Building a Media Empire (Money with Katie) with Katie Gatti Tassin

What this episode is about

Katie Gatti Tassin discusses the significance of effectively managing finances within a marriage, arguing that collaborative financial management can strengthen relationships and reduce the likelihood of divorce. She emphasizes the importance of understanding the legal implications of marriage concerning finances, referencing a divorce attorney's insight that marriage is one of the most significant legal commitments one can make, underscoring the necessity of being informed and protected.

Key takeaways

• Couples who budget together, stay together—money management may be the secret ingredient to marital bliss.
• Marriage is legally binding until death, yet we enter without reading the fine print; proceed wisely.
• The financial troll who critiqued my work? Thanks, anonymous hater—your negativity fueled my success in personal finance.
• High expectations from parents can be a double-edged sword: driving ambition but risking burnout; balance is key.
• Legal precautions like prenups aren’t failures—think of them as financial insurance for safeguarding marital happiness.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Ryan Hawk (Host) · 16 min speaking
• Katie Gatti Tassin (Guest) · 38 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: James Ston
2. 30:00 – 35:00: James Ston, Terry Martin Hecker
3. 50:00 – 54:32: Rich Girl Nation

Notable quotes from "Building a Media Empire (Money with Katie) with Katie Gatti Tassin"

• Are legally protected. And something that I think changed my perspective on this subject irrevocably was a quote from a divorce attorney named James Ston. He says, Marriage is…

  about James Ston · at 0:28

• How to legally protect yourselves and be realistic. I tell this story in the book about this woman named Terry Martin Hecker who wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in the 1970s and it was basically this kind of alternately playful.

  about Terry Martin Hecker · at 32:44

• You will be relentless. So good. The book is called Rich Girl Nation: Taking Charge of Our Financial Futures. Thank you for sending me a copy. It's really good. really well written. Much like,.

  about Rich Girl Nation · at 53:50

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• James Ston — Person · Referenced expert · 2 mentions · first at 0:35
  Cited as a divorce attorney whose quote frames marriage as a major legal/financial contract, supporting the episode’s argument for prenups and legal clarity.
• Terry Martin Hecker — Person · Referenced author / cautionary case study · 1 mention · first at 32:48
  Used as a narrative example illustrating the financial vulnerability of long-term stay-at-home spouses without legal protections like prenups/spousal support terms.

Books & papers

• Rich Girl Nation — Book · Primary recommendation · 2 mentions · first at 50:26
  The book discussed in the episode, focusing on personal finance and financial independence, particularly for women.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 There's that popular statistic that money is a big reason why people get divorced. But the flip side is also true that if you're managing money effectively together as a team, that can actually strengthen your marriage and lower the chances of divorce. Prenups, these are controversial. We're not talking about this because why would we set ourselves up to fail before we even start? To me, the goal with managing your money in marriage or with another person is really to make progress as a team and also to make sure both of you are legally protected. And something that I think changed my perspective on this subject irrevocably was a quote from a divorce attorney named James Ston. He says, "Marriage is the most legally significant thing you will do in your life other than die. And you don't get so much as a leaflet about how your rights and how your finances will never be the same. It's a contract that is

0:52 binding until death and there's nothing to read before you sign it. Katie, it is so cool to have you here on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome. Thank you. It's so good to be here. I I loved reading the dedication in your book because it's kind of spicy and I think that's a cool way to start and you said to the anonymous guy who works in finance quote in quotes that used to relentlessly comment on my nent website in 2018 urging me to quit writing about money and to quote keep it to myself. I hope you're well. Can you tell me more about your motivation from this guy to kind of like it felt like a little bit of a chip, you know, a little spicy. uh tell me more about this and and some of the motivation to to do the stuff that you've done. Yeah. Isn't that nice? What a good first impression I'm gonna make on your community. They're like, "Wow, she can really hold a grudge." Yeah. I this is somebody and an experience that

1:52 always stuck with me because I think when you start to put yourself out there if you are building a business or you're trying to I don't know make a mark on the world with your work it is going to involve facing criticism and facing feedback and not all that feedback is going to be positive and that's something that I've dealt with a lot over the years but that was really the first time very early on when I publishing a blog for I don't know probably like 16 people who read it who you know my mom, my neighbor, people I went to college with and I had gotten really interested in personal finance kind of overnight. And so this blog that I had been writing that was formerly about dating and my career and whatever, I kind of transitioned it really abruptly into a blog about money. And this was like this person that I dedicated the book to who I don't know who it was. It was just some anonymous

2:51 person. Uh I I kind of consider them like my first troll or my first hater. And it was this this moment where every time I would publish something new like without fail this person would comment and would leave me these long screeds basically saying like you shouldn't be writing about this. you know, I'm a financial professional and you don't have the the qualifications to have opinions about money online. You should really stop writing about this. And as I was turning in the book and I had to write the dedication, I was like, you know, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one of the two of us that's written a book about money, so I'm going to dedicate it to them.

