Listener Mail: Taking Care of your Small Business, from Season Two of Bottom Lines Top Dollars

The Ladies Who Crunch pop off to talk banks! Silicon Valley Bank - Signature Bank - Credit Suisse - First Republic Bank…financial institutions are on a wild ride of their own making. This popup episode reviews how banking works, digs into the hand-waving ways risk is assessed, and touches on why any of us might care about non-big-banks collapsing and if a bank collapse is something we want to experience or not.

In this episode, we discuss the conflicting leftist desires behind wanting to start or scale a business in order to avoid working for the man – and fearing you might turn into “the man” you’re trying to avoid in the first place. We look at the anxieties that come up: exploiting others, making enough money / charging, earning money feeling somehow inherently wrong, being a good boss not a shit one. We also talk the ways running your own business can still be better than other options: sourcing locally, paying living/thriving wages, creating a workplace that doesn't suck. There is no gold star in capitalism - but there might be ways to create work that doesn't make it worse. Is that good enough? Listen to the episode, and you decide. As always, let us know what you think on Instagram (@bottomlinestopdollars) and if you want to send us questions or episode ideas, email us at [email protected]. Bottom Lines Top Dollars is a podcast about all the money things you suspect might be ruining your life, hosted by Hadassah Damien from Ride Free Fearless Money, and Laura Boo MacDonald, CPA. This episode was recorded in March 2022, and edited by Erica Ricketts. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club.

Retirement, the state of having worked in the past but now being done with working, is a troubled concept. Given that it is a marginally possible golden carrot dangled in front of working life, how do you prepare to make it happen, when do you want it to happen, and how can you craft a post-work identity - when it happens or otherwise? For a lot of people, not working is the thing people talk about with the most anxiety. In this episode, we look at the history and concept of retirement in order to understand how it works, how people make it happen, what’s weird about it, and what early retirement – the alternative retirement timeline – is about. Bottom Lines Top Dollars is a podcast about all the money things you suspect might be ruining your life, hosted by Hadassah Damien from Ride Free Fearless Money, and Laura Boo MacDonald, CPA. This episode was recorded in March 2022, and edited by Erica Ricketts. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club. Please follow us on Instagram (@bottomlinestopdollars) and if you want to send us questions or episode ideas, email us at [email protected].

How do you prepare for a big financial purchase? Besides dreaming you also need to scheme because it’s all about putting yourself in a position to woo the unholy trinity: credit, capital, and income. FUN TIMES. We tell you how to get in the best position to get that sweet bank money – yes, get into debt, on purpose – so you can get that tricked out van/pirate sailboat, cooperative farm, or just a regular house or business loan. Learn how to eat the bran muffin of improving your credit, fancy bankerspeak, and get excited to move from the depressed nothing-will-ever-change hole of capitalist nihilism into a strategic and shiny sea of possibility. Bottom Lines Top Dollars is a podcast about all the money things you suspect might be ruining your life, hosted by Hadassah Damien from Ride Free Fearless Money, and Laura Boo MacDonald, CPA. This episode was recorded in March 2022, and edited by Erica Ricketts. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club. Please follow us on Instagram (@bottomlinestopdollars) and if you want to send us questions or episode ideas, email us at [email protected].

Much like the undead, debt can haunt and stalk you and limit what’s possible in your life - that is shitty debt. And however you got this shitty debt, which may be some bullshit: now it’s your bullshit - so now what? This episode guides you through mindsets and steps to deal with the feelings and face debt head on. You’ll learn how to understand your finances in terms of choice and how to use that framework to slay your debt and set yourself up to get ahead - so you can jump on the actions in the rest of this seasons’ episodes. Bottom Lines Top Dollars is a podcast about all the money things you suspect might be ruining your life, hosted by Hadassah Damien from Ride Free Fearless Money, and Laura Boo MacDonald, CPA. This episode was recorded in February 2022, and edited by Erica Ricketts. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club. Please follow us on Instagram (@bottomlinestopdollars) and if you want to send us questions or episode ideas, email us at [email protected].

Bottom Lines Top Dollars third season focuses on Practical Ways to Thrive in Capitalism. First - you don’t have to love work, but you don’t want to hate your life. NOW WHAT? In this episode, we explore Jobs That Don’t Suck. Specifically: what makes a job be awful and not, how to get one of these jobs, and what to think about as you’re on your way to the negotiating table for that job. This episode will be relatable if the idea that you’re going to have a job you’re going to love so much no matter what you do is a horror movie. To be clear, getting a non-suck job doesn’t mean capitalism is ok or feasible - just that you are finding a “middle ground” so you don’t live in misery, which as we all know is the punishment for not being successful and/or privileged under capitalism. Bottom Lines Top Dollars is a podcast about all the money things you suspect might be ruining your life, hosted by Hadassah Damien from Ride Free Fearless Money, and Laura Boo MacDonald, CPA. This episode was recorded in February 2022, and edited by Erica Ricketts. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club. Please follow us on Instagram (@bottomlinestopdollars) and if you want to send us questions or episode ideas, email us at [email protected].

Listen up small business owners and future owners, this episode is for you! Having a business can directly grind against punk-credible assumptions and preferences: you’ll have to work with government systems and try to make money after all. Cuz if you fail, you [and your employees!] may have to work for The Man again. We’re here to help in this episode. Learn how to manage the Ways You Might Have to Interact with the Government as a Small Business, and How To Provide For Myself and Others Doing Something I Like Without Feeling Icky Bottom Lines Top Dollars’ 2021 season told stories from our fabulous punk youths, and examines ways of thinking about money that came from these times. Bottom Lines Top Dollars is a podcast about all the money things you suspect might be ruining your life, hosted by Hadassah Damien from Ride Free Fearless Money, and Laura Boo MacDonald, CPA. This episode was recorded in August 2021, and edited by Erica Ricketts.

