Rich Bitch

Nicole Lapin

• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780062490414
• Topic: Crescita personale
• Subtopic: Finanza a livello personale

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

In this New York Times bestseller, journalist and financial expert Nicole Lapin shows women how to take charge of their lives by taking charge of their money

"You might not know this but stressing over money can harm your overall health. Let Nicole be the doctor for your financial health and you will feel better in more ways than you'd think."

—Dr. Oz, host of the "Dr. Oz Show", and Lisa Oz, host of the "Lisa Oz Show" Do your eyes glaze over just thinking about the mumbo-jumbo language of finance? Do you break out into hives when faced with getting your financial life together? Well, sister, you are not alone.

In Rich Bitch, money expert and financial journalist Nicole Lapin lays out a 12-Step Plan in which she shares her experiences—mistakes and all—of getting her own finances in order. She talks to you not like a lecturer but as your friend. And even though money is typically an "off-limits" conversation, nothing is off-limits here.

Lapin rethinks every piece of financial "wisdom" you've ever heard and puts her own fresh, modern, sassy spin on it. Sure, there are some hard-and-fast rules about finance, but when it comes to your money, the only person who can tell you how to spend it is you. Should you invest in a 401(k)? Maybe not. Should you splurge on that morning latte? Likely yes. Instead of focusing on nickel-and-diming yourself, Nicole's advice focuses on investing in yourself so you don't have to stress over the little things.

Rich Bitch rehabs whatever bad money habits you might have and provides a plan you can not only sustain, but also thrive on. You won't feel deprived but rather inspired to go after the rich life you deserve, and confident enough to call yourself a rich bitch.

STEP

1

STOP SMILING AND NODDING

Embrace the Rich Bitch Attitude

Every single story goes back to money. I learned that being in the news world for so long. If you want to get to the heart of any story, you just have to follow the money trail.

So, let’s follow the money trail of your life.

Yes, that will take us through the nuts and bolts of hard-core personal finance. Of course. But it also means going down paths of topics like shacking up and taking care of yourself. “Wait, say what, Lapin? Those aren’t money issues,” you might be thinking. Well, sure, they’re just topics about men and wellness at first blush, but they are absolutely money topics, too. Actually, to me, those are the best kinds of money stories because you don’t feel like you are talking about money. And that’s how I like to talk about money: in a sneak-attack way, like mixing spinach into a chocolate brownie. You don’t taste it, but you still get the nutrition.

Throughout our adventure together, don’t forget why we are following the money trail. We want to get to the heart of your life story, the one you have lived so far and the one you’ll continue to write. So I will do a lot of storytelling: my money stories, your money stories, the ones that we can all relate to and link us all.

It’s that simple: financial lessons are more easily digested through brownies and story time. Who said learning had to be boring? So here we go. It’s time to learn everything about money that you need to know but don’t—or think you know but don’t.

Now, before we start, let me make a confession: I wasn’t always this confident.

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CONFESSIONS

OF A RICH BITCH

Stop smiling and nodding

I was sure I nailed it. When it came time to interview for my first-choice college, I was beyond prepared, like the star student I portrayed myself to be (but I was really kind of a wannabe). I studied up on the history of the school, practiced saying the names of the important alums and remembered the titles of the courses I thought would be impressive to say I wanted to take. I did almost everything to look and sound the part but wear the school colors, and trust me, I thought about it. My test scores weren’t stellar, and I had no family connections to the school, but I wanted to get in so badly. I was convinced that going there was my ticket to the television news career I had dreamed of. So when the admissions officer asked me what else I wanted to know about the university, I pounced on my time to shine, asking my rehearsed, well-researched, confident-sounding questions.

Then she started asking me more about my proclaimed love for journalism and media. She asked me which papers I read, and I said something like, “I love the New York Times, skim USA TODAY for good digests and am a closet politico junkie with the Washington Post.” She said, “Oh, great. And I’m sure you’re like me and can’t get the morning started without the Journal.”

I smiled and nodded. I had no idea what the Journal was.

A few years later, I was at that school I so intensely craved to attend as a high school senior: the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. By then, I thought I was done with the “fake it ’til you make it” shtick of doing cursory research and focused on really nailing my work once I was there. In fact, I thought I was the bee’s knees of broadcast journalism when I received a big award while I was a student. It was a big, fancy shindig with bubbly and bow ties—my chance to meet some of the people in TV news whom I looked up to and admired, including the legendary Helen Thomas. Eek, Helen Thomas!! As in, the first woman ever to sit in the front row of the White House pressroom. I wanted to be like her with her badass red suit. She frequently got to ask the President the first question he would take. This was akin to meeting the biggest celebrity you can imagine. She was my idol. I worked up the courage to introduce myself in front of the people she was chatting with. I proudly said my name, shook her hand and told her what an honor it was to meet her. And then the group proceeded to talk about shorting the stock market.

I smiled and nodded. I was embarrassed that I couldn’t join the conversation, because it was a topic that totally stumped me.

