
How to Spend Money on What Matters with Queer Money Podcast
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What’s wrong with living and spending like a fabulous rockstar? Well, it might get you $51,000 in debt. That’s what happened to John and David Auten-Schneider. The married couple successfully paid off their debt in just three years, and they’re on a mission to help others spend, save and retire well. They are also using their platform to provide financial education to the LGBTQ+ community. John and David tell X why personal finance is actually different for queer people and how to get a return on happiness. Post-inauguration, this convo is all about how we can empower others and fight back with our money.
This series was created in partnership with Flourish Ventures, an early-stage global investment firm backing mission-driven entrepreneurs and industry influencers working toward a fair financial system for all. Learn more at flourishventures.com.
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Transcript
SPEAKERS
John, X Mayo, David
X Mayo 00:05
Welcome to The Dough, a podcast that’s trying to help you live that never baby lifestyle without having Angelina, Jolie in Brad Pitt as your parents. Y’all, I’m not gonna lie, it’s hard out here. Okay, eggs are $9 American. Netflix keeps increasing its subscription, but removing shows I actually like, but it knows it better not fucking touch squid game. Okay? Because remember the marbles. Oh, geez. I don’t even want to get into it. I’m gonna have a whole new squid game recap podcast. Be on the lookout for that. Okay, but I have to get my lattes made by someone I don’t have to tip, and that someone is me. And, well, you know who? Okay, he who should not be named, just moved back into the White House. Yes, I have to exhale for that. And you know he doesn’t have good taste in home decor, like yours truly. I mean, come on, can you imagine his office, please everything’s orange. So I wanted to give us a little space to breathe and vent. Lord knows we need it. That’s why, on today’s episode, we have a pair of guests who know your money should go towards your security and joy. Because no matter how bleak the present time is, the most loving thing we can do for ourselves is prepare for a better future. John Schneider and David Otten are not only married, but they have made 500 episodes of their podcast, Queer Money. How gay people do money? They help the LGBTQ plus community navigate this crazy, unequal financial system and fight back. We love to see it. After all, they have been through some shit. So podcasting, baby, that’s a breeze. In the first year of their relationship, they realized that together they had $51,000 worth of debt. And then, get this, they paid it off in just three years. We have clapping. We have to stand. So John and David started their website, the debt free guys, to help other people get out of debt too, and they are here to drop that knowledge with us all. John and David, welcome to The Dough. So let’s start with you guys origin story, like I want to do, like a Marvel superhero. You are married to each other. So sweet. How did you all meet?
David 04:00
Oh, we met on a gay disco dance floor in Denver, Colorado in the early 2000s I was dancing with my roommate, and all of a sudden he she was talking to him, and I was like, who are you talking to?
John 04:11
She just happened to be my biology TA, who I was dancing on the dance floor. And I turn around, and I’m looking at the backside of this woman. I’m like, why does this woman look familiar because I don’t usually memorize the backsides of women. And then she turned around, and I was like, oh my god, it’s Lenay. It’s my biology. TA and she came walking over to me, and she’s like, I knew you were too cute to be straight. Thank you, honey.
X Mayo 04:39
That’s a reckoning happening on Tiktok, the straight girls are coming at these beautiful, amazing black gay men, and they’re like, listen, I know you’re a gay and it’s no disrespect, but you’re still gorgeous. Like, I respect you and your identity, and I know you don’t want anything to do with me sexually, but my God, you are a piece of art, truly, yeah.
David 05:01
We see straight men like that all the time.
X Mayo 05:05
Okay, what was the song you guys were dancing to? What was it? What it was like, Ooh, hitting it early. 2000 Paris Hilton, stars are blind, yes.
David 05:14
Now that’s long before Paris Hilton, I’m thinking like, oh, wow, something like, it’s probably like Deborah Cox or something, yeah.
John 05:22
Either Deborah Cox, or maybe, maybe, what was the can’t get you out of my head by Kylie. Or, yeah, I don’t, oh, you know that. I’m gonna say this, that super believe song by Cher was so popular, whatever […]
X Mayo 05:38
It gave her, like, it gave her a second coming. Millennials, we were like, all right, share, get it girl, yeah, no, yeah. We loved it. Oh, my God,
John 05:47
It was a diva house song.
X Mayo 05:48
Yes, I love your meet cute. And then early in your relationship, you both realize that together, you were $51,000 in debt because of your very fabulous gay lifestyle. And those are your words, America. And now what do you mean by that? Because it sounds like a really good time.