3:29 Oh, that's so good. Um, you also write about though your specifically your mom in the acknowledgement section, you know, for all the quiet days that you spent sitting on the floor of the Lent Branch Library and wandering the stacks at Barnes & Noble. Um, I I what what impact and your dad's in there too, right? About being your number one fan and and kind of always having your back at the kitchen table. Can you talk to me about your upbringing with your your mom and your dad and how they set you up or what impact they've had on you as you've come uh gone on to build such an amazing business? Oh, that's a really good question and I'm impressed you read the acknowledgements.

4:07 My parents were extremely supportive of me when I was a kid. They were also people who had very high expectations for the things that I was doing. So, if it was school, it was straight A's or bust. Um, they didn't really have high expectations for me in sports because I'm very uncoordinated. So, they let that one go pretty early on. But, they were always supportive of my interests and they always really doubled down on doing your best and working your hardest. And I think in a lot of ways, I'm an only child, so you know, they um they really funneled all their ambition into me, but I think in a lot of ways that has been the biggest blessing and the biggest curse for me is that I am an incredibly driven person because of the people who raised me and the way I was raised, but I also have a really hard time with turning it off. I can become very narrow-minded and obsessive about the things that I'm doing. And I think

5:18 that if you are an entrepreneur in particular, that can be a really useful trait. You can kind of weaponize that because I mean, if you're willing to put in really long hours, really focused hours, seven days a week, like you're going to get results. But I have found that over the years as things have progressed that that is also a quality that I have to really be mindful of because if I don't watch it, work will completely consume me. And I think that my parents now, something that's a little bit ironic is that back in the day when I was in school and, you know, taking all the AP classes and just was like that kind of kid, you know, very type A, very ambitious.

6:05 Um, back in the day I would spend a lot of time doing homework and there was a lot of focus on my grades and I think now as an adult they're often the ones that are like remember there's more to life than like money and success. Okay, remember that like you can slow down a little bit. So I think sometimes they they will feel like oh gosh what have we done? Uh cuz she really like took it and ran with it. But yes, I was very fortunate to have parents who both supported that drive early on, really cultivated it, but also taught me a lot about money and made money something in our household that was just another topic of conversation. I knew how much money my parents made, which I think is kind of unusual. Like I've told people that over the years, and they're like, "Really?" I remember asking them when I was relatively young, like, "Well, how much money do you make?" And, you know, they told me. So, I never really thought

7:02 of it as something that was taboo, but my mom was a very diligent manager of our household finances, too, every single time we would do anything and come home with a receipt. It would get put on her desk and she would sit there at her computer with her spreadsheet. And she probably has 20 years of spending data in this one spreadsheet. and she would, you know, enter the amount in the category. And from a very, I would say, relatively young age, there was an emphasis on like, oh, you always pay your credit card bill off in full every month. Oh, it's really important to save. And at the time, you're a kid, you have no concept of monies, right? Yeah. Yeah, whatever. Okay. But I do think that a lot of that, even just the ability to talk about money openly in my home, made it a lot easier for me now as an adult and especially as a young adult when I was just getting started and kind of trying to figure out, okay, what is my

7:53 financial strategy going to be, I didn't have a lot of the hang-ups that I think some people have who are not as fortunate or whose parents maybe didn't have as like transparent and frank of a relationship with money as mine did. such a gift I think for parents to be that open and transparent because now it's I mean now you you've built your kind of business and and life around it. I want to go back though Katie because I I I feel this I I sense you have this uh extremely high standards uh a dedication to excellence and and this is something that I personally deal with.

8:30 This is a selfish question, but like the problem is when you can't turn that off, the people that sometimes are collateral damage are the people you love love the most. Meaning, I have these unrelenting standards that are not really attainable for myself. But the problem is you then kind of put those on the people around you like your spouse, your kids, and that can be a problem. I know from firsthand experience I and I am literally dealing with this as we speak. It never goes away. And I'm curious, how do you manage that like with your husband or other people that you're really close to that you have such high standards and a and a demand for excellence of yourself and a crazy work ethic? I know that's part of who you are. But that again that could come out in a bad way with the people you love.

9:22 How do you manage that? Oh man, that's such a good question. I think for me I try and sometimes succeed, sometimes fail to keep it in perspective as far as like what I'm what I'm asking that work ethic to do. So, if I'm talking specifically about myself, um, and that standard of excellence that you've referred to, I think that that's that's interesting because that is actually something that we kind of say internally in team money with Katie is like, okay, there's a standard of excellence for this work. Is this hitting that standard? Is is it reaching that standard or not? Are we proud of this? So, we actually use that phrase, which is kind of wild that you picked up on that.

10:09 But I've been working with a coach over the last I'd say like uh 16 to 18 months. And something that we unearthed probably about a year in together is that part of the stress and the drive and the ambition I guess you could call it around the work is in many ways coming from this pressure that I'm putting on everything that we're doing to essentially reflect back to me this affirmation of you're smart. Yeah, you're working really hard. Yeah, you're good at this. Like asking the work itself to be an affirmation of these things that I hope are true about me.

