Becca:
[1:33] I’m Becca.

Maggie:
[1:33] I’m Maggie.

Taylor:
[1:33] Taylor.

Jewels:
[1:33] I’m Jewels.

Loren:
[1:33] I’m Loren, again.

Maggie:
[1:39] Should we do an introduction of Loren?

Taylor:
[1:40] Ah sure yeah. Lauren is going to be talking to us today about buying her first home. We both just bought our first homes recently and she moved to Austin finally, super excited that she’s here and she’s also a super cool space journalist and writing a book about some stuff that we’ll get into maybe a little bit? Some female astronaut stuff. I don’t know what I can say, I don’t know what I can say.

Jewels:
[2:06] Top secret.

Loren:
[2:07] It’s not top secret. The deal is out there. It’s public. We can talk about it.

Taylor:
[2:09] Okay, okay cool. She’s writing a book about female astronauts. Uh, journalists for space. Cool space stuff. This is failing. I’m sorry.

Becca:
[2:20] I love the title. Space journalist.

Loren:
[2:23] Yeah.

Taylor:
[2:23] Space journalist extraordinaire. And she knows like three of the four billionaires, so…

Becca:
[2:32] What does that mean?

Jewels:
[2:32] She’s met them in person.

Loren:
[2:32] Three of the four. There’s only four.

Taylor:
[2:37] We were talking the other day about like all the billionaires and she was like I think I’ve met like three of the four.

Loren:
[2:47] There’s more than four billionaires. All right.

Taylor:
[2:47] No there’s not.

Becca:
[2:51] So we have some questions Loren that we ask all of our guests.

Maggie:
[2:55] Yeah.

Becca:
[2:56] Um so that’s uh we were gonna just like, we’re all together going to dive in in sort of a baptismal sort of way into this first guest appearance on Vaginance. Um, so our very first question, because this is a financial podcast. You might have noticed that from our name. Um, tell us about a financial mistake that you’ve made.

Loren:
[3:24] Okay, so when I was thinking about this, I actually came up with two. The first one was college, but it’s technically not my financial mistake because my parents paid for it. So I don’t know if that counts. So then I was talking with my husband and we both agreed that our wedding…

Becca:
[3:50] Really? Because that was recent.

Loren:
[3:54] I mean is it, can you consider a mistake when you loved it? Like we loved every aspect of our wedding, truly loved getting married and having all of our people in one place, but the amount of money we spent on that, we could have easily bought a second home.

Taylor:
[3:54] Like we loved every aspect of our wedding, truly loved getting married and having all of our place amount of money we spent.

Becca:
[4:06] Yeah. Do you want to share how much it costs or like a ballpark?

Loren:
[4:09] I do not. Absolutely enough for a down payment. And it got to a point where we just stopped kind of recording how much it costs because my father gave us an amount of money. Chris’s parents gave us an amount of money and then at some point their money stopped and we’re like, okay, well we have to get more of these things, like there’s more of these layers that were missing. So then we just started putting in our own money and so I can’t even tell you how much it costs because at some point we just stopped recording it. It was really just like, okay, pay for this here, pay for that here. And I’m sure if someone actually did the math and we went back and looked through, it would be really devastating to see that number.

Maggie:
[4:54] If could you go back and redo it with the knowledge you have now, would you keep it the same?

Loren:
[4:57] Um, I would still have the wedding, however, I would stress about so much less, because there were certain things where I, there’s a thing I coined in my head called wedding pressure where you think that you have to have the photo booth or you have to have, you know, the cute placement cards because all the blogs that you’ve read have been like, look at these really innovative ways to get people from their seats to the dance floor or whatever and you’re just like, why don’t I have that? But it’s all a trick to just get you to spend more money. And I just wish, there were so many things I just didn’t need to stress out about. But I was getting to wedding day and I was like, we don’t have enough like gimmicks, you know, and I just ended up spending like, you know, 50 bucks here and there and I’m sure it wound up to be a very costly wedding.

Taylor:
[5:57] Did you notice that you, it took you a while to pay off your credit card after that?

