How to get better at money, with Carrie Joy Grimes

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/d7b8792d9f1f1a70

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Money is math.
and feelings.
But having had thousands of conversations with individual people.
And having had the experience at Work Money of being in conversation over text, email, and phones with 9 million people all the time.
One of the things that became very clear is that
The thing that holds the most people back is the feelings part.
This is Masters of Scale. I'm Jeff Berman, your host.
This week on the show, Sі Grims.
CJ Grimes is the founder of Work Money, which helps nine million.
and more growing number Americans deal with uh personal financial issues, has a fascinating history, and is also a dear friend with a big new book coming out.
CJ Grimes, welcomed Masters of Scale.
Thank you so much, Jeff, for having me here.
So what we just start with like what is work money and how did you get started doing this?
Work money is
The thing I wish existed when I was trying to figure out money.
It is a
Nonprofit. We've got nine million members.
And we help people figure out how to
Earn more and save more and spend less.
And we do that through programs and services and coupons and discounts, kinda like the AARP.
The other thing that Work Money does is we figure out how to use the power of nine million people to bargain for cheaper stuff, to make sure that people understand how the economy works and what they can do to navigate it.
And it started in Covid.
You know, it was twenty twenty and everyone's money kind of got turned upside down. People were trying to figure out what are these stimulus checks, what's a PPP loan, what is unemployment.
And I put up a website to answer all the questions that I was getting from people. And it just took off. And then after COVID, it became pretty clear that there wasn't one place.
Everyday Americans could go to figure out
what to do with their money. Like not one trusted website, brand, person who you could really lean into who would give you the straight information. And that's why we are not
done after COVID. That's why we're now nine million people and we're growing pretty rapidly.
What in your background led you to not just identify this need, but say, oh, I'm actually someone who can really help with this?
I was a union organizer for just about twenty years and I had this
incredible gift of talking to working people.
at their homes, at their churches, in bars, in union halls, and just asking people about their money and their lives and figuring out how to help folks negotiate for higher pay and better benefits.
So I got to see what happens when regular people kind of get together and they put their shoulder to the wheel of doing better.
And there was a
Barry.
obvious set of problems that emerged after thousands of conversations. Thing one was that most people didn't really have the money basics down. Like nobody sat me down and taught me how to do money.
And then the other was most people felt like they were kinda in uh on all of it by themselves. Like they were just alone having to navigate it.
And so when I put the website up, I had a really
Strong
sense of what I needed.
Which was help with the basics of money, but then also
The idea that we really can change the circumstances that we're all trying to earn more and save more in.
I very much want to get to the scaling of work money, um, zero to nine million in in five years, basically, is a pretty impressive number. And these are people you have a a a text relationship, an SMS relationship, with not just people like nine million visitors to a website or a l you know, a a an Instagram or something. But before we get there, what led you to the union organizing work to begin with?
You know, I'm a pretty cantankerous person.
I
Don't like it.
When people have a bad deal
And they can't fix it.
And you know, I was in college, I was a history major and I went to Northern Illinois University, go Husky's and
I got really into how we improved America.
over time. Like how did it get better?
And it wasn't
Magic.
Wasn't nature.
People
Got.
up and decided to shift things over and over again.
And I was lucky enough that somebody who I w went to college with was like

And I was like, unions, those old things that like
people need when they work in a factory. But I was like, okay, you know, let's let's check it out. And so I moved out to Ohio where this local union was organizing workers.
And I
Said okay, I'll try it. I hated it for the first ninety days.
It was really hard, but
Like really good organizing is listening.
And I really liked to talk. And so I had to learn
To listen first.
One of the things that struck me reading the book
It was the
twenty years working with
working families, paycheck to paycheck voters, et cetera, gives you incredible grounding for the work you're doing at Work Monday Today.
And also you have some pretty extraordinary personal stories that
help you relate to the nine million and growing number of Americans you're serving through work money.
You reference moving to Ohio for the first union job. There's a story in the book about the boss you were working for effectively at that time.
Would you mind sharing that story with us?
No, I wouldn't.
When I moved out to Ohio, I had
negative money. I mean I really had no money. I had shoes with holes in them.
