Loading summary
Transcript96 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hey friends, if you've been sitting on a book idea and wondering could this actually become something? This is your moment. Join me in New York City on October 9th for book to Brand. This is my intimate full day immersive designed to help you turn your idea into a clear, compelling pitch ready book concept. You will meet the insiders, agents, publishers and recent authors who can help bring your book to life. Spots are limited and early bird tickets are on sale now. Head to BooktoBrand Co to reserve your spot.
- [00:33]
B
Back Market is the best place to get the tech you need for Back to School for Less. Like professionally refurbished smartphones to take those first aid pics.
- [00:42]
A
Mom, your finger's blocking the camera.
- [00:44]
B
Or so they can ask you to buy a poster board for the science fair tomorrow no matter what you need it for. The premium refurbished tech on Back Market is guaranteed by the Back Market Promise. Professionally refurbished with a one year warranty and free 30 day returns. Save now@backmarket.com with the Discover Cash Back Card. It's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5% cash back at different categories each quarter on up to $1,500 in purchases. That's 5% cash back at different places each quarter. Like grocery stores, on gas and at restaurants, it pays to Discover terms. Apply. See discover.com 5 for details. This is Nick and Jack from the Best One yet and we are excited to tell you about Walmart Business. Staying ahead of business trends means moving fast and adapting quickly. Walmart Business helps you simplify operations so you can focus on building the next big thing. Find exactly what your organization needs with their ever expanding business assortment and everyday low prices. Keep your momentum going fast with reliable shipping and fulfillment. Eligible organizations can take advantage of tax free shopping both in store and online, saving you more while getting you everything you need. It's Walmart built for your business. Sign up for a free Walmart business account today@business.walmart.com
- [02:04]
A
so Money episode 2018 when paying for our Values Gets complicated.
- [02:11]
B
You're listening to so Money with award
- [02:14]
A
winning money guru Farnoosh Torabi. Each day get a 30 minute dose
- [02:18]
B
of financial inspiration from the world's top business minds, authors, influencers and from Farnoosh yourself.
- [02:26]
A
Looking for ways to save on gas
- [02:27]
B
or double your double coupons.
- [02:29]
C
Sorry, you're in the wrong place.
- [02:31]
B
Seeking profound ways to live a richer, happier life. Welcome to so Money.
- [02:38]
C
There is a narrative right now that government is inefficient, right? And I find this super interesting because we also live in a city with a couple really big corporations. And consequently I'm sort of in environments with people who are around those corporations and the amount of waste that they produce is gross. But nobody's being like, hey, big company, you shouldn't waste your money. It feels like there's a double standard in how we talk about the efficiencies of humans getting together in institutions to try to solve problems. And it feels like at the governmental level, we're setting a standard that I don't know that we can meet given the amount of crises that are piling on to state and local governments.
- [03:31]
A
Welcome to SO Money, everyone. I'm Farnoosh Tarabi. Today we're asking a question that I think a lot of us feel, but we don't really discuss out loud. Are progressives slash Democrats liberals? People like me becoming anti tax? So a little context here in Montclair, New Jersey, where I live, we recently had a special election. The question on the ballot was how do we pay back a $20 million school budget deficit? 20 million. And here's the thing about Montclair, if you don't know it already, we are a very progressive town, maybe the most progressive in New Jersey. This is the town where there are yard signs about kindness. We vote blue by enormous margins. And on this vote, the town was split, even though many people will tell you the reason they moved to Montclair is for the public schools. So this split was not because people don't love education or because people don't believe in public education. A lot of the no votes were actually coming from a really legit place. People wanted to know, will this money actually be used properly this time? Properly this time? Are we just going to be back here in three years having this same vote? Because nothing structural changed. It wasn't anti tax as much as much as it was prove to me you're going to do the right thing with this money and that this won't happen again. And that split in a town like mine is exactly the kind of thing today's guest has been thinking about. Because historically liberals have been pretty comfortable with tax increases as long as they believe the money would produce a real societal benefit. It's kind of been the deal. But my guest today says she is noticing a shift. Even in deeply progressive communities like hers where she lives in Portland, there's a growing hesitation, even a flinch, when the bill comes due. Georgia Lee Hussey is a financial planner and founder of Modernist Financial. She has spent her career helping people plan their financial lives, but lately she's been asking a very big question. Are progressives becoming anti tax? And if so, what's it about? Is it about the money? Is it about something else entirely? Do we trust our institutions to spend it well? She's also noticed something that unsettles her. Some of that frustration is starting to echo language that anti democratic movements have used for a long time. And she just got back from Vienna, where a huge share of residents live in subsidized housing. And that got her rethinking what it would even look like if we stopped treating things like housing and child care as problems that we each have to solve alone. So today we're talking about trust, about taxes, and about what it really means to pay for the things that we believe in. Here's Georgia. Georgia Lee Hussey, welcome back to SO money.
