Everyone Is Pretending They Have Money | Just Getting Good

So, we by the time I think you get to be an older woman,

you're kind of the ageism thing is there,

but you you you have some muscle on the other isms that you've experienced.

Whereas, a lot of times men, you know, don't.

Hello everyone and welcome back to season 2 of Just Getting Good.

I am proud to say our most popular podcast ever, back by popular demand.

For those who don't know, well, first of all, pause,

go watch the back catalog from season 1.

But Just Getting Good is a show where I interview women over the age

of 50 about literally whatever they want to talk about.

And it is called Just Getting Good

because I am very interested to hear from these women

when they feel like life really started getting good for them.

And I am happy to report

that we are now eight episodes in

as of this recording

and not a single guest has said an age under 40.

So, for those of you watching who are under the age of 40,

which is the majority of you,

the good news is it's only going up from here.

And in this series, we talk a lot about the positives of aging,

more confidence and a stronger sense of self.

And one of the best things you can do to ensure

that that future version of you is the fearless woman I'm sure you're imagining

is to start taking care of your finances now.

Because the more time you give your money to grow,

the better off your future self will be.

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And I knew that this season for our much anticipated season 2,

I wanted to start with a guest who not only fits the criteria of

the guests we have on the show,

but is also herself doing something

that is incredibly aligned with what we talk about,

which is not just living well past the age of 50,

but also really defining what that looks like.

Some of you might be aware, but increasingly, especially amongst women,

there is more and more of a drive to co-live

as we get older.

For a lot of us,

when we think of things like roommates or living in more shared spaces,

we think about things like college dorms

or having roommates in our 20s

as being something that we just sort of inherently phase out of.

But increasingly, studies are showing

that living amongst each other throughout all stages of life,

intergenerationally and platonic social groups, in larger communities,

has an enormous amount of benefits for not just our health and our happiness,

but also our money.

My guest today, Elizabeth White, who is an author, an advocate,

and also the founder of New Age Co-Living,

which is an initiative for women over 55 of moderate incomes to co-live together,

is on the cutting edge of

that what I personally believe to be minor revolution in how we live,

especially in a society as atomized and lonely and increasingly separated as America.

So, I knew Elizabeth would be the perfect first guest for our season 2,

and I cannot wait to dive in with her.

Elizabeth, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

So, Elizabeth, I'd love to start by you just introducing yourself to our audience

in your own words,

name, age, where you live, what you do.

So, I'm the big age of 72.

I live in Washington, D.C.

And I have a company that you mentioned called New Age Co-Living,

which I am the co-founder.

And let me go back a bit.

So, during 2008-9, the Great Recession,

I'm someone who had who's doing really well.

So, I had all the things.

Harvard MBA, master's from John Hopkins, rolled back, all the stuff.

And I lost my job.

Not worried about it because I had that background.

And what I found was mid-50s

then is that I could not get back in.

So, that led to the book, 55 Underemployed and Faking Normal, a TED Talk,

and kind of all those things.

And how I got to the housing was um when I was 68,

I joined a venture studio.

And there's a story there, we'll get into that.

And um they asked me what did I want to work on.

And what I found talking to women who many had lost their jobs,

many fi- facing financial precarity, what they would say to me is,

"If I have my housing together,

I can extreme coupon it the rest of the way."

So, in DC, like New York,

I started to see a lot of co-living, shared living,

but it was for young people, nomads, entrepreneurs.

And I wondered, could this work for older women who are needed affordable options,

facing isolation, uh women already talking about could we live together?

So, my work then from the book to speaking about women who had landed

here was,

here is a solution that would deal with some aspects of this.

So, I've continued kind of in that vein over the last several years.

So, we of course have to ask you the question we ask all of

our guests,

which is at what age do you feel like things really started getting good

for you.

You know, I I can't say that it started at 70,

but 70 was a really good year for me.

How so?

You know, I came out of the studio, which was great.

I felt a little bit like Grandma Moses in there

because they were all sort of 30s,

early 40s, and then there was me.

And it was just fun to be with So,

my friendship span from 30s to 80s.

You mean your friends today?

>> My friends today.

And what I find with younger people is

that they know where the opportunities are,

they know who the rising stars are, they know where the money is.

So, something like that venture studio,

I'm typically not going to hear about from a 70-year-old friend.

I'm going to hear from a 38-year-old friend.

So, I'm always curious.

So, going into that, and I didn't think necessarily I would get it.

They had rounds of interviews.

And so, when I was told there were four rounds,

when I made it from the second to the third,

I thought that maybe I should pull my socks up here and pay attention.

And then I got into this thing, and it was just great.

Of really being able to like the thing I was passionate about to work

on this housing.

I met an interesting man that year.

I you know, was traveling, Lisbon, different places.

So, it was just a good year.

And I would say though going back So, I've never been married.

And once I realized sort of around late 30s

when you start to think this may not happen for you.

You can either be really upset about it

and stay upset and

that becomes the story you tell yourself.

So, you're sort of facing a door that appears closed,

but you can turn around.

And I turned around.

And so now I have like a really interesting circle of men in my

life that I've had for a long time.

So, there's obviously a lot I want to talk to you about with your

book and your work,

but you mentioned uh something I want to follow up on,

which is that you have a really great sort of range of men in

your life.

Are those relationships mostly romantic in nature?

No, so there's one that's romantic.

And then the others are not.

Platonic?

Platonic.

Now >> but they're intimate in

that I know a lot about them

and they know a lot about me.

And I um they're very much part of a chosen family.

Now you mentioned reaching your later 30s and being at that time single.

And obviously I you know,

the sort of two paths in terms of feeling like this door is closed

to you or sort of I guess rejecting the premise of the door in

the first place,

which it sounds like you did.

