Rich Girl Roundup: Does Shopping at Small Businesses Really Matter?

Katie: 

Welcome back, Rich Girls and Boys, to the Rich Girl Roundup weekly discussion of The Money with Katie Show. And boy, do we have a discussion for you today. I'm your host, Katie Gatti Tassin, as always, and every Monday morning Henah and I are going to unpack what we believe to be an interesting discourse in the financial space or just a straightforwardly "this is about money" question. So before we do that, here is a quick message from the sponsors of this segment.

Before we get into it, this week's upcoming main episode is about whether or not life "gets any easier" once you introduce dependents into the picture. So we often hear that once they're out of daycare, things get cheaper. Hey, it's fine, things will get easier. But as a couple readers sent me emails about a few weeks ago, do they? One person had signed off, "Hope and hearsay." So I just thought it was interesting that a few different reader emails came in about this around the same time, felt like a little intuitive nudge to pull on that thread. And yeah, we dug in. So that's coming on Wednesday. All right, Henah, onto the Roundup. How are you doing today? Hit us with our question.

Henah:

I'm good. I'm wearing my Rich Girl sweater in honor of this week's question, which is going to be a doozy. It came from Allyson T. I think it has a lot of great nuance in it. They said, quote, "What effect does shopping small have on our wallets? What about the small business owner's wallet, and how does that compare to us buying the same thing at Walmart or at Amazon? I've been doing a lot of research on small businesses lately, partially because I'm sick of giving Bezos money, but also because I feel like I'm actually making a difference for someone. And I found some really great ones: think local boutiques, locally owned yoga studios, farmer's markets, local restaurants, et cetera. I do, however, miss the convenience of two-day shipping from Prime and everything I need being in stock. I would be very curious in an experiment similar to the outsourcing one," which is referencing an older episode that we had, "where we try maybe only shopping small for a week and seeing what it does to your budget and lifestyle and if possible, what effect it has on the businesses that you decide to interact with," end quote. This is probably one of five topics that I'm most passionate about in life, so I'm excited to get into it.

Katie:

So I said, how can I...

Henah:

Ruin my day?

Katie:

How can I ruin Henah's day and play devil's advocate?

Henah:

You're Jeff Bezos's advocate.

Katie:

The little Jeff, little bald buff man on my shoulder is like, "Tell her about two-day shipping."

Henah:

Well, to be fair, I still leverage two-day shipping, but not from Prime. Not from Prime, never Prime. I thought we could start with just sort of a high overview of the small business kind of picture in America. I did some digging on smallbusiness.gov, and in 2023, there were 33 million small businesses in the US. And they defined small business as having fewer than 500 employees, which to me still seems very large.

Katie:

33 million?

Henah:

But 33 million and...

Katie:

There's only like 300 million people. You're telling me one in 10 people is a small...wait, is that right? Hold on.

Henah:

Yeah, one in 10 people would have their own business. I mean I guess some people could have multiple small businesses that would offset that number.

Katie:

Or maybe your small business is like just you. Like if you're a sole proprietor. Yeah, okay, interesting.

Henah:

And I thought this was really fascinating: Just under two-thirds of new jobs between 1995 and 2021 came from small businesses. So it's proof that they are obviously a major source of economic growth and prosperity nationwide, but in local communities too. And then there has been a huge decline in small businesses and startups actually since the 1970s and '80s, which mom and pop stores were much more common. Why are you laughing?

Katie:

And cue the Josh Peck TikTok where instead of going, "Megan," he goes, "Reagan." It's like trickle-down economics, baby. Let's tie everyone's benefits to their corporate benefactor. That's my own bugaboo about how we make it so hard to be an entrepreneur in America because we tie all the things you need to being an employee of someone else. Anyway, continue.

Henah:

We're going to come back to that, so that feels kind of full circle. "Bug a Boo" is a Destiny's Child song, is it not?

Katie:

Is it?

Henah:

I'm pretty sure.

Katie:

Hold on, definition, bugaboo definition. I always thought...yeah, "object of fear or alarm."

Henah:

I'm pretty sure there's a song by Destiny's Child called "Bug a Boo." But anyway, all this to say, a large chunk of these small businesses, to your point, are really self-owned or they just have a couple employees. And so I found another report that said the average salary of a small business owner is just 3% above the annual mean wage in the US. And that kind of shocks me because that's $60k, $70,000 maybe, and I don't know about you, Katie, but I would rather support upping the salaries of those folks than of Bezos getting another jet or a yacht or whatever.

Katie:

Can you please share this statistic with the thinkbois in my grindset Twitter feed that are like, "You'll never get rich working for someone else. You got to be an entrepreneur if you want to make that big boy money." And it's like, well, the tax data would suggest differently, but anyway. Okay, hold on, though. I want to push back on that because, yes, I agree. I would rather shop in a way that's going to promote their well-being and them making more money. Let's say this way, shrinking the distance between the labor and the income, so to speak. It's more closely tied, right? But tens and tens and tens of thousands of people work at big corporations and theoretically all of their wages are being supported by your shopping too.

So, I mean, I think maybe taking the Amazon example out of it, because I think their labor practices are so egregious so as to be the worst possible example, but I think about other large companies that have a lot of employees and pay people really well and offer really good benefits. This is part of where we can get into our back and forth high school debate team fun in a little bit, but I don't know that I would say that simply shopping at a small business is necessarily quote-unquote "better across the board" than shopping at a store that's not quote-unquote "small." And I think I'd be like, where do you draw the line, too?

Henah:

Yeah, we can get into the where do you draw the line because I do think it's kind of a gray area, a gray line, if you will. But according to the US Small Business Administration, because I'm in debate school, when you spend $100 at a small business, $48 stays in the community. And if you spend the same $100 at a big box store or a national retailer, only $14 stays in the community. And that's also because local businesses support other local businesses and they hire locally. So it's kind of the only way that trickle-down economics would've worked if it was going to work.

Katie:

Reagan.

Henah:

There's this very popular quote, like every time we support a small business, you're helping someone put food on the table, you're helping pay for their kids' activities, et cetera. And I think to me, it just feels much more tangible to see the difference or impact that you're making than at a big box chain, even if those employees are being paid well or they're having really great benefits. I mean, I know we said we'll take Amazon out of it, but I think as an example, I have a good friend who works at Amazon who makes extremely good money, feels extremely well taken care of.

Katie:

She's obviously not in the warehouses.

Henah:

Well, that was my point to her, which was that, what if you didn't make that kind of money but could equitably give that to the rest of the team there? And I think that's where I caught her off guard a little bit of just like, oh, but I don't want to have to take less money. And I said, okay, as long as you're clear about that.

Katie:

So you admit you're a shit. As long as you know you're a shitty person, I don't have to tell you.

Henah:

I would never call her a shitty person.

Katie:

I just love that you're like, as long as you're clear that that's what you're saying.

Henah:

What I said is as long as you're being honest with yourself. Because their point was, oh, I make enough that I can go invest through this nonprofit, I can go do these other things, blah, blah, blah. And I said, I'm not negating that you make an impact in other ways through that money. What I'm saying is what if you had taken a pay cut so that other folks could get that more equitably? I don't think Amazon is a company that works in that way where someone can say, "Hey, I'm willing to take $50,000. Can you give that to the warehouse workers?" But what I am saying is I do think that small businesses make generally more of an effort to treat their employees well because they're hiring locally, they see the challenges that a lot of people might have more intimately than someone at a bigger place.

Katie:

Okay, interesting. So I personally like this question because it's one of those things where I used to feel pretty surface level straightforward about it, and then someone else actually pushed back on me and it now makes me want to pay it forward and push back on Henah and be like, but what about this? I think that it's nuanced. And this is maybe my high level frustration with conversations like these. That there's this temptation to believe or to suggest...Weigh in, Rich Girl nation, JJ or RG, you know, from last week. That we can shop our way to social change and that your altruistic consumerism can help other people and that vote with your dollars. I do think, in all fairness, that there is something to that, that money talks. That if everyone stopped shopping at Amazon, that would hurt their business because only I think 50% of their revenue comes from retail. The rest is like AWS cloud, all that stuff. Especially when there's a cheaper, faster, more efficient alternative available. And I'm not speaking necessarily of something like Amazon, but that is the most readily available example I think that comes to mind.

That these corporations might have a parasitic relationship with the communities that they're in, but it doesn't change the fact that in the current system, Walmart might be the only retailer that a family can afford to shop at, even if their labor practices are totally reprehensible. And maybe it comes down to the idea that, okay, if you can afford to spend the time and money only shopping at small businesses or shopping locally, you should, but I guess I just bristle at this idea that it should be on the end consumer. Like, okay, we have a near total lack of corporate regulation. We've got tax loopholes run amok, we outsource so much stuff overseas and that's all fine, that's all legal, whatever. But then out of the goodness of your heart, end consumer, you gotta go the extra mile and do the due diligence of sourcing your purchases from people that aren't doing it that way.

And obviously we can't control legislation around things like that, but I feel like these conversations do typically revolve around how individual consumers need to be consuming differently or shopping differently or putting in more effort or spending more money, and I think it's important to kind of couch those types of conversations in that broader context of like, it shouldn't, in my opinion, be on the end consumer. Amazon in the first place should not be allowed to treat people that way, and we shouldn't be tempted with that cheap option that exploits people in order to exist.

Henah:

Well, fundamentally, I agree with you. You and I have had a lot of debates, I would say, where you are sort of saying like, this is the ideal blah, blah, blah, and I'm saying this is kind of the reality that we're in. And I think this is one of those instances where it's like, yeah, in a perfect world, there would be so much more protection for workers' rights. There would be so many fewer loopholes for some of these companies to do whatever they want. But unfortunately in the reality that we are in, I do feel like the best option, at least for myself, what gives me hope at the end of the day is knowing that my hard-earned doll hairs are investing in my community.

I think the nuance you made about some people only have an option to shop at a dollar store or Walmart or whatever, that's totally fair and valid. I'm not ever shaming anybody who feels like that's what they need to do. I do think for people who don't have to do that, that's where I'm sort of like, can you try to invest in your local community? I think one of the other things too is, we talked about this in an earlier episode about marketing, where we are targeted with these ads all the time. We feel like there's always this new product, new item, new whatever. Can we reframe what urgency needs to be? Do you really need it in two days? And if you do, then I think there's a different conversation, but I think oftentimes it's like, but I need the two-day shipping. It has to get here. It's convenient.

There's always a cost associated with trying to get that to you faster as well. So there's a different kind of payment that we're making for that, and that could be the carbon footprint of shipping something to you in two days. It could be you're paying the premium for your extra shipping through your Prime membership. It could be that someone else is paying for trying to get something to you faster. I think that when we think of convenience and cost, we're not always super holistic in what that looks like, and if we ultimately do need it as quickly as we think we do. Does that make sense?

Katie:

Yeah.

Henah:

I feel like a woman, you know that trope that's like, all women will end stuff with, "do you think that makes sense?" And I'm like, yeah, that's true. I do do that. I should just be...

Katie:

Sorry, I just wanted to say.

Henah:

I just wanted to make sure we were super clear.

Katie:

No, what would really drive it home is if I just repeated everything that you just said back to you and said, I just had an amazing idea. What if we reframed urgency? And you'd go, "uh-huh."

Okay, so no, that's fair. Agreed. I think that the urgency, it's like this ideal of the free market. That theoretically the free market should produce things better, faster, cheaper, and if it's incentivized to be a race where it's like, well, who can produce it the cheapest, fastest, most conveniently, then that vendor is going to capture a lot of market share. And so as the consumer that's always acting in your own best interest, it almost makes you go against your instinct to be like, oh, I can get this for $5 tomorrow and it'll appear on my doorstep from magical fairies, or I could go spend an hour trying to find it and spend $15 on it. You have to be really grounded in those ideals and in that vision of a better world, I think, in order to consistently make that choice. At the individual level, I'm like, yeah, sure. I think that makes sense. As long as that cheaper, faster, easier option is available, the majority of people are still going to choose that because it's in their direct best interest to do so.

Henah:

Yeah, I mean when I was in grad school, we talked about how I think like 93% of consumers are willing to switch to the more sustainable, ethical, whatever made product, but it had to be at the same price point. It had to have the same kind of perks. And I think that that's fair for how a lot of people live their lives. For me personally, I'm actually happier to pay a premium if I know that I'm buying it locally or if someone in my neighborhood made it.

Katie:

Did you still feel that way when you made a lot less money? Did you still feel like you had the ability to do that in New York City on $60,000 a year? Like, I'm going to pay more for this.

Henah:

I think that I'm a case study of one, because I feel so strongly about it that I did. It was never...

Katie:

That's fair. I'm mostly asking because I was like, was there a threshold above which it suddenly became more attractive to you or more appealing? But it sounds like you have put your money where your mouth is on this one pretty much from the jump. Henah's like, see Katie, the problem is that I'm just a better person than you.

Henah:

I'm just a good person and you...

Katie:

I'm just a good person and...

Henah:

...are Bezos's wing woman. No, I'm just kidding.

Katie:

I feel like I am generally a pretty ethically minded individual, but Henah is so far in that direction that she makes me look like a capitalist pig. And then we get in here and I'm like free market, baby. I was actively disadvantaging myself to help my community and I'm over here like I still...

Henah:

I mean, here's the thing, right? It's so pervasive and it seems so common that to not have it feels like... people ask me all the time, how do you do it? How do you live without it? I'm like, I just do.

Katie:

But it's true. It's like once you get used to that level of convenience, hell, I've got a Whole Foods order being delivered in 20 minutes. Jeff Bezos is getting richer on me as we speak.

Henah:

I will say, because I talked about this a little in my notes, the balance I have is shopping local as much as possible. And then there are things that are urgent or I can't find them elsewhere. So what I'll do is I'll go on Amazon to find the item and then I'll buy it through the third party retailer so that I don't have to do it through there.

Katie:

They're just like a search function for you. So the individual that I was referring to at the top of this episode when I said that someone pushed back on me, so I made an assumption about this person. A very good friend of mine who's quite a bit older than I am and also, I would say, even more left than I am.

So I brought this up and I thought for sure she was going to be like, yeah, small businesses all the way. She really surprised me. She had been a stay-at-home parent, full-time household manager, and then once her kids got a little bit older, she wanted to do something part-time. She starts working at Starbucks, said "I was paid well, I had coworkers for whom the company was paying for their college to get a degree, they had healthcare benefits, they had a 401(k) plan, they had paid time off, I think paid parental leave." Now to be fair, I have no idea to what level these things are provided. It could be that it's like you get one day of paid time off. I have no idea. But she was saying all of these different benefits were provided. She also noted that they were one of the largest purchasers of fair trade coffee in the world.

So she noted that in this time period where she was looking at working part-time in a coffee shop, she first went to the local coffee shops. They paid less, they didn't offer any of the benefits, they required employees to work longer hours. And her point to me was basically not every corporation is evil. Just because a business is large does not guarantee that that corporation is exploiting its employees or that it has harmful supply chains.

Though I think that the obvious counterpoint here is, well, if everyone went to the local coffee shop instead of going to Starbucks, maybe then they too could afford to provide these benefits. But still, I think it's economies of scale. It's very expensive to put a healthcare plan together for eight people. And that's less a commentary on the altruism of a small business owner and more a commentary on, well, it's just really freaking difficult to have privately provided healthcare. It's another facet of our current system that discourages entrepreneurship because it is so expensive to give healthcare benefits to employees that only big corporations can afford to do so. And I think that's a feature, not a bug. I think that's intentional.

But her point was basically just because a business is small or it's locally owned does not mean that it's going to have favorable labor or supply chain practices. And I was very surprised by her take on this. But I would say that to your point, this finding about money staying in the community versus being sucked out of the community is to me the most compelling argument for how this actually is in your self-interest as a consumer. And that even though it may appear as though it's not, if you are putting more money into your community, that is going to boost the local economy and be good for the area that you are a part of.

And I think that the interesting debate that leads to though is that theoretically everything starts as a small business, does it not? Starbucks used to be one local coffee shop and then when it became successful, it started expanding. So my question to you is, where should we draw the line? If a small business in my community has two locations here and they're like, oh my god, we are going to expand to the Bay Area and then we're going to expand to Southern California and then we're going to expand to New Mexico and Arizona. Is it no longer fruitful for me to support them because now that they've grown out of state, now the money they're earning on my location might not be spent here? They could be funneling that to other locations. And so to me, that's where it becomes not so cut and dried and where I'm like, what is the true end goal or benefit? Obviously I've kind of told you that I don't think it should be on the end consumer to have to be thinking this hard about where they're shopping, but I just think it's an interesting point of like, well, everything starts as a small business. Does size itself automatically mean that it's harmful and detrimental, or is there room for nuance?

Henah:

I think there's totally room for nuance. To your point about the Starbucks example, the number one thought I had as you were saying it was like, well, if everybody just supported the local coffee shop then, but then you said it anyway. So it's like, I think the obvious options are in front of us in some ways as consumers. Is it always the easiest option? Is it always the most convenient option? Is it always going to be the best on our own wallets? No. I think that's something that people have to grapple with and I think the same response applies to, where do we draw the line? Because I think as someone who really champions small businesses, I would be thrilled if a small business does so well that they start growing and they're able to expand.

Katie:

Right? Like you're happy for the business owner. You're not like, I'm not going to support you anymore because you now have a location in Texas.

Henah:

For me, is my baseline is I sort of assume, this is probably silly of me, my own naivete, but I assume best or good intent for a lot of these companies and then once something comes out about them, I can't really unsee it. And so for example, because you and I have talked about Chick-fil-A, right? I don't think I would've had a problem with them. I mean, I don't eat meat, but there was no reason that I would've not gone there when it was a much lesser known chain. But then once we heard what their owners believed and where they were putting their money and what policies they wanted to support, that was very much against what I am for, and so I just stopped going there.

I sort of assume best intent for a lot of these smaller companies that are trying to grow and become bigger, and it's not that, oh, once it goes to this state, I'm no longer interested. It's kind of like a spectrum, if that makes sense. A rubric maybe is a better sense of like, I don't know, I could go here or I could go to this other place that would need more support so that they can grow. I think that I just put a lot of thought into it more than the average consumer.

Katie:

That's what I'm getting hung up on. Is that a reasonable expectation? Maybe.

Henah:

For other people, you mean?

Katie:

For other people. Is it reasonable for someone that's like, I need a cup of coffee. Okay, well, oh boy. This coffee shop is like...well, who needs it the most? Who needs my business? Is that the most reasonable? That's so antithetical to literally our entire economic system, and so I'm just like, is there a point at which that level of grassroots intentionality from consumers could actually change things, or are we just making it unnecessarily harder for the average consumer who probably is not swimming in free time and money to make these choices?

Henah:

The obvious caveat here is I am a DINKWAD: double income, no kids, with a dog. I have the convenience, I have the time to think about these things. I don't generally assume that other people do. I don't generally assume that they have the money to even put aside and pay the premium.

Katie:

Which is fair. I mean, maybe unfair of me to even pose that question to you because we talk about a lot of things on this show that probably only apply to DINKs with free time and money. So it's not like, Henah, you need to come up with a solution that's going to work for everybody. That's probably not fair for me to even pose that question.

Henah:

Something you said really struck a chord with me, which is that this is a feature, not a bug, and I think that that's just endemic of this entire system that we live with within the US, which is much more motivated by tax loopholes and getting the cheapest and most cost-effective thing. There is feasibly no benefit to what I am doing because the system has been built the other way around. However, to your point about what an ideal system should be, I think that would be the case that someone could wake up and go, which coffee shop do I want to support today with my dollars? And it just becomes an easy like, well, any of them, because they're all doing well, they're all community driven, they're all blah, blah, blah. Does that make sense?

Katie:

In that sense, I think it becomes another platform on which businesses compete. That if businesses felt like them doing better in the community or having solid labor practices or yada, yada, yada, if they felt like those things were going to attract more customers to them, they would be incentivized to do it. Whereas I think a lot of companies just see that as, well, that's just going to cost us more, make our profit margins even slimmer. No one is shopping as though they care, because look at how many Amazon Prime members there are in America. Clearly people don't really care about who they're hurting with their...

Henah:

I would push back on that.

Katie:

Okay.

Henah:

Okay, so Amazon Prime is an example, obviously, but if we remove them, I think there's companies like Patagonia, right? They are literally known for doing the right thing, for being as ethically minded as possible. They have obviously had their own share of issues about labor or whatever. I think that happens when you start building a global business. But...

Katie:

Glad you said that, and we're going to come back to that.

Henah:

...which I know you're going to come back to it. But there's a huge market of people trying to do better and trying to make the world a better place through their own business practices. I think it would be a shame for us to discount those folks who are really trying to build their businesses in that way. And also because if you go into your local coffee shop, chances are they have the Small Business Saturday sticker somewhere. They probably try to advocate or put on their marketing materials that they have fair trade coffee or that they give back to environmental initiatives to plant trees, or they have a volunteer program. I don't want to assume that people just don't care because they've been incentivized otherwise to only focus on them. I think that's generally how a lot of businesses are, but I think there's a huge contingent of businesses that really are thinking otherwise.

Katie:

Where I was going with that was more so not to suggest that businesses don't care, just that the competing priorities of running a business sometimes necessitates that you're not always making the most quote-unquote "ethical" decisions, or that sometimes you're cutting corners that in an ideal world you would not be, but that if more people explicitly looked for those things, if the consumer demanded it, more businesses would begin to compete with that lens. Then it gets wrapped into this system as it functions today, which is like if consumers don't care, the business isn't, in a perfectly Homo Economicus world, would not be funneling a lot of resources to it. But I think ultimately a lot of this comes down to the fact that we have a global economy. This conversation, this question, this conundrum for the individual consumer and like societally us grappling with this, it's just a natural extension of that conversation. Can businesses become large enough to operate nationally, globally? Is it unethical to patronize a business that has business everywhere simply because of its size?