David 06:07
Oh, it was, oh my gosh. We was getting a little bit ahead of the story. But after we realized how much debt we had, David did a spending analysis of all of our expenses for the previous 12 months. And on paper, we were rock stars. We were alcohol parties, happy hours, traveling. Like, wow. But the irony was that we didn’t really feel like we were rock stars until we looked at an Excel spreadsheet.
X Mayo 06:31
Yeah, baby, one thing Excel is gonna do is humble you, honey. You put them numbers down, and you say, okay, add all this up, and it puts an equal amount, oh, my god, you’d be like, what was it? Who do I think? Girl, do you think you Bill Gates? Who do you think you are?
John 06:47
One of the things I always like to say is that that lifestyles creep is really when a treat becomes a habit. And, you know, the treat of going out and and having martinis on the weekend became the treat of going out and having martinis on Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and Saturday and then brunch on Sunday. You know, it just became this daily thing for us, and then it’s no longer special, right? It’s just life and then all that’s what, that’s how it all added up. And you don’t feel like you’re doing anything special anymore. If it’s daily life.
X Mayo 07:20
It’s not a moment anymore, right?
John 07:22
It’s just a habit.
X Mayo 07:23
But that’s a crazy thing to learn about each other, especially, you know, in a relationship, did it feel like a make or break moment for you guys, or were you guys like, listen, we’re going to, like, hunker down. It’s going to be like us, you we have to take shit seriously, like, what is important, what is not, you know, and settle this debt.
David 07:41
Yeah, it was actually the latter. And to add, for your audience who aren’t familiar with us, the extra layer to this was that we were in financial services at the time we I think at the time we combined, we had 15 years of helping other people with their money, telling them how to invest and pay off debt, and, you know, all that stuff, but we weren’t applying it to our own lives. And so sort of a come to Jesus moment. And we share that particularly because a lot of folks are kind of like, have a lot of shame around their financial mistakes. But I can tell you, from our own experience and the people that we’ve worked with, we’re making as many mistakes as the average Joe. So you know, there’s nothing to be ashamed about. We all have to go, go through our journey. But to your point, it was the latter. We were like, Okay, what direction are our lives going? What can we hope if we continue this trajectory? And that was sort of a come to Jesus moment where we said, okay, we got a course correct.
John 08:32
And the thing is, you know that we had two, two options. We could either make the change or we could stick our head in the sand. And the reality is, is that when you stick in your head in the sand, only one of two things happen, either you die because you’re not breathing, or you pull your head out, and most of the time it’s not out of the sand, it’s somewhere else. You pull your head out and you say, I got to change this if I want my life to be better. And that’s really what it came to to us. As we said, we got to change this if we want our lives to be better.
X Mayo 09:01
That’s so interesting, because you would never think that, like, your nutritionist is eating Taco Bell, right? Like you would never think that like, you know, like the people that are working on the finances, it’s like, yeah, but I think that’s a very like, affirming thing to hear like, even the even the people that know the ins and outs of a specific industry. Sometimes they have missteps as well. And you guys are just human beings, you know. And that’s reflective too, of like, your age at the time, and also, too, like, especially if it’s a new relationship, child, we going out to eat. I want extra guac. I want to lay up in this house. And we need to watch housewives period, you know. Like, that’s what we’re gonna do. So then, when you say, you know, you took your head out of the sand, and then you said it or the other way, which I feel you meant, out of your ass, and then you.
David 09:48
We didn’t know we could swear.
X Mayo 09:50
Please listen the amount of cussing that happens on The Dough. You absolutely feel comfortable to be your truth. You weren’t your butt. You saved and you budgeted and you paid off that debt in just three years, which is insane. I think that’s reflective of your smarts. You two coming together having like, dual income. So what did you learn about spending money, when not to do it, how to do it wisely in those three years?
David 10:16
I think the biggest thing that we learned this is, John, was we get more value when we spend money on the things that truly matter to us, and we get less value when we spend our money to try to make up for pain from the past or to try to fit in with our current reality. We realized that we had spent so much money trying to prove to the bullies from high school that despite you making fun of us because we were gay, we’re still worth something. We’re still valid, and don’t you wish you were our friends now, but we also spend a lot of money because the gay community can be pretty clicky, right? And so we wanted to have the fancy jeans in the right car and the right vacations, so that we fit in at the cocktail hour, and we realized that a lot of those things weren’t providing us happiness, and that’s why we kept having to spend more and more money. Hedonic adaptation, it just becomes a baseline for you. And so we started to realize, okay, well, if we spend more on what mattered to us, if we asked ours the question, do we want to have that Margarita on a Wednesday night here in Denver, Colorado, or do we want to have that Margarita on the beach in Puerto Vallarta? Inevitably, it’s always the latter, and that helps us stay focused.
