It’s easy to point out that wealth inequality in America is a problem. It’s much harder to identify realistic fixes. But what if there were a simple, elegant solution? In today’s episode, I’m speaking with Matt Bruenig, a former National Labor Relations Board lawyer and policy expert who’s one of the brightest minds in this space. This conversation will get you thinking differently (and bigger) about money, the economy, and wealth—and why a solidarity economy is stronger for everyone.

Transcripts, show notes, production credits, and more can be found at: https://moneywithkatie.com/social-wealth-funds.

Money with Katie’s mission is to be the intersection where the economic, cultural, and political meet the tactical, practical, personal finance education everyone needs.

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It’s hard to believe, but somehow it’s already time for another Rich Girl Roundup about our last three deep dives:

• The Real Cost of Being a Working Parent, to which Rich Dad Nation had a decidedly mixed response
• How Home Insurance and Climate Change are Upending the Real Estate Market, which introduced some good questions about the role of everything from technology to sabotage in effecting change
• The Truth About “Government Waste,” Privatizing Public Goods, & Turning Citizens into Customers, which generated an absolute treasure trove of stories from government workers

We’ll give y’all one guess which generated the lion’s share of emails—this batch of feedback had a surprising amount of tea, so don’t miss it.

• (00:00) Introduction
• (01:44) General feedback we've heard recently
• (08:00) Feedback on the "Working Parents/Childcare" episode
• (34:45) The "Disappointed Dads" feedback
• (47:22) Return to office and entitlement
• (54:39) Feedback on the "Home Insurance & Climate Change" episode
• (01:08:20) Connecting our "Climate Change" and "Privatization" episodes
• (01:17:03) Feedback on the "Privatization" episode

Transcripts, show notes, production credits, and more can be found at: https://moneywithkatie.com/rto-daycare.

Money with Katie’s mission is to be the intersection where the economic, cultural, and political meet the tactical, practical, personal finance education everyone needs.

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For years, I’ve referenced the book The Privatization of Everything as a seminal work in my understanding of the relationship between government and the private sector. So given the recent DOGE of it all, it seemed like a great time to revisit this conversation—now with one of its authors, Donald Cohen. We discuss the role privatization plays in government waste, and who stands to gain from the transformation of public funds into private wealth. (Hint: It’s not the public!) 

Transcripts, show notes, production credits, and more can be found at: https://moneywithkatie.com/privatization.

Money with Katie’s mission is to be the intersection where the economic, cultural, and political meet the tactical, practical, personal finance education everyone needs.

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The average middle class family has 67% of their net worth tied up in its primary residence. But there’s one looming issue: Rising insurance rates and climate change are threatening those property values—and they might be the canary in the coal mine of the American Dream.

We’re joined by Dr. Jeremy Porter, author of the First Street report at the center of most recent insurance analyses. We discuss insurers pulling out of “high-risk” states, “insurers of last resort” in those states, climate-driven migration patterns we’re already seeing, and how this is likely to play out over the next few decades.

So yes, this episode is about real estate, insurance, and climate risk—but it’s also about the assumptions underpinning wealth in America, and what it means if they’re changing.

Transcripts, show notes, production credits, and more can be found at: https://moneywithkatie.com/climate-change.

Money with Katie’s mission is to be the intersection where the economic, cultural, and political meet the tactical, practical, personal finance education everyone needs.

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In the past, we covered the national average costs for different types of child care and how it may be directly related to the gender wage and wealth gap. But Eryn Schultz, a CFP known as Her Personal Finance online, reached out to say the data was vastly undershooting the realities of working parents she works with. She joins us today to share the real costs of childcare and what working parents in the US contend with.

Transcripts, show notes, production credits, and more can be found at: https://moneywithkatie.com/working-parents.

Money with Katie’s mission is to be the intersection where the economic, cultural, and political meet the tactical, practical, personal finance education everyone needs.

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It's our first newly revamped Rich Girl Roundup of 2025, and we’re taking you on a scenic guided tour of the chatter spurred from recent episodes: our most contentious episode to date, one that generated moving revelations from listeners, and the two-part series that ended up being less polarizing than we expected.

We also discuss how to jerry-rig your Wealth Planner to project a “Die with Zero”-style drawdown, by popular demand—as well as the potential for a book club or community.