- [06:15]
C
Oh, it's so good to be here. Always.
- [06:18]
A
You have brought something really meaty to my attention. And I, at first I was like, I don't know. But then I thought about it and I said, well, certainly I feel like I'm observing this in our very liberal town of Montclair, New Jersey. You're in, you're in Portland. You just came back from, I think it was Austria.
- [06:37]
C
Vienna.
- [06:37]
B
Yeah.
- [06:38]
A
Sorry, Vienna. And, and, and this, there's this, I don't know if it's, we can say it's a new thing, but maybe we can. And I want to hear your thoughts on what you're observing with respect to quote unquote, progressives and their feelings about paying taxes. What are you, what are you seeing?
- [06:57]
C
Yeah, it sort of started out as a, an uncomfortable murmur in the back of my mind in the conversations I was having. This sort of. Oh, I didn't expect you to say that. Oh, that's interesting. I didn't expect resistance about this. I didn't. Anyway, just sort of, whether I'm in a tax planning meeting or the clients that we work with are very wealthy people who are hiring modernists specifically because they want to understand what enough is and they understand their systemic issues that have made their lives easier and other people's clearly not as easeful. And so that frame, knowing that we're all, we all identify as progressive and we're all interested in these conversations has made it sort of a little sneaky, this sense that something's changing. And, and, and so I feel like I started hearing it maybe six years ago, five years ago, and then it's really picked up steam and in really since COVID maybe it's eight years ago. And then Covid really started ramping up the issue.
- [08:15]
A
Can you give me a really concrete example? Like take me to one of these meetings recently.
- [08:19]
C
Mm. So you may or may not know Portland now has one of the highest tax rates in the country. We're behind New York, but not barely. And California, if you combine it with our state taxes, it's a, It's a very high tax rate. And that is in part because Portland is a little bit of a laboratory for progressive policy because we have had a history where we just, we'll. We'll vote for some crazy ass ideas, to be honest. And that hasn't worked out particularly well in the last six years because we decriminalized small amounts of drugs in the November 2019 election. And then they were decriminalized as Covid started and fentanyl spiked. Wow. So there weren't the operational infrastructure for places for people to detox and be put into treatment. It was just decriminalized. And suddenly you could get high for eight aluminum can bottles or aluminum cans. And this is an example of. So we have this problem. We decriminalize. Then we start a metro housing bill that basically adds an extra local tax that's trying to address the housing crisis that most of us on the coasts are experiencing. You and I have are the value of our house go up, but then other people can't buy housing. And so we're all sort of in this issue. So what I have noticed is when it comes to paying their metro housing tax or we also have a preschool for all tax people just complain about it in a way that I'm like, I know you believe in people being housed. I know you're concerned about houselessness. I know you're concerned about feminism and women of color having access to career growth. And when it comes down to you writing this check, there's something. There's another dialogue or monologue happening. And, and it's. And it's, it's quiet but very present. Does that make, does that.
- [10:34]
A
I get it. I get it. So let's. When you. Do you. Do you address this with your clients? I'm sure you do. And can I get to the. The why of it? What is the why of it?
- [10:46]
C
Well, I think there's a few issues. I think there is a narrative right now that government is inefficient.
- [10:58]
A
Right.
- [10:58]
C
And I find this super interesting because we also live in a city with a couple really big corporations. And consequently, I'm sort of in environments with people who are around those corporations. And the amount of waste that they produce is gross, but nobody's being like, hey, big company, you shouldn't waste your money. There's this. There's. Feels like there's a double standard in how we talk about the efficiencies of humans getting together in institutions to try to solve problems. And it feels like at the governmental level, we're setting a standard that I don't know that we can meet, given the amount of crises that are piling on to state and local governments. Does that make sense?