10:55 So, I guess you could call it maybe a vector of imposttor syndrome, but I really think it's more so about when you're putting that level of pressure on everything that you're putting out into the world to be the best thing that you've ever done. it has a way of really sucking the fun out of it. And so I think when it comes to managing that impulse and applying that impulse to other people who are not asking for it, I have found one-on-one coaching to be really really important and really helpful. I think that that a lot of the the a lot of the challenge with managing that impulse comes from the fact that it is just the water you're swimming in every day. So you often I didn't really even realize that I was doing it and so you know you might be experiencing the same argument over and over again or you might have like this pattern that you feel like you're stuck in. But until I started working

11:57 with a coach and started talking to somebody uh about these these feelings and these tendencies, I didn't really have that 360 view to be like, "Oh, that's where that's coming from. That's why I'm doing that. That's how that feels in my body when that like impulse creeps up." So that is something that I'm really thankful for. Just that outside help, that outside perspective. And I think that if you are somebody who works really hard or works for yourself or manages a team, it is really important to have that kind of third party objective voice that you really trust who you can tease some of this stuff out with. I mean, it's it's been invaluable for me. How is this like a business coach, a therapist, all of the above? Like who what what is the person how did you come about making the decision to work with a coach? I'm curious. I I need this, by the way, big time. Uh like I I also think high

12:54 performers want and need coaching, but it's hard to find the like the good ones. I don't know the I don't know the right. You know what I'm saying? Like so I'm curious about like how did you come up like come up with this idea? Who what is the person's technical job? All all the details behind it. I think that the part of the reason it's really hard well twofold. one, there's a lot of grift in this space and it's hard to know qualifications ahead of time and it's hard to gauge effectiveness ahead of time. So, that can be a hurdle. It is a hurdle, but it's also expensive. And I think that for me, as someone who tends toward saving money and investing money and writing books about how to do those things better and more, you know, efficiently and how to optimize that, I um I was really reticent to hiring somebody because I was like, what is someone going to tell me that I don't already know? You know, I had tried therapy in

13:52 the past and it was fine, but like it didn't really give me for me personally, it didn't end up being some like lifealtering experience. So, it was really um a a series of conversations that I had with a friend, her name's Tara, who runs a multi-million dollar edtech company. And she was a person that as you get, you know, those people that you meet where like they're just so themselves. They're so embodied. They're so confident. They're so authentic to themselves and kind of certain about what they want and not afraid to try things. That was that's how Tara is.

14:34 And she and I had this conversation about coaching and she asked me if I had ever worked with coaches or been in mastermind programs or done anything of that nature. And I kind of was like, "No, I think all that's bullshit." Like, "I think all that is grift." Like, you know, this is coaches coaching coaches. It's a pyramid scheme. And she was kind of like, "Huh, that's interesting." Like, I've invested a lot of money in this work. And I could I could point you to that's the person that helped me 10x my business. That's the person that helped me finally break free of this like, you know, limiting belief that was really holding me back. And I was very skeptical. I think I'm kind of a cynical person by nature. And I tend to I'm a cynical optimist, we'll say, but I I tend to try to think more at the systems level than at the individual level. And so I I kind of wrote off a lot of it.

15:24 But after a while, I was like, you know, but I can't deny the fact that she's getting results that I'm not getting, and she seems tapped into something that I'm not tapped into. So like, what could it hurt? So, I had posted on Instagram toward the end of 2023, hey, I'm looking to hire. I'm trying to level up next year. I really want to take things to the next level. I feel like I've, you know, had some success in business and things have been going well, but I feel like I'm kind of at a crossroads and in order to really kick things up a notch, I got to I got to figure this out. I I need somebody who can help me get there. So, I was originally looking for a business coach because I'm thinking I need tactics. I'm thinking I need strategies. And then I get this email from a girl that I went to high school with who was like, "Hey, I think that you would really, really like this coach that I've been working

16:17 with. Her name's Elizabeth." And I was like, "Well, what kind of coach is she? Does she do business coaching? Does she know how to scale? You know, how is she familiar with media?" Like, I'm asking these types of questions. She's like, "No, no, no. She's a life coach." And I'm like, "Whatever, life coach. Okay, sure." So, I end up taking a first like referral with her though cuz this woman gift this woman I went to high school with gifted me a session with her. And so, I prep my Google doc ahead of time. I'm like, "Okay, these are the three directions that I see my business going in. These are the three different paths.

16:47 I see these options. I think we could scale this way. We could do this. We could do this." I send her this Google doc ahead of time. And we sit down for this first session together and she's like, "Okay, [ __ ] your Google doc." She's like, "You are way too in your head. You are way too concerned with like the minutia. You don't even know where you want to go yet. Do you even know what you want to do?" And I was like, "No, you're right. I actually haven't spent any time thinking about what I actually want." And so the first hour that we spent together, I think we did like a meditation. I mean, it was like it was completely different than what I was expecting. But I left that session with what felt like a huge leap forward in clarity and I was like, "Yeah, I got to work with this person.