And I had like my rust bucket of a car, which is literally what I call it in the book. Like she barely got there. She had a name. Her name was Mo. I called her Mo.
She barely got there, and it was
It was like, please don't die on the road. I mean, we've all lived those those years, or not all of us, but many of us have lived those years. If you know, you know.
And uh
I show up for my very first
Day at work and we're at this union hall office and we're doing a bunch of stuff.
And then the organizing lead says, Well let's go out to dinner and we'll sort of
Finish up the night.
And I didn't have any money.
I was like gonna go back to my Red Roof hotel and get some
You know, ramen noodles and watch law and order, which is
The only thing on the television in hotels is at that time of night. And the
Organizing lead was like
No, no, you gotta come to dinner. And I was like, That's okay.
And he like knew. He knew He saw those holes in your shoes. I was so threadbare and I was so obviously
Like strapped for cash. He's like, I got you And oh my God, I
Hated that. He was like, no, no, no, you gotta come. And couldn't say no. He was like, I really wanted to impress him.
So we have dinner and he pays for my dinner and then he gives me a hundred dollars and he says
Here.
Buy some new shoes.
And like give yourself some cushion.
Basically, until the next paycheck. Yeah, and let's be clear, like a a hundred dollars also twenty years ago, when you have your your next paycheck isn't coming for two weeks. Right. Right. You you've you've got absolutely nothing. Like that is
God sent money, but also
How the heck do you pay that back? I mean, this is the question. This is part of why this book even exists is because look, I'd had I tried budgeting here and there. I'd you know, like we all had. I'd kind of like I'd had a bit of an emergency fund and then I'd kind of spent it all on an emergency, then hadn't figured out how to fill it back up.
And this was the first time
I was so aggravated.
That I owed this man money.
I it it it just ate at me, so I did
I sat down in that in my Red Roof hotel room and I took out a pen and I wrote down all of the money I had to pay for things, how much I was gonna make, and I was determined
To pay him back. That sounds suspiciously like a budget. And it was my first real budget to this day. The way that I figured that out has become like my method for budgeting.
It's not rocket surgery. It's like, here's what you gotta spend and here's where the extra money can go.
And so I paid him back and and I just had this feeling of accomplishment. And this is the thing that I I realized I had been
Telling myself
I was terrible at money.
Because I was poor.
Yeah.
And I and I was working poor and I was like I couldn't keep it in my bank account. I was living paycheck to paycheck. I had had these moments which some of us have had where you go to the store and you give'em your card and you're like, Oh, I hope it goes through. And I just assumed that all of that was evidence that said I'm bad at money.
And
The reality was
when I thought I was bad at money, then I behaved like somebody who was bad at money, and I kept behaving like somebody who was bad at money.
And that moment where I paid this guy back.
And I felt like I'd really done something with my money, and I decided
In that moment.
To change the way I thought about how I did money.
And I thought wow.
I can be good at money. I really can.
And then I was like, Well if that worked for that guy.
I should pay down the credit card debt that I've got. I should
Save up an emergency fund and so on. And I did. And every time I found myself thinking I couldn't do it.
I'd be like
Sh
Of course you can be good at money.
So I mean I I go back to my first job out of law school where I I went to be a public defender rather than going to a big law firm and, you know, making insane amount of money. And you know, I made twenty nine five that first year out of law school. And
the local Safeway would triple coupons on Sunday nights after nine or ten PM, whatever it was. And I would literally like wait for like the clock to strike so that I could walk up to the register and get that triple coupon value and buy my like huge thing of chicken thighs, which I'd have to stretch out to make the week.
The idea of setting money aside.
Yeah. At that time it's like insane for me. How did you
Do it.
Let me be really clear.
Most people
The problem they have is that they don't have enough money.
I just wanna say that plainly. It's a math exercise. It's a math
Problem. And
In this economy and in our society.
You play the hand of card you're dealt, no matter what they are.
And I think holding both of those realities together is hard. And so I say this without judgment.
I chose
For myself saying.
I choose to do this. It is important to me to pay this guy back. So it took me longer than I would have liked to save up a hundred dollars, but I did it.
And I the choose to, not have to thing was really helpful for me, but I also worry that I don't want people to weaponize it.