- [11:47]
A
Yeah, but they're not saying, like, it's it. I think I see what you're saying is, like, this disconnect, but do you find any merit to their hesitation? Because systems are broken. Writing a check for a tax can be arguably less productive and efficient than donating to a cause directly that's gonna use every dollar of that of that contribution.
- [12:18]
C
Right, but I disagree with that. I don't think that's actually true. I think that's part of the narrative that I, as an individual consumer, can control my money and send it to a nonprofit that's gonna use my money for the thing I intend. And, and. But when we do that, we are just actually supporting the problem. We're saying that it's not the government's responsibility, it's the nonprofit's responsibility, who have no legal right to policy, to advocate for policy change or to sue for change. So it's, It's. It can be a way to fund the Band Aid.
- [12:53]
A
Okay.
- [12:54]
C
But I don't think it's a solution at the long term. And I think that's where I feel a little stuck, because we both run businesses, Right. If you want to change something in your business, you and I both know it can take 2, 3, 4 years to envision the thing you want to change, build out the infrastructure and move the ship. And we have relatively small ships. If we do that at a governmental level, I think there's a way in which we're just not acknowledging how hard and complicated and erratic change can be when we are funding a tax that is specifically intended to change the system.
- [13:34]
A
Well, you know, earlier we were saying, before we were recording, I had a hunch that. That progressives or liberals or Democrats, you know, we. We historically have been not pro tax, but we've been sort of more okay with raising taxes if it meant benefiting the. The greater good, the social good. So I, I wanted to see, like, how has that shifted? Has it shifted? So there was a recent bipartisan Policy center poll. It found that over half of Democrats, 52% report being dissatisfied with government spending, compared with just 36% of Republicans, which is a reversal of the historical pattern where Democrats were usually more comfortable with government spending. You mentioned in the last eight years who has been in office in the last exact ish years, Right. Give or take, right?
- [14:27]
C
Yes, exactly.
- [14:29]
A
I don't know if I can say, if we can say that it is like circumstantial or if this is like the new normal. But does that give you more fodder for the resistance?
- [14:44]
C
Yeah. Even before the most recent frame of this, I've often heard people like, I just don't feel good about paying federal taxes because so much of it goes to the war to go to, goes to military. Usually the sort of left perspective. And there I often showed this graphic that took a dollar of your tax bill and broke it down into what it actually goes for. And the vast majority of it goes to Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, education, things we believe in. But it's like that last 20%. Yeah, we want it to be perfect. Now, this might be a symptom of a deeper problem on the left, which I think we do have that issue. We want things to be perfect instead of just good enough to happen. I think that gut feeling has gotten significantly inflated by the recent basically 45 and 47. Now we're like, oh, well, he's actually unwinding the government. I paid my taxes and now they're not going to the neh. And then NEA and Education, like I said, they're, they, they're deconstructing the Department of Education, et cetera. But the core problem is I'm like, yeah, but there's still people on food stamps who need them. So it's just like we, it's almost like, can we hold the both. And I, this is what I love
- [16:09]
A
about you, actually, Georgia Lee, because you, you know, we've had conversations before where you're like, the IRS isn't that bad, guys. You know, like the IRS is, is, you know, as much of. And so there are these narratives, right? And I've come to really not warm up to Uncle Sam, but like, also realize that, like, I have friends who are like, I don't know if I can pay my tax bill, it's going to be so high. And I'm like, relax, the IRS has payment plans. The last thing they want is for you to not pay your tax if it can't be right on time. There are way to work around it. And the interest rate, if you get an interest rate, is very Very low. Like, the penalty is worth the peace of mind to be able to pay this off over time. So I've come to sort of appreciate the IRS more, thanks to our conversations.
- [16:58]
C
And that's great, but, like, I did
- [17:02]
A
not expect that appreciation to come from a very progressive gay woman living in Portland, Oregon. Yeah, totally the criteria. You don't fit the stereotype. You just don't fit the stereotype.
- [17:16]
C
Well, I think it's because my own people are now fighting against the irs, and I'm like, hey, hey, hey. These are neighbors, civil servants who are just trying to do a job to fund the government. Like, they're. They're. They're only. They just have a job to do. I don't want to. I don't want to hate my grocery delivery dude because they're out of firm tofu, you know? Like, it's just not fair. I don't know. There's this way in which we're demonizing an idea when that idea is made up of us.