Being in a romantic relationship now

or I imagine through

that time is marriage something

or even you know,

super exclusive long-term partnership or whatever iteration,

is that something you intentionally did not want to welcome into your life

or is it just not something that's manifested?

So, I think that when you're when I was in my late 30s,

so for example, I have friends who really wanted children.

Mhm.

And I was more oriented towards family.

So, if there's not a husband, then I didn't want children.

Not all women feel that way.

Some women, the desire for children is

so strong that even

if there's not a husband,

they want a child.

So, when the husband thing didn't happen, and I think for me,

um what I would say to women who really want to be married is

really focus on that.

I think I thought I had a really interesting life.

I was at that point working at the World Bank.

I was, you know, traveling 1 month out of 3.

I thought I would just meet him along the way.

I was not intentional.

I'd be in a art gallery or the cool brunch,

and there he would be.

And I now say to women friends of mine who are much younger,

who really want to be married,

like don't like on this happenstance you will meet him.

I mean, really start cycling faster away from people who are not possibilities.

You know, I I I felt like in my 30s,

I was often in the fourth year of a 2-year relationship

or the eighth month >> >> of a 4-month relationship.

And so, you got to cycle through these people faster.

If marriage is And it's not that the fourth year was necessarily terrible,

but you realize then that you're not aligned in what you want to do.

In fact, I say to women

that if you if marriage is what you want uh to do,

that you when you meet someone,

that it should not be cuz I would also go by energy.

Okay, like love the energy.

But then, I wouldn't ask, are they actually available?

Are they a workaholic and not really present?

Are they have issues with an ex?

Um and then, are we aligned?

You know, are we both going to Santa Fe?

It doesn't matter if I'm going the highway and you're going the scenic route,

but our goal is Santa Fe.

Because if those two things are aligned, they're really available,

and you're both going to Santa Fe, then the chemistry will still be there.

I would do chemistry first, and then learn 3 years in, "Oh,

he's going to New York, and I want to go to Santa Fe."

And that wastes a lot of time if you want to be married,

if that's like important as a goal.

So, for me, it started to not be important.

But it during the time that it was,

I wish I had been more intentional in the way that I was dating.

That's what I'm saying.

So, your book, which came out in 2019 with Simon & Schuster,

um covered a very specific moment in your life.

Uh please restate the full title for me.

I don't want to butcher it.

>> 55, Underemployed, and Faking Normal.

>> Faking Normal, that's right.

What did Faking Normal mean to you in that context?

So, Faking Normal is, I think at the core, um different things.

One thing it is trying to buy the emotions that you want to feel.

Mm.

Say more about that.

So, you buy the outfit because you want to feel more confident.

You go to a certain restaurant

because there you will feel more like you belong.

So, there So, there's that aspect of it.

The The other aspect is where you are struggling

and you're still being invited to the same restaurants

that you've been going to with your friends.

And we live in a culture where you can't tell people

that you are in trouble financially

or that you can't afford to do what you used to do.

And so you pretend like you're okay when you're not okay.

And this is something now I really cuz when you get to my age,

there's there's a age

when you're younger that people are sort of nobody is kind of pulled away

and nobody's really lagging behind.

At my age, I have friends who range who are in, you know,

multi-million dollar brownstones and then living in studio subsidized walk-ups.

And but they've been friends for many years.

So you could go to a restaurant and they will still want to go.

I now notice I always ask to divide the bill.

And I do it because I pay attention to who's ordering mineral water.

You know, that's a Chardonnay girlie right there.

Yeah.

Who is putting $7 of gas in their SUV?

Who never invites you over anymore

because I know from experience they're not inviting you over

because the carpet hasn't been cleaned.

Right.

>> Or the sink needed to be repaired

and they didn't have the money to repair it.

And if you're in the faking normal,

I had to I was so good at it.

And then I would get mad at friends who were not like picking up

what I was going through

and I realized that cuz there's a point where you have the clothes,

you may even be still living in the neighborhood,

but you're the maintenance

that you need to do on your home is not It's getting away from

you.

>> It's getting away from you,

so you don't have people over or you start declining invitations.

So, all of that faking normal um that's that's what I meant by that.

There's um there's something about

that that feels almost like um something from like Gothic literature about sort of

being in the same space

while the quality of living declines around you

and sort of having to maintain the pretense

which gets more and more taxing financially,

emotionally, mentally.

You worked at the World Bank.

Prior to that, you had a kind of by all accounts a pretty illustrious

career that afforded you the lifestyle in the first place.

How did you go from

that to being in a position of faking normal at 55?

So, I became an entrepreneur.

So, I opened a chain of stores.

Actually, I was in Macy's at Herald Square.

I was in Stern's.

I was in Brooklyn.

I was in John Wanamaker.

I had several stores in DC.

So, I went that entrepreneurial route thinking that this is going to work.

And I was selling widgets.

So, I wasn't selling services.

So, I was selling decorative home products

that I was getting from small artisans in Africa

and here.

Okay.

And um so, at some point in the expansion,

I realized I was not with these artisans going to be able to supply

the growth that I was experiencing.

And I bet the ranch on this thing.

This was my passion at that time.

So, then I took my retirement savings and invested it in you know,

all these stores and and so,

it went for 10 years and then ultimately did not work.

So, that then landed me where I didn't have the the cushion

that I was used to having.

So, I though had the background that I did,

got other work and then the Great Recession had So, I hadn't happened.

So, I wasn't able to build back the kind of cushion I had

when I left the World Bank.

I had a cushion,

but not like if you're going to be out of work for 18 months

or so and it's not clear whether you will ever get back in.

It wasn't that kind of cushion.

Can I ask you a few kind of specific financial questions on that?

So, you cashed out your 401k?

Sort of over time.

So, it was, you know, I I But, short answer is yes.

So, not all at once, but that was uh you know, you have investors,

they want to see your skin in the game.

