← So Money with Farnoosh Torabi
So Money with Farnoosh Torabi
1913: The Truth About Queer Money: Myths, Stressors, and the Path Forward
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- [00:00]
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Farnoosh Torabi
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- [02:14]
So Money Episode 1913 the Truth About.
- [02:17]
Queer Myths, Stressors and the Path Forward.
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Adam Grant
You're listening to so MONEY with award winning money guru Farnoosh Torabi. Each day get a 30 minute dose of financial inspiration from the world's top business minds, authors, influencers and from Farnoosh yourselves. Looking for ways to save on gas or double your double coupons. Sorry, you're in the wrong place. Seeking profound ways to live a richer, happier life. Welcome to SO Money.
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Farnoosh Torabi
Is there a myth about queer money that you want to just squash?
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Nick Wolney
Queer people don't make more, they make less. We're not like wealthier as a whole. One is that it's a very wide swath of people. It's hard to even make any blanket statements about queer people. I talk about that. With the data that we have on the LGBTQ wage gap, it's 90 cents on the dollar, but within that it varies quite widely between men and women, between white people and people of color, between CIS people and trans people and gender non conforming people. I think a lot of this ends up getting shaped by media representation and that's why it's important get that message out there and get that quality information out there and not just have it be the stereotype.
- [03:33]
Farnoosh Torabi
Welcome to so Money, everybody. I'm Farnoosh Tarabi. What does it mean to build wealth when the world hasn't always made space for your ident? That's the question at the heart of today's conversation and the driving force behind a powerful new book that's reshaping how LGBTQ people think about money, belonging and the future. On our episode today, I'm joined by Nick Wolney. He's a longtime personal finance journalist, a columnist for out magazine, and the author of a new book, Money the Queer Guide to generate wealth, slay debt, and build good habits to secure your future. He's also a previous guest on our podcast and today he's bringing a candid, deeply human lens to the financial lives of queer people. From the emotional and cultural realities that shape money choices to the systems and habits that help rebuild stability, confidence, and long term security. He's got his own story, which he describes not as self help, but as kind of a spiritual reckoning that's woven throughout the book. And he sets the stage for a really honest, energetic and and practical conversation.
- [04:45]
We talk about the pursuit of belonging and how it can be expensive.
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We talk about queer joy and how to have that against financial boundaries. We talk about rethinking retirement because Nick has spent a lot of time covering the FIRE movement, the financial independence retire early movement, and as you just heard, he's got thoughts about myths regarding queer wealth and then what happens if same sex marriage protections roll back. Here we go. Here's Nick Wal.
- [05:17]
Nick Wolney.
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Welcome to Sew Money.
- [05:19]
Nick Wolney
Thanks for having me back. It's great to be here.
- [05:21]
Farnoosh Torabi
Great to have you and congratulations, you're back on the show.
- [05:25]
This time as a newly published author.
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Your book is called Money the Queer Guide.
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To generate wealth, slay debt, and build.
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Good habits to secure your future. Congratulations, Nick.
- [05:40]
Nick Wolney
Thank you so much. It feels so weird to introduce myself as author. I don't know, like stars in people's eyes. Yeah. When you say writer, they're like, that's cute. But then when you say author, I don't know, just like a few different letters and they're like, ooh la. Getting used to the excitement of it all.
- [05:56]
Farnoosh Torabi
Get used to it. Get used to it. Let's talk about your personal journey in personal finance. I read the introduction to your book. I'm still reading. I'm still reading through the pages. It's very well written. I love that you have decided to really focus on the queer community. I think it's a very and very underserved market that has very unique needs when it comes to personal finance. And your journey has been. You call it a spiritual journey. As an LGBTQ + person, can you tell us what that means to you? You're very clear in the book that.
- [06:30]
You want it to not veer into.
- [06:32]
This sense of toxic positivity or this idea of throwaway advice. Cause like this idea of spiritual journey, it can be an eye roll moment for some people to hear that phrase. So tell us what you actually mean by that.