- [17:45]
A
Yeah.
- [17:46]
C
The government is us. And when we externalize it, that is an alt right strategy. That is a very intentional, historically precedented attempt by the right to make us not believe in taxes and not believe in government and therefore disengage from the systems of self government. And that's. That's where I'm like, are we willing to. Are we willing to question our assumptions in the stories we tell ourselves about our resources and money?
- [18:21]
A
You know, what's. There's. There's being unhappy about paying your taxes, and then there's just trying to avoid them altogether, like some really, really wealthy people that we all know about and dumb. What's the harm in just being like, ugh, Yeah. I mean, it's a feeling. Is it consuming them? Is it making them. Is it showing up in other more dangerous things that they could stop doing? You know, I think. I think just comparatively, they're probably like it in their mind. I'm not trying to excuse them, just trying to, like, understand where they're coming from. Like, maybe some of them are thinking. Some of your clients are thinking, like, I don't love that we have an inaccessible child care system in our country. I guess I'll pay this local tax. But it. I'm not. I'm not confident it's gonna. It's gonna solve for many people's problems, but I'll do it. Whatever. I'll do it anyway. But I think they're just like, okay, fine.
- [19:24]
C
Well, and I. What I find interesting is the dissonance between the reporting. I'm hearing from the organizations that are actually pushing forward these taxes, these programs, and the narrative about the tax and the program. And this might have to do a little bit with local media where there's a little bit of a gotcha journalism about government. And I just wish it was a little bit more like they are making progress, they're 80% to their goal. They're not 100% of where they were supposed to be, but they're 80% and they're these systemic issues. And there's this problem that's real and we should address it. But there's a little bit of, of the frame that gets picked up by the public is let's just throw the whole thing out because there's one bad actor or one really bright, sparkling thing to focus on about why we don't like it. And I'm like, you still can't. Preschool is still $3,000 a month for my colleague. That, as a business owner, is far more troubling to me than me paying a $17,000 bill or a $30,000 bill. I'm like, I don't have kids. I don't even really like children, to be perfectly honest. But I want them to go to school and I want them to be engaged citizens because I need them to vote for our collective benefit when I'm 80 years old and they should care about me as an old woman.
- [20:50]
A
Does anyone else feel like August is the Sunday of summer? It's the perfect time to hit reset before the autumn rush. And for me, that always starts with my wardrobe. Quince proves you don't need a crowded closet to look incredible. You just need the right pieces. Quince specializes in effortless, high quality essentials like ultra soft organic cotton and premium Mongolian cashmere sweaters. They're beautifully tailored, built to last and transition seamlessly from morning meetings to dinner. Quince also has premium stretch denim starting at just $50 with the kind of perfect fit, structure and weight you'd expect from a luxury designer brand. Everything at quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So you're paying for quality, not brand markup. For me, the Quince pieces I find myself reaching for over and over again are their 100% European linen tanks and pants. It's become my summertime and early fall uniform, and it's more versatile than I thought it would ever be. And it's not just apparel. Quince also brings that same everyday elevation to everything they offer. From hotel quality bedding and bathroom to kitchen staples, essentials and thoughtfully designed furniture. Upgrade your everyday Download the Quince app for App Exclusive offers or go to quince.com Sewmoney get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com Somoney this episode is sponsored by Morning Brew Daily. If you're anything like me, you want to stay informed about what's happening in business and finance, but you also don't have an hour every morning to sift through headlines. Morning Brew Daily is the Go to Business News podcast for millions of people. It's a daily business news podcast that's a quick, fun and easy way to start your day. Whether it's the latest in tech markets or the trends shaping the economy, the show breaks it all down in a way that's clear, engaging and actually enjoyable to listen to. Hosts Neal Freyman and Toby Howell make the show feel like you're catching up with two friends while giving you the context you need to feel smarter and more confident throughout your day. New episodes drop every weekday wherever you get your podcasts. Tune in to Morning Brew Daily wherever you get your podcasts.
