Money Memories and Stories with Ilona Limonta-Volkova

Ilona

I think in some ways that’s true, but also, I think it’s just a very– it’s kind of like a characteristic, like beauty, or in some ways like physical appearance, where you’re always measuring yourself against other people. And some people just don’t– it’s not comfortable always being like, “Yeah, that person has way more money than me,” or the reverse side, to suddenly realize, “Whoa, I’m actually more wealthy than that person next to me, and they don’t–” it’s an uncomfortable feeling of inequality, right? But it’s a fact of life that not everyone makes the same income, not everyone lives in the same way, and I think that’s what probably has a lot to do with it, right? And I was watching this show, and one of the women saying that growing up in the ’50s, she asked how much her dad made, and her mom was like, “Never ever ask that question. You never talk about money in this house.” And I think that for a very long time it was just, for whatever reason, a shame, like, “We don’t talk about it, we don’t compare ourselves to others like that.”
And, yeah, of course, you’re not going to just go up to someone on the street and be like, “Hey, how much money do you make?” but at the same time, you need to understand your financial position, your earning power. These are all things that affect your quality of life, right? Because what does money do? It buys you time and it gives you some kind of freedom in some ways. And so, yeah, I think that’s kind of why people don’t like talking about it. It’s because it’s awkward. It’s awkward realizing that not everyone’s on the same level, on the same page. It’s not a comfortable– there’s friction. And whenever there’s friction, we don’t want to lean into that. Who would?

Megumi

Yeah, totally. It reminds me of– I was talking about this with another guest on my show. We were talking about how even in, say, high school or college as young adults, right? You go out to brunch or dinner with your friends, and someone picks a restaurant for the group, and it’s always this awkward…maybe the richer friend in the group picked the restaurant, and no one else can really afford it. And then how do you get around that conversation? Or even something bigger like planning your college spring-break trip; it has to be within budget for everybody. And it can become this uncomfortable conversation, and you don’t want to be the person who’s– I don’t know, seems like a Debbie Downer because they say, “Well, I have a budget and all of these things are beyond my budget,” and, “I want to go, and I can go if we just tone it down a little bit,” but you don’t want to feel like you’re the person bringing the group down. Even at a young age, we’re all dealing with having these weird, complicated discussions– or not having these complicated discussions around money.

Ilona

Yeah. In some ways, it can be seen as a very tangible measure of adequacy, which it really shouldn’t be. To me, it’s like a snapshot of a point in time, but we conflate that with some kind of feeling of worthiness. And maybe that ties into it as well.

Megumi

Yeah, that’s true. There’s a documentary on Netflix called “Minimalism” that I watched recently. And one of the guys who started this new– I can’t remember what his name is, but they wrote a book about minimalism. And he used to be the person who in college always felt like, “I have to make this salary, and then I will be happy and feel successful.” And he made that salary, and he was like, “I don’t feel happy or successful.” And so then, he kept having to get to the next salary and the next salary and– I know we’re kind of veering off into money and happiness, but so many times, like you were saying, it’s almost like this status symbol, right? Like on Instagram, where it’s like, “Okay, I need to get X number of likes. I need to get this salary,” and I’m comparing myself to, “Well, so and so that I went to high school with sold his company,” and so I feel so inadequate, “What am I doing?” and you’re just comparing yourself to– and not that it doesn’t matter at all. You want to be able to live comfortably and find ways to be happy in your own life and have a quality of life and have the money that gives you time and freedom, like you’re saying, but a lot of times when it becomes competitive and shameful, then that’s counterproductive.

Ilona

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And one last thing – I see a lot of similar threads between money and things like health. I think people treat it very similarly, or in some ways, we even talk about health more than we talk about money. But I think it’s a similar– kind of like, “I don’t want to mention this because I don’t want to be seen as–” I mean, health is a little bit different because there’s very valid reasons why you don’t necessarily want to talk about your health issues, etc. The HIPAA exists for a reason. But I do see some parallels in terms of how people feel and discuss those two issues.

Megumi

Yeah. That makes sense. And I feel like, also, it could become a more positive accountability thing, right, if I’m like, “Okay, we are going to go to the gym three times a week. No matter what happens, we are going to meet at the gym and hold ourselves accountable for working out.” I feel like if it was more of that kind of approach in the positive reinforcement way of like, “Hey, what’s your budget? What’s my budget? By the end of this month, how much do we want to have added to our savings or investments,” or whatever, and having this sort of fun accountability rather than this shameful, “Ah, you lost 10 pounds and I only lost 2.”

Ilona

Yeah, that’s a really good example. I think that’s a really good example of the kind of– when I think of healthier frank conversations, that’s what I would imagine.

Megumi

So how do you feel with people talking about their money memories and talking about money? Do you hope that this will lead to helping our personal finances? Like you said, there are resources out there. Maybe people don’t seek out those resources, and there are some people who, like you, work in finance but just don’t care. They understand the content but don’t do it. What’s your goal with Money Memories? Do you think this will help people sort of realize their inner personal finance warrior?

Ilona

Yeah. I have, I guess, two goals. The first is I really want the show to be like a light. I want it to spark the light in someone because I think the first step is to literally, like, “Do you know your password to your retirement account?” [laughter] Because if you don’t know that, we don’t have a beginning. My mom is always like, “Help me with my–” I’m like, “Okay. What’s your password?”
“I don’t know.”
I’m like, “I’m not talking to you until you figure out your login. Stop it.”
And so, I really hope that in hearing these conversations in such a down-to-earth way, where we’re not– I talked to a drag queen about how you measure the value of self-expression. Right? I’m talking to people who started with start-ups in South Africa and what it meant to grow up in inequality. And I’m talking to people who are in Kansas. I hope that in bringing things in kind of a down-to-earth way, people are like, “Oh yeah. This person did this, this, and this, and, oh yeah, and they had that experience with it. All right. I can do this now, too.” So, I really, in one way, hope this sparks a light. It’s just like that moment where you think and you realize, “I got this. Okay. I want to start. This is just another part of my day and another part of my life.” And it’s not this ivory tower situation where it’s so insurmountable. That my first kind of goal.

(cont.)

And my second goal is I would love to be able to create more meaningful content that shines a light on the ways that money and finances permeate through all aspects of society. I would love to create a John Oliver type show where you just discuss the week in finance. Because I think a lot of people’s gripes about society and things like that, actually, is always: follow the money. And I would love to be able to shine a light on ways that money impacts us negatively and positively, and how a lot of our issues can be resolved by thinking more critically about how we’re allocating money and resources, and how people empower and manipulate that as well. So that’s like kind of veering away from Money Memories, but. I don’t know. That’s why I studied economics. I was like, it’s so fundamental. Money really controls everything in this world, right? And so, I would love to be able to kind of map that out more for people and to really shine a light on things like that, but. With Money Memories, I would hope just people listening to the show realize like, “Oh, this is not that intimidating, and that person kind of sounds like me. And maybe today, I will just Google what the savings accounts rates are right now,” or something like that, and just take that first step to improving your relationship or if it’s already strong, enjoying the content and just enjoying the show. Yeah.

Megumi

I love it. I also am a huge fan of John Oliver. I’m so sad that he’s not on right now, and I can’t wait for the next season. [laughter] I love that you talked about the prevalence of money everywhere. Right? It doesn’t matter if you hate money or if you love money. Because at the end of the day, you are affected by it, unless you somehow have gone completely off the grid and you have your own farm and you grow everything yourself. But even at that point, you still needed the money to get to that point. So, it is crazy how much we are all impacted where we live, where we work, what we eat by money. Even in terms of– I’ve done some episodes on things like the racial wealth gap or the gender pay gap. Like you were saying, at the end of the day, the world does revolve around money, so we might as well try and improve our relationship with it and be able to take action on it.

Ilona

Exactly. And also again, why talking about it is so important because would we know there is a gender wealth gap or a racial wealth gap where people didn’t share their salaries. Right? So again, to my point, it’s uncomfortable and it creates friction, but it’s so important because in talking about it, you get closer to equality.

Megumi

Yeah. Absolutely. It reminds me of this one job I had. And the head of the company made it very clear– it was a smaller company, but they made it very clear that we were not to speak about our salaries. There was an email that went out. And so, of course, that made us all be like, “Well, why? How much are you making?” So, we found out–

Ilona

Because you’re getting screwed.

Megumi

Right. Yeah. There was a group of of us like a team of account managers and we all had the same title. We all did the exact same work and some people were getting paid so much more and some people were getting paid so much less and I was like, “This is insane”. I left shortly after because I was like, “This is wild. This is not fair.” And you can’t tell people to not talk about their salaries. This is sketchy. [laughter]

Ilona

No, exactly. It’s a tool of the oppressor [laughter]. But anytime, see, they’re like, “Don’t talk about it,” you’re like, “No, talk about it,” because they don’t want you to negotiate!

Megumi

I’m like, “Why? Why don’t you want me to talk about it? What are you hiding What are you hiding? Where is the body buried?” And I was reading about, for example, the differences between men and women and getting paid, right? Of course, there’s all these studies about how women feel when applying to jobs. Women feel like they need to check all of the boxes, meet all of the requirements whereas men feel like they need to meet half or sixty percent or something. “I have checked one box– I check no boxes but I’m just going to run for president,” I guess.

 [laughter]

(cont.)

But even with freelance work, for example, how women are more likely to charge less, are more likely to charge by the hour which actually gets you paid less than charging per project, and especially in freelance, I feel like that can even be harder, right? At least if you’re like,” Okay, I am a managing marketer. Let me go to Glassdoor and see what marketing managers make on average in my location.” But with freelancing, it’s a little bit tougher because you’re working on different types of things. It’s a little bit different; you’re contract. So, you have to take into account the fact that you’re not getting benefits from a full-time employer and you have to incorporate those things and so, if you’re not talking about money and you feel embarrassed to talk about money or asking fellow freelancers, “How much do you charge? How much are you making per year? How many hours are you working? What sort of different project rates do you have?” you don’t know, I guess. You don’t know that you’re cutting yourself short. You don’t know that, “Oh, my gosh, I could have been making so much more money.” And this happened to me too. When I started doing freelancing work, I asked a friend who does freelance, “How much do you charge?” and if she hadn’t told me, I was like, “What? I can’t possibly ask someone to pay that much.” But I said, “Okay, I’ll do it,” and I did. And then [the client said], “Okay, that sounds reasonable,” and I was like, “What? That’s crazy. I would have done it for half that price,” so [laughter]. But not anymore though!

Ilona

That’s a really good point. Yeah, I think freelancing is a really fascinating area because it’s not like someone else– you’re setting the price so you’re setting, assessing your own value, and yeah, people will be like, “You can try to monetize by doing X, Y and Z.” And I’m like, “I wouldn’t pay for this. I could just do it for free.” But to your point, it’s like, “I would do it for half. I would do it for this,” but it’s not about that. It’s also about you’re your own business, right? So, it’s a really good point.

Megumi

Yeah. You have to be the one advocating for yourself. Even if you’re not freelancing. Even if you’re working full time, negotiate that salary. Negotiate that offer.

Ilona

Get that promotion.

Megumi

Get that money.

Ilona

At work, the conversation has been how we’re going to return to office, and I was like, “Oh, ye of little faith [laughter]. Oh, ye of little faith.” I was like, “Do you not realize how much negotiation leverage you have in this conversation? You can be like, ‘I’ve been doing my job damn well for a year now remotely.’” Like, “Why do you need me here [in the office]?” And they’re like, “But, but–” And I was like, “Literally, you have so much negotiating leverage right now. How are you going to sit here and act like it’s not there?” Anyway. Good point. [laughter]

Megumi

Well, any final money tips, any personal finance tips, or overall money memory tips?

Ilona

I think the key is always save more than spend. Try to always live below your means. I was talking to someone else about how the key to weight loss is just eating less and exercising more for the most part. I mean, before everyone comes at me with pitchforks [laughter], I understand there is exceptions and things. You can feel free to edit that out. But there is kind of like, for most people, it’s actually quite simple. It’s just living within your means and spending less than you earn. And maybe this gets to conversations of consumption and conspicuous consumption, but most people don’t really need half the stuff that they’re out there buying or you can probably wait and buy it on sale. So, I think just realize you don’t need all that. You don’t need all that to have a nice life. And even in high-cost living areas, like I lived in New York City, I lived in San Fransisco, and yes, rent was more expensive there than it is in Louisville, Kentucky, but still be on the lookout for a lesser expensive option. Still be on the lookout for what things you can afford to live without, especially if you’re on a tight budget. So, yeah, I just think that as long as you stay within those reasonable means, you’ll do well. So, I think in your early 20s, it’s not as conspicuous, really because you’re still– or everyone’s kind of, well, not everyone.

(cont.)

But it’s less impactful because not many are really buying a house at that age or saving for any specific goal. But then suddenly, you start reaching 30 and if you’ve made good choices and if you’ve been living frugally, suddenly, you look and you see. You’re like, “Wait, how can you not–?” I don’t know. I was talking to a friend the other day and I bought my car, and they were like, “Yeah, I need to buy a new car, but I need to save for a down payment.” And I was like, “Come again? A what? A what? A what? No. I bought a used car.”
“Yeah. I’ll buy used, too.”
In my mind, I was like, “Okay, in your hierarchy of needs, there’s some things we need to think about.” Because, I don’t know, taking out a loan and depreciating asset, make it make sense to me! But, I mean, every circumstance is different. But for this particular person, I was just like, “Man, if we sat down and actually looked at your finances, I think we would reach different conclusions.” I just didn’t realize that their situation was like that. I think, given everything I knew about what they’re earning and things where I was like, “I don’t understand how you find yourself in this position.”

Megumi

Right.

Ilona

But that doesn’t happen overnight. That’s a series of choices, right? So that’s the long way of saying just try to not spend so much money. Honestly, you don’t really need all that stuff. Go to the library. I always go to the library to get my books, for example, because, or I try to. Because I’ll buy a book and then I’m like, “Well, that’s it. I bought it and that’s it. What does it do now? Just sitting on bookshelf?” Whereas with the library, I’m like, “Oh, I can return it. It’s not taking more space. It’s free.” Things like that.

Megumi

Yeah. As I am surrounded by my bookshelf.