17:33 There's there's something here." Like she's she's doing some stuff that I I am not tapped into. And we ended up I I basically asked her, you know, she presented me with these two options. You can do the year or you can do monthly and both are expensive. So I'm like, "Oh gosh, I don't know." So I like sit with it for a while. And we basically worked something out where I said, "I really want to do this, but I need an off-ramp if this is snake oil." Basically, like I I feel really good about that first session, but if what if that's all you got? Basically, the skepticism continued. And she was like, "Sure, sure. If at 3 months you don't think it's working, um, you know, you can break the contract and we'll be done." But, you know, by the 3-month mark, I was like completely sold. And yeah, it's one of the best it's one of the best investments in myself and in my business that I've ever made because

18:28 even though she's not there to talk to me about these different strategies and tactics, she helps me work on myself. And I think what I've learned is that as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, as somebody who has had that experience of kind of creating something out of nothing and like shephering something new into the world, I think a lot of the answers are in here. And I had just gotten way too in my head and kind of forgot that, you know, I have the resources and if there are other resources I need to go need, like I will that even that the first step is being able to recognize where your gaps are. And so it's been a really good experience, but yeah, it was just not what I was expecting. I think life coach is just a terrible name though.

19:20 They should be like a performance coach or something. Like when I hear that phrase, Katie, I'm like, "Nope, not happening." Like like they they should just rebrand it or something if that's what you call it because like I it there's there as you said there's just so much grift in that arena. But that's interesting. I I may want to talk with you more about that later. I don't want to get off track for the rest of this though. But you mentioned being an entrepreneur in your business. I vividly remember when the news came out that you were being or your business you your business was being acquired by morning by Yeah. by Morning Brew. Um, yeah, as someone, you know, who has a media business and and the different elements that go with that, it was super interesting to me that Morning Brew was a media company that had built uh built itself up and scaled, got acquired themselves, and now was acquiring you. I

20:11 was like, whoa, I need to learn more about this. So, can you can you talk to me about what was going on up to that moment and then what what made you decide to agree to the acquisition with the Morning Brew team? Totally. So, I write about this story in a little more detail in the book in chapter 2 as part of this uh basically there are multiple ways to earn more money, right? You can either earn more money working for someone else or you can go the entrepreneurship route. And so having done both now in my career, I wanted to kind of write a hybrid chapter that dives into all the finer points of kind of both paths. So that's what I did. But this particular experience was really really I learned a lot from it because I had been running Money with Katie.

21:00 started it in April 2020 and then I had been running it on my own as a soloreneur from April 2020 until around November 2021. So call it about 18 months and things were going really really well for me. I had kind of stumbled into a solid monetization strategy and I had also just gotten a job working in user experience design for Meta, formerly Facebook. So I had this great cushy tech job with good benefits on one hand. Then I also had this kind of nent personal finance media company that was growing month over month at a really solid clip and I was seeing a lot of success with it. So, I was really kind of content, but also looking ahead to go, okay, my side project, my side hustle is earning twice as much as my full-time job through ads, right? Or or through ads, through digital product sales, through affiliate revenue. So, I had several it was a it was a well diversified that you figured out all yourself.

22:11 Yeah. I mean it was and that's kind of the thing is like even for the ads people like how did you sell your first ads and I literally DM'd the businesses that I wanted to work with like hey I'm K I mean I don't know where I had the I don't know where the confidence came from. honestly think it was like when you can kind of have um it's naive that ends up working in your favor where like you don't know any better or you don't know that that's weird so you're just like whatever I'll just DM them and be like my blog's great you should definitely sponsor it and like to my shock and awe people were like okay so that was uh that was how that all kind of came together and you know it was like the the product similarly just responding to this is what readers are asking for and I think it'd be fun to make something like that, so why not? So, it was a very it was a very easy, breezy kind of like love at

23:03 first sight business in that sense where the first 18 months it was really fun to to build it. And so I was looking ahead though to 2022 and going, "All right, I really want to go full-time with this, but I'm nervous because it feels really it feels like I have this other career that has just kind of taken its next step. I just moved from a a good company where I was paid decently to like one of the tech companies where you can make a lot." And I was like, "Oh, this is like a prestigious job. You know, if I really want to be a UX writer in my career, I don't want to throw that away." but my heart was elsewhere. So, I'm like really weighing this decision to try to take it full-time and penciling out all the numbers of well, what would that look like and what would be the worst case scenario? And that was around the time that I get a I think a DM on Twitter from Austin Reef, who was the CEO of

23:57 Morning Brew at the time and one of the co-founders. And he was like, "Hey, I think what you're doing with Money with Katie is interesting. I'd love to talk." So, at the time I figured, oh, they're probably trying to spin up a personal finance for women thing. Like, he just wants to ask me if I have any learnings to share. Basically, we talk for 30 minutes and at the end he's like, "All right, I'm going to cut to the chase. Like, we want to buy money with Katie." And I was kind of taking it back. I was like, "What? No." Like, that that's crazy. Like, why would you why would you want to do that? because I basically told him there's no way that we could that this would be mutually beneficial.