- [23:06]
B
You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cash back. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates national average 12 month savings by $946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential savings will vary. Morning Brew Daily breaks down the biggest news in business every morning so it fits seamlessly in your day. I'm Toby Howell and I'm Neal Freyman and each morning we cover everything from the latest tech headlines to why nobody can afford a house right now. You'll leave each episode of Morning Brew Daily smarter and ready to take on the world around you. And some people are saying it's the best part of their morning because we know something you don't. Business news doesn't have to be boring. Join millions of monthly listeners and check out Morning Brew Daily wherever you get your podcasts.
- [24:17]
A
So what do you see as really the. The causes for this mindset? We talked about the media narrative. We talked about our own assumptions about what it means to contribute to a nonprofit versus paying our taxes. What else are we missing that we can. We can address?
- [24:36]
C
Yeah, I'll dig into that charity piece a little bit more. There's a movement maybe to call it effective altruism. Have you ever heard of this term? Yes. Okay. So it sort of comes from the brologarchs. They all are like, ah, we can make the perfect donation. And sim. I think that's an interesting part of this narrative of I can optimize my donations. What's interesting about that frame is oftentimes there's a look at administrative costs for the organizations that you're supporting. If they're too high, important thing to consider. But underneath that is a mandate to keep your payroll and benefits down for the people who actually make your organization run. And so there's this interesting. It feels like a very similar frame of I can make this ideal, and it can prove to me that it's doing a good job. And I'm sort of thinking, as a donor owner, that's a lot of responsibility to put on the organization that I'm supporting. And now they're spending a lot of time building data to prove to me that they're doing their job, which requires people to produce the data when they could just go do their job and I could trust them. Like MacKenzie Scott is. My example of the best way to donate money is find a hero, give them money and go away. Don't ask them for anything else. And she does it in the millions of dollars and tens of millions of dollars. But you and I could do it in the $50 and just be like, I. I believe you're. You're doing good out there. So I think that's. We've got sort of the perfect is the enemy of the good. I can control this. And by I can control this. I think that's actually about my anxiety. I know something feels uncertain, and so if I have just a little bit more control, I'll feel better. Which, of course, we see in investing behavior as well. It's like, oh, the market's being crazy. I'm going to get out. I'm like, no, please, God, don't do that.
- [26:44]
A
When I still hear that from financial planners who manage very wealthy people's assets, that she's like, oh, yeah, they always call when the market's down. I'm like, who are these people?
- [26:57]
C
I know.
- [26:58]
A
Who are these People, I need to find them and we need to sit down and have a cup of tea and really like look at, examine what they're doing and how it's not, not effective. But it's more people than we think.
- [27:13]
C
Oh, and I think again, this comes back to some that always comes back to some part of their own history. You know, the, like, what is the story you're telling yourself that makes you believe you can outguess the market?
- [27:26]
A
Yeah.
- [27:27]
C
No, you just literally can't. There's no data to support that. But there is this feeling that I am anxious and I can take control by hitting sell. And I'm like, but when are you gonna hit buy?
- [27:38]
A
Like, that's exactly. And I think we, we feel like these, these down points will be forever. That there is not a cutoff for a sell off.
- [27:50]
C
That's where I think we have this moment where we can, if we are trying to be intentional in the way we operate around resources, we can start to identify the general story and be like, oh, that's funny, I just said this thing about my local government. Do I actually know that's true? I don't even want people to say. They don't even have to say it's not true. I just want us to ask, do I actually know that's true or am I repeating something else I heard? I mean, this is your podcast.
- [28:20]
A
This is my podcast. I've been laughing because the Montclair pod, the hyper local podcast, I am now I have the privilege of being on the receiving end of so many people's conspiracy theories about why the school district has debt. You know, what's really going on with that business down the street, you know, like, and I always, my motto is to just say my, my M.O. is just to say, I don't not believe you, but I would love to share the story that you're telling me when there are facts. So exactly like get the facts and we will make it a story. Like, I'm not shutting my door on this story. I'm just saying like, come back when you have receipts because then it's a story. Then I can't like get sued for just, you know, sharing these, you know, blasphemous things about all these people that, you know, you can dislike someone and you can think someone's shady, but that's not a news story.
- [29:17]
C
No, but in, in our. That is that social media. It is. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
- [29:25]
A
And I think social media will allows for that. And you know, people forget what journalism actually is. But in any Case you had just come back from Vienna.