It wasn’t until after I graduated from college that I finally snagged my high school crush. He was the chisel-jawed, blue-eyed editor of the school newspaper and the only person I knew who’d scored a perfect 1600 on his SATs. He was the geek-chic guy who quoted Tolstoy and Dave Matthews in the same breath. He was brilliant, and I was absolutely smitten. We talked about a future together. We talked about the home we would share and the kids we might have. He was the only person with whom I could wax poetic about almost anything (I thought at the time)—politics, music, history, philosophy, you name it. Then he told me his dream of becoming a hedge fund manager.

I smiled and nodded. (I thought a hedge fund had something to do with gardening.)

You get the point: there was a lot of ignorant smiling and nodding going on in my teens and early twenties. My younger self thought she knew a lot. But hedge funds, shorting stocks and the Journal were definitely not on the list, and I was too scared of looking dumb to admit it. So instead of asking a question when I didn’t know what someone was talking about, or actually looking it up later, I continued to smile and nod, too nervous to confront the topics that scared me the most.

And I pretended all the way until our breakup, when my boyfriend told me that we couldn’t date anymore because I wasn’t smart enough to get along with his finance buddies. Okay, he dumped me because I was clueless about the subject he loved most.

Getting dumped by Mr. Future Hedge Fund Manager was equal parts devastating and motivating: I became determined to be a person who could hang out with those Wall Street guys. It wasn’t so much about the fact that I had been dumped by a boy, but that I had been exposed as not knowing or understanding such a crucial topic. It was like Elle Woods possessed me. I began by reading the Journal every day. At first it looked like complete gibberish. Then it started to look like Chinese, and after a few months it morphed into something quasi-understandable. I was still speaking only broken Wall Street when I got a great and super intimidating TV job offer to be an on-air business reporter for a national show on the floor of the major stock exchange in Chicago. I was beyond freaked out, but I took the job because I knew I could—and would—learn the language. And I did.

Fast-forward about five years, and I was named the anchor of the only global show on the most popular business network in the world, CNBC. (And yes, that means that it covered pretty hard-core financial news.) By then, I not only understood the language but also spoke it fluently—to the world.

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STOP THE BS AND JOIN THE CONVERSATION

Looking back, I wish I could talk to my younger self, whom I would have told that some guy shouldn’t be the motive for coming out from behind her cowardly smile and nod. I would have told her to figure out that the Journal means the Wall Street Journal. I would have told her that Helen Thomas probably would have respected her more if she had just asked what shorting the market was instead of acting like she knew that it meant you were betting that the market would go down.

Tell yourself earlier than I did that it’s enough already. You need to learn the language of money—and don’t think you don’t because you aren’t on TV talking about it. Money speak comes up in all aspects of life: from jobs to social situations to relationships. So the sooner you can understand and speak it, the sooner you’ll be able to accomplish what you want to accomplish and the sooner you’ll be able to live the life you want to live—that’s what being a Rich Bitch is all about.

WHAT IS A RICH BITCH?

Let me be clear. Being a Rich Bitch is good. (Rich Bitches are the good kinda bitches, like Glinda in The Wizard of Oz, not the bad bitches like the Wicked Witch of the West.) It’s about empowerment. It’s about taking control.

Being a Rich Bitch means going after what you want in life by getting the financial part in order. Because let’s be honest: you need money to live the life you want. And that’s what this book is going to help you do. You’re going to set your goals, and then together we’re going to figure out how to achieve them. My mission is to make you so financially fit that you’re confident to call yourself a Rich Bitch.

A Rich Bitch has the self-awareness to know exactly what she wants from her life—whether it’s buying a house, chasing her dream career, having three kids or none—and she is fluent in the language of money that is the key to achieving those goals.

The dirty little secret is that at some point in our lives, we’re all scared when it comes to money. You’re not the only one. I am proud to admit that I’ve been in your shoes. And I am proud to talk honestly about my setbacks along the way, because I made it through a very bumpy journey. And you can, too. I promise each and every one of you aspiring Rich Bitches, I’ve got your back. I’m going to tell you exactly what you need to know, straight-up without any jargon. Rich Bitch is your Rosetta Stone for finance.

I didn’t work at a bank or get my MBA, and I’m not going to pretend like I did. I just figured it out the hard way. This book is everything I have learned about money, warts and all.

Just to warn you: I’m going to admit to some embarrassing stuff in this book, so feel free to laugh at me; in fact, I want you to. I want you to be able to smile when you think about money issues. So if I have to be teased for my personal and financial foibles, I’m happy to take one for the team, as long as you remember one thing: learning about the financial world is not as bad as it seems, and once you learn the language I’m about to teach you, you will be able to join conversations I couldn’t back in the day. It’s only then that you will no longer feel left out. It’s only then that you will feel truly empowered.

Let’s get one more thing straight before we begin: you’re not going to read this and then all of a sudden make a million bucks. This isn’t financial boot camp. It’s a sustainable financial diet, one that encourages small indulgences to keep you from binging later on. I wish there were a magic potion but, as we’ve all seen from those protein or grapefruit or master cleanse diets, the extreme short-term diet ultimately just keeps us in terrible shape. And when you don’t get a six-pack after a day, what happens next? You quit because you feel like a failure.

And we are in it to win it, bitches.

THE FIRST STEP: ADMIT YOU HAVE A PROBLEM

I like using steps for anything I try to accomplish, especially in the realm of money stuff, because it prevents you from having an anxiety attack when you don’t accomplish everything all in one day....