- [06:44]
Nick Wolney
Yeah, I think it really came down to how it feels to take a close look at your own behavior and what you're doing in your day to day life and how that ends up creating the life that you have. Things like thought patterns and I also think family conditioning, social conditioning, things like that. I am not a religious person, to be clear, and I'm also pretty blunt in the introduction that religious persecution leads to a lot of the terrorism against queer people all over the world. So at first I'm hesitant to even throw out the word spiritual. But when it comes to connecting how you're spending your money and how you're thinking about money and your behavior and just connecting that to the other areas of your life and how it all fits together. Being able to pursue what you want and being able to cultivate the life that you want and I think learn a lot about yourself, which is something that queer people in particular must actively navigate. The connection between that, the connection between money and mental health was really interesting for me. I'd previously been doing a variety of odd jobs. I joke in the introduction that I'm not like other money authors who got it all right, checked every box, and now they're a super expert. I've pretty much effed up every step of the way became self employed in 2016. And every mistake you can make in the book and have made that and all of that, I did that full time for six years. And I just felt like I had plateaued as a writer and as a marketer and as a creator. And so I went into corporate media. A mutual friend of ours, Adam Auriemma, reached out to me about a brand called Next Advisor, a personal finance brand. And we really want an editor who can do small business, entrepreneurship, fire culture, creator, economy side hustles, that kind of stuff. All the stuff that's about making more money. And we've seen you write and what do you think? You want to come do this dance? And so I came on and. And can we swear on this podcast?
- [08:44]
Farnoosh Torabi
Yes.
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Nick Wolney
It's expensive. I was getting my ass kicked, Farnish. At the beginning, I was getting my.
- [08:49]
Farnoosh Torabi
Assured, like, well, I'm just making sure.
- [08:51]
Nick Wolney
I just. I'm just making sure. I don't want to mess up your distribution. Yeah, but I was. I was getting my ass kicked because there's just a lot of nuts and bolts of finance, a lot of regulation and things like that. And also just looking at the other verticals and what the evergreen coverage is in personal finance, banking, credit cards, loans, all that stuff. And the reason that is evergreen is that people are. Are constantly seeking help with that stuff. Yeah, they're constantly seeking help with that stuff. Seeking that information. Around the same time, I started writing a finance column for out magazine. It was a very Los Angeles origin story. I met the editor in chief at a party and we got a little drunk, and I don't remember who pitched who, but we, as one does, we should definitely do a finance column in this entertainment magazine. So I joke that I'm usually sandwiched between two man spreads. My little finance column, they'd be inflation. But it's. Yeah, we've gone on four years. It gets a really good response. And in. So in that experience, learning a lot about how to package the service journalism of personal finance for a queer audience, what is going to resonate with LGBTQ people and even within our little subsets. But what resonates, and much of it goes back to those behavioral finance pieces. How we think about money, how we feel about money, how we numb, how we avoid a lot of that is actually what's shaping our behavior. And even just the cultures that we identify with. And so discovering all of that and being like, okay, this is not just about the dissemination of information. This book can also be a really great packaging opportunity to present this Information that we know is evergreen for people and to really style it, to appeal to that queer person ally who is afraid to look at their bank account because they know how much damage they've been doing the last. That's who it appeals to.
- [10:44]
Farnoosh Torabi
You describe one of the stressors in the lives of LGBTQ individuals, this minority stress, as one of the differentiators. When you're talking about what makes it different for this community when it comes to personal finance, you bring up a few things, and one of them is this idea of minority stress.
- [11:08]
Can you drill this down for us?
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I want to unpack this and get our audience to really understand, like, what is involved.
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What are the stressors?
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Nick Wolney
Yeah, minority stress. It's a term American Psychological Association. It's the stress that is experienced from being the minority in a group, which probably a lot of people can relate to in one form or another. Right. It doesn't just apply to queer people. It can apply to anyone who is a minority in the social environment they are in day to day. And so it's certainly a chronic stressor. It's something that typically you're going to be encountering on a regular basis. And so what we know about chronic stress is that chronic stress actually begins to alter the brain over time. Our brains have the plasticity in our brains even as adults. And so if we're in an environment where we're chronically stressed, some of the ways that it makes us cope or makes us shut down, things like that, that is going to have a downstream impact on how we're managing our money. You're not thinking very much about investing when you are too focused on survival.
- [12:13]
Farnoosh Torabi
And it's passed down from the generations. Right. Because of trauma, because of microaggressions, macro aggressions. Like, that's what I was wondering. It's like, what are the experiences that lead to the stress, the current experiences, the past experience? I guess that's what I. Yeah, I.
