When I was younger, no one talked about female sexual pleasure. Women didn’t talk about vibrators, complain to their partners, and they certainly didn’t have vagina scented candles lighting up their room. However, in the past few years, there has been a massive cultural shift. Femtech is booming, people are drawing clitorises in the streets, and people are talking about female sexual health but why not their investments? 46%1 of women are having orgasms (that’s still not enough) but that’s twice as much as they’re investing (26%2). If we can cause a cultural shift in female sexual pleasure and openly talk about our butterfly vibrators, we should be able to talk about investing and I’d like to start with telling you my story.
My Story
After college, I moved to Salt Lake City with no savings, credit card, or credit score and was living on the floor of a friend’s parent’s house. I had just graduated and recently finished training for my new job at Goldman in New York. During this time, I was surviving off free breakfast and lunch during the day and Pringles by night. Shout out to my British friends that bought me 90% of my drinks during this time.
Needless to say, I was no investor.
After a month, I had finally made enough money to move into an apartment and felt like I was starting to get a handle on my life. But then came….the debt. When you graduate, you normally have about 6 months before you have to start making payments. However, I was coming to the quick realization that my time was almost up and I needed to figure out how to pay off 130k of student loans.
I didn’t know where to start. I felt like I had worked so hard to finally begin my life but realized, I wasn’t just starting at 0. I was starting at -$130,000. I’ve never really spoken publicly about this story because I’ve always been embarrassed (however, a few friends have heard this tale over one too many drinks in a bar bathroom stall), but in the spirit of talking about money and encouraging you all to talk about it, I want to share how I got off the bathroom floor and became an investor.
WTF Are You Talking About?
Investing is the act of allocating resources, usually money, with the expectation of generating an income (i.e. dividends or interest) or profit (i.e. appreciation or capital gains, we’ll break these down later). It’s basically the act of making your money work for you. For the purpose of this article, I’m going to talk about the steps you need to take to get started.
Step 1: Figure out where you stand
Before you even think about investing, you have to know how much you are worth from a monetary perspective (from a self-love perspective - you are invaluable). In order to figure this out, you need to figure out your net worth.
For me, my net worth was -130k. And while that seems insane, I needed to figure out where I stood to move forward and figure out what I needed to prioritize. In my case, I needed to prioritize saving.
Step 2: Create an Emergency Savings Account
Before you do literally anything, you need an emergency savings fund. I’ve talked about this in a few of my previous articles that emergency savings are like underwear and without them you are completely exposed. For me, I aimed to get 3-6 months (I settled on 4 months) of living expenses in my emergency savings account.
How did I calculate that number? I took 4 months of my rent ($650 x 4) + student loans ($600 x4) + essential living expenses like food, utilities, car payments, misc. ($550 x4). So in total, I saved $7,200.
Note: Everyone goes commando every once in a while and that’s okay. I was completely “free balling it” as my brothers would say in college with essentially no savings. But if you want to be protected, start investing in underwear today.
Step 3: Get a handle on your debt
Once I saved enough cash, I had to get a handle on my debt. I had a ton of student loans (14 to be exact) with all different interest rates ranging 2.5%-9.5%. While I could have started paying them off by paying the 9.5% interest rate first, I chose to consolidate them into one large loan with a new interest rate of 3%. Instead of fighting 14 gremlins, I decided to tackle one big beast. Simplicity is your best friend when it comes to money, so if you can ever simplify, do it.
Note: While not all debt is bad, you want to prioritize the high interest debt like CC debt (average credit card interest rate is 16.15%3) typically before proceeding to steps 4 or 5. What’s high? I told myself I was going to pay off any debt over 9% because the stock market yields about 9.8%4 on average.
Step 4: Invest in Retirement
Some people will tell you, start investing for retirement as soon as you can. That annoyed me because I was like, “I’m not retiring ever - I’m young, I just want to travel, and need to pay off debt.” However, my boss at the time said, “if two people save $100 a month for retirement, but one starts at 25 and the other starts at 35, the early saver will have nearly twice as much in their bank account by age 65.” So, I got started…
For my 401k, I started with a 4% contribution (aka my salary x .04) because that was the amount my company matched. AKA, if I invested 4% of my income (let’s call that number $100), my company would match and give me an additional $100 for each contribution. Free money, honey.
Note: Retirement investing is extremely personal. I’d recommend using a calculator yourself to figure out how much you should be investing to get started: https://www.nerdwallet.com/investing/401k-calculator.
Step 5: Investing Beyond Retirement
Finally, the step in the article you’ve probably been waiting for or skipped to. Investing BEYOND the boring stuff.
When I first started, I opened up a Fidelity account (because it was the only GS approved brokerage) and started investing in a diversified portfolio based on my risk tolerance and time horizon. Aka, I bought a bunch of shit for an aggressive 22 year old. And I know you’re probably wondering what the heck I bought, and I will eventually share but if you’re just getting started I’d highly recommend a robo advisor because they invest FOR YOU based on your risk tolerance, age, and goals. If you want to really get in the weeds of investing, we’re going to need a lot more time.
Things to Be Mindful Of
We all can be investors - You actually probably already are. The definition of an investor is “someone who commits capital with the expectation of receiving financial returns.” Have a savings account? You’re an investor. Contribute to a 401k? You’re an investor. Buy a piece of art from your art major college roommate? You’re an investor. It’s just about how much time you put into it.
What’s right for me, might not be right for you - I spent a lot of time in my early career taking advice from other people. I went to my boyfriend, my guy friends, my grandpa, reddit, books, podcasts, you name it. While I feel like I learned a lot, one of the greatest epiphanies I had was, my path is going to be unique and will always be unique. Therefore, I can’t just listen to what others tell me if they don’t know my situation. The fact is, some people are going to give you great advice and some are going to give you terrible advice. It’s ultimately going to be up to you to figure out what’s right. You know when you’re dating someone and asking your friend’s about them? I’m going to guess you never really listen but do what’s ultimately best for you or what you WANT to do. Do that with investing.
Cum Along - Investing is OVERWHELMING. There are so many apps, experts, guides, and directions. I think the best way to honestly get started is by educating yourself and learning what’s out there and what works for you. I don’t know what goes on in your bedroom, but chances are you didn’t figure out what worked for you after reading one blog post. It takes time, effort, and practice. So come join me on this journey and talk about money because it’s the only way we’re gonna make any progress.
What’s next?
If there is a topic you want to discuss, please DM me on Instagram @notyourbfsinvestmentadvice or email me at kelsey@tardiapp.com. See you next week lover!
Disclaimer: All investment strategies and investments involve risk of loss. Nothing contained in this website should be construed as investment advice. Any reference to an investment's past or potential performance is not, and should not be construed as, a recommendation or as a guarantee of any specific outcome or profit.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5087699/#:~:text=In%202015%2C%2046%25%20of%20women,orgasms%20fairly%20infrequently%20at%20most.
https://www.fool.com/research/women-in-investing-research/#:~:text=A%20survey%20by%20S%26P%20Global,compared%20to%2031%25%20of%20men.
https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/rate-report/
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/18/the-sp-500-has-already-met-its-average-return-for-a-full-year.html
First of all, I still don't (and will never) own a vagina candle. I've never understood the obsession and a piece of me doesn't want to. One day, I realized that my net worth at 19 was significantly greater than it is now. Back then I actually had a respectable savings account. I'm crawling my way back to stability. My dream is to have 1 year of emergency savings saved and set aside.