What are you putting in?

So, yes.

But, so you were taking the penalties on doing that prematurely.

>> Yes.

Okay.

Um roughly how much did you lose in that endeavor?

I'm going to say half a million.

Half a million.

Okay, got it.

Which at that point in your sort of career

and proximity to retirement is pretty catastrophic.

But, and you you know,

you believe in this thing you're creating

and um and it looked in the beginning like this would work.

Can you talk about the emotional process of deciding

when to call it on the business

and sort of really accepting

that it wasn't working?

I think you know, there's sort of it's a process.

So, when you're in a big department store and department stores back then,

so we're talking uh late '80s, early '90s.

So, this is all before all the social media

and Amazon and kind of all of this.

So, department stores were big deal.

So, when you go in, you first,

unlike having I had some brick and mortar,

but what was really fueling the growth was through the department stores.

I had to hire people who were paid like they were they were Macy's

staff.

Right.

And I would have they could do a one-day sale.

I had a Fulani wedding basket

that I can't like mark down drastically

because the terms that I'm going to get my Fulani wedding basket are not

the terms that they're going to get their products

that are mostly coming out of Asia.

So, I would I didn't have the sort of flexibility in my pricing to

really do the volume.

You know, so knowing

that I'm spending down my money faster than I'm making money

that I will need to live on

that at some point,

and this and this is I was thinking about this actually on the way

here.

This knowing when to quit.

Yeah.

And quitting gets like a bad rap.

So, there are many um times where you can have your ladder against the

wrong building.

>> >> And you're climbing up there

and you get there

and you know you the building you really want is over there.

And you even known it for a while,

but the pressure to not quit

when you know that this is not like working for you anymore is strong

in this culture.

And so, I would say I probably 2 years later than I should have

decided that,

you know, to pull the plug on that.

I mean, there's the there's the social pressure, um,

especially in our particular version of capitalism

that first of all conflates anything other than,

you know, exponential growth with retraction,

which is an in and of itself an issue,

and then there's also the pressure to sort of see things through even

if they're not working.

But, I think there's also and I'm curious what your experience of this was.

There's also this feeling of even if something's not financially working necessarily,

there's also usually so much that you still love about it.

And that is sort of a grieving process to give up even in terms

of your day-to-day life with it,

the creativity that goes into it,

your identity that is sort of formed around it.

Can you talk about that?

And I would say that, um,

it's really sorting out what parts of the business are feeding what parts of

you.

Right.

You know, I was saying to you just before we started

that I with New Age Co-Living initially thought

that I wanted to build buildings,

that I actually wanted to raise the money and have real estate.

And I started to like feel like this is I'm actually interested more in

the journey to the housing for women

and helping women who are thinking,

"Could I do this?

What would it take?

You know, what kind of community living?

What is community?"

Kind of processing that.

And you you know,

you're thinking I was the inertia

that has taken you down a certain path

that you Oh,

you can't quit that.

Like all the other people in my cohort changed like radically.

Like no problem.

They're they're, you know, 30 years younger, no problem.

We don't want to do that.

We want it.

But I felt, and I think this was sort of the boomer uh you

know,

you got to you know, stick with this.

And then I realized, no, I don't.

I don't This is not feeding me.

And this is not actually the part that I would be the best at,

you know, that cuz so it was thinking coming to, you know,

be a developer at, you know, early '70s and all that's involved in that.

As a young friend said to me, "That's not your zone of genius, Elizabeth."

>> >> I like that term.

Um so, okay.

So, the book comes out

and did you feel What was your relationship to being

so public about your financial struggles

and your struggle to maintain

that kind of facade of normalcy?

Did you feel like you were really kind of outing yourself?

Or what was your relationship to it?

So, it was uh I did feel like I was outing myself.

You know, I felt and and I'll even I'll say this.

So, my to my family, they call me by my middle name,

which is Diane.

And so, going by my first name,

which I started doing around the time that I wrote the book,

cuz Di- Elizabeth felt a little dis- you know,

what your mother calls you is your name.

Yes.

>> Okay.

And so, but I could easily go by Elizabeth

because that is actually my first name.

But it it sort of was like a little bit of a it just

didn't feel so me.

The name I use is not my act- it's my middle name,

not my last name, for the same reason.

I totally get it.

>> No.

And so, that was kind of my like way of hiding a little bit,

being a little bit removed from what I was sharing.

And I would say

that so many people came up to me grateful

that I finally said it.

Yeah.

So when I wrote the essay,

I was sitting on my grandson's bed just at a point of despair

and I wrote this essay in one go.

And I sent it away and they told me they wanted to publish it.

This is Next Avenue, which is sort of under the PBS umbrella.

And then they called me and they said,

"Are you seeing what's happening with this article on Facebook?"

Well, it wasn't on Facebook.

Oh.

And they had used a little white lady as the picture of Oh god.

And so I was afraid to like even then I felt like shy.

So I went and I found through stock photos

that little old lady

and I opened a Facebook account with her picture.

>> Stop.

>> >> And then I saw all these people just oh my god, somebody said this.

>> Right.

And they'll find your email.

So there are 11,000 comments in like 2 days.

So they'll they'll find your email.

So the comments are like two or three sentences,

but the email is a page and a half.

Yeah.

Single-spaced about this is what happened to me.

And so I then and then you'll get the people you know, "Your fault.

You you know, you should have been eating more oodles and noodles."

You'll get those people, too.

But most of the people

that I got were just grateful

that someone had said out loud cuz they thought,

"Oh, this is just me."

There's nothing systemic here about you know,

you I know now from the data

that half the people in their 50s in this country are going to lose

their jobs.

And less than 10% will ever again get a job commensurate in pay

and status with the one they left.

All those people didn't suddenly become incompetent.