X Mayo 11:23
That’s a very interesting thing that you were talking about. Because I think not just within the gay community, but just anywhere, the pressure to keep up with the Joneses is definitely a real thing. You know, consumerism is at an all time high. Child with the Tiktok shops and all that, I have to listen. I can’t. You know you can’t. You can’t drink and drive, honey. I can’t be sleepy and shop. Hello, I can’t do it. I can’t do it. It’s like, wait.
David 11:47
You can’t drink and shop either.
X Mayo 11:49
Yeah, I don’t drink. David, but I do get sleepy, so I don’t drink. Celsius is my drug of choice. This is how hard I go. Maybe I’ll do a dark Pepsi on the rocks. It’s about as crazy as I go, but I will say that I’m so happy that you spoke on that, because I think that a lot of emotion is attached to money. And then if you don’t have a metric system on what is a value that you’ve created for yourself, then you will just be tossed to and fro by any other trend that’s coming out, and I gotta have these jeans, I need these specific type of shoes. I gotta get this lipstick, and it’s like for what you know. So I think that what I’m hearing from you all is there was probably some internal work that had to happen about what do I place value on, and why?
John 12:35
And to your point about emotion, that’s the very reason it’s behavioral finance, is why half of financial advisors have also had bankruptcies or have acquired so much debt, because it’s not necessarily about knowing the math or how knowing the tricks of the trade. We all have emotions and anxiety and pain, and we’re all sort of chasing that dopamine rush of spending, whether you’re in financial services and an expert or not. So it’s all about, as you said, the emotion
David 13:02
John and I like to say that that personal finance breaks down an 8020 split, kind of like the Pareto Principle, 80% of finance. The reason why we say this is because people say this all the time. Money isn’t different for queer people, and we’re like, the fuck it isn’t. And you know, it’s it breaks down like this. 80% of money is the same for everybody. I swipe a credit card the same way you swipe a credit card. I pay a bill the same way you do. All of that is the same the transactional side, but the 20% is the personal side of personal finance, and that personal side is my sexual orientation, the color of my skin, where it was raised, the kind of family I had. Yeah, all of those things go into, how you and I interact with money differently. I may have been raised with a family that was middle class, but I had a parents who were so scarcity mindset that we had nothing right. It was always we. It was always we don’t have money for that. We don’t have money for that. You have been, may have been raised in a situation where you didn’t have money, but your parents just constantly fed you with the idea that there is abundance and you will have it and it’s coming for you. And then you all get out into the world, and you and I interact completely different with money, and that’s why two people who look the same can be so completely different with their finances.
X Mayo 15:17
What’s the first thing someone should do if they are serious about paying off debt?
David 16:40
Get crystal clear on what matters most to them. For most of us, it’s only like two or three, maybe at most, especially if you have kids, maybe five things that really matter to you. Everything else is superfluous and a complete waste of time. Not that you can’t spend your money on those things, but at least you can make the decision of, do I really want to spend my money on this thing that actually does not matter that much to me, or do I want to save this for something that’s more important? And every single time, hands down, it’s always get crystal clear and whatnot, because we’re all dealing with you said this yourself. We’re in this consumer society. We have marketing is not just art, it is a science. And they have figured out how to make us feel like we need that product, whether it’s on Instagram or Tiktok or television, they’ve they know exactly how to tap our emotions, to tap into our weakness, and that’s why we end up making a lot of the purchases that we do. So we have all that to fight against. And arguably, the better candidate didn’t win the election because we’re in such a consumer society that more people are concerned about the price of eggs than the quality of their friends and family’s lives in the next 48 years?