- [12:31]
Nick Wolney
Think it also is. So it's. It can be inherited, but I think also a good example. So a good data set we have is the data that comes out from the Trevor Project, which I just drop a couple of items from it in that introduction. But about 40% of LGBTQ adults experienced a mental health illness in 2024, and that's compared to 18% of all adults. And then we also see a lot of just out, like, outperforming of queer teens reporting depression anxiety at much, much higher levels than teenagers in general. So it's this combination of the. You can be stressed that they've inherited. But it can also just be them getting on social media and looking at all the headlines every day, very adamantly focused on the erasure of trans people. And it's gonna happen with same sex marriage. Just one thing after another. And if you haven't had that lived experience like some of us elder adults have, then that can be really scary. It can be like, wow, this is. This place is not for me. And so that begins to. What I assert in the book is that there creates this. It creates this downstream desire. Seek out relief.
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Farnoosh Torabi
Yeah.
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Nick Wolney
In whatever way you can. And that sometimes finances will go to the wayside order to seek that out. One example is that queer people are more likely to live in a city because they want to find that community of other people who are like them. They can feel that sense of belonging. It's more expensive to live in a city. And so that's one example. Another example is that for young queer people who go to college, it. One of the reasons they go to college is to get away from home.
- [14:07]
Farnoosh Torabi
Yeah.
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Nick Wolney
Get away from their family. And that occurs at a much higher percentage rate. That's from Williams Institute data. It's a much higher reason for them choosing the out of state school. That might be like an eye watering tuition, things like that.
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Farnoosh Torabi
22 almost. Right?
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Nick Wolney
Yeah. Yeah. So there are these kind of different outcomes in which the pursuit of euphoria and the pursuit of queer joy and there are some other vices and things that kind of appear in the picture too. Right. Queer people and substance use. Queer people and other aspects and whatnot. Where you it again, the escaping from that minority stress and the desire to move toward a more stable environment or a more welcoming environment often makes queer people choose to do things with their money.
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Farnoosh Torabi
Yeah.
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Nick Wolney
In pursuit of that at the cost of other aspects of financial wellness.
- [14:57]
Farnoosh Torabi
And so all the more reason to learn how to manage your money well, how to earn more. How did you ultimately get a handle on your money? Nick, it sounds like a lot of this is mindset work. A lot of this is maybe it's financial therapy work. But then there are systems that you have to put in place. Right. And so what is maybe the first step?
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Whether it's this first step that you.
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Took or it's a first step in your book.
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Nick Wolney
So the first step I took was just allowing myself to slow down enough to look at my money. One bad habit. I'm probably gonna get canceled for saying this, but one bad habit I developed as an online business person is taking this language of invest in yourself or trust the process. So these aphorisms that kind of float around in that online entrepreneur space and spending money that I didn't have for, you know, oh, I'm in. I'm investing in the business. I'm investing in the business. Farnoosh. That's why I'm doing this mastermind. I'm investing in the business. And sometimes those would. The investment would be realized and then sometimes it wouldn't. But I was just skipping over that step of do I have the money?
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Farnoosh Torabi
Yeah.
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Nick Wolney
And then to be fully immersed in personal finance journalism and personal finance media where it's just a very different mentality. It's just actually looking at what you're doing and then making decisions based off of that and weighing your options. I also think I was covering fire. Culture is unique on the opposite end of the spectrum of financial independence. Retire early. That's fire. Where these people are saving 50, 60, 70, 90% of their incomes in order to retire very early. And then they retire and they have no idea what to do with themselves because they were such an asshole the entire time. They were saving so aggressively that they never bothered to learn anything about themselves. And then they wasted a lot of their most able bodied years or helpful years along the way or their spouses left them or they never hung out with their kids because they were like, they were. There's. It's not always about the spreadsheet.
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Farnoosh Torabi
Yeah.
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Nick Wolney
And so I think what I took away from all of that was just this balance of, all right. Like being diligent and being grounded and making a plan for things like saving rate. So the end of part one of the book, we really arrive after we've kind of talked about you and your thoughts and your feelings and also your debts and all that stuff. And just really the first sentence of the whole book is it's time to come out to yourself about your money.
- [17:16]
Farnoosh Torabi
Yeah.
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Nick Wolney
So after you've done that, arriving at that point of saving rate. Because to me, saving rate, how much you have left over at the end of each month is a fuel that informs everything else that we're going to potentially do. And saving rates, Federal Reserve of St. Louis has measured that it's between 3 and 5% for most Americans, which is not amazing. It was in double digits back in the 1980s. So looking at that, I also think that helps make the book more universal for people. If someone's reading and their salary is $40,000, that's a different situation than someone whose salary is $140,000. So saving rate can help you determine what's left over. And we need that because that's the stuff that's literally the dollars and cents that we're going to be working with to do all the other stuff for the rest of the book. So once I got clear on that, it's okay, what am I working with? What do I actually have to work with? And then making decisions about what to do with that money, that sort of sequential step, it helped me not worry about some of the more intermediate things that I think are distracting for most people. Cryptocurrency and options.