- [29:38]
C
Yeah.
- [29:39]
A
And you notice there that, you know, it's a different way of life, obviously, in many ways, but especially the way they relate to money and plan around money. Can you talk a little about the differences and what's worth maybe bringing over the, the ocean?
- [29:58]
C
Yeah, well, I, when I travel, I'm a little annoying to the tour guides I hire because I'm like, tell me about your financial life, because I'm just so fascinated. Yeah, exactly. It normally comes up sort of naturally because people who don't live in America think we're insane, think our, our structures are lunatic. And it comes out in little ways because they know, oh, we have to pay a lot of money for healthcare and they sort of like, oh, that they'll talk about that. But then I start pulling on the thread. I'm like, oh, how much does college cost for you here, etc. So I asked Yasha, who runs an amazing tour guide com tour company in, in Vienna, which I can find the show note name for. And he has two little kids. He has them in private preschool which is €250amonth. What for Waldorf style preschool? What public preschool? He's like, I know, it's really sad. They have to pay for food. And I was like, like, that's, that's, that's true. And I think the teacher. Yeah, yeah. And I'm like. And I'm pretty sure that like the Head Start parents or teachers are probably bringing in their own food for these kids. So that was one I started with preschool because he had two little kids. He talked about. I was like, so what's college like? And he said, oh, well, you have to finish in four years, but it's paid for free for four years. And I thought, okay. And then I was like, what about elder care? And he said, well, you know, we have in home care and they'll come to your home and they'll take, you know, yada, yada. And I was like, okay. And I was like, what about healthcare? And he said, well, you know, people have private care, they add on top, but everybody has universal health care. And the list goes on and on. Right. But what I find interesting for our purposes Farnish, is Austria is one of the oldest monarchies in Europe. And it went on for centuries of sort of semi colonialist rule. And then it all fell apart at the beginning of the 1900s. And they took. There were people doing planning, like policy wonks in the background doing planning, preparing for the moment when they had enough sort of Change space in the government to be able to put through social housing. And now the city of Vienna owns 40% of the housing and housing costs, like 15 to 20% of your income maximum. And it's limited. And I'm talking about inside the city housing. And it's developed by the city, it's designed by the city. Some of the original buildings are designed by some of the most famous architects in Europe. And what's interesting is that now people live in the same building and neighborhood for generations. So families get to grow up around each other. They don't move. People our age and of our economic bracket may or may not own a house because they might say, I don't. Why would I spend my money on that? I get great. I love the housing. I'm right next to my grandmother, right. So I just imagine I was sitting there, I was like, wow. I, as a financial planner, I'm not needed for most people in Vienna. And that is great. I wish financial planners were not needed in America.
- [33:28]
A
Oh, wow. Because ideally. Right? Yeah. Well, are you trying to.
- [33:34]
C
Ideally I would just be for rich people, you know, who have like complex situations that are hard to navigate.
- [33:40]
A
Family money.
- [33:41]
C
Right, Family money. Family. Or like complex businesses or you know, there. I think it's a skill set that should not need to happen for everyday middle class people because I'm sorry, varnish, as you know, the math is impossible.
- [33:57]
A
Yeah. I remember being in Mexico and our tour guide, he was from France, I want to say, and moved to Mexico and can. Could live off of his tour guide income, which is not true in America. I would, I would venture to guess that tour guides here have three or four other kinds of jobs or they're working hard seven days a week and they're making. They were barely making ends meet. So that's fascinating. What brought you to Vienna?
- [34:32]
C
My former partner and I wanted to go for a last trip.
- [34:35]
A
He's.
- [34:36]
C
He's been ill and so we decided to go to Vienna because the classical music is amazing, the architecture is amazing. The Wienerwerkstada is there, which is the precursor to modernism in architecture and design. So it was, it was really just hear a lot of amazing classical music. The food was not as good as, you know, it was. It's German.
- [34:56]
A
No. I guess the wiener, it was good.
- [34:58]
C
I mean if you like, if you like sausage.
- [35:01]
A
Yeah. Wiener schnitzel. Yeah.
- [35:02]
C
Yes, Wiener schnitzel is really good. But at some point it's like when
- [35:05]
A
I was in, I think a middle school, we all got a country and we had to bring a food from that country. And I brought strudel.