And so when you start talking about this, the shame factor for people,

I have met men whose wives don't know

that they're unemployed cuz they leave every day in the morning.

>> More common than we think, that dynamic. >> you know, eventually the check's not coming,

they're going to know, but trying to you know,

hide it as long as possible.

So once I understood, oh,

there's an audience that I'm speaking to

that feels helped and feels seen by what I'm saying,

then I could, you know, the little pot shots here and there.

First of all, how long did it take you to reveal your actual identity

after having taken that woman's stock photo

as your as your profile picture?

>> I started to get invited to speak.

Oh, hold on.

And there yeah.

>> Cat's out of the bag.

Um so it's interesting

that you initially and I sort of have a similar thing where I started

using my middle name instead of my last name

when I first started publishing my first book in 2012.

Same thing and then I almost think of myself

as first middle instead of first last last.

Do you Do you think of yourself as Elizabeth?

Yeah.

Okay.

I mean, so and I will the Elizabeth people

and the Diane people meet sometimes.

I'll have a dinner cuz some of the Elizabeth people,

I have some now

that I'm really close to cuz I've been doing this for a

while.

And so there will be

and I can have a moment sometimes where I don't you know,

am I in this setting?

Am I Elizabeth or Diane?

>> Right.

Um cuz professionally, but I now have very good friends

that I've met in this journey with the book

and all the speaking

that are really close to me.

But they don't kind of pop over to Diane.

Right.

>> Yeah.

Okay.

So, the book comes out.

Um can you talk about the time between the book coming out

and then what you have now with New Age?

So, the book came out

and I started to get a lot of invitations to uh speak

and you know,

the podcast, the panels, kind of all of that. >> hope.

Paid and I started uh working for something uh it's now called Center for

Workforce Inclusion.

And they uh had a program called CSAP,

which is a workforce program for older adults with moderate incomes.

And what they found after the Great Recession was

that uh the kind of people who were coming to them were better educated

than traditionally they were.

And these were also people who

if they did not like the experience they were having with CSAP could write

to the Department of Labor

and complain.

And these were these people.

>> Squeaky wheels.

Right.

And so, when uh the person at the time, Tony Sarmiento, saw me,

he said, "This is someone who could speak to this audience."

So, right after the book came out,

he just put me on a tour all over the place talking to people,

which then sort of elevated uh my profile in this area.

And then I got on PBS NewsHour where they did three national profiles.

So, all of that got me as being a voice in this space.

And I was an unusual voice because I had do have a Harvard MBA,

but I had been on food stamps.

And I do have a master's from John Hopkins,

but I had been on Medicaid.

And I understood the urgency when the bottom falls out,

but I could be in these rooms with very senior people

and my background matched

if matched theirs easily.

>> Or exceeded it.

And so, it gave me a Sometimes people are like,

"We don't really know what to do with her."

But it also gave me credibility cuz I understood the urgency of what was

really happening to people.

And then the friend told me about this venture studio.

And that was an opportunity to sort of make concrete the advocacy with a

product.

And product and service cuz I thought

that shared living for women would also need some wrap-around um,

services, too.

So, that got me from the book and advocating and speaking to, "Oh,

here's a thing that I could work on

that is maybe the biggest thing

when you think of housing

as the source of well-being

and financial stability."

Women were telling me, "Look, if I have that,

I can extreme coupon it the rest of the way."

>> Right.

Um, so, in terms of you know,

you you you emptied your you cashed out your 401k essentially on your prior

career.

That did not pan out.

Now you're 72 and kind of in the still earlier stages of what you're

working on now.

From a financial perspective and also just kind of you know,

a long-term intention perspective,

do you feel like you're essentially not going to retire professionally?

I feel like I don't I don't know

if I ever saw myself

as just sitting in a chair.

>> I mean so I have I don't I really like the pace of

my life.

So I described it a little bit earlier in terms of the community

that I'm in,

which is sort of buttresses me.

That is my chosen family.

I have a sister and brother brothers, you know,

in Ohio very close to him less close to my sister

and so my friends have become my sort of community

that I'm a part of.

>> Right.

I love the work I'm doing.

So essentially you feel no urgency to think in terms of retirement.

You're just enjoying it. >>

and and I'm going to say we're like the 100-year life is kind of

on the horizon.

Right.

>> This sort of where you you go to school, work, retire.

That's No, you know,

that that worked when you're going to be dead at 68 or 65.

So you you know, retired early 60s, you had a few years,

if you're a man, you did a little fishing,

kissed the grandkids and you were dead.

Now if you make it to 60 in reasonably good health,

you're living into your 80s.

Yeah.

You know, so and we're living longer, not only longer, but fitter.

I'm 72.

I mean I can, you know, bounce around still.

And so, you're not feeling like, "Oh, I don't have energy.

I'm tired.

I just want to, you know, sit down."

And that doesn't have to be the story.

I'm interested, especially someone in your position who is out of place in not

just her career,

but her sort of social life, dating life,

all of that that is pretty comparable to someone in their 30s, for example.

People often talk about getting older

and feeling still internally like you are in your 30s

or like you are this younger person.

How do you conceptualize age?

Yeah, I'm like, I don't like this uh definition of aging well

that is how many youthful attributes can you manage to hang on to?

Okay, I don't feel I don't want 72 to me is not the new

52.

I am 72.

Mhm.

And I want to like fully stand in 72.

And I don't feel 30.

I'm not trying to, you know,

I feel like I get to write the script.

Yeah.

This is this I get cuz I'm not like in

that building phase of an early career.

I'm not in that trying to get married

or new marriage or trying to have kids.

I'm not So, I don't have the conventional things that would that bound us.

And there is a script for it.

It's very specific.

Right now, this is the first time so many of us will live longer,

fitter lives.

So, there's really it's unchartered.