X Mayo 17:42
Yeah, I John, you know, we have so many thoughts. Clearly, we both know. We both know who we voted for and wanted to win. And I think the individualistic approach to the world I could never be down with I understand people who want to think that way, but ultimately it is not for the greater good in the way that I choose to live my life, and it would never be, you know, and so, so yeah, I 100% agree with you with that sentiment. And I would love to get a little more clarity from you both, from David and John, about what really makes us happy. Like, how do I sit here? Because you brought up a great point. Like, to get serious, like, what do I really want to spend money on? Like, what is it worth? But, like, some people were like, well, you know this HBO Max, add on does make me happy? You know, it’s like, okay? Girl, you know, can do you have seven other add ons? Okay could take off you don’t even watch ESPN plus. You don’t even watch sports girl, you know, why do you have ESPN plus live? You know? Like, how, how do we get crystal clear you guys. Like, do you have advice for listeners on, like, what really brings you joy, what really makes you happy, versus like you just like getting a dopamine hit, you know.
John 19:05
For us, this is David, one of the things that we do, and we teach our teach people to do is to to get a return on happiness. And basically what that means is whenever we’re spending, for most of us, we spend our time to get money, and we spend our money to get the life what we want, and we spend that is what really can provide us happiness, right? You can’t go out and buy happiness, but you can buy the things that can lead to you feeling like you have a happier life, right? So ask yourself, does does having that ESPN add on. Does it truly make you deep down inside say, I am happy, or is it like you said? Is it a dope in yours rank it? Give it a one to five scale. Go through your spending. Okay, go through your spending and give it a one to five scale. I’ll say that the vet, for the vast majority of us, the things. We spend our money on are probably a three or less, but there are a couple of things that really, truly, if you would think about it, that makes me happy today. Knowing that I spent that money on it last month makes me happy today. Knowing that I spent my money on it two years ago makes me happy today. You know what kinds of things are deep down inside. I mean, yeah, we all want to go get our nails done, we want to go out to brunch. We want to have the money for the here and now. But that’s momentary. It’s fleeting, and sometimes we need it, but not all the time. Do we need, like, kind of like you said, you know, Taco Bell is not the new most nutritional meal in the world, but sometimes at two o’clock or 230 in the morning, you’re telling the Uber driver, hey, I need to stop a taco bell because I’m fucking needed to soak up the alcohol I just drink or I’m hungry.
X Mayo 20:56
He’s like, Girl, me too. Do you want a chalupa? Okay, give me some extra fiery hot sauce. Girl, five stars, please give me five stars. Absolutely.
David 21:06
Buy your Uber driver a taco.
X Mayo 21:08
Yeah, no, truly.
John 21:09
there’s nothing wrong with treating yourself from time to time. But you know, one of the things I like to say is that if you can’t afford the big things in life, you have to enjoy the small things. But if you enjoy the small things too much, you will never be able to afford the big things. Right? We sometimes prevent ourselves from having bigger things in life, because, and this is the what we were doing, right? We it was the it was the $20 bottles of wine with every meal at, you know, at home, or the $60 bottle of wine when we went out that was preventing us from having enough money to have a down payment on a house. That’s why we were living in a basement apartment, right? All of our friends were buying their homes, and we’re like, why the Why the heck aren’t we buying a home? Well, when we looked at it, it was because we were spending 1000s of dollars a year on bottles of wine. Yeah, not individual bottle of wine, but it was the small ones that added up for us. And so when, when you, when you actually look at the numbers, when you sit down and look at the numbers, you can actually say, yeah, I really enjoy this, and I want to do it more, and I don’t really, although it’s fun, I don’t really enjoy that as much. So I’m going to shift my spending over to the stuff that I do get more fun out of.
X Mayo 22:35
I would love to talk about how you guys became the debt free guys, right? I think that’s so dope. I love the name and you help other people pay off their own debts. But when you guys started, you noticed something about the personal finance space that it is unfortunately, very straight, right? So what was that experience like trying to break through that barrier.
David 24:11
We like to call the finance industry in general, pale, male and stale.
X Mayo 24:18
That is very good. David, that is very good.
John 24:21
We came up with that, like a decade ago, and now we’re in our 50s. Yeah, yeah. Now we’re stale and male and pale ourselves.
David 24:27
Yeah, folks, for those of you who can’t see us, John and I are almost as white as a sheet of paper, but to be honest, when we first started, our focus was helping people get out of debt, that if you go back to into the origin story of our business, John and I decided that we paid off our debt. We saw other people struggling. We paid our debt off right before the financial crisis hit in 2008 and John and I were like, holy shit, everybody else was living exactly like we were. And Thank. God, we paid our debt off, or we’d be living like them now. And so we were like, there are a lot of people out there who need help. So we said, let’s write a book. And it took us seven years. It took us seven years to finally do it right? We finally wrote this book. And we thought, you know, you write a book, Oprah invites you on her show, and you get a book, you get a book, you get a book. And all of a sudden, you know, everybody’s got our book, and we’re helping millions of people, right? Well, that obviously didn’t happen.
