We’ve been working on a post related to the corona virus, but had to pause as we noticed that more emails were coming from women… That’s not a typo and we were surprised. The interesting part about it? It suggests that following the non-dating part of the blog works for practically everyone. We’re glad we stopped writing about that since it takes less than 12 months to master and writing about difficult items is a lot more fun.
Below is an email we recently received and we’re going to highlight a few parts in bold (our emphasis).
“Unusual reader here: mid thirties (redacted) woman who has worked in alts for the past decade and a half after collecting degrees in finance from two private universities in New England. Followed your advice, “made it” outside of the day job in seven years, continue to stay full time on the street as a D&I unicorn on a bench full of white dudes to keep collecting carry points on successor vehicles. Will tap out at some point, but no rush as I have seniority and can pull rank pretty much 24/7.
Wanted to say thank you for the amazing content, AGAIN. Huge fan since before Efficiency who is curious to see where you head next with WSPs.
And had to say that this product is downright eerie.
How is it your product addressed all of the things I’ve been looking at recently? Looking at upgrading to a massive and completely unnecessary house in the ‘burbs to entertain, scoping out private doctors for the past six months, daily routines to increase flexibility, reading up on performance enhancement options, spending on family to help them bridge to stepping up in life/pay for medical treatments badly needed, learning to ski for networking since I am NYC based and so many of my contacts are regularly in Stowe/Whistler/Vail during the season, upgrading my mattress to one that seemed ludicrous at first blush, but actually has had a huge impact on rest quality the past 12 months, working to jump a decade, outsourcing all low level uses of my time, figuring out where to donate to minimize tax burden by being based in one of the highest tax jurisdictions in the country, realizing just how out of touch I am to most in my age bracket in terms of lifestyle/focus/emotional balance/maturity/spending ability, looking at those $10K-$50k watches and just not being convinced that lemon is worth the squeeze, creating once in a lifetime experiences for those dear to me, piling up cash/crypto, seeing what a pain in the ass it is to flip sites after seeing so many scams on bizbuysell, etc.
EERIE.
Cruising on autopilot, piling up cash for the next downturn. “Never work for the same money twice” indeed”
Initial Screen: If you look at the above writing, the average guy is going to assume it’s a troll. Luckily, there are several clues that give us confidence it is a woman and she’s actually from a finance background. Why? Even in a quick email, a lot of tells are given. The use of “dudes”, “at first blush” and “lemons”. Your average reader would say this doesn’t mean anything but it does.
For fun if you want to do this yourself when proof reading an email to see if the woman worked in finance other tells would be the use of the phrase “Will do” or “buddy”. Both of those phrases are incredibly common in New York as well and anyone in the industry now or in the past is laughing a bit at their screen since they know it is true. So for now it appears this isn’t a troll.
The last item is that she repeats a word that practically no guy would ever use “eerie”. Just isn’t common word choice for men. Perhaps if the word creepy was used it would make it more likely but that is usually reserved for people women don’t like. So replaced with eerie lines up.
Some Interesting Notes: She’s going through the exact same decision trees: 1) bigger house, 2) thinking about a watch, 3) flexibility training, 4) performance enhancing and 5) donations. Not to mention the most obvious sign of all which is being out of touch with regular people in the same age band. To close it out, being interested in crypto was also out of left field as the vast majority of crypto advocates are male (exceptions of course include Elizabeth Stark etc.)
Some Notes for Women: We’re going to add an addendum to the book here. May as well given that the product wasn’t written for them. These are simply opinions since we aren’t women but we’d add it if you’re female.
1) Health: All of the health items still actually apply. While we wouldn’t recommend increasing male based hormones we’re referring to a private doctor and all other health advice. In fact, women can probably benefit a lot as most women simply try to “eat less” and refuse to exercise more. Generally speaking, men prefer to work out and eat garbage, while women prefer to eat less and don’t like going to the gym. So everything still applies and if you’re willing to get a private doctor you’re going to be way ahead. To wrap it up, we’re positive on any cosmetic surgery as long as you don’t go overboard with it and look like a mess later on. “Men” who claim plastic surgery is bad are just poor. No real debate there. If someone has a few changes made, not sure why it would be a big deal. Looking like Michael Jackson would be a mess.
2) Unfortunate Truth: Luckily, smart women realize that successful men don’t really care much for a wealthy partner. While we would have probably changed the wording a bit in the book if we knew a large number of women would read it… Too late. It’s much more important to find someone who is easy going with a warm heart (at least to a successful man). Why? Well if you’re a rich female reader you already know why… The extra digits don’t do anything. You end up in the same spot if you make it within a certain range of outcomes. And. On that note, remembering that rich people don’t have to deal with annoying people explains why they prefer warm hearted people over a rich person with sky high standards. Just another “problem” to solve. We’d bet that rich women feel the same way as well.
3) Most Guys Are Lazy: Unsurprisingly, the women who get entertainment value and enjoy the blog are already rich and are making good amounts of money. The ones that hate us probably all live in San Francisco or Seattle (anywhere where purple hair and needles are acceptable). If a female is reading this she shouldn’t be surprised to find out that most “guys” are just talkers with no real results. This is a great opportunity for women. Since you know that they will be busy getting drunk at the bars you can simply follow the plan in efficiency and move onto bigger fish in the sea.
4) Smart Early Decisions:If we wrote a blog similar to this related to women, we’d probably emphasis the decisions made between ages 20 and 25. Versus 30-35 for men. At age 20-25 you should ideally find a high quality partner particularly if you want kids. For men these life decisions don’t occur until their 30s. It just isn’t realistic to think it’s “easier” to find a high quality mate at age 30 vs. age 21. Sure you’re giving up all the fake excitement your friends talk about, but you win over the next 20-30 years. From the reader above it looks like she somehow made that decision correctly while starting a side business and working in finance. So for all the naysayers out there… It is not only possible but incredibly realistic.
5) Find Something Non-Material: For what it is worth, most rich women end up going down the endless pit of materialism. While buying a nice car and watch is fine, we’re talking about constant wardrobe upgrades and status symbols that never really end. The wealthy women we know that appear to be happy have at least two things that they enjoy doing from a social perspective. Vast majority choose kids as priority number one and the second one usually ends up being some sort of community work. The rich women who don’t fall down the materialism trap usually do interesting volunteer work. They might run an animal shelter, they might be the head of the local golf/tennis competition, they might do fund raising events for some sort of cause for their home city. The main theme here is they find something to do that helps their general community. Why? We’ve noticed most women settle down by age 35-40 or so (if rich) and become attached to that particular city.
As usual… All of the above is general and there are always exceptions to the rule. That said it highlights some of the main things we’ve seen from happy wealthy women. For our next Q&A we might even see some new interesting questions! Our Next Q&A will be on February 9.
Newer Readers: For those that are unfamiliar with our blog we have three high quality products in order: 1) Efficiency, 2) Triangle Investing and 3) Spending for Maximum Return. In order, you learn how to make a good amount of money (a million liquid within 10 years or so), how to correctly invest it and finally how we’d avoid blowing it all with intelligent spending.