We don't know kind of how to do this yet.

And uh boomers are like, "Oh,

elbows and knees about it."

because there's this sense of like wanting to push us off into what our

parents had.

And we're like like Pass.

No, we're not trying.

And but it for me isn't that like trying to be you know, younger.

I enhance I add gray.

I want more gray.

Okay, I'm >> looks great.

And I'm uh but I do want to be physically strong.

Yes.

Um and I do and I'm curious and but I'm I'm not like oh,

I want to be 45.

I want to be 50.

I like the age I am.

I like what I know at this point.

I like um sort of being able to write the the script without the

pressure of oh,

it's got to look this way.

Can you tell me something about You mentioned

that you wouldn't necessarily say

that 70 was the year

that things started getting good,

but it did stand out to you as a particularly good year.

Obviously, a lot of that is external, what was happening, what you were doing,

the projects you were working on, the people you were with.

Is there something internal to you about how you perceive the world

or how you move through it

that you feel has really shifted in the past few years?

So, I think one of the things

when you have not married

and had children in the conventional way um is

that you've controlled a lot of your environment.

You really have not had to compromise a lot.

Mhm.

So, my house looks exactly the way I want it to look.

It's exactly the art I want.

What's in my refrigerator is what I want to eat.

Right.

And so, there is a retirement doesn't look to me like oh,

finally I get to do what I want."

I've always been doing what I want.

For a long time.

I've had a cool career

and interesting things and uh what could have been a disaster,

the book and this and that, that was another path.

So, I don't I don't have a feeling of um oh,

I need to sit down now and rest.

I It's been interesting since I was in my 20s.

So, it's still interesting.

In terms of the the work you're doing with New Age

and specifically this idea of co-living intentionally past the age of 55.

Now, I have a few questions from a financial perspective.

You're specifically targeting moderate income,

often women who found themselves in similar situations seeing quality of life

or means diminish past a certain point.

Um can you talk first of all about why you wanted to target

that specific demographic?

So, when I think of like median retirement savings of between 55

and 64 of like 60,000,

something in there, under 100,000.

And then you think of women in particular.

So, wage gap, caregiving, uh you know, On both ends, by the way.

>> Both ends, right.

And can be, you know, even educational attainment.

So, all of like where women land.

For black women alone,

it the wage gap is a million dollar gap right there over a 40-year

career.

So, what I was realizing is that um the precarity for women.

And not And any And more now.

I mean, boom, this is not a pesky little boomer problem.

Right.

This is Gen X is right behind us.

Nobody has, you know, pensions anymore.

They're everybody's on this 401K trying to save money,

pulling it out when the heat pump goes out, you know,

there's that is often the cycle that many people are in.

So, um, when I uh was thinking about

and in fact I'll say it this way,

right now if you're in your I'm going to say late 40s,

you already can see someone in your friendship circle who used to be okay

and now they're not okay.

You can start to cuz it it

and what by the time you get mid 50s,

it really cuz there's a point everybody in their 20s is sort of the

same,

but people start to pull away and lag behind the older you get.

And then life happening, the divorces, kids off the rails and you know,

needing a job, all kinds of things happening.

So, I felt like when I started to get this response to my essay,

I knew this was not a small issue

and I knew that women in particular were impacted.

Right.

And I knew that black and brown women even more so.

So, when I was thinking about

and had the opportunity I was invited in the studio to think about,

you know, who what do you want to work on?

Cuz it was either going to be on the employment

and workplace age discrimination

or housing.

Those were the two things that I was looking at.

And housing to me is

that base that really determines whether

or not you have even the opportunity to be good.

And um and I didn't I wasn't sure about uh whether Golden Girls would

work.

You know, it it's not just about bandy wit witty banter in the kitchen.

And then what does a big age woman need to be living with other

women when lots of them either are solo agers,

so either never married or by choice or circumstance divorced or widowed,

but having spent many years alone

and living the way I'm describing where you're choosing everything in your place is

kind of the way you want it,

how do you then build community with other women?

And so one of the things in doing the work in readiness with women

is to really understand architecturally what do these places need to look like?

And Chip and I talk about I call it parallel living where um I

take the women through a process in our workshop,

uh do you need to close the door?

Or do you can you imagine yourself kind of comfortably walking in

and out of shared spaces?

If we know, and obviously we do through the data,

that living in more communal settings is really good for us,

that isolation is bad for us,

um and that gets more and more true as we age.

If we know that that is the case,

why do you think in America intergenerational living, co-living past a certain age,

these kind of intentional platonic communities,

why do you think

that they are so either kind of stigmatized

or looked down on

or just not even really considered

as an option.

Um one thing is I think the intergenerational households now are about 20%.

So, it's really and it's not just immigrant families now

that I think that more families are seeing

that this is sort of the way to go.

But I think we live in a culture where being independent early on Not

needing anyone.

>> Not needing anyone.

I was at a dinner here in New York

and there was an Italian woman

and her son lived with her.

Oh, failure to launch.

She's like, "What's wrong with you people?

Yeah.

>> He's working.

We get along fine.

Why can't he live in the house with us?

>> Yeah.

And this is, you know,

but I think with capitalism it means there two snow blowers, two lawn mowers.

If everybody has their own, you know, all everybody's needs their own toaster.

So, it it it's not surprising to me

that what would be encouraged is everybody to be on their own needing more

and more things.

I think now with just the way the economics are going

that people are realizing they can't afford it.

And so that we will see I don't think it's reflected.

I think housing is starting to take notice.

Uh and we've seen some runs at shared living

that I don't like totally love yet.

But I think this is where inevitably we're going to have to go.

You know what's funny?

I I'm so of two minds about this

and I think about it a lot actually

because a lot of the content we do kind of talks about exactly the

dynamic you're talking about

which is like it makes total sense

that everyone is encouraged to live separately

because everyone can get sold one of everything rather than,

you know, sharing.

