[Ep. 394] Why Women Need to Invest More Than Ever with Jessica Spangler

Welcome back to the More Money Podcast.

I’m your host, Jessica Moorhouse, and this is episode 394 of the More Money Podcast.

Welcome back.

And I’m not sure if this is the first time, but it might be.

I feel like I’d remember if I’ve ever had another Jessica on this podcast.

If there is another Jessica that’s been on this podcast, I’m gonna look into this after.

I am sorry to you, but I feel like I would remember that.

Anyways, I’ve got a Jessica on the show.

Her name is Jessica Spangler, and you may already be following her because she has over a million, more than a million followers across all of her social media platforms.

Like she has like over 400,000 just on Instagram.

It’s wild.

And not only is that pretty impressive, but she is also a doctor.

That’s right.

Doctor Jessica Spangler is an award-winning money educator, but that’s kind of her side hustle because full-time what she does, and she still does this.

It’s her full-time career.

She’s an emergency medicine pharmacist.

So I don’t know how she does both because I was barely surviving, trying to do this content creation thing on top of my little marketing job, which really wasn’t that.

You know, when I look back at sometimes, I just took my jobs so seriously and I look back, I’m like, why?

You worked at a law firm.

They did not care.

She’s a doctor.

She’s saving lives.

So I don’t know how she does it.

Anyways, I am so excited to have her on the show because she has a new or her first debut book coming out called Invest Like a Girl.

And in case you’re wondering about the title, it is kind of a commentary or satire with the whole kind of feminine.

Here’s some air quotes you can’t see.

Feminization of lots of things that really don’t need to be gendered, such as, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen like, CEO instead of just CEO or fempreneur or mompreneur instead of just entrepreneur and you’re a woman or girl boss, all these kinds of things that I know probably started with maybe good intentions being like, yeah, we need to lift up women.

We need to normalize women being in these roles.

But also, I feel like it sometimes does the opposite.

And just, yeah, I don’t want to be a CEO.

I am a CEO.

I don’t want to be my gender necessarily attached to everything that I do.

One thing that we talk about in this podcast is sometimes I’ll meet someone new.

They’re like, oh, what do you do?

And I tell them, they’re like, oh, so you teach women about money.

And I never mentioned that.

I say, oh, I run a financial education company and that’s it.

But they assume because I’m a woman, I only teach women.

And even though, yes, I do have a high proportion of women who follow me, I don’t think of things like that.

I want to be, you know, someone who can educate everybody, no matter what you identify as.

And so we talk a little bit about that.

We also really get into the weeds about investing and what everyone should know so you can build wealth, achieve the life that you want.

And hopefully also by, you know, everyone getting more wealth and more opportunity and freedom, we can start breaking down some of those barriers that still exist and, you know, still a lot of work to be done in terms of breaking that glass ceiling.

So you’re going to love this episode.

And without further ado, let’s get right to it.

Welcome, Jessica, to the More Money Podcast.

So excited to have you on the show.

Thank you for having me.

You’re so welcome.

So I thought it was so interesting, well, not just your book, but the kind of story of where you got to where you are.

Because I know like on your Instagram and part of it is like you have a PhD, you’re in pharmacy.

Also, you teach women about investing or people about investing.

Do you want to kind of walk me through what brought you to where you are today?

I know a lot of it probably had to do with your upbringing, some things that you experienced and realizing how important is to take control of your finances, especially as a woman.

But and then how did the world of pharmacy then you shifted into finance?

How did that all come about?

It certainly wasn’t a linear path, as many things in life are not.

So I grew up, I started off in a middle class family.

My dad worked in construction as a carpenter and my mom was a stay at home mom.

And then when I was seven years old, my little brother was three at the time.

My dad actually passed away very suddenly of a heart attack.

He went to work one day and he didn’t come back.

And this was like a shock for everyone.

I mean, he was in his early 40s.

He was like a tall, slender dude, worked a manual labor job.

Like nobody saw this coming.

And it was a life-defining moment for me and for my mom.

You know, we lost my dad, which was obviously this emotionally devastating situation in its own right.

But we also lost our only source of income.

You know, neither of my parents went to college.

So my mom didn’t have a degree where she could just, you know, go out and pick up a good paying job.

But she had two little kids at home.

