elements of writing a nonfiction book that I really underestimated, the time that it takes is going back and creating all of your endnotes and citations. So there is a lot of data in the book, and most of the data comes from reports that in many cases are very long. And so I had read them enough as I was writing to be like, I think this says what I think it says. I think this supports my point. But as we all know, data can be manipulated to prove pretty much any point you want. So when I went back through and I had to actually build out all the endnotes and kind of beef that up a little bit, I wanted to kind of double check every single one. I wanted to make sure that I had not misinterpreted anything. And when it took me six hours to do half of one chapter, I was like, okay, I am not going to be able to finish this in time. So part of what I ended up using AI for at the very, very end was helping me parse. Like, okay, here's the source. Here's what I think it says. Does it really say this? Is there anything that I'm missing here? So I kind of would go back and forth and make sure. That if there is some 60 page report that I'm taking like one little factoid out of the middle of it. Help me make sure I'm understanding this correctly and that I'm not misrepresenting what this data really says. So that was. That was toward the tail end. But yes, it was very helpful. It probably saved me 60 hours of work.
Toby Howell
I feel like I'm an irresponsible reader where I kind of don't always look at the footnotes the first go around. So knowing the labor of love though, that you put into it, I'll go back.
Katie Gaddy Tassen
You're trusting me?
Toby Howell
Yeah, I'm trusting you. I am trusting you.
Neal Freyman
You also recently recorded an audio book for this book, which is also par for the course these days because so many people listen on audiobook book. What did you learn about yourself, the work itself from recording this out loud?
Katie Gaddy Tassen
Well, I was a little bit nervous about it because there is a lull when you publish a book. So it takes. It does take years in many cases. I guess some people go faster. But I was also running money with Katie and doing other things on the side. So I. This is just the kind of one thing that I was working on for the years that I was writing it. You sell the proposal and then you spend 18 months writing and editing it. You turn in the manuscript and then it takes about six months from when you turn in the manuscript to the book actually coming out. So there's a bit of a lull. And I had been so immersed in it for the entire time that I was writing it. And you're so close to the material that if you've ever even written like a term paper or an article that you spend a lot of time on, sometimes you almost start to feel like, I don't even know if I like this anymore. I remember turning in the manuscript and being like, I hate it because I was so sick of it. So then those six months pass, I go to record the audiobook. And it was the first time that I was reading it again since I had handed it in. And I was really relieved reading it because I was like, oh, thank God this is good. Like, now that I've had distance from it, I actually felt really good about it. I was like, no, this is a really good, really rigorous book. And I think a lot of people are going to get a lot of value from it.
Toby Howell
And I will say, if you like the way Katy sounds and you enjoy listening these episodes reading your book, I heard you and I could just feel your voice coming through on that. So even if you don't opt for the audiobook, you write with your voice in mind. And that was just very clear. So either, either medium that you choose to consume it in, you will hear Katie in it.
Katie Gaddy Tassen
All right, thank you for saying that.
Neal Freyman
We got one more question. If you could get a blurb on your book from any person and it doesn't have to be realistic, who would that be?
Katie Gaddy Tassen
Gloria Steinem.
Toby Howell
Oh, that is a good answer. We thought maybe you were gonna toss a Warren Buffett out there, but Gloria Steinem is pretty solid.
Neal Freyman
He's not a rich girl.
Toby Howell
True that.
Katie Gaddy Tassen
He's not a rich girl. He's a rich guy. Very rich. I do, I do, I do like Warren Buffett. But yeah, Gloria Steinem. There was a, the inspiration for the COVID was like an old photo of Gloria Steinem from the seventies at a march. I am very inspired both politically and aesthetically by the 1970s era women's movement. I think it was just a very cool time in history. And so yeah, she's, she's the og. She's the coolest.
Toby Howell
Very cool. Katie, thank you again for jumping on. I always leave our episodes we record together feeling smarter and ready to reap the rewards of, you know, compound investors. If you guys enjoyed this conversation, make sure you pre order Katie's book Rich Girl Nation at moneywithkatie.com Rich Girl Nation it is out on June 10th. Katie, until next time, thank you so.
Katie Gaddy Tassen
Much for having me. It was, as always, a pleasure.
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Morning Brew Daily Podcast Summary
Episode: Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
Release Date: May 26, 2025
Hosts: Neal Freyman and Toby Howell
Guest: Katie Gaddy Tassen, author of Rich Girl Nation and creator of Money with Katie
In this enlightening episode of Morning Brew Daily, hosts Neal Freyman and Toby Howell engage in a captivating conversation with Katie Gaddy Tassen, the mind behind Money with Katie and the author of her debut book, Rich Girl Nation. Released on June 10th, 2025, the book delves into achieving financial freedom with a tailored approach for women, addressing unique financial challenges they face.
Notable Quote:
Neal Freyman introduces the episode enthusiastically:
"We have a very special episode for you today where Toby and I caught up with Katie Gaddy Tassen from Money with Katie, who is coming out with her very first book, Rich Girl Nation, about taking charge of our financial futures."
(01:08)
Katie opens up about the personal experiences that fueled her passion for personal finance and led to the creation of Rich Girl Nation. She shares a pivotal moment during a book tour for Money Diaries in 2018, which inspired her to shift her blogging focus entirely to financial topics. Katie dedicates her book to an anonymous finance professional who once discouraged her from discussing money publicly. This dedication underscores her commitment to empowering women to take control of their financial narratives.
Notable Quote:
Katie reflects on her dedication:
"I don't think this guy has ever written a book about money. And now I have. So I thought, you know what, why not? Why not dedicate it to him?"