There are several personal stories from the book that
were quite powerful to read and felt formative.
There's a story about when your mom is passing.
Which which feels really foundational. And so I was wondering if you could share that as well.
Yeah.
My mom.
Bless her heart.
Yeah, she died in twenty twenty two.
I'm gonna say some things that are a little hard about my mom.
And just to pay for that little bit, I'm gonna say she was so smart. She was a card shot. She was a very Christian woman who believed it was her God given right to cheat at cards and beat you any way she could. She was a huge Cubs fan and a Bears fan.
And she lived long enough to see the Cubs win the World Series, and my mom died uh
Yeah.
really shocking conditions. By the time she passed away she had been living on
Diet Coke and cheese and crackers'cause she wasn't sure how much money she had.
So she had been spending nothing.
Uh like the
barest of like sustenance living, and her house was filthy and
Everything she owned was set out at counter level.
because her health had deteriorated from her lack of nutrition and mobility. So she couldn't really bend up or down. And so she fell.
And then we moved her into rehab and then um an independent living facility where she passed away pretty quickly after we moved her.
And what I realized is that my mom
had been living this like a pauper's existence.
Has she been afraid to go to the doctor?
She hadn't been taking her medicine'cause she was afraid she couldn't afford more.
And so the end of her life, she just her world got so small and she was so afraid
That she wouldn't have enough.
That she did nothing.
And
I to this day I know that if like if my mom had called me twenty years ago or even ten years ago,
I could have sat down with her, looked at her money.
figured out maybe some in home help for her. We could have budgeted differently. We could have I could have helped her think through
what the end of her life could look like.
It was hard in the moment and then the reflections afterward were really
Like it was very like oof.
I don't want my kid to go through that or my husband and also me. Like I don't want to go through that. But I wanted to make sure that other people's moms and other people
kind of maybe didn't get to the cheese and diet Coke and Crackers stage.
Yeah, and it it's such a moving and powerful part of the book.
one of the more mundane, but for me really
Striking Elements was
Even people who
Or not in the financial circumstances that your mom was in.
Can have a lot of issues around money. Oh my gosh. Yeah. A lot of fear can be avoidant. I'm an avoider. I I you know, I mean the book really helped un unstick me on a couple of things that I've just been like, I don't want to deal with it, so I'm not gonna do it. And it's like
Yeah. I have to do this. Yeah. Right. And so why do so many of us have so many issues around just facing the facts and dealing with the matters, the basics of our personal finance?
Money is math and feelings.
It's math and feelings. Math plus feelings equals money. Math
Plus feelings equals money. Got it. But having had thousands of conversations with individual people and having had
The experience at work money of being in conversation over text, email, and phones with nine million people all the time.
One of the things that became very clear is that
the thing that holds the most people back is the feelings part. You know, that's the part where you go to Target and you go in for like, I don't know, pick up a prescription and you walk out with like peanut butter pretzels and a throw pillow and that really cute little solar lantern that you're like, this is gonna look perfect on my back porch, but it wasn't really in the budget, but you really wanted it and I'm just gonna do it anyway.
That's there's nothing.
morally wrong with doing that. But
I I got really curious, like, well, why did I do that? Like why did I I knew I know I have a budget. It's not in there. Why did I why? And for me it would usually be I had a hard week
I felt like there's no joy in life. I just needed some
bit of pleasure in my daily week, which is a note that I need to figure out some pleasure in my week. Or for me, avoidance was also, I cannot stand
evidence that I might not be good at this. So I would just not want to open the envelope or look at my bank account. It's like I just don't need one more person telling me that I'm doing a bad job at something. Cause there's a story in my head that runs pretty hard telling me you're doing a bad job. You're doing a bad job. This is obviously in the past. And so the feelings part it's part of why when I
In the book, the very first chapter is figuring out
what your money story is and what you want it to be.
Ca that's the thing more than anything else I've seen.
Make it
hard for people to implement all the math.

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Let's talk about work money. What happens that this goes from being sort of a project or a side hustle or something that like might have potential to something that starts actually scaling.
I thought when the pandemic was over or
Subsiding.
That we would see.
Interest subside.
that our signups would would would drop.
This was meant to be like a let's get us all through something hard and then let's see what happens.
And it became
I mean to be blunt, I'm also
A person who believes in organization.
And so
Of course Twenty years of union organizing will do that for I wanted to build something that would be sustainable, but I was aware that this was launching to solve an immediate problem. And I had been thinking about sort of the concept up till this point. Like I've been thinking about the concept of work money.
But work money was really meant to patch a hole in in the moment.
And then
The test for me was, well, for all of us was, okay, once the pandemic is over, do we see traffic drop? Do we see sign-ups drop? And it turns out no. Because the economy hasn't really gotten
Dramatically better for most of us. Yeah. No. I mean, there was a chart that you and I were looking at this weekend that showed like basically the delta between where the stock market is and where uh Americans how they feel about the economy has literally never been larger since they've been measuring this. That's right. That's right.
Look, there's always gonna be those of us who get dealt a hand and have a really hard time getting to financial security in the American economy. Like I'm I'm I'm very aware that that is that's that has been a story for some people.
perennially in the American economy. But the number of us who feel squeezed in today's economy.
who make very good living.
who are watching health care costs, education costs, housing costs, child care costs go so
go up so much faster than our wages. Yeah.
It's
It's staggering. And
When the pandemic ended and our signups
B.
When
just as fast, if not faster. And right now we're seeing a lot of sign ups.
Because middle class families
Are stretched.
Was a real
clarion call after the pandemic. It's like oh okay, this really is about
For me, this is about how do we build a
permanent civic institution in America.
A place that anybody can go to get the individual information about money, how to save, how to invest, how to you know how to learn about buying a house or not.
And then also how do we use our collective strength?
T
to bargain for better in the market.
Two
Make sure that
decision makers who are pol politicians know what everybody wants. This isn't about
political parties. It's about right and wrong.
And how do we think about using all of our resources to build the businesses that we want and
And I I feel even more passionately now than I did during the pandemic that
The problem isn't just a one time crisis, you know.
I mean that was a particularly gnarly one, but there's a need to shift.
how the economy works right now and to make more success more possible for more people.
On the road from zero to nine million, where there are inflection points you can point to and go, Oh.
That that really changed. We we hit a scaling moment there.
We started in the pandemic, so we're fully remote. We're still fully remote.
And that moment when you go from one zoom screen
to like two, do you know what I mean where you have to like hit the little arrow. That was a big deal.
'Cause it meant that we had
gone from like passionate generalists to passionate generalists and experts in some things.
it meant that also a lot of things I was doing were sh were leaving my hands. And I I'll just confess, like as a
As a founder's founder
I really love solving hard problems.
All by myself.
And I am very lucky to have.
an incredibly c talented team.
That
Can do a lot of work, but also can
Give me some grace as I learned as I learned to let go. So me I don't make it about me, but me learning how to like
Like let the team take things was great. Was it was a moment
And then I'll say um
Figuring out.
How to deliver
Dollars in people's pockets in a material way.
And realizing that
One solving
This is kind of anthetical to how some startups work.
Defining the problem in a very specific way where it's like one
kind of problem. So for example,
We could have decided, you know what, the problem we're gonna tackle
Is car insurance costs are too high.
We're gonna focus on that. We're gonna be really narrow and we're gonna be like okay.
Forget.
Talk about car insurers and how they can do better and we're gonna deal with regulators on that and lower costs and we're gonna
Cut a deal with some car insurance.
So we thought about doing that, like picking one or two specific problems that could put dollars in people's pockets.
What became really clear is that
Being able to scale fast meant
How quickly
could we talk to anyone and figure out what kind of money help they needed and then deliver the best version of that. So we kind of broke some of the startup y rules where we didn't get really specific. We actually got we actually leaned way back.
And so we have
bunch of partners now and we think a lot about like
How do we provide
An individual person with the
Most
Help they can that does two things.
immediately add some value, whether that's a dollar in your pocket or information you really needed.
And then also
Гимн чанс.
T.
To influence what happens.
In the economy more broadly.
What's an example of a partnership that gives you additional capacity so you can scale the impact you have for your members?
You know, here's a great example.
There's an app.
Called upside.
Upside is an app you can download it to your phone.
And you buy gas at a p gas station.
And upside will give you a discount.