- [35:13]
C
Ah. I mean, it's delicious.
- [35:15]
A
It is a.
- [35:16]
C
It is a land of great people.
- [35:18]
A
I had Austria, so that was. Yeah. Which is what you learn quickly is not Australia when you're, like, 8 years old. It's a different country.
- [35:25]
C
They are different places. So the last thing I'm going to say about Austria and Vienna is that their tax rate's 50%. Now, when I looked at that, I was like, I will happily pay 50% for all those benefits because I literally can never save enough money to fulfill all those goals for myself.
- [35:42]
A
I mean, we. Some of us are paying that here with state taxes, local taxes, federal taxes, definitely in Montclair, some of us are paying more than 50% of our dollars, I think.
- [35:54]
C
So that's a good point. The last thing I would say that I think is interesting here is actually go to your tax return and take your total tax paid, divided by your total income, total gross income, and figure out what your real effective tax rate or average tax rate is. Because I don't have. I have clients who make a pile of money and none of them pay close to that. They pay, like, sometimes 35%.
- [36:20]
A
I need their. I need their accountant. I need their accountant. I mean, you're right. It's. It's a progressive tax ladder.
- [36:27]
C
So, yeah, your top rate might be that high. Right, Right. On average, you're probably not very close to that, but that's a good thing. Again, this is about. Is that really true? Yeah, it's this question of, like, am I saying that because I understand the numbers and how that's calculated, or am I saying that because, like, my neighbor said that and now I'm saying that because there's, like an emotional to it.
- [36:51]
A
We love to complain.
- [36:53]
C
We love negativity. Bias is our natural way.
- [36:56]
A
We love feeling like we're being taken. You know, we don't love feeling it. We love to talk about it and express this.
- [37:03]
C
I mean, a good kvetch is valuable.
- [37:05]
A
So before we go is if someone's listening and they're flinching at their tax bill, local tax bill especially, what is something that you want? What's a reframe that you want them to walk away with?
- [37:19]
C
Yeah. I would think about what resources you have to approach this problem yourself. So do that. And that may just be time to research the situation. Go to the sites of the organizations that are running these programs and find out what is their most recent update. So that's one example. Like, put a little bit of energy into figuring out whether it's really true and figuring out what specifically about it is is true. Like is it the rollout of this program? Is it the staffing? Is it the, you know, whatever? So that when you do talk about it, your dissatisfaction, you have something specific to point to, not just the whole system.
- [38:01]
A
Right?
- [38:02]
C
Because pointing to the whole system also tells my me and you and yourself that there is no answer because you've just damned the whole system. So I feel like we have to get more specific about what we are annoyed about and bring the receipts for that annoyance.
- [38:17]
A
Bring receipts George Lee Hussey, thank you so much for pushing our thinking around money. And you know, this wasn't a solutions driven episode. It wasn't, you know, like here's the five tips for how to feel better about paying your taxes. But I think it's once in a while we really do have to sit back and just reflect how we how we reflect on money. And you have an incredible perspective and we appreciate you. Thank you.
- [38:46]
C
Thank you so much. Varnish. Such a pleasure.
- [38:52]
A
Thanks to Georgia Lee Hussey for joining us. Check out George's work@modernistfinancial.com She has a whole section called Modernist University Free Tools, a Blog, Investing Insights Resources a newsletter. Check it out. Modernistfinancial.com thanks for tuning in and I hope your day is so Money.
- [39:23]
B
With the Discover Cash Back Card, it's payback time. When you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5% cash back at different categories each quarter on up to $1,500 in purchases. That's 5% cash back at different places each quarter. Like grocery stores, on gas and at restaurants, it pays to Discover terms apply. See discover.com 5 for details.
- [39:47]
C
Hi, this is Paige from Giggly Squad and today's episode is brought to you by McDonald's. Honestly, Caesar sauce and a Diet Coke at McDonald's might be the perfect girl. Dinner and McCrispy strips dipped in Caesar Sauce. No notes right now at participating McDonald's. The $2.99 Caesar Snack Wrap is making me rethink my entire go to order. Caesar sauce is at participating McDonald's for a limited time, so go try it before it's gone.
- [40:13]
A
Prices and participation may vary.