Loren:
[5:57] Oh yeah, absolutely. And actually he did say it, I hope none of my wedding guests are listening, but a lot of the gifts that we got went to paying off the wedding because you know, most people give you money now. And actually that made me feel good. It was like, okay now we can like move on and feel good about the wedding, but their gifts went to paying off our debts mostly and having a good time on our honeymoon basically.

Maggie:
[6:29] I kind of assumed that when I give cash at a wedding as a gift that it’s probably paying for the wedding.

Loren:
[6:29] Yeah, you’re almost paying for your meal, like you’re essentially paying for your meal when you come and you give your gift, you know?

Taylor:
[6:40] Yeah, that’s good.

Maggie:
[6:43] I think that’s a really good insight for a lot of people though, because there’s a lot of social pressure to like have a nice fancy wedding with all the fancy things.

Becca:
[6:54] Okay, so that kind of, especially the way you said, like morally it makes you think about it. So what is your relationship with money and what has it been like historically over your lifetime?

Loren:
[7:06] So historically I just never really understood it very well. Um I think growing up, the way that we did, you know, it’s not that I didn’t work hard, but my parents were just like okay, if you work hard, you know, we will fund things for you and I continued to work hard when I got to college and they continued to fund that, and so when I was on my own, I just assumed that money would be there, you know, and I think logically I knew that wasn’t the case, but you know, I just thought, oh, if you work hard, you’ll get money and you’ll be fine and you can pay for all the things that you want.

Taylor:
[7:47] Because that’s the fucking narrative we were fed, that’s literally what we thought is working hard, equates to money. And we’ve talked about this in the podcast, it fucking doesn’t always.

Loren:
[7:50] Absolutely. So when I got my first job, I was like, I had no concept of just how low of a salary I was making, and also I was in New York, the most expensive city of all time and so I just thought, oh this is enough to fund my lifestyle. But I had no concept of how much money I actually needed, also I didn’t understand just how many taxes were taken out of my paycheck. So I thought I had an understanding of what I was making, but I really didn’t. And then also I had sold my car that I had driven here in Austin to help kind of serve as a cushion in New York and that made me feel as if I had money. But then what I watched was it slowly deplete from my bank account over time because I was like, oh I’ll book a trip to Los Angeles because I want to go see my friends there and I thought that I could do that no problem. But I probably, it’s probably in the first few years that all that money kind of like went away and I watched it transition from money in my bank account to debt on my credit card.

Taylor:
[9:07] That I think, that story is so many people’s stories, including mine, like we literally, me and Loren both moved from Austin to New York, we got pretty decent jobs, that we were like living large, like having tons of fun and both just like depleted our savings.

Loren:
[9:23] And I think also I kind of had this mindset of like I’m unwilling to compromise, like I want to go have fun, I’m in New York, I’m young and so I just went out and didn’t really think of the consequences of it, and then about five years later I kind of got confronted with it and I’m like, oh now I realize I could have had more money by being smart about it, but instead when you’re young, you’re just more concerned about the immediate effects of your life and less about the long term implications of what you’re doing.

Maggie:
[9:58] So at some point, yeah, it must have changed because you bought a house, you had a wedding and all that. So is that the trigger point? Like looking at credit card debt and being like, oh shit?

Loren:
[10:06] Yes, the credit card debt was probably the biggest wake up call and I mean it sounds so silly, I’m not an idiot, but I just couldn’t fathom why it wasn’t going away or why I couldn’t pay it off and it really just took having a large number on that card to be like, oh,
you have to pay it off every month, you know? Yeah.

Taylor:
[10:31] No, that is exactly what happened to me exactly, I was like, wait, what’s interest, what are they doing every month?

Loren:
[10:34] Yeah and right but now now my relationship with money is very micromanaged, so I, people laugh at me but I sign into my bank account every single day and I check on how things are going. I just want to know where we stand and I I do all the finances for the house. I map out how much Chris is gonna put in, how much I’m going to put in, how much we are able to spend that month, you know what we can afford, things like that and if I notice things are getting too high on the credit card… but the credit card I feel, so for a while I spent most of my time just paying off this one credit card I’d opened when I moved to New York. It was so bad that I only just started, I only paid it off like maybe a year or two ago just because it was, it was just sitting there, And then I would pay it off over time like $200 there, $200 there, you know, because I didn’t have a lot to put on it. Um, so then we opened a new joint credit card together and, that’s the one I’ve been really kind of like focused on and I make sure that we just don’t get too high on it because I don’t want to get into that situation again. We’ll never get into that situation again. But I have, you know PTSD from the previous credit card that I just don’t want to put too much on it because I don’t want to get into that position where we don’t pay it off in its entirety each month.

Maggie:
[12:06] You said people like make fun of you or laugh at you for checking your bank account regularly, but you’re preaching to the financial choir here.

Loren:
[12:11] Yeah, I feel like I’m among my people here.

Maggie:
[12:14] Yeah, I was like, I’m every day, and I know Julie has got some spreadsheets, so.

Loren:
[12:18] Yeah, I’m sure.

Becca:
[12:21] Get a dopamine hit every time I opened my Mint account.

Becca:
[12:26] Okay. Actually, I feel like all of that kind of cycles well into…. the question that I think is really helpful. What is something that you wish that someone, like literally anyone had told you years before you learned it?

Loren:
[12:40] Yeah, I don’t think this one counts because I was told it, but I just yeah, so definitely with the credit card minimums and paying off your bill every month, I just…. I think I had to live it in order to fully understand it. My parents told me pay it off every month or you’ll get interest on it and the concept of interest just really did not penetrate my like 19 year old brain, you know?

Taylor:
[13:11] And we just assumed it would be fine, right, like it’s going to be fine, Everything works out all the time for us.

Loren:
[13:15] And I think also with us, yeah, we didn’t ever suffer any consequences when we were children of, you know, not paying off. Well we never really had any relationship with money. Maybe that’s a fair thing to say. I didn’t really have a relationship with money until I was on my own and had to kind of, you know, figure out my financials for myself. It was more of just like those things got taken care of and I feel really privileged and blessed about that. But it also just set me up for failure when I first was on my own out in the world. And yeah, I mean I was told pay off your credit card bill every month and yet I’ve, I signed into my bank account and it said minimum payment due and of course that’s like this shining beacon of oh, look how beautiful it’s only 30 bucks.

Taylor:
[14:12] And they design it that way.

Loren:
[14:12] I know, I know exactly how it works now, but when you’re 22 you think, oh reprieve from all of my debt and in reality you’re just racking up more and more debt. So yeah, I don’t know. I guess it’s not fair to say that I wish someone had told me because I was told but at the same time I just don’t think it would have penetrated unless it happened to me.

Taylor:
[14:26] But this is the thing, it’s like being told that there’s a war going on on the other side of the world that has, that doesn’t affect you and has nothing to do with you. And then you’re expected to have some kind of relationship with that knowledge. You know, I mean you’re expected to do something with that knowledge with, with money. We were told these things, I was told the same thing, you know, my parents said very similar things growing up, but we didn’t understand how the world worked. It’s not like you’re taught in school, hey, this is how credit cards work. This is how jobs situations work. This is like what you’re going to encounter in life. Like they don’t set you up to learn those things so there’s no…

Loren:
[15:15] Absolutely. It’s a matter, it’s like when you try to learn a language and, you can be taught the language, but then you can go to France and immerse yourself in French and like that’s going to, that’s going to be the more effective tool for learning how to speak that language than actually being taught in a classroom.

Jewels:
[15:33] And there’s going to be a lot of wake up calls. Like oh, they don’t use formal grammar the same way.

Taylor:
[15:38] Exactly. And tone, tone is different. You have to learn how to read people’s tone and inflections and you don’t, that’s the same with money. You don’t learn any of that when you’re just told from a distance like hey, these things are going to happen, but you have no real life, you know, way to apply them.

Becca:
[15:55] Also at least when you go to French class in high school, you like have to sit there for a number of hours.Versus like when you’re told about finances, you’re told offhand one or two lessons once or twice and then, and then you have a credit card all of a sudden. And they’re like, yeah, it’s like someone tells you how to say bonjour and then they send you to France.

Taylor:
[16:12] Yeah, this is how you say hello.

Becca:
[16:18] Yeah. And they’re like we told you.