Um on the one hand clearly living more collectively, having less sharing you know,

being part of these communities even something as simple as like,

you don't when you have a child a new baby you don't have to

run out and buy everything you can just go on the local Facebook buy

nothing group and grab some clothes

and then put them back on

when you're done that kind of thing.

Clearly that's better in a lot of ways

and something that is important to kind of intentionally move to.

However, you're absolutely right

that a lot of people are increasingly moving toward this

because of diminished economic power

because of not being able to afford the alternative.

I'm interested both from your perspective having gone through a period of serious decline

of kind of purchasing power

and then also in dealing with

that regularly for women in a similar position how do you recommend people mentally

square or make peace with the reality

that their conditions are different

while still looking for what is potentially positive in

that?

So I think it starts with what do you actually need to be happy?

Mhm.

So I I said earlier this where we try to buy the emotions we

want to feel.

So if we're trying to buy confidence, if we're trying to buy happiness,

if we're trying to buy belonging, if we're trying to buy you know,

I'm cool or I'm whatever it is.

So and that then I think leads to a lot of kind of impulse

purchasing and a lot of you know,

why women will say I have these clothes in my closet with the tags

on that I never wore.

So what um um you know,

your income plummeting co- forces you to do is now you're evaluating every purchase

against its affordability.

Mhm.

You know, and that you know, do you want the coffee?

Do you have to really now decide.

And I say to people um when that happens,

it's also cuz all the shaming is thinking strategy, not failure.

Right.

And so the strategy may be

that right now I do need to get snap.

Right now I do need to move in with my sister.

Right now I do need to get Medicaid.

Right now I need to take this job

that may that pays half of what I got before.

Because what I'm trying to do is not go all the way down the

drain.

I'm trying to break the fall that is happening to me.

And I think when people think strategy, not failure,

then this feeling of like it's over

and there's no possibility of clawing my way back is what sets in.

And I also, I think what helped me, I had a resilience circle.

I had women who this was happening to,

where we would periodically get together and talk.

So, that talking it's sort of it's not normalizing,

but then the shame of I don't know

if I can pay my you know,

cell phone bill or my electric bill, when that's also happened to her.

And you have cuz what I notice is

if you don't have some place where this feeling of shame

and upset uh that you can put it you will leak it in places

that it should not be leaked.

So, when you finally do get the opportunity to interview for a job

that you want and I've seen this where people cuz they're excited about my

book or they want they're going to be in DC

and I meet them for coffee they're bringing this energy of upset

and frustration that if I were a hiring manager I wouldn't know kind of

exactly what was going on there,

but I would know I don't want that energy in my workplace.

Right.

So, what the resilience circle did was allow us to get

that energy out there for us to vent our frustration

and then also to share.

Uh it was through uh one of the women there who told me about

a program that got my mortgage paid for 1 year.

Uh you know, I learned somebody

that uh SNAP you can go to these outdoor markets

and use your SNAP.

Yeah, so we shared information as well.

But, that was sort of the scaffolding

that held a number of us up

so that we could

then take the next step

because the the chaos of

that,

the crazy-making of that in a culture

that tells you you have to be this way

and this shouldn't have happened

and if it did,

you're a loser.

I mean, there's all of that.

Uh you've got to have a way

that you can counteract

that when you're in the midst of it.

And it's hard to do it if you're just by yourself.

Well, I was going to ask about exactly that.

Being a single woman throughout all of this, not that you weren't dating,

not that you didn't have a really good circle around you, but that,

you know, even just from like a tax standpoint, from an income standpoint,

you were navigating this by yourself.

Looking back, especially at the most kind of turbulent moments,

do you think that being solo in it helped you, hurt you, was neutral?

Cuz of all the things that it led to.

I don't like have a a feeling of big regret about it.

>> Right.

You know, I feel I mean, I really my circle now, what I realized,

my faking normal was

so good that I was getting annoyed with some of them

because they still just invite me places

and assume >> know. they didn't know.

And so then I thought, that's on me.

Right.

>> To not uh cuz the other thing um I'm not that religious,

but I have a friend who's a minister

and she said to me at one point,

she said, "God works through people."

And I said, "What do you What are you saying to me?"

And she said, "I'm saying,

if you don't tell me that you need cheaper rent,

then I don't know to mention to you that you know,

so-and-so has a apartment that's available and she's looking for somebody.

If you don't tell me the truth about what's happening,

I don't even know how I You don't There's not I can't even help

you."

Right.

And so when she said that,

cuz I realized I was getting frustrated with people

because they couldn't discern what was happening,

but then I was very invested in hiding.

Right, in keeping up the facade.

You know, it's funny

that you say that you realized after a certain point

that not asking for help

and then feeling kind of low-grade resentful

that you don't get it um took you a

while to come to

because I think even for people who don't necessarily have financial issues,

that that is kind of the American condition in a lot of ways.

As you mentioned earlier, there's such a pressure on self-reliance, stoicism,

on not making your problems other people's.

Um for someone watching this who feels like they have a very difficult time,

whether it's asking for help

or even stating their needs

or being honest about their situation,

maybe it's not financial, maybe they're in a bad marriage,

and they have they have this real pressure to keep up an appearance,

um or maybe they've failed at something and, you know,

feel like they can't be honest about it.

What is your advice for specifically becoming more comfortable with

that vulnerability about where you maybe aren't thriving?

So, when I think about uh like that closed door that you're facing,

that nothing can happen with you just standing there facing that door.

Mhm.

You really have to turn around to even have the possibility of something different.

And you don't need a cast of thousands of people that you're talking to.

You need one or two.

That there's somebody that you can tell the truth to.

But you got to tell the truth to yourself first.