John 25:27
Oprah has not called yet, yeah.
X Mayo 25:30
Listen, I’m gonna get her on the line. You know, I know somebody that knows somebody that know her gardener. Okay, so we get, listen that’s closer than most, okay, yes. Okay. So what is the name of the book before we get out of there.
David 25:45
It’s called for the four principles of a debt free life. It’s really boring. The title is boring. It’s out of date. It was written in 20 we finished it or published it in 2015 and to be honest, I don’t, we don’t. People don’t even need to go buy it because the company who published it for us isn’t paying us, so we don’t want to give money to that crappy company. We got plenty of free resources on our website, yeah, but we paid our debt off. We decided we wanted to help people. Once we realized that we weren’t able to publish a book and get on Oprah, we decided to start. Fortunately, somebody said to us, you guys need a platform. You need something that lets people out there know who you are, because nobody’s going to publish this book unless you have a platform. And that’s when we started debt free guys as a website. And that was kind of the first year or so of our business. And then in 20 late 2015 we went to a Personal Finance Conference, and this is a conference with 900 other people who have blogs, who are authors, who are on TV, all talking about money. And John and I are walking around, and we’re like, we’re the only gay people here at a 900 nobody else here.
X Mayo 26:58
Oh, my God.
David 27:00
Nobody is talking to the LGBT community. And John like, well, that sucks, because that means that everybody else out there is listening to homophobic people like Dave Ramsey, right? And so they’re taking their information from from the pale male and stale and nobody is talking to the LGBT community. And that’s when we decided in in 2016 to kind of pivot and create the queer money podcast.
X Mayo 27:25
Okay, now on my show, you know, we want to help everyone get their dough, especially people who haven’t always been given their fair share of it, right? So, can you please enlighten us on what are the financial barriers in the way of LGBTQ plus people and wealth.
John 27:39
You said we have an hour.
X Mayo 27:43
Yes. John, yes.
John 27:46
So we’ll try to be succinct. Well, I think one of the one of the first challenges that the LGBTQ plus community has is that, similar to the gender get wage gap, there’s a sexual orientation and gender identity wage gap. This was shown in the 2012 study, coupled with a 2017 and 2018 study done by Prudential show that there’s a sexual orientation, gender identity, wage gap. So as a community, we tend to earn less. We’ve done two studies back to back in 2021 and 2022 with the Motley Fool, fewer of us have access to health care plans. When we do have access to health care plans, fewer of us are able to get our partners or spouses on or spouses on those healthcare plans, even though marriage equality, oh, really, 2015, we use fewer financial tools than the LGBTQ plus community that we have. We have fewer wills and states and trusts. We have fewer retirement accounts. We’re not investing in the stock market to the same degree. The one thing that we do have a lot more of than everybody else, though, is student loan and credit card debt. Now, there are a lot of reasons for why those challenges exist. One of those is, you know, a lot of us are coming to adulthood with a lot of pain, so we spend accordingly, especially in this consumer society, one of the great ways to make ourselves feel better. A lot of us gravitate to lower paying jobs because we find jobs where it’s safe for us to be, where if we are out, it’s not going to be a problem. And we are hesitant about moving up the corporate ladder, because typically in many industries, the higher up you are in an organization, the more the public knows about your personal life. And so if you’re kind of afraid to come out of the closet, or at least come out too loudly, you kind of are tend to not try to climb the corporate ladder. And then you couple that with the fact that for many LGBTQ plus people, especially trans folks, going into a bank or a financial advisor’s office is a lot like going into the high school locker room. And we kind of avoid that because it’s a lot of anxiety and a lot of flashbacks of pain from childhood. In fact, our study with the Motley Fool found that 58% of LGBTQ plus folks have been discriminated against by somebody in the financial services industry, and many of us attribute our lack of financial security in part to that discri. Nation, that’s a succinct answer.