24:37 Like either you're going to pay me the amount that I want to make from this and you're not going to make any money or you're going to make all the money and I'm going to be working for my own brand for like a pittance and that's stupid. So I kind of sat with it for a little while and and originally was like really leaning toward no because I was having so much fun with it that I was like I don't want to sell this to somebody else. But as we kept talking and as I and I write about this this kind of thought process in the book of like okay well what is most important like let's prioritize here. Most important is I want to be able to stop context switching. Right now I spend all day doing one thing and then nights and weekends do another. That's not like a super sustainable lifestyle in the long term. So I know I want to do this full-time anyway. I want to make more money than I'm making now doing both of

25:31 these things, but to do just one. And I want to learn because this is a media company that has $50 million a year in revenue. This is a media company that knows how to sell ads, right? I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm flying by the seat of my pants. So, as we as we continued the negotiation over the course of like the next six weeks and I really started to think about the long-term play, the um the the best advice that I got was from another a friend of mine who also actually had had recently sold a company to I think Acorns. He was like, "Well, would you rather have 100% of a grape or 25% of a watermelon?" Because that was kind of how we were framing the like I'll get to keep a percentage but not the whole thing. And I was like, "Oh, yeah, good point." So ended up doing it and in January 2022, Money with Katie became part of Morning Brew. So now it's been part of Morning Brew longer than it was

26:24 independent. They do own all of it. They own 100% of it and I get a revenue share and I have a base salary as well. But the big lesson that I took away from that negotiation and that I really wanted to make sure I conveyed in the book for any entrepreneurs who end up in a similar position is your intellectual property is the most valuable thing that you are negotiating over. And it is probably going to be worth it to seed other terms in order to keep some of the work that you're doing to to retain some level of ownership over the thing that you're creating. And there are a lot of other terms that I think are worth negotiating as well that I outlined in chapter 2. But, um, when my original three-year contract ended this past January and we were renegotiating a new one, that was something that I kind of came back to the table with and said, I have to have a termination clause in this contract that gives me a path to

27:28 buying this back from you. I don't want to be in a situation ever again where if I leave or if something ends that I lose everything that I've built. So that's something that I would have negotiated differently the first time around but was fortunate enough this time around to have that opportunity to come back to the table and say I'm willing to give up some other things in this contract. I will seed other terms to you if you include a term that says what happens if we part ways and gives me a path back to independent ownership because the primary value of the thing that I'm spending 60 hours a week working on needs to be acrewing to me otherwise it doesn't make any sense like I think you you reach a point there at least I feel like I did where why am I going to continue building something for somebody else where if it were to end someday like I kind I have nothing. I have the money but I don't have the the work like

28:30 it would make more sense for me to go start something else. And I think that they to their credit you know came to the table in good faith and saw that and agreed with me that that was a fair ask. Um, and you know, your negotiation partner will not always come to the table in good faith, but that is a really, really big learning that I think we've seen play out over and over again, particularly in this space, that the IP is everything. Like Alex Cooper leaving Bartool and Dave Portoi structuring their contract and her negotiating to get the Call Daddy IP back. She has made how many tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars off that IP now.

29:11 And that was probably the smartest thing that she ever did. But it's just if you I if you don't know any better when you are faced with that decision like I didn't completely naive completely unequipped to negotiate with somebody that had themselves just been acquired um and had a lot more experience with those sort of deals. You just don't know any better. And so it was really important to me to put that sort of information in this book that I hadn't read about in other personal finance books. Well, there's a that relates to another part of the book. Um, prenups like these are controversial. Like these are like, hey, let's don't we're not talking about this because why would we set ourselves up to fail before we even start? you know that type. We've all heard that like I've probably said that before, you know, like but let's let's relate that though now more of a personal life and the financial elements

30:02 of prenups and postnups, which you write about both of those things. Um, and yeah, this is a really touchy subject. It's almost hard to even know how to ask this question, but what are your thoughts on what are your thoughts on prenups? So to me, the goal with managing your money in marriage or with another person is really to make progress as a team and also to make sure both of you are legally protected. And something that I think changed my perspective on this subject irrevocably was a quote from a divorce attorney named James Ston.

30:42 He says, "Marriage is the most legally significant thing you will do in your life other than die. And you don't get so much as a leaflet about how your rights have just changed and how your finances will never be the same. It's a contract that is binding until death and there's nothing to read before you sign it." So, for starters, I like to just set the stage by saying the rule of thumb to remember is that anything that either of you earn, buy, or borrow after the date of marriage is probably going to be treated as marital joint property that belongs to both of you if you ever get divorced. Now, that is probably going to be the case even if you have a prenup. prenups that let me put that differently like prenups are not like a a a magic tool that means everything is going to be kept separate. They typically just specify okay any separate property that either of you came into the marriage

31:49 with. You know, we'd like to keep that separate so that if we do split up someday, that stuff isn't on the table for the taking. And it also can be used for a very critical thing that I think is really really important for women specifically because women are more likely to leave paid work to take care of children and that is specifying spousal support. So this applies to any person who enters a marriage who thinks that at some point they may want to be a stay-at-home parent. This is a choice that I think everyone should be freely able to make without fear of the financial consequences someday. So there's a story that I tell in the book, the whole fourth chapter. It's called Ivy Wed and spend thy bread. It's all about managing money together in marriage, how to set yourselves up as a team, how to find success, how to build wealth together, how to attack debt as a team, right? But it's also and here's