Taylor:
[16:23] That’s actually the perfect analogy. We taught you a word.

Jewels:
[16:35] There was no money class every day of the week.

Loren:
[16:43] I think we had we had one semester of economics I think is what all I took and that was as close as I got to any kind of… But that doesn’t count because it’s about trends like macro and micro trends, it’s not about personal finance, you know.

Becca:
[16:52] Um so yeah, we got to hear some, we got to hear some sex stuff. Tell us about like an embarrassing or just like a really notable or horrifying dating experience that you’ve had.

Loren:
[17:03] Um, let me think about that. There’s a few, I think the weirdest one was here in Austin.

Becca:
[17:07] Like before you moved to New York?

Loren:
[17:08] Yeah. Before I moved to New York.

Taylor:
[17:19] No while she’s here married.

Loren:
[17:20] Yeah. Yeah, while I’m here married.

Becca:
[17:21] I would have learned a lot.

[17:22] I was talking to this guy, we were messaging on Facebook, that was how long ago this relationship started, and I had just broken up with my high school boyfriend and so you know, he had already gotten together with somebody else and so I was like ready to also date again. You know, I was like I had to show that I was yeah, I couldn’t be content to lose this dating war.

Becca:
[17:50] Viable.

Loren:
[17:56] And so I had met this guy through a mutual friend and we were messaging on facebook for a while and texting. And so I think it happened while I was on spring break, and so when we came back we made a date to go see a movie and then after the movie we went to Kirby Lane to get um you know like pancakes, I think of that French toast all the time. It’s probably how I got the freshman 15, I was just eating pancakes or a French toast all the time. Um, so it’s 2:00 AM, go to east my French toast, I’m ready, I’ve put the syrup on it and he’s like what are you doing? And I was like, about to eat and, he takes my hand and we begin to pray.

Taylor:
[18:46] Curveball. I really didn’t see it going there. I don’t know what’s going to happen.

Maggie:
[18:46] Oh yeah, I also did not know that’s where it was going.

Becca:
[18:47] Oh my God, I love that!

Loren:
[18:52] Yeah and so I was like oh no, oh no, and look nothing against people who thank the Lord before they eat, but it was not something I was expecting it 2AM in the morning at Kirby Lane.

Becca:
[19:09] And it doesn’t sound like it was consensual.

Loren:
[19:11] Uh no.

Taylor:
[19:19] There are like a lot of drunk 18 year olds at a 2AM Kirby Lane.

Loren:
[19:23] There were some other red flags that we were not a match either. Like he wore his cell phone on like a holster on his belt.

Maggie:
[19:34] I do that now.

Jewels:
[19:35] Can we bring that back?

Becca:
[19:39] I’m not against.

Taylor:
[19:39] No, I’m against it firmly.

Taylor:
[19:44] Exactly. You think you’re so important!

Loren:
[19:45] Absolutely. But we did not break it off at that moment. We continued dating for weeks afterward.

Taylor:
[19:49] Wow. Wait – tell us why though really?

Becca:
[19:55] Did you keep praying before meals? Did you keep praying before meals

Taylor:
[19:59] Did you just stop eating with him?

Becca:
[20:01] That’s sweet.

Loren:
[20:01] Yes. And, you know we all we all make compromises when we’re in relationships. Yeah the worst part is he broke up with me, and you know when you’re, when you want to win the post breakup battle, I was just, I was like I just need to be in this relationship to show I can get a boyfriend after my last guy. But then it was like I’m kind of glad he broke it off because this is not gonna work out.

Taylor:
[20:38] Yeah, that’s fair.

Loren:
[20:38] Yeah I guess it’s not so bad.

Jewels:
[20:41] It’s more how judgy that felt like what are you doing? You’re not about to eat that right? Without warning you that he prays before meals. Like it’s fine if you want to do that and maybe invite your date to do that, just to just be like, what are you doing? And then grab your hand and launch into it.

Loren:
[21:06] Right, right, um I have another one in New York, this isn’t really a date, but I do remember I was out at a bar, very… had a little too many glasses of whiskey and this guy shows up in front of me and he’s like, oh my God, who are you? And I was like, I don’t know who are you?

