I haven’t had any coffee yet so that
boots are going to have to do all the
work for me I’m Lillian I’ve had a lot
of jobs a lot of jobs I’ve actually had
more jobs than years I’ve been alive and
my jobs have been so varied that you
actually need a transit map to navigate
them so I’ve done a lot of things I’ve
run the second largest zine library in
the world I’ve worked on a presidential
campaign I’ve helped teenage mothers
gain custody of their children back
after incarceration and I’ve taught a
heck of a lot of people how to manage
their student loans using cats now I’ve
always really kind of struggled to
describe my work as you may imagine I
kind of have stumbled on the term cat
economist which my mother saw a poster
of me described as a cat economist and
immediately texted me and said you need
to tell them to change that that’s not a
real thing what is a cat economist
anyway no one will take you seriously
and I was like mom but you don’t take me
seriously anyway
I wear I wear Bowie costumes and winged
boots
I’m obviously exactly what you expect
someone to teach personal finance to be
dressed as I think this is what
everybody wears on Wall Street I’m
pretty sure so I’ve always struggled to
describe my work especially in those
kind of situations where you only have a
couple seconds to explain yourself like
you know you meet a stranger on an
airplane or at a hotel bar or when going
through Russian immigration and there
it’s really hard to look a stranger in
the eyes and go I make cat books about
personal finance but here’s the thing it
works
personal finance is actually pretty
effective and I got into this whole
personal finance thing completely
accidentally and when I first started
teaching it you know I thought oh I’m
just gonna show everyone compound
interest charts and they’ll immediately
rush out and start saving for retirement
it doesn’t work that way by the way no
amount of compound interest charts
compels people to save for retirement
and I I realized it most of money it’s
about 95 percent emotional and only
about 5% actual math and people are so
stressed out and have so many things
built up inside them they tell themself
they’re bad with money before you even
walk in the room and I kind of stumbled
on to this perfect formula which is
simple it’s just add more cats and it’s
I know that you’re like oh my gosh of
course she’s telling me to add more cats
she’s in a pretty ridiculous outfit this
is quite normal for me just so you know
but the thing that I kind of discovered
is that people have a very specific idea
of what a personal finance workshop is
going to be like they expect something
very specific when they walk in they
kind of have a mental image of what
they’re gonna do and they’ve already
shut down they already kind of expect to
fall asleep there there’s only so many
ways you can describe exchange-traded
funds without your audience completely
falling asleep and they there’s
something that happens when you step
back and you say hey let’s look at a
different way to do this maybe a
different way to do this they kind of
completely changed their ideas of what
they expect so when I first started
doing this I thought I would just show
people compound interest charts
immediate start saving for retirement oh
I see someone back there they’re like oh
my gosh are you gonna show a compound
interest chart I was promised kitties
it’s okay I won’t but once I started
teaching this I
realized that there was something that I
could do to kind of shift that
expectation of what they expected in a
personal finance workshop I started
dressing up in Bowie costumes and so I
live the kind of life where I just have
like 10 Bowie costumes hanging in my
closet we don’t have time to get into
why I’ll just let you draw your own
conclusions but it turns out when you
walk into a personal finance workshop in
8-inch platform heels and glitter
spandex people’s ideas of what was gonna
happen in that room are completely
broken and it turns out that then once
you put that all aside whatever stuff
they have built up about money whatever
they think they’re in for and they’re
like oh my gosh what is she wearing
suddenly something different happens you
can actually start to get to work on the
real stuff they toss aside all of that
emotional baggage they had built up
about money and then you can get to the
real world which I know I’m wearing a
silly outfit I know I have wings on my
feet but there is something that happens
when you break down people’s
preconceived notions of what they’re
going to expect in a workshop and it
really helps and I know you’re like oh
my gosh of course she’s a millennial
there’s a new hit piece on my generation
every week
did you know that we’re destroying bars
of soap we’ve we’ve killed bars of soap
breakfast cereal Applebee’s cable TV I’m
amazed at all the things I managed to
kill in my spare time but I so it’s easy
to write it off as oh that’s just a
millennial they’re not serious about
anything except apparently killing
breakfast cereal we’re very serious
about that but there’s one thing that
Millennials are really really good at
and it’s not just adding cats to things
it’s taking something really boring and
rebranding it and let’s just think about
this what are Millennials so good at
rebranding we managed to take smashed
fruit on dry toast and rebrand it into a
so let’s think about other things that
we could rebrand well let’s look at a
typical diversification worksheet this
is from a actual curriculum that says
fun beginner diversification worksheet
this is what happens to most of my
students when they see that kind of
diversification worksheet let’s try to
apply this simple formula of adding more
cats well you have two different