Per gallon.
If you do it and use the code Work Money, you get an extra discount. And so I've saved myself twenty five cents a gallon in some places.
The upside's not perfect.
They track your data.
You know, and also they uh it's not the best deal in every single market, but it's like a way.
That somebody who's really thinking about gas.
can like save a little bit of the pump right now.
And it's a it's a good example because we look for partnerships that are gonna add value.
But we're very eyes wide open about it, you know, there's very few perfect things out there in the world.
And I really like upside personally, and I like having cheaper gas, especially in this economy where gas is off the chain.
And I think, you know, a lot of us can use a little bit of breathing room. And so one of the things that Work Money does is we look for the highest, the best possible partner.
And then we're we're very eyes wide open about it. We say, Okay, here you go, you can sign up for it.
It might not be perfect for you, but here's a way in which you can use it and here's how it does better for you and for your family. Right. So you don't have to develop the expertise yourself. You don't develop the service yourself. You really are almost really to your ARP point, you're a marketplace for them to choose options that might work for them in some cases. That's right. And and mostly what we do. So we have
Those are a bunch of different options. U mostly what we do right now.
Is we're looking at the economy, we're we're really understanding where prices are at, we're understanding where things are going, and we give people a heads up. So for example, we read every word in the new tax bill, and we said, Okay, y'all, here's what the tax bill means, here are the tax credits you should look out for, here's what you should be mindful of, here's the benefit of this.
Here's where it's not gonna do you as much good. And so we really help people parse
what's happening in policy and in the economy. And then we also have the coupons, the discounts, the partnerships. It's really a full stack thing. Money's individual. Make your good choices, do what you can with it. Everyone should you know play the cards you're dealt. And there are things we can do.
That improve the odds.
That we can do better.
How do you think about the political power
Uh
the middle class of paycheck to paycheck voters of the kind of the core of the work money community in this moment. Are these two examples you've offered a representation of where you can go?
I think he yes, but
I am
Very
Very clear.
That if politicians could solve the problems
of the American economy, they would have
So I do not look to politics to fix anything.
Politics is like
An outcome.
You know, and I don't really
think much about left or right. I think a lot about right and wrong.
Politics is an outcome, but politics is also the process by which we have policy. So that tax bill that you referenced exists because a bunch of politicians
passed a law that the president signed and there were a lot of big money interests trying to influence the fine print of that bill.
That's right.
That's right. So when I say politics is an outcome, I mean the decisions that get made
are the end result of a lot of stuff that happens. And so when I think about work money, I think about work money having power in five ways.
I think about market power.
That's like get together, bargain for cheaper stuff. I wanna get so big we can bargain around healthcare costs. It does not seem impossible.
There's a bunch of things like that that we could bargain for cheaper on.
I also think a lot about
Constituent power.
Right, like
Everybody together.
Tell him.
politicians and regulators and you know elected leaders of both parties.
Here's our expectation.
You g have this job'cause we put you in it.
And your job is to represent all of us. And what we want from you is this and this. So I'm a very big fan of working to middle class people, really flexing their power.
at the constituent level.
I also think a lot about audience power.
You know, like how do we
decide what we listen to and what we make for ourselves. And so Work Money does a lot of that, like as part of what I talk about, we
make content or we send out messaging around like here's what this economic thing means for your wallet. So how do we
Know who to trust and who to follow. How do we make our own content?
I also think a lot about
uh entrepreneurial power and ideas.
And
How do we make our own businesses? How do we launch our own
stuff that makes life better for us. And so we have a it's not official yet.
But
Breaking news. Breaking news. We're launching a bill negotiation service.
It's called Money Finder.
Moneyfinder.com. Will this work with my health insurance company or my healthcare providers? Not yet. That is on deck. But right now we can negotiate to lower anybody's
Cable, Internet.
uh and cell phone bill.
Well.
And so you go to it and upload a bill.
We analyze it.
And then our negotiators get to work and
We've saved
So far, an average of four hundred bucks.
A pop.
Which is a lot of money. So I upload my Verizon bill
You all come back and say, Yeah, we think we can do better than this. What am I paying for this? So you were paying
A maximum of seventy five dollars, but you only pay if we save you money. I'm basically gonna give you a commission.
on what you can save me. And I say, Great, I'll make the deal, go ahead.