X Mayo 30:04
I’m just thinking about all the nuances too, of of that, because you add in racial identity, you know, you add in the way is in which you present, if you are a mask black lesbian, you know, or if you are maybe a non binary femme, Latino person, you know, just just the all the ways in which how you present yourself, and how that could be perceived and welcomed or shunned, you know. And just as our our trans brothers, sisters and family, their very existence is illegal in some states, you know. And when I heard about that, I mean, that just broke my heart.
David 30:44
There was a study out of the University of Surrey in England. They interviewed hiring managers and recruiters, and they found that, with this study, that hiring managers who could promote people or hire someone, or recruiters who could pass somebody on to being hired, that a person’s physical appearance, if it was not within the gender binary, and their voice, the way that they sound, if it was not within the gender binary, if they Could not immediately say you are definitely a man, you’re definitely a woman, they were much less likely to be hired. It didn’t matter whether or not they were a queer person or they were a trans person, all that it took was their appearance or their voice, right? So if you’re a man, let’s say you’re you’re a straight man who has a family, and you’re you have a slightly higher voice. You’re calling up to do a phone interview. You’re being discriminated against, even though you’re not queer or you’re not gay.
X Mayo 31:49
Which is why homophobia and transphobia affects us all. Oh, hello. Like you, exactly you. You straight person from Milwaukee just happened to have a higher pitch voice, and then all of a sudden, like you don’t get high. That’s what I’m saying. Like these type of terrible, oppressive systems and thought patterns have to be dismantled, because it truly does affect us all.
John 32:12
As a community. Every trans person I’ve ever met by and large has been way more intelligent than as a community. Most straight people like that?
X Mayo 32:21
Oh my god, yes, because they have.
John 32:23
Some of our friends. I’m like, You are so brilliant. Why you need to be like, writing for like, science magazine or something, but they don’t get the opportunity because of the discrimination. And just think of all the problems that these brilliant trans people could solve for us, but we don’t give them a chance, and so we just continue to struggle with whatever those challenges are from curing cancer to getting Elon Musk to the moon faster.
X Mayo 32:45
Oh geez, oh my God, please don’t say that word. We don’t use the E word here.
John 32:50
We don’t like Elon or election. Say the word moon.
X Mayo 32:53
Yeah, those 2e words, Elon and election. We just don’t want to do, I want to get into the good stuff, because you guys are doing amazing work for the queer community. Your Podcast, queer money, is dedicated to creating desperately needed generational wealth within the gay community, because we deserve to sleep better at night, and we must stand up to the anti LGBTQ plus industrial complex. Now that’s how you clear a bitch. I love it. Okay, so I would love to, because I think the this phrase gets thrown out a lot, but I would love for you to go deeper on, what is it? What do you mean by creating generational wealth for the gay community?
John 33:31
Yeah, I’m glad you asked that question. For most, for many queer folks, we get left out of our families. We’re pushed out. We have to be for our safety. We don’t aren’t going to have the opportunity to inherit money from our mom and dad or uncle or what have you. So many of us go out and own we build our own life, we acquire some money, but unfortunately, many of us typically don’t leave money behind to transfer to other LGBTQ plus folks. Very often that goes back to our family, unless we have children, it goes back to our family, brothers, sisters, cousins, what have you who may not necessarily be supportive of you being LGBTQ, plus. So that money just goes, goes back to Republicans, basically. So what we’re trying to do with our show is create a system for our community, whether whether you have children or not. Let’s figure out a way that with whatever money we have left over after we after we pass on that we make sure that we’re intentional about giving that to younger LGBTQ plus folks. So even, even if they just get an extra five or $10,000 they get a little bit of a leg up to maybe pay off that debt, pay off that student loan, maybe have enough money to be able to put on a down payment on the car that can get them to a better job, or put down a down payment for a lease or a house creating this system so that we keep money within the community, and it doesn’t very so often go back to other people who don’t necessarily support our lifestyle. We have not created that as a community. I don’t think for our generation, generation X, we didn’t really have that opportunity because we lost so many LGBTQ plus folks. Due to the HIV AIDS crisis. So we’re trying to have that conversation now so that generation X can start to say, what can we leave behind? How can we leave that behind strategically? And then maybe, if we can leave 10,000 $100,000 to LGBTQ plus kids, now maybe that that generation can leave 200,000 or a million dollars to the people coming up behind them, so that we have that in the community, and then we have more power to be able to fight for and protect our rights.