investment vehicles you have a
traditional retirement plan of 401k box
it’s a box because it kind of closes up
it’s actually hard to get to after
retirement age once you put something in
it
or we have our Roth basket which is a
little more open friendly it’s easier to
get your contributions out before
retirement age and in those we need to
put our actual investments so let’s
think of investments as some cat toys we
have some sparkly balls some dangling
sticks a bell ball so my cat absolutely
loves sparkly balls they’re her favorite
she loves to carry them around the
apartment at 2:00 in the morning
now Anxi makes this very cute meow she
prefers to do it whenever I want to be
asleep of course and she likes to drown
them in the water bowl I don’t know why
so Dora tried to build a portfolio her
Roth basket and she filled it with
sparkly balls but this is pretty risky
portfolio because what happens if we
invent a better sparkly or ball where we
discover sparkly balls cause cancer or
you know something happens to the supply
chain for the tiny little glitter pieces
that end up all over my house this is an
undefined and risky portfolio so let’s
have Dora look into making a more
diversified portfolio
she’s balanced her fund she has a bunch
of different toys in her Roth basket now
I said I wasn’t going to show you any
compound interest charts but did you
just retain diversification a lot better
from that than you did from that first
slide
[Applause]
here’s the thing about this the idea of
adding more cats it’s easy to write it
off as sort of a millennial flair but
it’s really effective if you take
something that people think they need to
be doing and know they should probably
learn and combined it with whatever they
do when they’re avoiding doing that
video games with learning a foreign
language cats with managing budgets or
you’re you know trying to figure out
perhaps what happens when you have dogs
on the Supreme Court John Oliver took
something incredibly boring which is
Supreme Court deliberations and figured
out how to make them more in through it
interesting
that’s Justice Ginsburg in case you
couldn’t tell there’s a lot to be said
for the power of just taking something
simple and challenging and figuring out
what that fun element is so voter drives
with costumes or improving outcomes in
low-income health communities with more
puppies I’m not saying that felines have
to be your solution but I’m saying
there’s a relatively simple formula you
take some cats you add them you shake it
with your boring activity maybe don’t
shake them they might scratch you and
there you go you have better learning
outcomes so I want to leave you with
this idea which is that if you have
something hard or emotional that you
need to teach I want you to take a step
back and look for where are the cats what are your cat’s thank you
boots are going to have to do all the
work for me I’m Lillian I’ve had a lot
of jobs a lot of jobs I’ve actually had
more jobs than years I’ve been alive and
my jobs have been so varied that you
actually need a transit map to navigate
them so I’ve done a lot of things I’ve
run the second largest zine library in
the world I’ve worked on a presidential
campaign I’ve helped teenage mothers
gain custody of their children back
after incarceration and I’ve taught a
heck of a lot of people how to manage
their student loans using cats now I’ve
always really kind of struggled to
describe my work as you may imagine I
kind of have stumbled on the term cat
economist which my mother saw a poster
of me described as a cat economist and
immediately texted me and said you need
to tell them to change that that’s not a
real thing what is a cat economist
anyway no one will take you seriously
and I was like mom but you don’t take me
seriously anyway
I wear I wear Bowie costumes and winged
boots
I’m obviously exactly what you expect
someone to teach personal finance to be
dressed as I think this is what
everybody wears on Wall Street I’m
pretty sure so I’ve always struggled to
describe my work especially in those
kind of situations where you only have a
couple seconds to explain yourself like
you know you meet a stranger on an
airplane or at a hotel bar or when going
through Russian immigration and there
it’s really hard to look a stranger in
the eyes and go I make cat books about
personal finance but here’s the thing it
works
personal finance is actually pretty
effective and I got into this whole
personal finance thing completely
accidentally and when I first started
teaching it you know I thought oh I’m
just gonna show everyone compound
interest charts and they’ll immediately
rush out and start saving for retirement
it doesn’t work that way by the way no
amount of compound interest charts
compels people to save for retirement
and I I realized it most of money it’s
about 95 percent emotional and only
about 5% actual math and people are so
stressed out and have so many things
built up inside them they tell themself
they’re bad with money before you even
walk in the room and I kind of stumbled
on to this perfect formula which is
simple it’s just add more cats and it’s
I know that you’re like oh my gosh of
course she’s telling me to add more cats
she’s in a pretty ridiculous outfit this
is quite normal for me just so you know
but the thing that I kind of discovered
is that people have a very specific idea
of what a personal finance workshop is
going to be like they expect something
very specific when they walk in they
kind of have a mental image of what
they’re gonna do and they’ve already
shut down they already kind of expect to
fall asleep there there’s only so many
ways you can describe exchange-traded
funds without your audience completely
falling asleep and they there’s
something that happens when you step
back and you say hey let’s look at a
different way to do this maybe a
different way to do this they kind of
completely changed their ideas of what
they expect so when I first started
doing this I thought I would just show
people compound interest charts
immediate start saving for retirement oh
I see someone back there they’re like oh
my gosh are you gonna show a compound
interest chart I was promised kitties
it’s okay I won’t but once I started
teaching this I
realized that there was something that I
could do to kind of shift that
expectation of what they expected in a
personal finance workshop I started
dressing up in Bowie costumes and so I
live the kind of life where I just have
like 10 Bowie costumes hanging in my
closet we don’t have time to get into
why I’ll just let you draw your own
conclusions but it turns out when you
walk into a personal finance workshop in
8-inch platform heels and glitter
spandex people’s ideas of what was gonna
happen in that room are completely
broken and it turns out that then once
you put that all aside whatever stuff
they have built up about money whatever
they think they’re in for and they’re
like oh my gosh what is she wearing
suddenly something different happens you
can actually start to get to work on the
real stuff they toss aside all of that
emotional baggage they had built up
about money and then you can get to the
real world which I know I’m wearing a
silly outfit I know I have wings on my
feet but there is something that happens
when you break down people’s
preconceived notions of what they’re
going to expect in a workshop and it
really helps and I know you’re like oh
my gosh of course she’s a millennial
there’s a new hit piece on my generation
every week
did you know that we’re destroying bars
of soap we’ve we’ve killed bars of soap
breakfast cereal Applebee’s cable TV I’m
amazed at all the things I managed to
kill in my spare time but I so it’s easy
to write it off as oh that’s just a
millennial they’re not serious about
anything except apparently killing
breakfast cereal we’re very serious
about that but there’s one thing that
Millennials are really really good at
and it’s not just adding cats to things
it’s taking something really boring and
rebranding it and let’s just think about
this what are Millennials so good at
rebranding we managed to take smashed
fruit on dry toast and rebrand it into a
so let’s think about other things that
we could rebrand well let’s look at a
typical diversification worksheet this
is from a actual curriculum that says
fun beginner diversification worksheet
this is what happens to most of my
students when they see that kind of
diversification worksheet let’s try to
apply this simple formula of adding more
cats well you have two different
investment vehicles you have a
traditional retirement plan of 401k box
it’s a box because it kind of closes up
it’s actually hard to get to after
retirement age once you put something in
it
or we have our Roth basket which is a
little more open friendly it’s easier to
get your contributions out before
retirement age and in those we need to
put our actual investments so let’s
think of investments as some cat toys we
have some sparkly balls some dangling
sticks a bell ball so my cat absolutely
loves sparkly balls they’re her favorite
she loves to carry them around the
apartment at 2:00 in the morning
now Anxi makes this very cute meow she
prefers to do it whenever I want to be
asleep of course and she likes to drown
them in the water bowl I don’t know why
so Dora tried to build a portfolio her
Roth basket and she filled it with
sparkly balls but this is pretty risky
portfolio because what happens if we
invent a better sparkly or ball where we
discover sparkly balls cause cancer or
you know something happens to the supply
chain for the tiny little glitter pieces
that end up all over my house this is an
undefined and risky portfolio so let’s
have Dora look into making a more
diversified portfolio
she’s balanced her fund she has a bunch
of different toys in her Roth basket now
I said I wasn’t going to show you any
compound interest charts but did you
just retain diversification a lot better
from that than you did from that first
slide
[Applause]
here’s the thing about this the idea of
adding more cats it’s easy to write it
off as sort of a millennial flair but
it’s really effective if you take
something that people think they need to
be doing and know they should probably
learn and combined it with whatever they
do when they’re avoiding doing that
video games with learning a foreign
language cats with managing budgets or
you’re you know trying to figure out
perhaps what happens when you have dogs
on the Supreme Court John Oliver took
something incredibly boring which is
Supreme Court deliberations and figured
out how to make them more in through it
interesting
that’s Justice Ginsburg in case you
couldn’t tell there’s a lot to be said
for the power of just taking something
simple and challenging and figuring out
what that fun element is so voter drives
with costumes or improving outcomes in
low-income health communities with more
puppies I’m not saying that felines have
to be your solution but I’m saying
there’s a relatively simple formula you
take some cats you add them you shake it
with your boring activity maybe don’t
shake them they might scratch you and
there you go you have better learning
outcomes so I want to leave you with
this idea which is that if you have
something hard or emotional that you
need to teach I want you to take a step
back and look for where are the cats what are your cat’s thank you
Please follow and like us: