So much of the financial advice we get from social media, television, and podcasts focuses on the instant gratification of wealth. Experts promise ways to get rich fast, proposing we cut spending on everyday items – those frilly Starbucks drinks and organic avocados … and eggs – in favor of putting an extra few dollars a week into our checking accounts. Then, if we let time and the apps, the ebooks, the online courses they’re pushing do the work, those bills will accumulate, making us millionaires in one year, or three, or five.
Gabe Dunn isn’t calling bullshit on those how-tos, but they are resetting some expectations with their Bad With Money series.
“I’m never trying to make people rich,” Dunn tells UPROXX. “I’m just trying to make people not as stressed out.”
Instead, their chart-topping podcast promises to be a safe haven for the “not-billionaires of the world,” a place where the financially challenged can learn the basics about things like budgeting, investing, paying off debt, and saving for retirement from some of the most lauded, recognized names across multiple industries — without feeling embarrassed, ashamed, or defeated by their knowledge gaps. It’s a platform where guests can laugh, and cry, and laugh while crying about money – the necessity of it, the unfairness, the ability it has to change lives and ruin them, the sense of accomplishment that comes with learning to manage it, but most of all, the relatability of it all.
Most of us, at one point, have struggled with money, and it’s that thread that Dunn tugs on in their talks, weaving professional advice from the likes of Senator Elizabeth Warren with their own heartfelt, personal experiences as a Queer and trans-best-selling author, comedian, and TV writer just trying, like us, to figure this all out.
Here’s what they’ve learned so far.
1. We Need To Talk About Money More
According to Dunn, who used to pay for everything in cash, avoided credit cards like the plague, and thought one needed a map to “get to the stock market,” what makes money so terrifying for most people is the fact that we don’t talk about it enough. That’s true in the workplace when it comes to discussing salaries with fellow employees. It’s true in our schools, where money management is rarely taught in the classroom. And it’s true in our personal lives – in conversations with friends and family – where topics like debt, savings, and building credit still, weirdly, feel taboo.
“I thought [money] was terrifying,” Dunn admits. “I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know that there were different types of savings accounts. I didn’t know how people retired. I saw money as sort of a day-to-day struggle. My parents were like that. There was no, ‘We have retirement plans.’ I mean, friends of mine whose fathers opened their bank accounts when they were 15? There was nothing like that.”
Once Dunn started their podcast though they realized just how many financial sectors benefit from our lack of knowledge. It’s basically a form of passive gatekeeping and it’s doing a hell of a job keeping us in the dark.
“The biggest mistake would be thinking that you just don’t know enough,” they explain. “A lot of this stuff is just in jargon, but it’s actually not that difficult. I think sometimes obviously stuff is presented a certain way because they want you to hire someone. They want you to hire a financial advisor or whatever. There’s a whole industry. Why would they let you know how to do it yourself?”
2. Start Asking Questions
It might be a bit tedious at first, but Dunn recommends doing the research yourself. Pick a topic you’re curious about and just start typing in a search bar. If you work for a company and you’re wondering about the health of your retirement plan, send an email to your HR department. If you’re looking for ways to invest in the stock market, ask a friend who’s already doing the same thing.
“I just had to research and learn,” Dunn says. “I think a big thing for me was asking and calling. I think sometimes people hide that stuff [but] there are people around that are just sort of waiting for you to ask. HR is just sitting there waiting to do things. So if you go over and you say, ‘Hey, I want to learn about my 401k,’ they’re not going to be like, ‘That’s weird.’ They’re going to be like, ‘Oh, okay, great. That’s my job.’ I had an IRA for years before I realized I could call [the company] and there would be an advisor there. I was like, ‘Hey, I’ve had this IRA for a year.’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah, you were kind of supposed to call in the beginning to talk to me about it.’”
3. Budgeting Is Key And Everyone Can Do It Better
No one likes pulling up their bank account, especially if the number is going to be low, but knowing your monthly intake is key to budgeting and budgeting is key to, well, everything else.
“When I was starting, the first thing I did was go through my bank account and label everything,” Dunn says. “‘What is this? What did I spend on this?’ And I color-coded it. It took me three days and I cried the whole time, but I color-coded it. And I was like, ‘Okay, what am I spending the most on?’ This was in 2016. Now there are apps that’ll do it for you, but I was doing it by hand. I had to see what I was spending.”
One of Dunn’s most requested episodes was the chat they had with fellow podcaster Tiffany Aliche, a financial educator and host of The Budgetnista. The tips they learned during their talk are ones they implement to this day.
“I realized the people are clamoring for budget information,” Dunn says. “What’s hard is that a lot of budget information is really shaming and really doesn’t take into account people’s actual lives. They’ll be like, ‘Okay, we’ll cut cable. That’s how you save money.’ And these people are like, ‘I don’t even have a TV. What are you talking about?’ There’s such a disconnect between the people giving information and the people asking for information.”
But Aliche’s approach felt accessible, whether someone was saving for an expensive trip or just trying to put away a few dollars at the end of the month.
“She asked you to break it down into tiers of A, B, and C,” Dunn explains. “’A’ stuff is stuff you can’t cut like rent and healthcare. ‘B’ is middle stuff that does actually matter to you. And then ‘C’ is kind of take it or leave it. She would say, ‘When you start cutting things, people get really anxious and they just cut a bunch of A stuff. But you can cut one A thing, or you can cut three C things. It just helps you organize it.’ I liked her approach.
4. Look At Everything
If you’re trying to claw your way out of debt (and who isn’t these days) then the best piece of advice Dunn has is to dig up every bill that tells you what you owe. Look debt in the face, have a good cry over it, and then get to work.
“Just look at everything,” they say. “Put everything together, every credit card, every loan. Look at everything.”
Once you’ve done that, pay back smarter, not harder. That means you don’t necessarily need to tackle the biggest chunk of change first.
“For credit and for loans, look at the interest rate, that’s the simplest thing,” Dunn continues. “You can say, ‘Oh, I have a $9,000 loan and I have a $2,000 loan,’ but if the $2,000 loan has 15% interest, you got to get on that one first. People don’t look at interest rates enough.”
5. Disaster Prep – Financially At Least
Even if you’re a guru when it comes to investing or paying off loans, there’s this thing called life and it happens to everyone. It happened to Dunn recently, it happened to guests on her podcasts, and it’ll happen to you – an accident, an injury, a diagnosis, or a repair that comes unexpectedly and with a hefty price tag. Ridding yourself of debt is great, learning stock market lingo is fun, but putting away money for a rainy day you know will come is essential. It’s not necessarily sexy to talk about the way those other things are, but Dunn insists on doing it anyway.
“Tax laws change, then inflation happens, then there’s a recession, then a pandemic hits. I realized that you can know everything and think that you know enough or that you’re perfect, and then something will just slam into you. Like a medical bill, a tooth falls out, or someone hits your car. It’s just never-ending,” Dunn says. “I did an episode a while ago that I loved called ‘What If You’re Fucked?’ about a friend of my dad who was in a motorcycle accident and lost a leg, and he was obviously not expecting that. A friend of mine, her mother was [a victim of] identity theft.” Dunn adds that, “these are people who are living in the real world who’ve had something happen to them, and it’s not really their fault.”
Ultimately Dunn wants to reach those people, the ones like them who are just trying to master the basics to live more comfortably, maybe even a bit freer from financial stress. They’re still “extremely mad” at money, at knowing how much they still don’t know, and at the way capitalism and our financial systems consistently fail us. That’s where the intersectional theme of their money advice podcast comes in, setting itself apart from the rest of the get-rich crowd. But, at the end of the day, Dunn just wants to demystify finances a bit, to build a community where the most basic questions get asked (and answered) without any strings attached.