David 35:25
Yeah, I think that one of the other things is that there is a very organized, this is the anti LGBT industrial complex that we talk about, that we share in that tagline of the show. There’s a very organized apparatus that is fighting against us, that has literally billions of dollars sitting there that is funding all of these people. The interest is funding the people, and for many of us in the LGBT community, when we give, it’s pass through giving. And what I mean by that is I write a check and I donate it to my local LGBT charity or the National LGBTQ charity, and almost immediately that money goes out and IT services somebody, right? Because there is a need for it, right? There’s a in many cases, there’s a desperate need for it. And so that money immediately goes out and it’s used and it’s consumed and it’s gone. When we pass away, John and I want to give money. Have our money go to these organizations that are building repositories of money that can then be building that wealth, and then the money that that that has been built can be passed on to these organizations. Let’s use the same armor, yes, use the same tools. Let’s use the same weapons that they are using against us. Let’s use that to protect ourselves and to fight back, because if we don’t, I hate to say it, but we live in a world where money is power, and that’s exactly what this election showed us. Money is power, right? And if we don’t have money as a community because we’d rather have a martini than than use our money wisely and not pay our bills off or get our nails done rather than save for an emergency, we are literally giving away our power, and we’re giving it to the people who just voted against us and want to take away our rights. Sorry, I got on a soapbox.
X Mayo 37:24
There no, and you better not get off. I would love to know what advice, if any, do you have for queer people who are anxious about their finances and the state of the economy?
John 37:35
For folks who are anxious about their their finances, I would simply say this, and this is the whole purpose of why we started the Career Money podcast. Start talking about your financial situation. Start sharing what’s not working for you, what and what’s causing you anxiety. And then also share what is working for you. Share the coupon that that you just that, just scored you more makeup, or whatever the case may be. Share, especially share the financial advisor or the banker who didn’t judge you for being LGBTQ, plus, and so that your friends can go work with them and just start having those conversations that is literally the first step towards financial security. And then when you start that conversation, focus on the big things first. What is going to give you happiness? What is going to give you joy? What do you what do you want your life to look like? And then as you kind of hone in on what’s going to give you that joy, then start to back to reverse engineer it, and say, What is preventing us from getting there? And it’s those micro steps that start with conversations that will help us get to the place of security regarding the the economy, even though we have inflation. Biden has done an amazing job getting us out of the pandemic, keeping our inflation low relative to the rest of the world. And the end, the stock market is doing great. Jobs are doing great. He should be getting a lot more credit than he than he did during the campaign. Are things perfect? No, but by and large, as you typically gage the the quality of the economy. The economy right now is good. We’re at we’re at full employment for almost two years in a row, which is typically estimated around between four and 5% so I would argue that what we need to focus on, one is what’s working. And then hopefully the next president will start to figure out what what they can do to try to manage inflation as well. But I would not put all my eggs in his basket.
David 39:25
Speaking from from personal experience right now, I feel you, John and I have a business that is built around helping LGBT people, and we’re literally seeing companies and sponsors and organizations say, maybe we need to pull back on this because we don’t want to piss off the person who can literally. I mean, we know. We all know why Jeff Bezos did not allow the Washington Post to endorse Kamala Harris. We know because of the power. That that these people have. So I feel you. I feel you because if we lose our sponsorship, John and I are literally having to figure out, Where are we going to get our next job. So I feel your pain. The problem with anxiety is that anxiety is like the wheel that a rat race runs on and the faster you run, the more you’re going to have anxiety, the more the faster the rat runs, the faster the wheel goes. And the way to help stop that anxiety, the way to slow that wheel down, is to start taking one step. Take one step. If that step is downloading a budgeting app and connecting your bank so you can see where you’re spending your money, it’s the one step that helps, you know, just a little bit more, do something to slow the wheel down. And that wheel is that wheel that’s going in your brain, and we all need that wheel to slow down right now. Do it for yourself. Do it for your friends and family and do it for our community.
X Mayo 41:08
Yes, sorry. I got very emotional. I got very emotional Hearing you say that I think I disassociated with Trump winning, and it didn’t hit me till right now. I’ve acknowledged it, but I didn’t really grieve the future that I had hoped for the next four years and seeing the effects on communities that I dearly love, that that have influenced everything about me. You know, it’s very close to me. So I apologize for.
David 41:55
Don’t we’re all feeling it. You gotta let it on right now. That’s the thing. Is, is that the pain that a lot of us are feeling right now is not just the pain of the fact that he’s been elected, it’s the pain of what we’ve been carrying with with us. Some you, you just you mentioned it earlier, some of us are dealing with some financial trauma, some of us are dealing with emotional trauma, some of us are dealing with physical trauma, some of us are dealing with sexual trauma, and all it takes is one thing, and sometimes that trauma becomes overwhelming, and we we need, we all need a shoulder to cry on from time to time.
John 42:31
And I think if we put it into perspective, that your financial security is the biggest protest that you can come up with, yeah, if you as an individual, are financially secure, if you’re empowered, if you’re not dealing with financial anxiety, you’re able to sleep better at night. You’re able to march faster, Rachel, to pound your fist harder. You’re able to donate more of your time and your money to the causes that will protect you. So the your financial health is your wealth, and that’s why this conversation is important. That’s why we’re we’re thankful that you invited us on the show, because the more of us in the community who can become financially secure, or even even better, become financially wealthy, the stronger we are as a community. And eventually, probably not in my lifetime, but eventually we won’t have to fight this fight anymore, right? Yeah, because we will have fought that fight.
X Mayo 43:18
For sure. We’ll, we’ll leave our listeners and subscribers to continue to follow and support you. So please let us know where we can find you, on socials or on the interwebs.
John 43:29
Well, we’re debt free, guys and queer money pretty much everywhere on social media, as well as our URLs for websites, and then you can find the queer money podcast on YouTube or your favorite podcast player. But I’ll add David and I completely understand that. We’re two cis, white guys. We’re the pale male and stale now, as cool as we thought that was a couple years ago. But there are, there are other personal finance experts with other backgrounds and experience. There’s the trans capitalist. If you’re a black person or a trans person, and you would connect better with his message, you know, go to him. There’s Daniela Flores of I like to dabble. You can connect with with them. There’s all sorts of demographics of people in this space. And so if you don’t connect with us, please use this as an opportunity to find those experts who you do connect with, because, like we said, your financial security is the best form of protest right now.
X Mayo 44:22
Thank you so much, John and David, it was a pleasure having you. Thank you for letting me be the artist I am I feel so deeply and to be emotional and being a safe space for me and I give all that right back to you. Thank you so much.
John 44:37
Thank you for having us.
X Mayo 44:38
All right, let’s all take some calming breaths together. Okay, consider me your yoga teacher. Matter of fact, I’m doing a downward dog right now. And no, you don’t need to see it to believe it, okay? Talking to John and David really slowed my heart way, but like, like, in a good way, like, it made me calm down. I don’t want, I don’t think I was talking to. When I was dying, because even though we have, you know, who’s up there living rent free in Washington, DC, that doesn’t mean we can afford to lose all hope, right? It’s more important than ever that we get our money straight and gather our community together. Think about how your money can create the future that you want, not just what’s going to give you a dopamine hit today, and if you can afford it, keyword if consider donating money to organizations supporting marginalized communities. Also, some of you guys know that I am born and raised in Los Angeles, California, and I am here and have been here during the unfortunate tragedy and traumatic event of these California fires, I was someone that had to evacuate. By the grace of God, I was able to come back to my place. But there are 1000s upon 1000s of families that cannot. That is a lot. Our city is mourning. We are doing everything that we can. We have rallied together with one another, and I just couldn’t let this episode end without acknowledging that I’m sharing as many resources as I can. Please stay on the lookout for my Instagram to find more resources. I thank The Dough so much, and Lemonada, for making adjustments for my schedule, being understanding, making sure that I have everything that I need. It’s times like these, I see my community come forward and rally for the people that need it. And as much as this has been traumatic and disturbing and very difficult to watch and experience and smell fire and see ash fall on your face to see the city of LA band together to support each other has really been beautiful. So I want to tell you to remember your joy is your strength. Take care of each other. Don’t let the fight get you down, and we will get through these next four years together. I love you, bye. The Dough is a Lemonada original. I’m your host X Mayo. This series was created in partnership with Flourish Ventures. This series is presented by the Margaret Casey Foundation. Our producers are Tiffany Bui, and Dani Matias. Kristen Lepore is our senior producer. Mix and Sound Design by Bobby Woody. Original Music by Pat Mesiti Miller. Jackie Danziger is our Vice President of narrative content. Executive Producers include me X Mayo, Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer. Help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review. You can follow me on IG @80dollarsandasuitcase and Lemonada @lemonadamedia across all social platforms, follow The Dough wherever you get your podcast or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership, thanks so much for listening. See you next week, bye.