32:44 how to legally protect yourselves and be realistic. I tell this story in the book about this woman named Terry Martin Hecker who wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in the 1970s and it was basically this kind of alternately playful indignant piece where she was talking about, hey, the women's rights movement, you know, you guys say you want women to do their own thing, but I'm a housewife and it doesn't seem like you all are supportive of that. And at the end, she's kind of talking about how this can be a really fulfilling path. And you know, I'm really happy to kind of play second fiddle to my husband. And she ends up going on this book tour. She gets a book deal. She kind of travels the world espousing the virtues of, you know, being the stay-at-home wife. And then in 2006, she writes a follow-up oped. And the follow-up oped is called Paradise Lost Domestic Division. And she talks about how on her 40th wedding

33:44 anniversary after she had stayed home over the years, devoted her life to her family, raised her five children, that her husband asked her for a divorce because he had met a younger woman. And over the course of the divorce proceedings, she's now in her 60s. The judge basically tells her, "Well, you need to find a job." Keep in mind, this woman has not worked in 40 years, so employment prospects are not good. She ends up eligible for SNAP benefits and she writes a book in 2009 called Disregard First Book and she basically comes to this conclusion of like this is a cautionary tale that if you are going to do what I did, you need to protect yourself. Now again in modern in modern times in 2025, you know, um this is advice that is just as applicable in some ways to men who might want to be stay-at-home fathers. But the bottom line is that if you spend decades out of the workforce, you know, you're accumulating zeros in

34:44 the social security records, you don't have an opportunity to invest for your own retirement. You need to ensure that if your partnership ends someday, and you know, god forbid that you will have a certain amount of income for a certain amount of time to get yourself back on your feet. I interviewed several divorce lawyers for this book. All of them told me that judges are not often kind about spousal support in the absence of a prenup. So to me, that is kind of the the main reason that I think people should get them because they allow you when you are feeling the most optimistic and the most rosy about your future together to say, "Hey, I love you so much that this is what I want to guarantee that you have in life, even if someday it's not with me." I think that that is so much more romantic and selfless than being like, "Well, what happens happens, babe.

35:41 Let's lock the door, throw away the key, and like hope for the best." Because the reality is that everybody has a prenup. Every couple has a prenup. The difference is whether you're writing it yourself or the state is writing it for you. And I think if given the choice, if you have the opportunity, you're probably better off writing it yourself. What what was it like for you? So, my husband is an attorney and we had talked uh in our we I think we were engaged for about six months before we got legally married because he went into the Air Force and um Ever the ever the rational optimizer. We were like, well, you know, your salary will be higher if you have a dependent, so let me uh sign on the dotted line and let let me become the dependent. We had talked about getting a prenup and we were it was a pretty like low drama conversation. I think we both saw the value in it particularly because

36:35 we had both been saving and investing for several years at that point and we had accumulated separately like kind of comparable amounts of not insignificant money. And the embarrassing truth is that we basically just never got around to it. We were 26 and 27 at the time. Now we're 30 31. And in retrospect, we kind of joke all the time about how like the benign neglect of paperwork was the reason we didn't do it. Like we had h we had had the hard conversation, the supposedly hard conversation. We had we were on the same page about it. We just kind of it slipped through the cracks.

37:18 So we actually don't have a prenup. And I write that in the book. like, you know, you read this this very long section where I outline all the benefits and I talk about all the considerations and all the terms you should be thinking about and then I'm like, yeah, so you're probably like, wow, I've never met a woman so excited about contract law. I bet her prenup is ironclad. And then I'm like, but w like this is a mistake that I made that I don't want you to make. But in the absence of a prenup, I think a you can get a postnup. That's that's a really um solid second option. You you can do a postnup though they tend to have more issues with enforcability. So like all things held equal, get the prenup if you can if if you have that opportunity before you get married.

38:07 Um but that's where managing money as a team becomes incredibly important. So, I talk about the three different ways that people tend to I'm going to get a drink of water actually. One second. So, in the book, I talk about the three different ways that you can manage money as a couple. You can either kind of do the traditional model, which is you're going to combine everything, or you can do the what I call the roommate model, which is everything stays separate, or you can do the yours, mine, and ours, which is what I personally do and what I recommend to people because I think it strikes the best balance between morale boosting and recognizing that you are a team with joint goals and you're you're planning this future together. But it also allows you to have a little more autonomy and frankly a little bit more safety should something go wrong someday.