I don't think it's unethical, but I'm open to being wrong about that. I think it does probably depend on how the business treats their employees, the supply chains, but even then, it's fundamentally frustrating to me that that's on the end consumer to have to research and dig into as opposed to just legislating a reasonable standard. Although that's probably difficult across countries, and again, it's a challenge of globalization. We might not see exploitation in our own backyard, but that does not mean that someone somewhere is not being taken advantage of. The employees that are working in your local boutique may be paid well, but if they're buying wholesale clothes from a factory somewhere in Southeast Asia that's paying women 5 cents a piece, is that really better? Maybe marginally, but I would argue it's also possible for a small business to be just as detrimental in those choices as well. And I think that that also makes it difficult because what are you going to do? Go in and be like, "This shirt is made in Vietnam. Talk to me about the factory that produced it." It's like we're swimming upstream as long as globalization is happening.

Henah:

You're going to laugh at me, but I have my own, like I said, kind of rubric for this. When I go to say a farmer's market that has popups with different little shops and I walk around and there are just some things out there like mass-produced shirts that it's just very clear that they did not create this themselves, I walk away. It's just not something that I'm interested in if I know that I can just get it from any person on the street. When I go to one where I know that this person made it with their own hands or that this was poured local, whatever it is, I'm much more likely to support them. And to your point, the reason I do that is because while I would love to support small business owners everywhere, I think when it comes to the value of my own dollar and where I can put it, I don't want to give it to someone who's just outsourcing other wholesale items. To your point about globalization, the Human Rights Council, there's a literal organization dedicated to stuff like this and we still haven't gotten a grasp on, you know.

Katie:

I feel like we should just insert clips from the Shein influencer campaign where it's like, I was expecting everyone to be sweaty and upset and it was actually good. And it was like, what in the propaganda am I watching right now?

Henah:

And that's the thing, right? We have such an image. When we had Sallie [Krawcheck] on the show, she said, when I say investment banker, you think of this white, tall, male dude. When I think of a sweatshop person, you are probably thinking of a very specific type of image in your head as well. And so it's like, that's not always what unfair labor looks like, it's not what unsafe working conditions look like, et cetera. So to your larger point, I don't think that it's unethical to support a global business, but what I do think is important is thinking through the supply chain of what the product or service is and then kind of working backward from there.

Katie:

Think about, though, the computers you and I are working on right now, the phones we both use, and how they had to install nets outside the Apple factory in China because people were jumping because conditions were so bad. It's inescapable in some ways.

Henah:

Yes, it's unavoidable, I think, in some ways. What I try to do, though, is try to be like, how can I minimize any sort of exploitation happening anywhere? There was a real time and point where I was like, am I going to have to get rid of the iPhone? And then it was like, well, if I switched to another phone, there's no saying that...

Katie:

But then you're like, but my texts would be green and that's not good.

Henah:

And that's why I didn't switch. No, I'm kidding. What I'm saying is I try to minimize the damage I'm doing and actively being a participant in. To bring it back to the question, I don't want us to just be complacent in a system that requires our dollars for it to function. If everybody did stop shopping at Amazon, you bet your ass that that would make a difference. You said it really well in the newsletter where you were like, "Let us each be a tiny spark." If we don't carry that optimism with us, what's even the point? And I don't want to get to that point. I don't want to feel nihilistic or feel pessimistic about what's out there, because the beauty of 2023 is that you can get online and start a business and become a small business owner in minutes, and I think there's a very intentional way to do that or to support people who are doing that.

Katie:

Thanks for letting me hold your feet to the fire. I intentionally wanted to play devil's advocate a little bit with this one because I know you feel so strongly about it, but also because I just recently had that conversation. But I appreciate you letting me be like, no, but how do you respond, Henah? I do resent you a little bit for being the good person foil to my capitalist pig. That is a little annoying, but maybe it's for the best.

Henah:

I'm so sorry. Next week I'll hold your feet to the fire. We'll ask you something that you feel very strongly about.

Katie:

Good, you can pay it forward. All right, well, that is all for this week's Rich Girl Roundup. We will see you on Wednesday to talk about the cost of living with dependents. Always so fun. So fun and easy.