So she didn’t have time to figure it out there.

There wasn’t really a choice.

It wasn’t, you know, really up to her.

So as women, when we’re faced with like an incredibly trying situation, she just pulled it together.

She took some classes and long story short, she wound up working in the real estate industry.

She started off as an appraiser, but it took a ton of apprenticeship hours and it really wasn’t paying the bills.

So she said, you know what, I’m going to switch to real estate sales where I can take a class, get licensed and really start bringing in some money.

And meanwhile, I kind of became like a mini realtor.

I would go with her to open houses, settlements.

I would hang out in the title agency office.

I was watching her draft contracts, phone calls, the whole shebang.

So I learned a lot about real estate just from osmosis, frankly.

Of course, all of this led up to the housing market crash in 2008.

So yeah, once again, I won’t say nobody saw it coming, but certainly the average consumer was shocked and we were blindsided again.

And it was really monumental.

I watched my mom build this amazing career and really figure it out for her kids.

And then to watch it come crashing down a second time, I think it really kind of broke the both of us for a long time.

And so after that, I sort of resolved mentally for a couple of things.

First, I knew that I needed more than one source of income and I didn’t want it from another person.

Like I myself wanted to have multiple streams of income.

But I also felt like one of these income sources needed to come from like a stable college degree job.

Like watching my mom work commission and neither my parents went to college, you know, I was like, okay, I’m going to go to college because at the time my mindset was, this is how you build a stable life.

You go to college, you get the job, you work forever.

And so obviously these feelings were shaped by my experiences, but they kind of just led me down this lifelong path of financial independence.

And I really never looked back to the next part.

I wound up going to college for almost 10 years.

Wow.

Yeah, yeah, really committed to that.

Really did.

Yeah.

Yeah, I said college and I meant it.

So I did four years of undergrad.

I did four years of my doctorate.

And then after that, I did a residency.

I graduated right when COVID hit.

Oh my gosh.

But I feel like you’re kind of used to these things happening now.

So I bet you’ve built up a lot of resilience just from everything you’ve gone to.

I don’t know, was your experience like great?

What else is new?

I know, it’s like, okay, this is the latest crash, right?

Yeah.

We’ve got COVID.

Yeah, and I think a lot of Millennials honestly can relate to that.

It’s like, Jess, when we get started doing something, just smack down again, right?

Actually, my last rotation, I was in a surgical ICU and we would be rounding on patients and it was like you would look at somebody’s chest x-ray and the docs would be like, that’s weird, never seen that before, that’s a little strange.

And then the next patient would be like, this ground glass infiltrate, like what is this, never really seen anything like that.

And then five days later, it was full-fledged COVID, we were being pulled out of rotations, finishing out our last two weeks online.

My graduation gown was mailed to me, no graduation.

So it was just this weird time, it was the weirdest time ever.

And I started working and I would strip all my clothes off before I came home, because we have no idea what was going on at the time.

I mean, it just started.

And eventually I was in the ICU and the emergency department, and we would be doing our thing, rounding on patients.

And the patients would say something to me like, if I ever make it out of this hospital, I have no idea how I’m going to afford the medical bill.

And in the same time, in between rounds, I’d be chatting with docs and nurses and social work and dietary, and all the people that kind of work together in this team.

And somebody would say something like, well, I got into a fender bender this morning.

Do you think my insurance rates are going to go up?

Or a nurse would say, you know, I’ve been working at this hospital for two years, and I’m not even sure I have a 401k.

Like, is my money going in there?

Or I don’t know.

And it was this moment of, nobody really knows about money.

Like, I’m standing here with some of the most highly educated professionals in the country, like cardiologists, infectious disease docs.

Like, people have gone to school for 10 plus years, like myself, $200,000 in student loans, and not one class on personal finance.

But I got this kind of informal education in finance, growing up with a single mom and just figuring it out.

Along the way, so I kind of said, let’s go to the Internet and find another way to help people.

Because, not to be morbid, but at some point during this COVID, especially the Delta wave, it was like, we did everything and we couldn’t keep people alive.

I mean, it was like, I know it’s dark, but it’s true.

And so I thought to myself, what if I can help another way?

What if I can go online and start talking about everything I’ve learned about money over the years?

