Hello everyone and welcome back to an all new episode of the financial confessions.

It's me, your host, Chelsea Fagan, founder and CEO of the Financial Diet and woman who loves talking about money.

And today I am joined by someone who also loves talking about money, something that I am pleased to say is becoming more and more common in the years since starting

TFD. Next year will actually be the 10-year anniversary of me starting my own personal blog,

The Financial Diet, which became this company. And in many ways, looking back, I am deeply

heartened to see the way the conversation around money has changed, especially with people

younger than myself. When I first started TFD, there was a real absence of anything in the

personal finance industry that wasn't quite frankly geared toward wealthy, older white men.

And most of the rhetoric around money, whether it was on the surface or more subliminal

and suggested, had a bit of an ultra-libertarian bootstrap bent to it that effectively boiled down

to your financial status being a result of your character or your intelligence or your

inherent worth. If you were poor, it was your fault. And if you were rich, it sort of

automatically meant that you were a good person. Now, of course, we know if we watch TFD that

neither of those things are true and that in America in particular, your financial destiny is

largely determined by where you started financially, although, as we discuss often, there are

ways to improve the hand that

you're working with. I'm happy to say that now there is a much broader landscape of who

is talking about money and how they are talking about it. And particularly as it pertains to

younger people, there has been a real awakening around the systemic inequalities and, quite frankly,

inherent unfairness of our financial system.

Wealth inequality is at gilded age levels or beyond, and most people are starting to realize

that when it comes to things like massive student debt, the limited job market, stagnant wages,

...