(03:16)
Katie emphasizes the importance of tailoring financial advice to women, highlighting that most personal finance literature is authored by men, thereby reflecting predominantly male experiences and priorities. She outlines several key areas where women statistically face different financial challenges, such as:
Expenditure on Beauty and Personal Care:
Women spend significantly more on beauty and personal care, which Katie estimates could translate to an opportunity cost of around a million dollars over a 40-year career if invested instead.
Negotiation and Raises:
Although women now negotiate salaries as often as men, they are still 15% less likely to receive raises. This discrepancy is partly due to societal expectations and the penalties women face when adopting traditionally masculine negotiation tactics.
Longevity and Retirement Planning:
Women live approximately 6.5% longer than men on average, necessitating more robust retirement planning to ensure their financial resources last longer.
Caregiving and Unpaid Labor:
The caregiving roles predominantly undertaken by women contribute to a significant wage gap, which widens as women advance in their careers and approach retirement age.
Notable Quote:
Katie articulates the gender-specific financial challenges:
"Women retire with about 57% as much money as men do. So could a man pick up this book and get really rigorous, tactical, personal financial information out of it? Absolutely. But I wanted to tailor a book toward the statistical realities that women specifically face."
(07:00)
One of the standout concepts Katie introduces is the "Hot Girl Hamster Wheel," a metaphor for the cycle of recurring expenses that women often engage in to maintain societal standards of beauty and appearance. This cycle can be financially draining and offers diminishing returns over time.
Key Points:
Recurring Expenses:
Beauty treatments like acrylic nails require continuous investment, leaving women financially worse off in the long run.
Social Capital of Beauty:
From a young age, women are conditioned to prioritize appearance, often at the expense of financial well-being.
Depreciating Assets:
Investments in beauty are inherently losing propositions compared to investments in financial capital, which can grow over time.
Notable Quote:
Katie explains the concept:
"The hot girl hamster wheel is how I describe the litany of recurring rotating expenses that are necessary to uphold what I will jokingly call the capital a capital F acceptable femininity."
(08:57)
Katie delves into the 4% safe withdrawal rule, a cornerstone of financial independence planning. She explains how this rule can serve as a guiding principle for budgeting and saving, illustrating how different saving rates impact the time required to achieve financial freedom.
Key Insights:
Connection Between Spending and Financial Goals:
By understanding how much one spends and saves, individuals can project the time needed to reach financial independence.
Impact of Saving Rates:
Higher savings rates can significantly reduce the number of years required to achieve financial freedom.
Personal Transformation:
Applying the 4% rule enabled Katie to transition from a corporate 9-to-5 job to entrepreneurship, highlighting the practical benefits of disciplined saving and investing.
Notable Quote:
Katie emphasizes the importance of saving:
"As you spend less, that number goes down. If you can live on less, if you can really live beneath your means and invest more of your income, you will get there infinitely faster."
(17:35)
Katie shares insights into the extensive process of writing Rich Girl Nation, particularly the laborious task of compiling endnotes and citations to ensure the accuracy and reliability of her data. While she primarily conducted her research manually, Katie utilized AI tools towards the end of her writing process to verify her interpretations of complex reports and data sources.
Key Points:
Manual Research:
Katie spent considerable time reading and interpreting lengthy reports to support her arguments.
AI Assistance:
In the final stages, AI helped her parse information, ensuring she accurately represented the data without misinterpretation.
Time Efficiency:
The use of AI significantly reduced the time required for fact-checking, saving her approximately 60 hours of work.
Notable Quote:
Katie discusses her experience with AI:
"I ended up using AI for parsing... It probably saved me 60 hours of work."
(21:34)
Transitioning from the written word to audio, Katie recounts her experiences recording the audiobook version of Rich Girl Nation. Initially apprehensive due to her close relationship with the material, she found renewed appreciation and confidence in her work after distancing herself during the manuscript's publication phase.
Key Points:
Emotional Journey:
Katie felt fatigued and critical of her work immediately after submission but gained a fresh perspective during the audiobook recording.
Validation of Effort:
Recording the audiobook reaffirmed the quality and rigor of her book, boosting her confidence in its value to listeners.
Notable Quote:
Katie reflects on the audiobook process:
"I was really relieved reading it because I was like, oh, thank God this is good... Now that I've had distance from it, I actually felt really good about it."
(23:32)
When prompted about whose endorsement she would seek for her book, Katie chooses Gloria Steinem, a prominent feminist and social activist, highlighting her admiration for the 1970s women's movement and its influence on her work.
Notable Quote:
Katie shares her choice thoughtfully:
"I am very inspired both politically and aesthetically by the 1970s era women's movement. I think it was just a very cool time in history. And so yeah, she's the og. She's the coolest."
(25:21)
As the episode wraps up, Katie encourages listeners to pre-order Rich Girl Nation and visit her website, moneywithkatie.com/RichGirlNation, to access exclusive content, including a bonus chapter on the crucial decision of renting versus buying a home—a topic particularly pertinent to women.
Notable Quote:
Neal Freyman invites listeners:
"If any of those concepts sound intriguing to you, our conversation is just the tip of the iceberg. Right after you finish this episode. Run, don't walk. Run to money with Katie.com/Rich Girl Nation, where you can preorder her book."
(01:38)
For those interested in delving deeper into Katie’s insights, the podcast episode serves as a comprehensive overview, but listeners are encouraged to read Rich Girl Nation for a more detailed exploration of financial strategies tailored for women.
Note: This summary excludes advertisements, intros, outros, and non-content sections to focus solely on the substantive discussions and insights shared during the episode.