Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend a podcast for long distance festies everywhere. I'm I'm in at to so and I'm Ann Friedman

I actually am very very interested in today's show topic. We're talking about money and feelings and money and relationships

Hi Ann Friedman. Hello. Hello. Hello.

Bonjour. You are trolling me. This is going to be the great troll of my life. How you doing over there?

It's been a trying last two days for you and me like we're still we're still standing behind the scenes. I just want everyone to know that we have been plagued by technical difficulties this week, which is not really a new experience for us, but like over time we've kind of gotten better and this week was just like a wow all kinds of gear failure user error like everything going wrong. Yeah, Mark, you're in lemonade. It's still my god. Don't even get me started.

Today though we're talking about money and feelings and money and relationships. Man, I just I'm already like I'm already shook I'm already shook. Okay, well, I'm going to I'm going to ask you like first the kind of fun and easy version of this, which is when do you feel rich?

Man, that's such a good feeling truly which is 100% a feeling. I don't know if you saw this interactive New York Times thing a couple of weeks ago

that was basically asking like are you rich? It was like a really well done quiz because it accounted for your feelings. It was just like well, it was like what's your income right and then also like what do you think rich is obviously like you're ranked by your actual like income in the world, but you are also your feelings about like whether your rich or not are definitely influenced by what you think a lot or not a lot of money is.

Yeah, it's funny. I actually didn't see the New York Times thing, but someone recently sent me a quiz which I will link to it essentially like tells you how much of your income you could give away without even changing your position in like what percentile you are in terms of global wealth, which I thought was really good because there are all kinds of statistics about how essentially people who are more likely to be living paycheck to paycheck or are more in need of the money they have are more likely to give a higher percentage.

And I thought that was like a really interesting check as well on like your perceptions of wealth or what you are able to give so it's like not the same quiz, but I I had a similar had a similar online interactive experience recently right and so like OK, back to your question for me, I think that I feel rich.

Anytime a problem arises that I am able to throw money out like today, I'm having all these problems with my computer and that's not a problem I can throw money out immediately so that made me feel not rich today at the Apple store right, but I had a similar like gear failure recently and I was like OK, I can buy a new recorder that's something that's like easy to do or.

You know, I I have like 17 errands to run, but there's only 24 Beyonce hours in the day if I can one of those things can get taken off my hands and somebody else can do it whether it is you know like a grocery service delivery or having somebody like pick up my dry cleaning or whatever I'm always like this is how I feel rich.

I had a revelation about that recently I was helping a friend hang some shelves or like one of our agenda items was hang some shelves and when I was like oh wait, we actually could afford to like pay a handy person to come hang these while we do some other equally important item from the to do list I felt rich in that moment for sure so I'm feeling this right because I feel the difference between me and people that I consider very wealthy is that they either have a lot of support or they can devote their time not to.

Like running you know like their own self so I'm always like yeah, I'm like this is what rich people can like they can just buy outsourcing all sorts of tasks and it feels like a huge extravagance to me that I have someone who cleans my house.

Whenever I come home and everything has been organized and the house is not a mess that I left it in I am really really really grateful that that is a kind of support that I can afford.

Totally it's totally in line with the kind of support that you're talking about.

Totally and it's also like honestly like really transformed my mental health obviously like when I was sick I needed someone to like clean my house because I couldn't do it and then it's just like a routine that I've kept up for a long time now and I was like well yeah great like this is what I'm doing.

Yeah great like this is now I know I have to work hard enough that I can always afford this because it like makes me happy.

I also feel very generally like I feel like it's an indulgence that I that I can smell the way that I want to smell like my my idea of a rich person is someone who smells very good and doesn't wear socks with their loafers and anytime I can be like an approximation of that person I'm like hell yeah.

Your your house smells better than most physical spaces I have ever been in like truly it is is it is an experience of wealth for me to inhale deeply when I cross the threshold of your home like so I can't even imagine what it's like to live their full time.

You know me I just I want to live like my spaces of hotel or like a hotel that I respect there's just like a lot of feelings that are tied into that and then I you know because at the end of the day I'm like I am definitely more blessed than most people I think that's true I make and you know I make.

And you know I make an income that means that I can afford a lot of those things but when I think about you know in the grand scheme of like generational wealth I have nothing and also I you know I'm like I got a lot of bills like I support a lot of people and so it's so interesting like the psychology of like what makes you feel good because you know I've told you this before I just feel like a nine year old with a rich dad so I'm like can I go to a Beyonce concert yeah definitely like I have Beyonce concert money I don't have money for like more than that.

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