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Farnoosh Torabi
Oh, my gosh.
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Nick Wolney
Stuff that's just. You need money in the picture to even play in those sandboxes to begin with, and people are skipping that step. So let's focus on that first step before you do other stuff.
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Farnoosh Torabi
I'm curious if it ever felt isolating to you as you were trying to rein things in financially as you described the queer culture. It's very. For you, at least, it was very social parties. Dj, the book talks about that. At least. At least in your 20s, it was very much joyous. And there was a community and there was going out and they're late nights and. And I've talked to others who are personal finance experts in the LGBTQ+ community, and they've echoed this aspect of the challenge being like the consumerism and the. And the spending and the debt that can happen as a result of this. And it's not unique to LQ plus people, but it is something to reckon with that has a presence. And so when you're that person who's like in a friend group that's, I'm not gonna go out this weekend. I am not spending money on this vacation that we always take during spring break or we're not skiing, we're skiing always on the holidays. I'm not doing that. I wonder how to manage that, how to work through that, how to communicate this to your friends. Now, there's a book. So maybe you gift this to your friends, but in the absence of that, what are your recommendations for how to communicate this to your friends? TikTok tells us to loud budget. I love that. But maybe it's easier for some than others.
- [19:51]
Nick Wolney
Yeah, I really like the loud budgeting trend because I think it gets people in communication and just to get them to set boundaries rather than get swirled up in the consumerism of it all. Like you said, I think what makes queer people susceptible is that desire for belonging within the community. And I talk about how it's twofold. There's this initial phase of trying to find your community and perhaps having to relocate or just seek out that community, and then you find the community, and then the community is inviting you to Mykonos again this summer. You're like, oh, God, like, I'm a waiter.
- [20:26]
Farnoosh Torabi
And so it's, don't worry, I'll go.
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Nick Wolney
So you actually have this second phase after you've discovered your community and you feel that sense of belonging where you want to make sure you're keeping up with them so that they don't leave you behind or so that you don't lose this thing that you so desperately yearned for. And I don't know that is unique to queer people. I think that's true for a lot of different groups of people, but certainly we see it in. In queer culture that really like an iteration of Keeping up with the Joneses. Yeah, in some way, but it's just like the friendship version of that. So I like the loud budgeting piece. This is main. But you might need different friends.
- [21:02]
Farnoosh Torabi
We've already been canceled. You might need different friends.
- [21:05]
Nick Wolney
I know. Actually, my goal is to get canceled by the end of the podcast.
- [21:08]
Farnoosh Torabi
It's fine. I love how in the book you talk about that you say you feel a duty to live a joyous career in life because many LGBTQ plus people before you never got the chance. I think I often say that you have to give your money meaning. You have to give your money meaning. You have to wrap your financial life around a philosophy or five philosophies. Right. You gotta anchor it in something meaningful to remind you why you're doing the things that you're doing with your money. And for you to say that I'm doing this because I'm doing. I'm spending my money, I'm saving my money because I want to live a joyful life. Not just for me, but because I want to honor the this community and also in honor of everybody who helped me get to this place where I can now be in a celebratory place. What do you mean when you say managing your money, though, as part of celebrating being gay? What do you want that to represent for people?
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Tell us.
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Nick Wolney
It's a both and solution. I'm really passionate about that outcome. I've seen the spend everything approach. I've lived the spend everything approach. And then, like, professionally, I reported on the save everything approach, literally when reporting on fire and covering, overseeing the coverage of fire and how we were approaching all of that. And I think queer people need to find that happy medium, particularly our current legacy of isolation and loneliness and how that has been for so much of our history. It really has to be this both and solution in which we're getting out there and discovering what we like in life so that we can experience more of that when we age and when we perhaps get to retirement or partial retirement or whatever that looks like we actually have a sense of who we are. And as we often, as we know people will do something like that, they'll seek out who they are and it'll actually completely change the direction of their lives entirely as a result. Right. It's this, this peeling away of the layers and really discovering who you are. And I acknowledge it often costs money to do that. The sinking funds are right up there. They are jammed right in there in that spending and saving plan so that you can be doing both concurrently. And I just think that not even I just. It's really important that we figure out what we enjoy in life in person, not just on our little computers that are in our hands. Scroll, scroll, seven, eight, nine hours a day. And that's so much for our lives. We got to figure out what we like doing. We got to figure out where we like to travel to and what cultures we like to experience and what kind of food we like to eat and creating different groups of friends and. And cultivating all of that. So I think that there is a more holistic definition of wealth to be had. I am sure I am not the first person on this podcast to say something like that, but.