Not pretending that you know,

you're in a marriage that you want to be in,

pretending that you uh this job that really isn't a fit for you anymore,

whatever the thing is.

You've got to like get through yourself first.

And then the things that what I'm saying where you think strategy, not failure.

And um and I, you know,

I sort of in my mind I think about um moving through the world

like you're already chosen.

Like what is that?

When you think that, what does that feel like?

>> you mean by chosen?

I think one of the things that women do, there'll be some opportunity.

There'll be 10 sort of, you know, you need to have this criteria.

We'll have eight and we won't apply.

Men will have four and they're all like all in and think they're ready.

Cuz they feel chosen already.

They they move in the world, like, yeah, I can do that.

Yeah, I and this is, you know,

remind this is one of the interesting things about ageism.

For many men, ageism is their first ism.

Mhm.

You know, they're um this is the first time they can walk in a

room and just based on appearance be dismissed,

discriminated against, or looked at, you know, negatively.

Whereas women, black women, we're used to, you know, racism, you know, sexism.

So we, by the time I think you get uh to be an older

woman,

you're kind of the ageism thing is there,

but you you you have some muscle on the other isms that you've experienced.

Whereas a lot of times men, you know, don't.

I I I think so it's what we've been talking about.

It is um truth to yourself.

It is um and that truth,

if you need cuz the first time I had to snap,

I went all the way across town to another grocery store thinking that oh,

you know, You didn't want to be seen.

And the person at the register could care less.

I mean, there was just you know,

cuz it was kind of all of the hiding.

And you have to when you think strategy not failure,

then you're sort of more in the mode of what do I need to

do to get out of this situation

that I'm in that I don't like.

And I may have to do some things I don't like temporarily to get

out.

It's just a different frame than you're sort of your parade of horrible's

or what I call awfulizing.

Where it is you know, I don't have a job,

I'll never get a job, I'm going to lose my house,

and then I'm going to be in the street,

and then that and we can you can get in that loop.

What my circle did is we could pull you out of that loop.

We could remind you of who you are.

And one of the things I did in the book cuz this was

so helpful to me is

that at the end of each chapter we did question I did questions for

your resilience circle so

that you could have

that scaffolding when you're kind of feeling like you're just out here by yourself.

So now, we have reached my personal favorite part of every conversation.

Our rapid-fire questions for Just Getting Good.

Number one is what is something about aging that we don't talk about enough?

I think we don't talk about

that we are uh sort of on the cusp of like living a lot

longer.

I think we're still in this uh we talked a little bit about it

before of school,

work, retire.

But you think you got 20 more years.

Mhm.

You know, it's almost like

if you and people like to think of adding the years on the end,

but maybe adolescence goes to 32.

Maybe it doesn't end, you know, in the teens.

Cuz when we're thinking of a 100-year life,

which is kind of where this is going,

then how we like we should not you can't now go to school, graduate.

I I can barely keep up with with Claude is doing week by week.

I know.

>> You know, you can't you're not going to graduate at 22 and okay,

we're done with our education.

Maybe we should be the school I saw great article.

I think it was in either Fortune

or Forbes about we should be going to school at 60.

We should be cycling through school because the where we are now that that,

you know, sort of very like model just is not applicable anymore at all.

Yes, I completely agree.

We were before we started filming I was mentioning a a good friend of

mine who got pregnant at 29

and refers to it jokingly

as a teen pregnancy here in New York cuz we often have kids

so much later.

And honestly, I agree

that is a teen pregnancy

because I think your teens extend until you're 30 personally.

You're still we're still cooking.

I know they say the frontal lobe develops at 25,

but I think they need to redo those tests personally.

>> >> Um what is something

that you really enjoy about aging

that you did not expect to.

>> >> You know, being able as I write my own script, I mean,

I feel free.

Mhm.

Yeah, I feel >> free.

Yeah, I feel I mean, I just I it's so good.

It's just so good, you know,

I Um and even not doing all the things that, you know,

you were told you were supposed to do.

And uh stepping on a banana peel here and there.

No kidding.

It's still good.

I do want to add on one question to this

that I don't normally ask,

but given that you were the age of some of the women

that we have on this show,

55, when you were at a huge kind of low point financially

and really just like treading water every day to keep seeming like you were

still living the same life.

How do you look back on

that particular time now with almost 20 years of difference?

What would you say to that version of yourself?

I mean, I And God, when I think about that, it is 20 years.

>> Almost.

>> Yeah, almost 20 years.

I mean, I see her as It's not like a woman who's 30.

Cuz by, you know, you sort of you are big age.

I think big age starts kind of around 50, 55.

I feel like by being so public,

it sort of forced me out of the pretending.

It forced me out of the faking normal.

I was candid in a way

that I think actually prior to

that I had not been.

I would have been like really carefully managing it.

>> Yeah.

And so you Sorry.

>> So so this like now I've just told you.

I've told you what is happening.

And the world didn't cave in.

It didn't cave in.

In fact, a lot of people Oh, thank you.

I I feel in that, too.

I wasn't I didn't know

that would be the response

that uh so many people in shame

and silence were feeling

that.

So it actually was freeing in that sense.

I didn't have to fake normal anymore because now lots of people knew.

What is the most important thing

that you've learned about money in the past few decades?

This about uh that we also talked a little bit um before about um

not buying the emotions

that I want to feel.

Mhm.

What is the most important thing you've learned about relationships in the past few

decades?

And I'd love an answer for romantic and an answer for platonic.

Okay, so let's say on romantic.

I've learned that I have different needs.

Mhm.

I've learned that I want men in my life.

I want the male energy.

And I it's important to me.

And I think when you don't have that,

when you then meet someone that you are interested,

your energy can be kind of off cuz you're not I'm like very used

to being around >> welcoming >> it in,

maybe.

Or you're you're just is you're just not used to it.

>> Right.

That you know, you're not casual, not yourself,

not easy in your sort of being with it

because there's so few men

that you're really interacting with in a deep way.

So, I I like having a bit of a rotation.

A roster?

Of interesting men that and then one that I really adore.

Mhm.

And that one has to be good with the rotation

and know that these are not sexually intimate relationships.

These are men that have been friends of mine for a long time

and are part of my community.

Now, it also means if you're asking for that,

you have to be able to give that.

So, that means that he has friends

as well that um there's a very good friend of mine,

the one I adore, who lives here in New York,

I'm going to see after this, and we're so different.

I mean, he's uh like a black hippie and I'm not.

And like the olive oil he puts on his salad,

he also puts on his face.

And I've got potions and serums, okay.

And I just adore the difference and the um you know,

sort of what I learn.

Cuz I almost like barely walk in the grass and he's camping and motorcycle.

I love that.

Um but he's not the one who wants to go to Monaco.

Right.

And I have another one, good friend, lives in Toronto,

who likes that kind of traveling.

And, you know, another friend of mine who we do Christmas together.

A man.

A man.

So, when my parents were living, I had done every Christmas with them.

Right.

Cuz I didn't have my own husband and children.

So, I would go to my parents' house.

So, when they both died, then I was like, "Okay,

what am what's Christmas going to be?"

And then my birthday is December 26th.

So, my dear friend Arthur comes up, who's single as well, from Florida.

He comes up every Christmas for the last My mother died 8 years ago.

He's been coming for like 6 years.

And then we hosted dinner.

The first time we did it just the two of us.

And now we all the strays who have no place to go,

they come to my house.

And he and I argue about the menu starting in November.

Then we cook together, and then we just do this dinner.

And um New York, who's not particularly into Christmas, is like, "Do your dinner."

So, Arthur continues to come to my place.

And then we have a You know,

there's a bar we go to Christmas Eve.

We always go to that bar.

We have the same drink.

And then there's a place we go on my birthday

that we sit in the same same restaurant.

So, it feels like cuz I think what happens when you get older,

we don't have the rituals.

So, you know, all the cards at my age are joke cards.

Yeah.

There's, you know, it's kind of like you get, you know,

when you're graduate or your first house or you're married,

when you get to be older, there aren't these sort of occasions to celebrate.

I love this friend of mine coming from Miami.

I mean actually he's in Fort Lauderdale.

And we we know kind of how our Christmas is going to be.

Yeah.

Um.

And so that creates like a really like richly textured life.

And that's the one I want.

You could want something totally different

and you're free now to kind of like what do you what do you

want it to look like for you?

Like really think about that.

So you sort of answered the romantic and the platonic in in that answer.

I'm out of out of curiosity like especially

when you're like traveling with the Toronto guy there's never like a vibe.

You know you No,

sometimes you have to manage it

because I'm very clear with him

that you're monogamous with your with your partner.

Yeah.

And you um you have to manage.

You have to manage it.

But I can manage it.

So cool.

Okay.

>> >> What advice would you give to a 30-something woman who is currently single,

no kids, and not where she wants to be financially?

So we've like talked about some of this.

I would say >> >> you're not at the end.

Okay?

I would say you know this

that we've talked about of uh thinking strategy not failure.

So there it would mean

so what are some of the hard things you're going to have to do?

What are some of the subscriptions you're going to have to give up?

What are some of the living situation you might have to adjust?

But to think about this not in terms of this will be forever.

Mhm.

The strategy part is you're trying to get out of where you are

and kind of believe in

if you take certain actions you can get out.

But you're not going to love it all.

You're not going to love it all.

And you have to start.

And I think this thing, you know,

when I talk about turning around from the closed door it is I'm feeling

later that I fully get to write my script.

But why can't it start earlier?

You know, as everything is kind of in upheaval,

all the sort of structured things that it used to work this way.

What do you want your script to be?

Can you not start thinking about that at 30?

Thinking about who's in your life that supports your ability to change and grow.

Cuz they're not everybody is like there's some people want to see you like

right there.

And especially if you're feeling like there's maybe something

that they're not going to think this is really me.

Well, it is you.

You know it's you.

And so the people that may get left behind.

You know, this point, does she want to be married?

You know, what I said about cycling through people faster.

You know?

And but I mean I, you know,

I look at a 30-year-old woman you know, if curious,

if she's um invest in women friends, which is really important.

You know, so don't get with so-and-so

and now your women friends like don't see you.

I mean, really, women will save you.

Your women friends will save you.

And so kind of, you know,

kind of in that area is what I would say to her.

And I and I actually talk to a lot of young women

and what they'll say to me

and what they like about me is what they're hearing from their mothers sometimes

is it's all downhill from here.

And so they and

then they're like And

then they meet me

and I'm like No,

it's not.

It doesn't have to be.

And then it's sort of like, oh, well,

maybe even if I haven't met him yet

or maybe if I don't have a baby

or maybe it it could look could be okay.

It can be really okay.

Elizabeth, this has been such an amazing conversation.

Thank you.

Where can people watching this go to find more about you,

which I'm sure they'll want to?

So, I am on IG.

>> Oh.

Uh I think it's Elizabeth White Faking Normal.

I'm trying to get better at posting.

>> Yes.

Yeah.

>> Yes, we must get we must all get better about posting.

Unfortunately, this is how this works now.

>> >> And I'm like I'm constantly I don't know if you feel this way,

but I'm constantly in the battle of like it's important,

but it's also not good for us.

Our brains are not served by constantly I'm always like, oh,

I forgot to take picture of my plate.

I know.

>> I ate it all, you know, >> >> so.

Um well, thank you again

so much for being here

and thank you guys for tuning in

and we will see you back here next week on an all new episode

of Just Getting Good.