39:09 Now, the interesting thing that I always want to point out to people who kind of go the everything separate route is that if you have decided as a couple that keeping everything separate is strategically beneficial to you and you've had the conversations and that is the decision that you have come to, that's perfectly fine. However, if you are using separate finances as a band-aid for not having those conversations or for avoiding the process of getting on the same page, that can be a harbinger of trouble down the road and where the legal stuff comes in and why I think this chapter is so critical for people and should be in every single personal finance book where you teach people how marriage changes their finances is that That separation is an illusion. If you were to split up someday, all of that money that came into that marriage after the date of marriage belongs to both of you. And

40:11 maybe a little bit scarier, any debt that that person took on also belongs to both of you. This is particularly serious in community property states, of which I believe there are nine or 10, uh, Texas and California among them. Some of the most populous states in the country have this this rule where if you get divorced in one of these states, everything is just straight down the middle 50/50. So there are legal ways, you know, around that. If you get into a situation where you are finding yourself divorcing from somebody who has taken on a lot of debt, but it's a legal headache. Lawyers charge a lot of money. It is much better if you can get on the same page about money while you're married and avoid that entirely. There was a financial therapist that I interviewed for the book and for the show who who kind of pointed out that there's that popular statistic that money is a big reason why people

41:07 get divorced. But the flip side is also true that if you're managing money effectively together as a team, that can actually strengthen your marriage and lower the chances of divorce. So, I think it's really important to remember that money can actually be something that brings you closer together, that that is something that's within reach for you. And um I think understanding how legally your relationship to one another's assets and liabilities will change once you lock yourselves together. Um I think that's like a really important first step, but yeah, there's a there's a lot in this chapter about I I think that those can be really enjoyable conversations.

41:52 Um, meaning for example, you could say something like, "What do we what's the purpose? What's the point of striving so hard to make so much money?" And and this is a conversation we had in our in our home. And it's to create memorable, amazing experiences with our family. And so that usually looks like traveling, concerts, hiking, skiing, um qu like any sort of quality time, dinners, quality time as a as a unit, as a family. And and so sometimes when you're working long, you're working extra, you're traveling, like we're we're generating fun coupons and experiences for our family. And that I think that brings you together. Like that can bring you together by having like what are we doing this for? like why are we working so hard or why are we striving extra? It's not just for the money, but it's what we're turning the money into, right? And so, and you also sense like what do you value? Do you

42:47 care about uh homes or jewelry or cars or do you care about trying to turn that hard work into great experiences as as a family union? I think that that can be good. That that kind of leads me Katie to my next question, which is this phrase that you write about called being financially free. I think we could have an understanding of what that means. But how how does somebody know what their number is or how do they know what they need to get to to be quote financially free? Yeah. So, it's a really good question and I think that it is the backbone of all financial planning. So my start in the personal finance world was in the financial independence retire early community like that wing of personal finance. And so anyone familiar with that movement knows that they basically turn personal finance into an extreme sport. And so because that was sort of my baptism into the financial world, I still rely pretty

43:51 heavily on what I think are some of their most quantitatively sound principles. And one of those principles is that retirement is not an age. Retirement is a number. And it is a number that you can calculate. So I devoted all of chapter 3 to this subject. It's called knowledge is power because I think that this was the knowledge that really transformed my relationship with instant gratification. And basically my spend thrift qualities were completely neutered by understanding something called the 4% rule. So the 4% rule for those who are unfamiliar was discovered in 1994 by a no joke MIT educated rocket scientist who became a CFP and was really curious how much will my clients need to retire? Now at the time nobody could answer that question. No one really knew. So you had pundits who would throw out outrageous numbers like $10 million, but there was no way to personalize that data for a client based

45:01 on how much money they had, how much they were spending, etc. So what Benan did was he sat down with, I believe, 70s something years of real stock market data and real inflation data and he compared dozens of overlapping 30-year periods of real historical hypothetical retirements and said, "What is the amount that every retiree could have withdrawn from their investment portfolio and never run out of money or at the very least have made it all the way through that 30-year retirement without running out of money. And the number that he found was 4%. So if we know this, all we have to do is essentially take the inverse of that number, multiply our annual spending by the inverse of 4%. So 25. So once you have accumulated 25 times your annual spending in a particular asset allocation something between 50 and 75% US equities and then um 25 and 50% US government bonds that you should theoretically be able to use 4% of that

46:13 amount every year withdraw it and live on it and theoretically you should be just fine for many decades at least. Um, I believe it's something like in 75% of scenarios, people die with more than they even retired with, which is crazy and just goes to show the power of compounding. Um, but I just find this a really useful shortorthhand for, okay, let me contextualize how close or far away I am. It also makes your spending decisions now easier to contextualize and easier to make honest tradeoffs with. You might decide that the bigger house is worth it for you and your family, even if it means that that number, that magic number of work optionality is going to get a little bit farther away. Or you might go, "Oh, you know what? I actually like don't want to buy the Mercedes anymore because if I do, my number is going to get three years away." This is the magic of being able to translate money to time that

47:13 these principles allow and it has been integral in my financial uh coming of age. And I think that the other really cool thing about it is that even if you're not all the way financially free, even if you are not in a position where you would never have to work for income again, just structuring your life in such a way that you are pursuing that goal is going to give you infinitely more optionality after a certain point. A friend said this to me the other day. She was like, "Life becomes a video game because you're not having to make decisions based on money anymore." which is an incredibly privileged place to be in for sure, but it's also a place that is in some ways up to up to you and in your locust of control if you can live beneath your means to the point that that becomes possible. There are, as we all know, plenty of people who make 200,250, $300,000 a year who are effectively paycheck to paycheck because

48:17 their lifestyle has just scaled up with their income. And I I find that golden handcuffs situation to be the most terrifying path that one could possibly be on because you are not going to get paid $300,000 a year or anywhere close to it to like sit back and twiddle your thumbs in most cases. That's usually going to take quite a bit of work. And so I think that a lot of really ambitious driven, high achieving, high-erforming people find themselves trapped in that cycle and then have very little maneuverability to get out of it.