Maggie:
[21:32] I don’t know.

Jewels:
[21:33] Is this dating in New York?

Taylor:
[21:38] People are pretty forward in New York.

Becca:
[21:40] Oh my God, who are you? I don’t know, who are you?

Loren:
[21:42] Yeah, no, dating in New York is a weird thing. And he proceeded, he was like so enamored with me and proceeded to follow me around the whole night, but I was too intoxicated to really understand what was happening. I somehow gave him my number and I left to go home and he had texted me and, the next day, in the sober light of day, I was like, oh maybe I’ll give this guy a chance because I was too drunk to really understand what was going on last night. So we do the texting thing all day and I learned that he’s a musician and he plays the drums. There’s nothing wrong with that, what’s wrong with that?

Becca:
[22:15] Lots of things are wrong with that.

Loren:
[22:16] Okay, fine. So we’re texting, you know, doing the back and forth where you only talk to that person all day and then I take a nap, and I wake up to a bunch of text messages from him and the first one starts off with, so I googled you. And by this point I had started like my reporting career, so there was some information about me.

Taylor:
[22:48] Wait, he knew your last name?

Loren:
[22:51] Uh, I guess I gave it to him. Oh no, was I, was I the problem in this situation?

Taylor:
[22:53] No, you’re not the problem. I’m just saying I just don’t know if he had like found your Instagram, like if he had done some like digging?

Loren:
[22:55] I must have told I must have told him, because there’s no other way to found out about. Yeah. Anyway, he was like, I just want to talk about the juxtaposition here of you and me. Me, the hermit, the social isolationist, you, a rock star. You’re like Punky Brewster. And then, I know, and then I didn’t respond because I was asleep and then he just wrote back, fuck, I ruined everything, didn’t I? And I just woke up and I was like yeah, so weird.

Maggie:
[23:41] That’s so weird.

Becca:
[23:46] Love that.

Loren:
[23:47] But of all the people to compare me to, I just don’t think Punky Brewster is really the right fit.

Taylor:
[23:48] Sounds terrible.

Jewels:
[23:56] Uh well, this was so much fun, thank you so much.

Taylor:
[23:59] Thank you Loren, you’ve been amazing.

Loren:
[23:59] Of course.

Maggie:
[24:02] Loren, Loren, Loren, Loren. Becca you wanna wrap us out?

Taylor:
[24:03] Our best, our favorite guest.

Loren:
[24:05] The best guest this podcast has ever had.

Becca:
[24:12] I’m gonna wrap, alright, lay down the beat for me.

Maggie:
[24:20] Taylor’s got it. Taylor’s got it.

Becca:
[24:22] Thanks for listening, y’all. This is a part one of at least a two part series.

Taylor:
[24:35] It‘s like a four part.

Becca:
[24:36] Yeah. Next up, Guess the Price Space Edition. Check it out. Place a bet on who you think is going to win. It’s fun and it’s a very wild ride that is intergalactic. Then we’re going to dive into first time home buying, which is more earthbound. Incidentally.

Jewels:
[24:55] For now.

Taylor:
[24:55] Only for now.

Becca:
[24:56] For now. If you have any questions we really, really want to hear it. Please comment like, subscribe on wherever it is that you stream this, go to our website vaginance.com. Go to our Instagram @vaginancepodcast.com We really want to hear from you. Oh and you can send us a voice message and we can play your voice on our podcast. Can you imagine what that might feel like?

Maggie:
[25:25] Loren, any place that we can find you that you would like to mention?

Loren:
[25:30] Sure you can go to my Instagram, which is @grushcrush or I’m Loren Grush on Twitter, L O R E N G R U S H.

Jewels:
[25:41] What’s your website address?

Taylor:
[25:43] Coolest space journalist website.

Loren:
[25:43] lorengrush.com I won’t be producing any content because I’m writing a book, but I will soon.

Taylor:
[25:50] You can just go there to look at her hot ass face. Thank you Loren.

Becca:
[25:57] All right, thanks for joining.

Taylor:
[26:00] It’s her out music. We all have different ideas.

Jewels:
[26:09] Different decades just happened.