You go off and you negotiate between
Right. So we we rise or fall together.
But most people have saved four hundred bucks or more.
There's other bill negotiation services out there. We wanted to make one that everyone can trust. This is nonprofit backed.
We're not doing anything except literally trying to put money in people's pockets. And this is the first stage. I want to add a bunch more to it. I want to add
healthcare bills, I want to add health insurance bills. I want to
Add car insurance and home insurance
Tons of different things we could do once we get the negotiation team built out. And so right now we're starting with cable stuff on the internet. People should get while the getting's good.
Well, I mean, I think there's huge value here, not just in the actual dollars, but in the time and the exasperation cost of it. I mean, you know, I'm a lawyer by training. I've been a professional for a lot of years at this at this point.
And uh, you know, several years ago, I I was negotiating four months over a five figure healthcare bill that like absolutely should been covered by insurance.
And granted, I didn't have the benefit of of Claud or Gemini or whatever to go to to coach me through it, but I I had the internet.
And it it took me forever.
And so to to say like I'm happy to give up a portion of what I get back if you'cause you have the pattern recognition then, you know what the trigger words are gonna be, et cetera.
I mean, this is real benefit for people.
Before we close, I want to come back to the book for a moment. CJ, what is one of the biggest pieces of advice that proliferates through the internet?
That is just really bad advice when it comes to personal finance.
I'm torn.
Give us two.
Okay. Okay. It okay.
The first is anyone
That makes you feel like crap about yourself or your choices.
Any advice that makes you feel bad about yourself.
Any shame
Based money advice.
Just walk away.
And and look, that's not just a moral thing, although it aggravates me morally. It's also
Short termism.
It won't actually fix the habits.
Friend used to say, he was a baseball player, he used to say there's always a
Guy eating a hot dog in the fourth row yelling at you to hit the ball better.
And it turns out that doesn't actually work to help people hit the ball better, you know?
And so the first thing is just
those shame messages, it can be really tempting. We have a lot of
Training to listen to them.
Do what you can to ignore those people.
I don't know who hurt them, but
That's a them problem. It's a them problem.
And the second is
Please.
Max out your tax advantage retirement accounts.
Before you go throwing money.
into some other investment.
There is
Barry
Little.
The everyday person can do that's gonna make them more money.
Than just maxing out.
Their tax advantage retirement accounts.
That's a four one K, that's a four three B, that's an IRA.
Read the book, you can learn about Roth versus traditional. You can make your own choices.
But

Cowboy investment culture right now. Is it crypto? Is it housing and
Should I be in which how do I
And look.
No shade.
My husband loves that stuff. He is good at it. He puts a lot of time into learning about crypto he's a crypto person and
figuring out how to maneuver inside the markets and
I ain't got time for that.
And also
It takes a level of skill and it takes a level of knowledge in the industry that most people don't have.
So the one piece of advice I wish everyone could hear me say.
Is it's not
Complicated.
Get yourself a thousand dollar emergency fund.
Pay off any
credit card debt you have, you will not
Invest in things that will make you more than your credit cards are costing you.
After you have your credit cards, you want to save up three to six months worth of expenses.
And then you're into investment and retirement.
It's not that hard. The math is pretty clear on it.
So the third thing I would say is this.
Nobody gets to tell you what matters.
No one tells you what matters about your money.
No one should tell you, you know, you're only successful if you buy a house, have a kid, one point two kids, whatever that is. Like the the reason I called the book The Joy of Money is because
But
Joy is what the money is for.
And whatever that is for you.
You know, maybe it's being a homeowner, maybe it's not. Maybe it's something entirely different, and you can build wealth by investing.
Just don't let other people tell you how you're supposed to do money.
Like you get to decide.
Don't give that power up to somebody else.
There's less joy in it.
The book that I have most recommended and reread on personal finance is The Psychology of Money. Oh yeah, Morgan Hasle. He's great.
The joy of money.
is a phenomenal companion.
to Morgan's book and they really should be read together.
I'm
So excited for people to discover this. CJ, thank you for being on Masters of Scale.
Thanks, Jeff, I really appreciate the chance.
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