48:52 Yeah. I I personally, and I know you write about this too, love the the set it and forget it mentality. I have conversations with my financial advisor quite a bit, but I really just want to automate as much as humanly possible. All 529s for me are automated. All of our investing is automated. Everything is is is is pulled no matter what, every month. And we just sit down every six months or so and try to increase that that that amount of money. Um and and and and that way it doesn't matter what's happening in the markets.

49:24 It doesn't matter what's going on. We are always buying. We are never pulling out of out of out of it. It just it's just done. And then, you know, hire somebody who's far wiser than me about it to to pay attention closely to that, do that for a living. I feel like that's now much like your parents though, I was very lucky that my parents set that up for me when I was 22 when I was graduating college, right? I got a college scholarship and they gave me some of the money that they had saved for me for college with a financial adviser. I went and met with a financial adviser. He helped me like get my first house, all of that stuff. So, there's a a huge element of privilege and luck in that statement as well because I didn't have to like learn the hard way. I learned because I had amazing parents.

50:08 So I think us now as leaders and and those who are of us who are parents, that's part of our job. I think that's a that's one of our responsibilities is to be financially financially literate ourselves. That's why your work is so important guys girls everybody. Right. I know you kind of have a a you know, Rich Girl Nation and it's kind of slanted a little bit towards women, but I'll tell you, I'm not a rich girl, but it it definitely applies to me. all the stuff you're talking about. It's it's helpful. So, I I think that's why I would highly recommend your your your work. Um I do have one more question before we run, though. You let's say you're meeting with somebody who is like a little bit earlier version of you, but maybe they're not as sure of what they want to do. They're 22ish to 25. They're recent college grad, highly educated, want to make a dent in the world, as you talked about at the beginning of our

50:58 conversation, but not like fully sure what they want to do. What are some general pieces of life slashcareer advice you give to that person? The most valuable thing that I have learned over the last seven, eight years of my career is if you're not curious about it, you are not going to give it your all. If you don't want it, it's going to be an uphill battle. So, I don't say that because I think people should put a lot of pressure on the thing that they're working on to be the most important thing in their life for it to be their passion project. You know, like that that whole thing. I think that that can become a slippery slope. And I'm very very aware that the barriers and the obstacles that a lot of people face are in in a lot of ways, frankly, like there are large swaths of this country that face insurmountable uh barriers. I'm thinking particularly of like people in low-wage jobs that are

52:08 really just hustling to keep the lights on. But if you are in a position of privilege such that you have that latitude in your career to really pursue what you're interested in. My what I would consider to be um secret weapon over the last several years has been that I am genuinely interested and genuinely curious about the work that I am doing. And there is such a difference in outcomes. If I am really into something that I'm working on, it's going to be second to none. It's going to be amazing. It's going to be top tier. But if I'm not, it's like I might as well just not even do it. It's just going to be a waste of time cuz it's not going to be good. It's not going to be it's not going to be a needle mover in the same way. And so I think that like we really underweight the power of desire in our work and how far that desire will go. um it will make you relentless if you desire something

53:07 enough. And so rather than rather than working against it or rather than trying to force it, I think it's much easier to find the thing that you actually desire where you are going to really put the necessary time and reps and uh effort in because like everything takes time, reps, and effort. It that's not a question like that. That's just going to be the reality if you wanna if you want to have a really meaningful working life, which I think most people, if they're being honest, do. I think most of us want to spend our time every day doing something we really care about. Um, but that that if you can pair drive with desire, I think you will be unstoppable.

53:50 You will be relentless. So good. The book is called Rich Girl Nation: Taking Charge of Our Financial Futures. Thank you for sending me a copy. It's really good. really well written. Much like, you know, not surprising that your writing would be um both fun to read, great stories, but also a lot of practical application tools, ways for you to actually like make a difference and impact uh change your life for the better. So, really well done. Thank you for being here. I would love Katie to continue our dialogue as we both progress. Sure. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It was really fun. You asked really interesting questions, too.

54:25 So, I I had a great time. You kept me on my toes. Love it. Love it. All right. Thank you so

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Building a Media Empire (Money with Katie) with Katie Gatti Tassin"?

Ryan Hawk (Host), Katie Gatti Tassin (Guest).

What is "Building a Media Empire (Money with Katie) with Katie Gatti Tassin" about?

Katie Gatti Tassin discusses the significance of effectively managing finances within a marriage, arguing that collaborative financial management can strengthen relationships and reduce the likelihood of divorce. She emphasizes the importance of understanding the legal implications of marriage concerning finances, referencing a divorce attorney's insight that marriage is one of the most…

What is mentioned in this Ryan Hawk episode?

3 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Rich Girl Nation, James Ston, Terry Martin Hecker. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Building a Media Empire (Money with Katie) with Katie Gatti Tassin"?

The episode runs 55 min; the transcript is about 9,746 words in 63 timestamped sections.

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