And maybe it’s something that somebody else doesn’t know.

So I did.

I talked about real estate.

I talked about investing, medical bills, how to afford prescription medications, prior authorizations.

And I’m not an investment banker.

You know, I don’t have a trust fund.

I learned all of this by actually going through it and reading the literature, which is something I learned to do in all my years of school.

And people listened.

Like, never in a million years did I think that anybody was even out there on the other end of my phone when I like sat in my dining room talking to myself.

But they were.

There were so many people out there.

And here we are.

Here we are.

I mean, yeah, it’s interesting looking back now that we’re in 2024, for really how the year 2020 and COVID really shifted things in personal finance, especially because even though I mean, I’ve been talking about personal finance for a long time.

Once that happened, I mean, and you started getting that and getting questions, I got an influx of people that never talked to me or never asked questions about money, DMing me and things like that.

I’m like, something’s happening, something’s different.

This is affecting people in a different way.

Not just because of the cost of medical bills and things like that, but people losing their jobs or realizing, I hate my job, should I switch careers?

Everyone was having this moment of, what do I do?

Because I’ve never had a reason to maybe think about it this seriously.

Now, I need answers and I need them right away.

Most of us stuck at home or quarantined.

And so the only kind of thing that we have to find these answers is going online.

Because you can’t even go to the library.

Libraries were shut down for a bit, right?

And so it was so fascinating how things shifted.

And I’ve seen an explosion of financial content creators.

But again, I think there’s been a heightened interest then.

And then even to now, I think it’s continued of people, especially young people, Gen Z, millennials, wanting to find these answers.

Because they realized, oh, I can’t not find these answers.

Because I know what could happen.

Maybe something bad happened.

Like they did lose their job.

They didn’t have an emergency fund.

Or they invested improperly.

They didn’t realize what they were doing.

They got into the meme stock situation, lost a bunch of money.

They’re like, I don’t want that to happen again.

I need to fix things.

And so was that, I guess, ultimately, a big inspiration for why you wanted to specifically make a book that’s really just about the investing component?

Because there was so much information about the saving, the budgeting, and things like that.

But especially for us women, when it comes to investing, it does still feel like, I don’t know where to start.

There’s so many opinions, and it is very male dominated still, and I don’t feel welcome in this world.

Was that kind of a big point where like, this is why I need to write this book?

Absolutely.

And to your point, women are taught differently about money.

Like you said, we’re taught to budget, we’re taught to save, clip coupons, and we’re not taught to invest.

It’s a different conversation when you actually look at the studies of kids.

Really, their parents actually teach them different, whether they know it or not.

I understand the irony of investing for women, right?

Like there’s ballpoint pens for women, there’s razors for women.

The thinkification of money.

I don’t know if you get this, but it drives me nuts when people find out what I do.

They’re like, oh, you teach women about money.

I’m like, well, I’m a woman and I do have a big woman audience, but what I teach is not different for women.

It’s just that someone like me is teaching it.

Exactly.

And so for sure.

And the irony of that is not lost on me.

So when I named the book Invest Like a Girl, I didn’t want people to think that that is not something I’m aware of, because it is like the fundamentals of investing don’t change because you’re a woman.

However, we as women, there are unique circumstances that really only apply to us.

We’re more likely to take career breaks, to take care of a family, to raise kids, to even set up an in-law suite for our in-laws and take care of our aging parents.

That more often traditionally falls on women.

We are less likely to be investing in general.

We make less money than men.

The gender pay gap is still very real.

When you’re making 80 cents to every man’s dollar, you have to be investing.

We talk about a 7% interest rate on a mortgage versus a 5% interest rate on a mortgage.

And that being such a huge, substantial difference in the amount of interest that you pay.

When you make 80 cents to every man’s dollar, that’s a 20% cut that you’re taking compounded over your entire working career.

Not to mention the fact that statistically we live longer.

So we actually need more money when we do retire.

So the fundamentals of investing are the same, but our circumstances are unique.

And so that spin on it, I think is applicable to women and makes it an important distinction for so many books that are just cookie cutter and kind of written for everyone’s circumstances when realistically there’s no one size fits all scenario.

Absolutely.

And I think your point that because of all of those things, we earn less, we live longer, we do need to invest to build our wealth, which is funny because it’s like, why then have we just been told just save and pay off debt?