- [24:09]
Farnoosh Torabi
But it likes it begs to be repeated.
- [24:12]
Nick Wolney
Yeah.
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Farnoosh Torabi
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- [25:42]
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- [29:08]
And I think if we could just explore that as well. Because also you said something in the book that was really heartbreaking to me when I read it. And I think you're over it now. I know you're over it now, but you said that again. I'm gonna go back to retirement in a second, but I know I'm like.
- [29:21]
Waffling here a bit.
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Like. But you said you there was a moment where you didn't think you were.
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Going to get to an old age.
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And that's why partly, you didn't care about managing your money. And that was sad to me. And I can unpack that a little bit. But I think that's a lot of people probably of your generation who grew up queer identifying as queer. Because yeah, AIDS was a real thing back then, staring them down. So now, hopefully we are living in an era where we do see us aging gracefully and into our 90s and beyond. And retirement costs money. It's very expensive. The good news is we're living longer. The bad news is we're living longer and it costs money. And you write that we need a reframe with retirement, that it is not determined by age, it is determined by assets. And you've covered the fire movement, as you said, for years. So tell us how we should be rethinking retirement. Because you say a lot of people wrongfully are thinking that government is going to save the day and that these fire people, they're beyond. Like, we could never be these people who like, retire early, but you say they're just like us. They just go harder. Like it's a choice. It's a choice.
- [30:39]
Nick Wolney
Yeah. I think I say in the book, they're the extra credit people. Right. They're gonna go real hard and they're thrilled to do it. Yeah. The. For me that specifically to the old age thing because so many gay men died in their 20s and 30s during the AIDS crisis. And the government did nothing for you knew it was happening and did nothing. So I will not dilute my disdain for the government. So perhaps that's one reason I'm attracted to fire is just like Social Security, whatever. That's a different talking point for a different episode. Everyone could go on and on about that. I just like the taking the complete personal responsibility of, okay, what am I going to have to work with as I am getting older, as I am looking at working less, as I am looking at potentially not working anymore. And that's something that the fire people have to figure out because they will not touch their 401k until 59 and a half. They will not touch Social Security until their 60s. They will not touch Medicare until they can't until mid 60s. And they have to come up like part of that fire planning methodology which this book is essentially delivering, but in a very gay way, very stylish way.
- [31:50]
Farnoosh Torabi
Listeners, if you could see Nick right now, there was a big shoulder action movement.
- [31:53]
Nick Wolney
Oh, absolutely, yes.
- [31:55]
Farnoosh Torabi
He used his shoulder.
- [31:56]
Nick Wolney
It's high tide with these shoulders. Yes, yes, completely. Yeah. The fire people, they the. The usual, okay, you're going to retire in your 60s. The fire people. One of the first steps they have to do is they have to abandon that because that money is either not going to become available or they need to do something like a Roth conversion ladder to get the money out of their 401k to sidestep those penalties or just some of the more technical stuff. But they have to problem solve for the fact that they're going to stop working sooner, but they're going to need access to the money that they have saved before our societal targets and guidelines and things like that. And so in terms of breaking up that perhaps previously held belief that retirement is something you do in your 60s or that you do in your 70s, like helping people understand there's a set amount of assets. And we teach investing over the course of the book. Right. So that people understand, oh, this is a thing. This is an asset. Assets make money. Oh, okay, I could make my money from assets instead of labor. So we go through all of that all throughout the book. But helping people realize that it's the buildup of those assets that is going to solve the problem down the line when you decide that you want to work less or if you need to work less or if you need to stop working. And so if you think about it from that perspective and just wrap your head around assets, not necessarily as capital because you're a capitalist and you want to be rachunkle money bags and take over the whole monopoly board, it's not. That's not what we're talking about, but just an understanding, a working understanding of assets and why you would want them and what they will do for you when you get.
- [33:27]
Farnoosh Torabi
And compounding.