So it's been a while huh? Well.... let us explain....  In this episode The Ladies Who Crunch talk about how sometimes shit goes a little sideways in life and we cope by doing something that only makes it worse: GHOSTING. When we ghost on part (or all) of our lives, we tend to dig ourselves a hole that is hard to climb out of. In this episode we discuss how to come back from exactly that kind of bullshit, whether that's with your friends, your collaborators or your finances (think taxes, debt and other forms of money-based-boogeymen).  Given that we ourselves are coming back from our own state of "overwhelm", we decided that we just needed to put something out there into the world in the most simple, direct and quick way possible. So this episode is actually completely uncut and un-edited, it's our full and unscripted conversation from start to finish. It's a little different than our previous episodes, but we wanted to publish fast, so here it is.  We will be returning with Season 3 in April 2022!! Until then, please send some love and say hello on social media, even just to let us know that you haven't forgotten us and that you are still excited about the show despite our recent absence. 

This is our final episode of Season 2 and our final journey through this season's theme of punk storytelling as a mechanism for understanding our own relationships with money. And in this episode, The Ladies Who Crunch give our dear listeners an end-of-season parting gift: A guide to building a strategy to change your life! From the lofty process of visioning all the way back down to earth-bound planning tools, this episode's goal is an old school DIY workshop for giving yourself a future after the punk paradigm of "no future" stops working for you.  Using our own experiences as punks who had "oh fuck" moments that motivated us to change our careers pretty drastically as examples, this episode is full of our hard-won wisdom about making big changes in their life. In this episode we talk deep tactics, including:  Confronting our own belief systems that may no longer be working for us so that we can make space for change Exercises and prompts to help you figure out what you do want or where to go from here, even if the only thing you know right now is what you don't want and/or that you need to get the hell out of wherever it is that you are.  How to take your (potentially boundless or messy) vision and use some of your DIY punk skills + research to frame it within reasonable boundaries and find that first foothold that will set you on your journey Discussion of how change can be have many faces, some that feel like growth and liberation and others that feel like letting go or saying goodbye Tips on what NOT to do when trying to make big changes so that you don't end up more fucked then before you even started this journey PLUS A BONUS! At the end of this episode we give you a preview of some of the episode topics that will appear in SEASON 3 (planned for fall 2021).  --- This episode is part of our second season. We are calling this season "Punks Not Dead and Capitalism Still Sucks" and it explores the question: how did 90s and 2000’s punk intersect with money, and what can that teach us today? What if you don’t “Live fast die young,” but have to meet needs over the course of your longer-than-expected life instead? Listeners will hear stories -- from “the punkest way I ever made money,” to “the worst minimum wage job I ever had,” to “magic bullshit I did to try to avoid working” -- as well as learn facts about how the financial systems around us operate. The show is written and produced by the Ladies Who Crunch: Queer femme artist/organizers turned financial professionals Laura and Hadassah, who explore the alternative ways of being that crafted the bedrock of who they are today to understand what they learned - and had to unlearn - from punk in order to figure out their money lives and to understand financial systems. ------- The Ladies Who Crunch are Hadassah Damien and Laura Boo. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club. Please follow us on Instagram (@bottomlinestopdollars) and if you want to send us questions or episode ideas, email us at [email protected].

Leonard Cohen said, “the poor stay poor, the rich get rich, that’s how it goes, and everybody knows”. Well, once you know, then what?  In punk culture, there's a general understanding that the world is fucked up and unfair. But what does that actually mean? If the outcome of the game is predetermined (and you are pretty sure you are a born loser), then what do you do? Do you walk away from the table? Flip it? Set it on fire? Try to cheat? If winning this game makes you a capitalist pig but losing means you don't have enough resources to get by, is there a third option that isn't winning or losing?  In this episode of Bottom Lines Top Dollars, we go deep into confronting a key concept in punk culture that kept both of us from engaging with money for a long time: the idea that capitalism is un-winnable for most and a golden ticket for the few. And though we don't disagree with that idea, we discuss how this dichotomy can result in social norms that discourage understanding the fundamentals of money and economics and may not be helpful in finding ways to survive (both as individuals and as a world falling over the edge of crisis). You already know that both of The Ladies Who Crunch are queer punks who made careers in finance, but this episode really digs into how doing this required breaking away from the dichotomy of "drop out or sell out" to carve out new paths for ourselves. It is clear that we have more questions than answers, but this episode is all about that process of finding new ways to engage with money (& how we earn it & the stuff it buys) that allows us to personally thrive while still being in alignment with our values.    --- This episode is part of our second season. We are calling this season "Punks Not Dead and Capitalism Still Sucks" and it explores the question: how did 90s and 2000’s punk intersect with money, and what can that teach us today? What if you don’t “Live fast die young,” but have to meet needs over the course of your longer-than-expected life instead? Listeners will hear stories -- from “the punkest way I ever made money,” to “the worst minimum wage job I ever had,” to “magic bullshit I did to try to avoid working” -- as well as learn facts about how the financial systems around us operate. The show is written and produced by the Ladies Who Crunch: Queer femme artist/organizers turned financial professionals Laura and Hadassah, who explore the alternative ways of being that crafted the bedrock of who they are today to understand what they learned - and had to unlearn - from punk in order to figure out their money lives and to understand financial systems. ------- The Ladies Who Crunch are Hadassah Damien and Laura Boo. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club. Please follow us on Instagram (@bottomlinestopdollars) and if you want to send us questions or episode ideas, email us at [email protected].