• (00:00) Introduction to the new Rich Girl Roundup format
• (03:59) General feedback we've heard recently
• (12:55) Feedback on the "You Don't Need a Budget" episode
• (28:27) Amending your Wealth Planner to "Die with Zero"
• (34:45) Two moving emails from a listener, several years apart
• (41:19) Feedback on the "What's Next for Money with Katie" episode and downsizing
• (47:29) The possibility of a Money with Katie book club or community
• (50:37) Feedback on the GLP-1 weight loss drugs series

Transcripts, show notes, production credits, and more can be found at: https://moneywithkatie.com/dangerous-advice.

Money with Katie’s mission is to be the intersection where the economic, cultural, and political meet the tactical, practical, personal finance education everyone needs.

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Welcome back to Part Two of our series, the Economics of Weight Loss Drugs. (If you haven’t heard Part One, listen here!)

Today, we’re picking back up where we left off in our conversation with Lili Zarghami, a writer who got on (then off) a weight loss drug. Then we’ll talk with Dr. Mara Gordon, a weight-neutral physician who deals with GLP-1s. Finally, I’ll share my final thoughts and analysis on where the world of GLP-1 agonists is all headed and what it says about health, wealth, stigma, and class.

Transcripts, show notes, production credits, and more can be found at: https://moneywithkatie.com/diet-culture.

Money with Katie’s mission is to be the intersection where the economic, cultural, and political meet the tactical, practical, personal finance education everyone needs.

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We’ve all heard about Ozempic. But there are the GLP-1s we colloquially call “Ozempic” (see also: Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepbound) and then there’s the cultural role of Ozempic.

Given the price of these drugs, barriers to access, and class implications of weight stigma, this topic presents a unique opening to talk about inequality in health outcomes and the profitable business of individualizing social problems.

In part one of this rare two-part series, we’re covering: 

• The wage penalties associated with (and relationship between) weight and women, and the parallels between the American attitudes about thinness and wealth
• The Danish pharma company that put Europe’s entire economy on its back
• A conversation with a 12-year veteran of drug and device advocacy who said some of the surrounding issues represent, and I quote, “everything wrong with health policy in our country,” especially given the shortages, costs, and online pharmacies springing up to bridge that gap with non-FDA-approved solutions

Let’s take a peek at the inside the business of weight loss drugs, and join us here next week for part two.

Transcripts, show notes, production credits, and more can be found at: https://moneywithkatie.com/weight-loss-drugs.

Money with Katie’s mission is to be the intersection where the economic, cultural, and political meet the tactical, practical, personal finance education everyone needs.

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After three years and 255 episodes, we take a walk down memory lane to reflect on some of our top episodes of The Money with Katie Show thus far—and where we're going from here. We're excited about what’s to come, and we hope you are, too.

Preorder Rich Girl Nation: https://moneywithkatie.com/rich-girl-nation

Transcripts, show notes, production credits, and more can be found at: https://moneywithkatie.com/whats-next.

Money with Katie’s mission is to be the intersection where the economic, cultural, and political meet the tactical, practical, personal finance education everyone needs.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most personal finance advice falls into one of two camps: one that implicitly assumes that humans need discipline, control, and punishment, and the other that says people are fundamentally good, reasonable, and worthy of trust and confidence.

So when I read Dana Miranda's You Don't Need a Budget and realized her system was in that latter bucket, it challenged my own ideas of "budget culture" and what trusting yourself with money might actually look like. Dana joins us on the show today to talk through it all.

Transcripts, show notes, production credits, and more can be found at: https://moneywithkatie.com/budget-culture.

Money with Katie’s mission is to be the intersection where the economic, cultural, and political meet the tactical, practical, personal finance education everyone needs.

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Chelsea Fagan of The Financial Diet and Berna Anat of New Dimes join us for our last Rich Girl Roundtable of the year. We cover everything from women and first-gen communities' relationships with money in 2025 and beyond, to building coalitions in "real life" for the futures we want to see. Tune in to this episode...then head offline.

Rich Girl Roundup is Money with Katie's weekly segment where Katie and her Executive Producer Henah answer your burning money questions. Each month, we'll put out a call for questions on her Instagram (@moneywithkatie). New episodes every week.

Transcript, show resources, production credits, and more can be found at: https://moneywithkatie.com/community-action.

Money with Katie’s mission is to be the intersection where the economic, cultural, and political meet the tactical, practical, personal finance education everyone needs.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices