So Money with Farnoosh Torabi – Episode 1921: The Best of So Money: Money, Feminism, and the Power to Choose

Release Date: December 22, 2025
Host: Farnoosh Torabi
Featuring: Neha Ruch, Katie Gaddy Tassen, Amina Altai, Dr. Corrine Lowe

Overview

In this special "Best Of" year-end episode, Farnoosh Torabi revisits some of 2025's most compelling and candid conversations exploring the intersection of money, feminism, and the power to choose. The episode draws from a diverse set of guests—authors, researchers, and entrepreneurs—who each challenge the narratives surrounding women's work, caregiving, beauty, systemic inequities, ambition, and the value of our time. Through these highlights, listeners are invited to reflect more deeply on agency, options, and building a financial life that truly aligns with who we are and what we value.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Redefining the Career Pause with Neha Ruch, Author of The Power Pause

[04:43 – 16:01]

• Historical Narratives & Modern Choices:
  Neha Ruch examines how second-wave feminism in the 1970s proved women’s abilities in the workforce but also reinforced restrictive archetypes of women at home (the "June Cleaver" vs. "Michelle Obama" dichotomy). The cultural narrative of the "stay at home mom" hasn’t kept pace with modern realities—today, women have more education, delayed childbirth, and often make active, empowered decisions about career transitions.

  “When you ask them about the working mother, they’ll say, Michelle Obama, one is fact and one is fiction. And what it also highlights is that we never updated the perception of women doing work in the home.” — Neha Ruch [05:55]

• The Power Pause Mindset:
  Neha reframes career breaks as intentional, strategic choices—periods to grow personally, develop new skills, and build household resilience, not as steps backward or moments of loss.

  “When you step into a career downshift where you might be parting with your salary, you are still providing value to the household… The partner working out of the home is equally dependent on you for doing the unpaid work.” — Neha Ruch [08:43]

• Practical Advice for Couples:
  The importance of financial planning and open, respectful dialogue with partners is stressed. If a power imbalance exists around money, external help (like financial planners, marital counselors, or even postnuptial agreements) may be needed.

  “If you are in a relationship where it’s a much more traditionally minded partner and we are not able to get to a place of agreement…that is where…a postnuptial agreement [comes in]…guardrails to make sure that we’re protecting our partnership so that we can both feel safe and secure…” — Neha Ruch [14:43]

2. Beauty, Money, and the Hot Girl Hamster Wheel with Katie Gaddy Tassen (Rich Girl Nation)

[16:01 – 25:10]

• Financial (and Psychological) Cost of Beauty Standards:
  Katie opens her book with a searing analysis of the "Hot Girl Hamster Wheel"—the often unexamined, relentless financial outlay required of women to meet beauty standards. This goes well beyond "choice," intersecting with systemic pressures and opportunity costs.

  “I had never heard somebody say, the beauty industry is terrible for women’s financial health… you’re spending an average of…$320 per month…over a 40-year career…that’s about a million bucks in opportunity cost… I don’t think many of us think about those decisions as optional.” — Katie Gaddy Tassen [19:36]

• Personal Choice vs. Systemic Influence:
  Katie challenges listeners to ask whether beauty-related spending truly feels like a choice and highlights how individual decisions are shaped (and shape) the experience of others.

  “The more people who labor and spend to uphold them, the more that pressure is exerted on every other woman to do the same…these are conversations that really exemplify that intersection between personal choice and systemic change.” — Katie Gaddy Tassen [20:35]

3. The Motherhood Penalty & "The Bigger Math"

[22:51 – 25:10]

• Working Mothers and Short vs. Long-Term Financial Thinking:
  Many women contemplate leaving work when childcare costs seem to swallow their take-home pay. Farnoosh and Katie discuss the “bigger math”—how staying in the workforce (even for negligible near-term gain) is an investment in lifetime income, future options, and flexibility.

  “The bigger math is thinking about when you stay employed, even if in the short term it feels like a wash, you are investing in higher lifetime earnings.” — Katie Gaddy Tassen [24:35]

• Farnoosh’s Personal Investing Story:
  Farnoosh shares how aggressive mid-career investing built a financial buffer, granting security and choices as family needs evolved.

  “I continued working…because I did the big math and it is already paying off…now when they’re 8, 10… I may not want to work as hard as I was five years ago, and I have the runway now to be able to have options. That was the biggest theme from your book…” — Farnoosh Tarabi [29:26]

4. Painful vs. Purposeful Ambition with Amina Altai (The Ambition)

[32:49 – 38:24]

• Systemic Barriers to Women's Ambition:
  Women and people of color often start their careers equally ambitious as men, but are penalized for it. While “ambition” is celebrated in men, it can be seen as “difficult” or “unlikable” in women, especially women of color, who encounter disproportionate backlash.

  “Women and people of color experience an ambition penalty. So the data was collected in a gender binary. So men and women enter the workforce with the same levels of ambition. Men are rewarded for theirs. Women, it’s seen as a detractor.” — Amina Altai [32:49]

• Painful vs. Purposeful Ambition:
  Amina explains the two types of ambition—one rooted in core wounds and scarcity ("painful"), the other in purpose and self-awareness ("purposeful"). She urges listeners to recognize if they’re “in the wrong room” and not to stay and “outwork” broken systems.

  “It’s almost virtually impossible to outwork a broken system.” — Amina Altai [36:49]

• A New Script for Ambition:
  Ambition can—and should—be reframed as cyclical, tied to our deeper why, not simply accumulation for its own sake.

5. Having It All? Systemic Constraints and Invisible Labor with Dr. Corrine Lowe

[39:23 – 45:57]

• Women Still Doing More at Home—Even When Breadwinners:
  Dr. Lowe’s research reveals that although both men and women are putting more hours into parenting than previous generations, men’s hours spent on cooking/cleaning have not increased since the 1970s, and women still bear double the burden—even as top earners.

  “Even when she’s the female breadwinner, she still does twice as much cooking and cleaning, so she doesn’t get the relief that her male colleagues get…” — Dr. Corrine Lowe [39:36]

• Outsourcing, Gender, and the Value of Time:
  Lowe draws a parallel between how families easily outsource "male-coded" chores (like car maintenance), but find it “unaffordable” or “against our values” to outsource "female-coded" domestic work. This exposes persistent undervaluing of women’s time, even among progressive couples.

  “They are taking the car to the mechanic. They are hiring somebody to clean the gutters…But it becomes an unaffordable luxury when it’s a female-coded task instead.” — Dr. Corrine Lowe [45:14]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Updating Outdated Narratives:
  “We never updated the perception of women doing work in the home…what we’re looking at is just a vastly more empowered generation of women who may be making it a choice or needing to make a choice.”
  — Neha Ruch [05:55]

• On Financial Foundations for Career Pauses:
  “Finances is literally the second chapter in the book, because I think it is the foundation of being able to walk through this stage with dignity and with a sense of possibility.”
  — Neha Ruch [08:44]

• On Beauty as a Financial Issue:
  “I had never heard somebody say, the beauty industry is terrible for women’s financial health.”
  — Katie Gaddy Tassen [19:26]

• On the Systemic Penalty for Ambition:
  “You are probably an amazing human, right? You can probably contribute amazing things to another organization that will see you fully. So I think sometimes it’s really important to recognize if we’re in the wrong room.”
  — Amina Altai [35:34]

• On Outsourcing and Valuing Women’s Time:
  “I do push back a little bit because for lot of the families that say, well, outsourcing isn’t financially feasible for us, they are taking the car to the mechanic…But it becomes an unaffordable luxury when it’s a female coded task instead.”
  — Dr. Corrine Lowe [45:14]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [04:43] – Neha Ruch on how culture shapes narratives of caregiving and career breaks
• [08:32] – Redefining power in career pauses and the role of planning and partnership
• [12:20] – Navigating resentment and imbalance in couples; postnuptial agreements
• [18:16] – Katie Gaddy Tassen on the financial implications of beauty culture
• [22:51] – The “bigger math” of working motherhood and childcare decisions
• [29:26] – Farnoosh’s investment strategy as career resilience
• [32:49] – Amina Altai on the ambition penalty and gender differences in being “seen”
• [34:22] – The pivotal distinction between painful and purposeful ambition
• [39:23] – Dr. Corrine Lowe on the invisible labor gap, even among high-earning women
• [43:35] – The undervaluing of women’s time and double standards in outsourcing

Tone & Style

Throughout the episode, the tone is frank yet empathetic, blending deep societal critique with practical advice, humor, and lived experience. The conversations respect complexity—acknowledging both individual agency and persistent systemic barriers. Farnoosh and her guests speak candidly about money as a tool not just for wealth, but for independence, options, and authentic life choices.

Conclusion

This "Best Of" episode of So Money unpacks how money, feminism, and the power to choose intersect in daily life. Listeners are left with a richer understanding of why our choices matter, how systems shape them, and how reframing old narratives—about work, care, ambition, and value—can lead to more empowered and intentional financial lives.

For the full stories, listen to the original episodes with Neha Ruch (Ep 1774), Katie Gaddy Tassen (Ep 1832), Amina Altai (Ep 1880), and Dr. Corrine Lowe.