- [33:29]
Nick Wolney
Exactly. And just understanding how all of that stuff works together. Because for many I feel like it's a sentiment. Maybe it's because I've been on TikTok more lately, but it's just the anti capitalism is quite passionate right now and for good reason. We've got this K shaped economy humming along. It sucks to be on the lower rung of that. But I worry that in the rejection of that, people swing so far in the other direction that they're putting their dollars under the mattress and they're missing out on some of the things that historically help people make and save enough money to be able to have something like retirement be an option in whatever capacity that looks like you spent a.
- [34:12]
Farnoosh Torabi
Lot of time on TikTok, is there any recommendation that you have?
- [34:16]
Nick Wolney
I guess you do it for work.
- [34:17]
Farnoosh Torabi
But when you are on TikTok for work and you're perusing for financial information content, what's a healthy way to browse.
- [34:28]
TikTok for money stuff?
- [34:29]
Just don't go on there. Is my advice.
- [34:31]
Nick Wolney
I should first say I'm not on there for work.
- [34:34]
Adam Grant
All right.
- [34:35]
Nick Wolney
I don't even know if I'm on there for fun. No, I am on there for fun. Yeah. All right, so what? I've been making vertical videos because I've Just acknowledged I've cried about it on my porch and I've had a martini. And now I'm ready to accept that some people just won't read and they will just never read. Just get over myself. That sharing information in another modality of media on another type of content. So I've been doing vertical videos and my vertical videos are, they're so long in comparison, they're like 90 to 120 seconds long. Which is agony on TikTok. Right. So if someone makes it to the end of this video, I've done a damn good job. But all of that aside, I think the thing about TikTok is that algorithm is so sensitive. It's so much more sensitive than the other platforms. We were just making fun of Instagram before we hit record. Or just all these other platforms are based on social graphs. That's how the algorithm, that the algorithm is very tethered to who you were already following. And TikTok doesn't give a shit about that. And that's why it's actually, it's secret sauce that has all these other American social media companies back on their heels. Is that it is a highly behavior based algorithm. If you watch, like whether I want to or not, if I've watched someone take some guy take his shirt off over the first five seconds of the video just to figure out whatever the hell is going on for work, then that's all I get.
- [35:52]
Farnoosh Torabi
For work.
- [35:53]
Nick Wolney
Okay, that one is for work. Then the next 25 videos I get are of a similar kind of type of content.
- [36:00]
Farnoosh Torabi
Yeah.
- [36:00]
Nick Wolney
And so looking around, digging around, finding certain accounts I like and looking for stuff where it's either the discourse or the presentation of information is just good quality. And sifting through that, just engagement bait. Or when people move the phone around to try to keep people on the video for a few seconds, I am much more liberal with the mute button and with the block button on TikTok. And it's not because I don't like you, it's just that I know that your, that type of content is not what I'm looking for. And this algorithm, or my feet, excuse me, my feed is not big enough. Keep everyone else's little engagement bullshit around.
- [36:36]
iHerb Advertiser
Right?
- [36:36]
Nick Wolney
Like I want this to be a news source.
- [36:38]
Farnoosh Torabi
You have to work harder to curate what you need.
- [36:41]
Nick Wolney
I know, it's so tough because there's all this bullshit all over that platform as well.
- [36:46]
Farnoosh Torabi
I think it's terrifying, especially if you're a newcomer because you're getting a lot of weird stuff sent to you moving on? I want to get back to your book. You're. So I wanted to ask you this. Is there a myth about queer money that you want to just squash with your book and maybe your column and out magazine that you feel like there's a misconception people have that's unfair, that you really want to address?
- [37:13]
Nick Wolney
Queer people don't make more, they make less. We're not like wealthier as a whole. One is that it's a very wide swath of people. It's hard to even make any blanket statements about queer people. I talk about that. With the data we have on the LGBTQ wage gap, it's 90 cents on the dollar. But within that it varies quite widely between men and women, between white people and people of color, between CIS people and trans people and gender non conforming people. It's very. It's a very wide range. The example I use, I was speaking taken at an ERG last month at an erg. And the example I used is that. I don't know if you remember this farnoosh. When the original Queer Eye came out, they were in one episode, they were teaching the straight guy how to eat caviar. And I just feel like that. And everyone was like, this show is trailblazing. And we're just like, there is this stereotype queer people or of gay men or of lesbians or.
- [38:07]
Farnoosh Torabi
They're fancy.
- [38:08]
Nick Wolney
Yeah. That they're affluent. That it is sink and dink households. So single income, no kids, double income, no kids. Right.
- [38:15]
Adam Grant
They're just there.
- [38:15]
Nick Wolney
That there's, there's always.
- [38:17]
Farnoosh Torabi
Why do we think that? Who sent out that memo?
- [38:20]
Nick Wolney
I think media representation acclimated to that first Modern Family. Yeah, maybe a little bit. I just think it's. And also queer people not having kids as often and that we're starting to see that gap close as same sex parents become more accepted in society, more normalized, represented. Much of GLAAD's work is media representation. It's a media representation advocacy organization that's in reaction to stuff like the Hays Code. So for a lot of the 20th century, the queer person could only be the villain. And that was actually. It was called the Hays Code. And so in terms of the reaction to that, how media shapes our perception of queer people. And I think particularly now, just with lots of people having an opinion on trans people, but many of those people having never met a trans person or interacted with a trans person, they're just going off of. Of what XYZ radio host or television host is saying about them. So I think a lot of this ends up getting shaped by media representation. And that's why it's important get that message out there and get that quality information out there and not just have it be the stereotype because people will comment on my TikTok things like I had no idea that gay men make less or that queer people make less or did all this different stuff.
- [39:32]
Farnoosh Torabi
I'm curious if you've also been. If your work has eclipsed any of the threats to gay marriage in our country and with the financial implications of that.
- [39:42]
Nick Wolney
Yeah, it's important to pay very close attention to it. I think it will be a pretty dramatic setback. And it's also quite clear that is the intention of Christian nationalism in this country to reverse that decision and to find the right appellate court case to drive up to the Supreme Court in order to overturn that decision. And obviously that creates a number of different impacts. The way it gets sent down to the states. One topic that comes up often is that from 2013 to 2015 the states were in this very patchwork situation. It's very similar to abortion right now where it varies a lot from state to state and how states were handling that. And sometimes the laws were codified, the laws were not codified. There's just a lot of different variation going on with that. And so looking at that, we can jump up and down about how much more money comes into the economy as a result of of same sex marriages being federally legal. But I think even beyond that, it's just the way it opens the door for discrimination on a number of other things. If the marriage is not allowed, forget the financial benefits of course, but there are financial benefits there, estate benefits and whatnot, really important. But I think even just the more subjective discrimination that would be implied from that will start to have an impact. But certainly the estate stuff, because Windsor versus United States, that was in 2013, that was an estate planning case between two women. And that really laid groundwork for Obergefell in 2015, which is the federal same sex marriage rights. You know, in Windsor, basically a widow had to pay hundreds of thousand dollars in estate taxes because her marriage was not recognized. And so she ended up winning that case in the Supreme Court against the United States. There was lots of conversation and lots of decision made about what a state level marriage does and does not mean. So we'll see what ends up unfolding with that. I think in the interim. It's the message that I've been pushing is which is also chapter 10 of Money Proud is Getting the estate planning in check.
- [41:47]
Farnoosh Torabi
Yeah.
- [41:48]
Nick Wolney
So if there's something that changes and suddenly federal same sex marriage is overturned and you live in a state that doesn't have those state level same sex marriage rights, then you need to be really clear about what other things you might need to add, remove or change to your estate documents to ensure that your spouse is taken care of. That's stuff like healthcare, power of attorney and things like that that you have to be super duper diligent about so that you're not in a situation where you can't be with your spouse or spend time with your spouse because of paperwork, which we never don't want that anyway.
- [42:22]
Farnoosh Torabi
It's so important. I'm so happy you wrote this book and I can't think of a better person because you've lived this obviously. But as I'm. I have your book in my hand right now and it's just the way you've written it too. I love the organization. There's obviously great storytelling, but there's. It's the sort of book where you can pick up and you can jump to a chapter because that's where you are in your life right now. You want to learn about investing, go to chapter six. You want to learn about the estate stuff, that's chapter 10. And you've also included anecdotes from people in real life. You've got action steps, you've got some tea that you spill, which I really like. It's very approachable, it's very Nick Walney. And of course I love the title. Did you already know the title before you knew anything? Because obviously this title couldn't have been another title. Do you have other titles in mind or was this what the one that you had to go with?
- [43:10]
Nick Wolney
It was the original went the one of the book proposal was Gay Boss.
- [43:14]
Farnoosh Torabi
Gay Boss, Yeah.
- [43:15]
Nick Wolney
But we were like that maybe the girl boss is perhaps waning. We don't know exactly. Yeah. So that was like a good call out also.
- [43:23]
Farnoosh Torabi
I feel like that feels like a career book to me.
- [43:26]
Nick Wolney
Yeah, we wanted to broaden it a little bit more. We wanted money, cash or dollar in the title with SEO and with publishers and all that. But beyond that, I think a of piece something that emerged in this book because the fire chapter, which is chapter nine, the financial independence chapter, that was originally the sample chapter in the proposal and that was originally chapter two. I think this was pegged to be a little bit more of a fire book, a little bit more of an intermediate book. And just as we really worked Together in the proposal process. And we really meditated on the tens of millions of queer people that live in this country and what's going to be of service to them. That we really broadened it into more of a behavioral finance book and more of a. I wouldn't totally call this. It's not what is a credit card, but maybe like a 102 or a 103.
- [44:11]
iHerb Advertiser
Yeah.
- [44:11]
Nick Wolney
The honor honors AP. We like a little caffeine, but really giving that A to Z so that the person who feels like they should know more about their money than they do, and maybe they're intimidated. Again, for me, that target reader is someone who's afraid to open their bank account and look at what they've spent the last couple of weeks. You know what I mean? So appealing to that person and delivering that mix of charisma and actual information and doing it in a sequential way. This is not a collection of articles with no through line like some of these other books floating around. It's sequential. Everything's in sequence. It's cumulative. So that you can feel like you have a really good foundation to then go and feel good about what you're doing with your money, how you're saving it, how you're spending it, and whatever that means for you and your unique life.
- [45:00]
Farnoosh Torabi
And as an author, it's good for you, too. It sets the foundation for then the other books that then you write. Because I do think you can still write that fire book as the next level. Because someone reads this and they're like, what else you got, Nick? Okay. Yeah, I got. Definitely got this down. How do I retire early now? How do I buy a house or start my. How do I get my side hustles going? I don't know.
- [45:25]
Nick Wolney
It was also about how much we had to cut from this book. I have 30,000 words.
- [45:31]
Farnoosh Torabi
Oh, my gosh.
- [45:32]
Nick Wolney
From this.
- [45:32]
Farnoosh Torabi
That's a workbook.
- [45:33]
That's something else.
- [45:34]
Nick Wolney
And it's. It was interesting. Just that process. I think in that editing process. I loved doing a traditional deal. I loved doing a deal with a big publisher. Because working with an editor.
- [45:45]
Farnoosh Torabi
Yeah.
- [45:45]
Nick Wolney
At a big publishing house, it just. It raised my game so much. And it also. We were in continuous conversation about, okay, what are we gonna cut? What are we gonna not include? And then that forced us to make decisions about why we were including what we were including. I'm like, I really think we need this chapter on entrepreneurship as just an introduction to entrepreneurship framed as a way to make more money.
- [46:08]
Farnoosh Torabi
Yeah.
- [46:08]
Nick Wolney
A way to increase income, things like that. And that meant, okay, we're not gonna talk about amortization. That could be in a different other things. And so I process and working very rigorously with an editor in publishing, I'm happy I held out for a traditional book deal advance aside and all those little bells and whistles, I really enjoyed what I got out of it in terms of craft and in terms of helping discover this very gay shoulder shimmying voice that I, that I just don't get to throw around in journalism and in reportage as much. So yeah, it was a pleasure to write and it was great to do. I'm so happy that we did this sort of foundational work for the first round.
- [46:49]
Farnoosh Torabi
It's the work shows and I'm excited for everyone to see it. And it's gonna hit the bookshelf soon. It's coming out in January.
- [46:57]
Nick Wolney
December 30th.
- [46:58]
Farnoosh Torabi
Sorry, it's coming out December 30th, right before the new year. Congratulations. The book again is called Money Proud. Nick Wolney, thank you.
- [47:06]
Nick Wolney
Thanks for having me.
- [47:10]
Farnoosh Torabi
Thank you so much to Nick Wolney for joining us. I got a link to pre order his book in our show notes.
- [47:15]
It comes out at the end of the month.
- [47:17]
The book is called Money Proud.
- [47:19]
I'll see you back here on Friday for Ask Farnoosh.
- [47:21]
If you like what you're listening to, hit that follow button, leave me a.
- [47:25]
Review and you know, you can send me your questions.
- [47:28]
Just DM me on Instagram or email.
- [47:30]
Me farnooshomoney podcast.com thanks for listening and I hope your day is so money.
- [47:48]
iHerb Advertiser
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- [48:35]
Adam Grant
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