That really like when I started exploring this world of personal finance over, gosh, since 2010, that really was, it was very siloed, women talked about saving, budgeting, debt, men talked about investing and maybe anything, a little bit more complex taxes and things like that.

And so if you just keep seeing that, then you feel like, well, then I’m not, that’s not for me.

But the data shows, no, we need to be investing because if we don’t, we are not going to have enough.

And then how is that going to help future generations?

How are we going to ever climb out of this imbalance when we can’t build wealth and then pass it down to our daughters or even share that information?

When you were structuring this book, what did you really want to make sure that anyone who read it, what would they get out of it that maybe they haven’t been able to find in other finance books that have traditionally ignored some of those barriers that women face and are very cookie cutter, black and white?

I think the key messaging here is not only that your situation is unique, but that no matter what your situation is, you can invest.

It doesn’t have to be $500 a month.

It doesn’t have to be $600, $700 a month.

It can be $5 a month.

It can be $50 a month.

Even if you’re not able to achieve complete financial independence where you get to quit your job and sit around and do nothing and your investments are just paying for your lifestyle forever after, maybe you can step down to part time.

Maybe you only have to work 10 hours a week, 12 hours a week.

Maybe you’re able to travel.

Maybe you’re able to do something that you never thought you would have been able to afford because of investing.

It’s not a one size fits all scenario, but you can get started today with any amount of money and waiting for these arbitrary numbers or things like you have to pay off your student loans before you get started or you have to make six figures before you get started.

It’s all garbage.

Anybody can start with any amount and it’s going to improve your life.

And I know you really did such a great job of breaking down how to get started and just building and building upon it because I feel like for a lot of beginners, it’s very intimidating taking that first step or finding the specific, like what products do I buy or what accounts do I use and all this kind of stuff.

And again, you look online, you get a million different opinions.

When it comes to really getting started, what do you believe is everyone’s first step that will help them set up that foundation that will then give them that confidence to get to the next step?

As hard as it is, I think that in order to figure out how much you can afford to start investing, you really have to look your money in the face.

And that’s how I put it in the book.

Forever, when I went through college, I accumulated $200,000 in student loans.

And I made it through the whole 10 years without even looking at that document.

I just didn’t want to see it, frankly.

But if you’re going to make strides with investing, you have to see the numbers.

And that isn’t necessarily making this really intricate budget that you follow to the T and X, Y, and Z, although I do include some strategies to budget in the beginning of the book.

It’s not about that.

It’s about looking at what is coming in and what is going out and how can you tinker with those numbers so that some of that is going toward investing.

Maybe you find out that you’re paying for a bunch of fluff subscriptions that you don’t even use.

And you could instantly take that money and throw it towards investing.

It’s not about cutting out everything in life that brings you joy.

It’s about finding opportunities to reroute that money to pay yourself first.

And I know you do a really good job as well of when we’re talking about different investment strategies, you talk about, no, these are the different strategies out there.

Again, there’s a million different ones out there, but you really outlined some of the core ones.

And also get into the nitty gritty of, depending on your situation, here are some examples of asset allocations.

And I think that’s another kind of roadblock for people is, should I do index investing or should I do more of a dividend strategy?

What’s right for me?

You do, again, a really great job of explaining, here’s how it works, here are the pros, here are the cons.

So for you and your mind, what is, I’m actually curious, what’s your kind of investment philosophy?

What’s the thing that you chose that works for you?

Yeah, so I think if I had to align with one of the portfolios that I list in the book, and the whole second half of the book is just example portfolios because I really wanted people to see something, like you can talk about these numbers and what it might look like, but to actually visualize, okay, it’s not complicated.

You can pick these two things or these three things, put all your money in there, and you’re actually very well diversified.

It doesn’t have to be this complicated process.

But if I were to align myself with one of them, I would probably be somewhere in between lazy luxury and the fun money investor, where the majority of my money is definitely going into index funds that track the total stock market or the S&P 500, just depending on whether it’s in my 401k or my Roth or whatever.

I do enjoy picking a handful of blue chip stocks, like companies that have been around forever, that I really only expect to continue to grow, and then I just buy and hold them forever.

But the majority of my money is definitely in index funds and very few bonds for me right now, because I just want to maximize my growth for as long as possible.

So I’m curious, how did you personally find lots of this information?

How did you find what works, what doesn’t?

Was there a lot of trial and error for like, oh yeah, I do like index funds, even though there’s a lot of opinions of index funds?

I mean, I’m an index investor, so everyone who listens to my show knows I’m biased and I like index investing.

But how did you recognize this is going to work for me?

I like it.

So I started off reading a couple of books.

I think The Simple Path to Wealth by JL.

Collins was hugely monumental for me.

Your Money or Your Life by Vicki.

There are some books that really kind of shifted my mindset on money.

And after that, as a scientist, I kind of just like turned to the data.

You know, I went online, I looked at the literature, and every piece of evidence ever says that the index funds are where it’s at.

You know, you can be a billionaire hedge fund and try to do better than the S&P 500, but 90 plus percent of the time, you won’t.

So I kind of thought to myself, OK, I didn’t go to college for finance.

I am not an investment banker working on Wall Street.

I’m not even going to pretend that I’m going to be out here and be the next hedge fund manager who’s going to outsmart the S&P 500.

I think I’ll just do what the data says and invest in index funds and the broader market, because it’s really such a myth that you have to sit down and wake up first thing in the morning when the market opens and look at the candlestick charts and do all this analysis.

It’s like, no, actually, you can be very lazy and still get a great return, if not a better return, by not trying as hard.

Yeah, sometimes, yeah, the simple path is the best path.

That’s again why I’ve also done the exact same thing.

I’m like, yeah, it doesn’t have to be overly complicated.

But with that said, I was just thinking, you know, one big roadblock, besides the kind of financial literacy component that I think is really big, we kind of already touched on this, is the income component.

We do earn less, no matter how many years of school and how great of a job we got.

Sometimes when you have those conversations, you know, with people in the office, you’ll find out how am I earning less than so-and-so, who has less experience, less credentials, et cetera, et cetera.

How do I bridge that gap?

So I know there’s part of your book that does talk about how to increase your income.

How can you do what you can even though we live in this unjust society and it’s annoying that we have to do it ourselves.

But what are some mechanisms that women really do need to kind of own and do what they can to level up their income so they can build wealth quicker?

Yeah, I think one of the biggest things is, like you said, you know, figuring out how to make more money.

And one of the ways that I think we’re sort of taught in perhaps a less efficient way is that we tend to focus on, okay, how do I reduce my daily coffee from $5 to $3 a cup?

Or how do I eliminate these little tiny things that in the grand scheme of things, maybe don’t make that much of a difference?

Your time is almost certainly better utilized figuring out instead of how to cut your coffee bill in half, how do you double your income from $40,000 a year to $80,000 a year?

And again, that’s like a big thing that we as women were told is like cut first.

I feel like that was everything I focused on in my 20s.

And in my 30s, when I focused more on the how do I earn more, that was the biggest life change in my mind, not cutting out, you know, this and that, the subscription, the coffee that that helped.

But it wasn’t until I, yeah, double tripled my income that I’m like, well, this actually makes a big difference.

Right, right.

And it’s a noticeable difference and it’s a meaningful difference.

And, you know, sometimes when I say that, I’ll get some feedback that’s like, well, you know, if you can spend X amount on coffee, that’s just a example of how you live so frivolously and you’re so willing to throw money away at X, Y and Z.

And it’s like, I reject that because you can spend money on things that you value and still be rich.

You can.

Exactly.

It’s like, you don’t know what my goals are.

You don’t know that I am on track to achieve them and I still have money for going out, travel, coffee, whatever the case.

Like, it doesn’t have to be, but I feel like that’s been, yeah.

I feel like there’s been this message ingrained in our minds that frugality is such a core value.

And there’s nothing wrong with frugality.

I’m still frugal in lots of ways, but we don’t have to live well below our means where it’s just like, it’s almost hurting us.

There’s no joy because it’s like, I can’t enjoy life until I pay off all of my debt and et cetera, et cetera.

There can be balance.

There can be.

I think frugality is one thing.

When you put your money where your values are, it’s a totally different conversation because I drive a paid off Honda Civic that I’ve had for 10 plus years.

It’s got a little dent in the side of it from one time I was in a parking lot and my car got hit when I was inside.

It’s like, that’s not what I value personally.

I’m not driving around in a Porsche, but I do spend money on travel.

I do spend money on seeing friends and family.

You’re allowed to spend money on things that bring you joy, and I think that that’s a huge part of womanhood as well.

It’s almost a rite of passage to be told, spend less, save more, and you almost just inherently feel bad about spending money.

So I don’t want anybody to feel bad, and I don’t think that what you choose to spend your money on says anything about whether or not you live within your means.

There’s a much larger conversation there.

And I think part of it is this stereotype that’s been around for ages that women, if you don’t, you know, take care of your woman because she’ll spend all your money.

And women are shoppers and et cetera, et cetera, and they’re bad with money.

So if you’re bad with money, it’s because you’re a shopper and you’re spending too much money.

If you’re good, then you’re, you know, frugal, and you budget, you clip those coupons, and you’re very conscious of where your money is going.

And it’s like men don’t have the same, you know, their praise for when, oh, you earn money and you can afford that Porsche, good for you, you’re doing well.

But if a woman does it, oh, well, that’s irresponsible.

Right, right.

A man can spend thousands of dollars on a Super Bowl ticket, but like you go out and get your twice weekly latte, and God forbid, it’s like, well, you don’t even have any concept of financial.

It’s like, well, not quite, actually.

It doesn’t make a lick of sense.

And I think that’s part of the reason that, you know, there needs to be more people like you and books like yours that counter all these biases and really, you know, educate people about these biases do exist.

Women, we’ve noticed them.

We maybe didn’t have labels for them, but we knew they existed.

And these stereotypes that still are prevalent, unfortunately, because they are still pushed in TV shows and movies where these characters are still like stuck in the 50s for whatever reason, but they’re like modern age.

And as women, if we want to elevate ourselves and elevate the next generation of women, we need to fight against that.

And yeah, having just like the conversation of, I’m allowed to have avocado toast and a coffee because I’m still earning this amount.

I was able to increase my income.

I don’t have consumer debt.

I was able to be responsible, pay that off, and I am reaching my investment goals.

So we’re allowed to do both because, you know, men were always allowed to do both and we just weren’t for whatever reason.

But it should be, again, more fair.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And I think that that’s the thing is, you know, women struggle to start investing in the first place.

Like, there was even a study, I believe it was done by Fidelity that said women who were investing, when you asked them if they considered themselves an investor, many of them did not.

Even when they were investing, they didn’t consider themselves one because it’s this mindset.

But actually, when women do start investing, when they can get past that mind block, this conditioning that we’re not smart enough, we’re not good enough, we’re not, we don’t have enough money or whatever it is, when they actually start, they do earn higher returns.

And it’s the opposite of what we’re led to believe that, oh, you’re going to make these irrational emotional decisions.

And I can’t imagine you being an investor.

It’s like, when you actually look at the numbers and the data, we do the exact opposite.

We’re less likely to make emotional decisions.

We’re less likely to sell in a market crash or a downturn.

We’re more likely to ride out the waves of the market that we know are coming and that they will forever come and that eventually our money will go back up in the end.

We actually do it better when we’re given the opportunity and when we allow ourselves to start doing it.

I remember reading that study.

We are great investors.

We’re great savers.

We’re very resilient in the face of tragedy or catastrophe.

We’re very good at picking up the pieces.

Your mom was a great example of that.

But for whatever reason, we ignore these facts that have been around for ages.

We are actually really good at money, but we just have not gotten the opportunity until recently.

And we need to make sure that we not only take that opportunity, but really own it and grow it and see where we can go.

And, of course, continue talking about this.

I’m sure since you started producing content about this, you’ve probably had so many conversations with women who maybe never had a conversation with someone else about money because they just didn’t know who to talk to or who to go to.

I’m curious what kind of conversations have you had with your audience that have really inspired some of what you’ve done?

Totally.

I mean, the conversation in general has been kind of taboo for a long time.

And I feel like we’re making up for lost time now because 50 years ago, we couldn’t even have a credit card.

And now we’re kind of running at this accelerated pace of passing through the kind of evolution of finance, if you will, of like, okay, budgeting, coupons.

Now we’re moving on to investing, starting these conversations.

And I think that’s really…

The internet can be a crazy place.

There’s a lot of information, right or wrong, floating around.

And it’s hard to keep going sometimes.

But having those conversations with women, you know, hearing, I just moved here four years ago.

I’ve never even lived in the US.

This is brand new to me.

And now I have a high-yield savings account.

Now I’m learning how to start investing.

Those are the types of conversations that really keep me going and remembering that the work that we are doing, that you are doing, is so important because, like you said, having those conversations is the only way we get and continue to give access to this knowledge.

And sometimes it’s as simple as just talking to your coworkers and asking, what are you making in your role?

You know, I’m not sure if I’m being paid fairly or talking to your coworkers about, do you have a 401k set up?

Okay, well, what are you invested in?

How much are you contributing?

Do you know about the employer match?

This is how much.

And spreading that information is what men have been doing for years and years and years on the golf courses or wherever.

Or the gentlemen clubs that we weren’t allowed to go into.

Exactly.

And we’re finally allowed to have these conversations, and we are speeding up at an exponential rate.

The wealth owned by women throughout the world just continues to compound.

We went from 30% to 40%.

I’m sure we’ll eventually surpass that.

And having these conversations is the most important piece.

Yeah.

And besides having those conversations, taking the first step.

I know for me, I don’t know about you, when did you start investing?

Was it when you were still in school, or was it after you started working?

I started investing with an app like Acorns.

Like a $5 a month, throwing it in there into a random like robo advisor and seeing what happened, not really understanding the process at all behind it.

But it wasn’t until I really reached the end of my pharmacy career and started to work that I was able to actually throw in the majority of my income to my investments.

And that’s when I really started to think about, okay, where is my money going and what am I actually investing in?

I do think robo advisors and automatic investing apps and that kind of thing are great to get people started.

And I still recommend apps like that to a lot of my friends because you can round up your spare change.

I mean, you don’t even have to think about it.

And that is so much better than not investing at all.

But once I really kind of wanted to understand how do I maximize my returns and how do I wind up with the most money possible in the end, that was when I really started to look into the kind of nitty-gritty of investing.

Amazing.

And yeah, I feel like your book is a really great breakdown and gets into the specifics because believe me, I’ve had a lot of guests on the show, I’ve read a lot of money books, and sometimes you want, give me the answer, and it’s just like, no, you still didn’t give me.

And sometimes you just want a chart, you just want like, here’s a breakdown, step one, two, and three, and you do a really great job of outlining all of that and different scenarios and different options for everybody.

So, you know, hopefully someone can find the right path for them in their book.

So I highly recommend people grabbing a copy of your book.

So with that, where can people find more information about you, how to get started, and also where to grab a copy of your book?

You can follow me anywhere on social media at ecomjess, and my book, Invest Like a Girl, is available just about anywhere you can buy books on March 26.

Amazing.

Well, thank you so much, Jessica.

Could I call you Jess?

Are you a Jess or a Jessica?

I get that question also.

What do you go by?

You know what?

I never really pay attention, I guess, close people, Jess, and then, you know, people who’ve just met me, Jessica.

And then, when someone throws in a Jessi, I’m like, let’s not do that.

That’s like what my dad calls me.

That’s like my dad’s nickname for me, Jessi.

No.

Yeah, I think I agree.

Well, it was great to chat with you, Jess.

Great to chat with you, Jess, too.

And that was episode 394 with Jessica Spangler.

Make sure to check her out on all of her socials.

You can find her on Instagram at ecomjess.

And same with, I think, every other platform, including TikTok and everything.

I will link to everything in the show notes just to make it really easy for you.

jessicamoorhouse.com/394 is where you can find that.

And of course, make sure to grab a copy of her book, Invest Like a Girl.

Again, I’m going to link to where you can find it in the show notes.

jessicamoorhouse.com/394.

Now, I do want to clarify something, and this is because I’m a terrible person.

How dare I forget that I had two other Jessica’s on the show?

To be fair, though, okay, we’re getting close to June.

The end of the season will be beginning of June, and that will mark nine years of the podcast.

So, of course, I’m going to not remember every single name that has been…

I do remember most of my guests.

I do.

It’s just like nine years, and we’re almost at 400.

Give me a break.

So, apologies to Jessica Robinson of Episode 290 and Jessica Desjardins of Episode 143.

I am so sorry.

I’m sorry to all the Jessica.

I’m so sorry.

Oh, gosh.

Anyways, so, like always, because I have someone on the show who has a book, I am giving away a copy of her book.

If you go to jessicamoorhouse.com/contest, that is where you can find her book and all these other books that I’m giving away.

They’re featured on this season of the show, jessicamoorhouse.com/contest.

Honestly, enter to win.

I feel like a lot of y’all don’t.

And that’s, I don’t give, I don’t give, you know, whatever.

You do whatever you want to do.

But I, that just means your odds are better of winning.

And I always pick, you know, winners myself, make sure that they haven’t won before.

So it’s a new fresh winner every single season and time whenever I choose.

So, you know, you got some good odds.

So just go to jessicamoorhouse.com/contest.

Also, I recognize when I was doing some Googling, I forget why, I had to Google myself.

Also, there was a reason for it.

I was looking for some like web page or something or a media hit or whatever on the interwebs.

And I was Googling.

And you know how sometimes Google does that?

Like when my website came up and then it was just like all these kind of like, oh, quick links or whatever, one of them was book.

So there was no book page on my website.

And so like when you clicked on, you’re like, what is this book?

Like it went to a tag that I had on some like old blog post from years ago.

Anyways, that indicated to me that people are Googling my name and looking for information about my book, which is very flattering.

Thank you so much.

So I did just put a new web page on my website.

There’s nothing really there.

It’s just like, oh, hey, you’re here for the book.

Well, yeah, it’s not out yet.

So stay tuned.

But yeah, thank you for your interest in the book.

How it’s going, if you’re wondering, is I just handed in my first round of edits.

It was not as bad as I expected.

I was terrified.

And yeah, it did take me a few weeks to get through everything.

And yes, we do have a lot of cutting to do.

I don’t know how, though.

Honestly, I don’t know what we’re going to get rid of, but I’m sure there’s some tightening we can do.

But I’m very, very excited about the process.

Also had, you know, like throughout me writing this book, I did hit up some experts in certain fields to look over sections.

But then when I was doing these line edits, I also hired a few, they’re called sensitivity consultants to look over some passages.

And that has been really great.

Most authors are doing it these days just to get a second pair of eyes on terminology and things like that.

And that’s been a really exciting experience as well.

So we’re getting there.

We are getting there, and I’m very excited about it.

Very excited about what this means.

And next, you know, there’s going to be talks about covers.

I also just did a photo shoot a few weeks ago for some new photos for my author photo, which is exciting.

So hopefully those look good.

It’s hard though.

It’s like the photos I have on my website that I use for like my social media and stuff like that, although I still look like that, technically, that was me in 2021.

And a few years have gone by, and I feel like I look at that girl, I’m like, why do you look so much younger than me?

Age is a, she’s a cruel, cruel witch.

Let me tell you.

Anyway, so that’s really update on my front, what I’ve been up to.

And also been doing some updates on my investing course.

If you don’t know, I have one, have had it for three years now.

Hey, three year anniversary, it’s called Wealth Building Blueprint for Canadians.

It is a course on passive investing for Canadians.

If you want to learn the ins and outs of investing for Canadians, specifically index investing, this is the course for you.

And there’s hundreds of students that I can attest to how great it is.

And you can read all the testimonials.

And just go to jessicamoorhouse.com/course for more information on that.

But that is really it for me.

A big thank you to my podcast team, video edit by Justice Carrar and produced by mravcanada.com.

And to give you an idea of who is on the show next week, let me just look at my little spreadsheet.

Oh my gosh, you’re going to like this.

If anyone watches The Bachelor or has watched The Bachelor Bachelorette, you may be familiar with this guy’s name is Jason Tartick.

And the reason he’s on my podcast, even though we do talk about The Bachelor a little bit, just because I need to have some questions answered, he has a book coming out, a second book actually, called Talk Money to Me All About Money and Relationships.

Right?

Fitting for someone who is on a show like that.

So very excited to share that episode with you.

He was a delight.

So that was it for me.

Thank you so much for listening and supporting the podcast as always.

I will see you back here next Wednesday with a fresh new episode of the More Money Podcast.