TW: This episode references suicide.
“Money’s a math problem, sure. But money is also so deeply emotional, and you can’t ignore that. Ignoring that, you know, it’s not gonna help you. You need to acknowledge that it is emotional, and then you need to do the work to let go of the guilt and shame and realize that so much of our circumstance is systemic and is not just you and your quote unquote bad decisions.”
In today’s episode, Tori sits down with Madeline Pendleton, business owner and author of “I Survived Capitalism and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt,” to discuss the intricacies of personal finance, capitalism, and ethical business. Madeline shares her journey of dealing with loss as a result of financial stress and how it affected the way she now runs her business. Madeline has gone viral for her alternative business model and in this interview she’s sharing invaluable insight on managing money and navigating that path while trying to stay true to her ideals.
Madeline’s money story
Speaking about her early days growing up and learning about money, Madeline shares that she never really knew or felt that she was poor until she grew up and moved out of her Fresno, CA neighborhood. As a child living with and being raised primarily by her father until the age of 12 and off and on with her grandparents, she didn’t come to understand the implications of having money until she was on the other side of it. “I came from a place where everybody was pretty broke. My dad was on the broker side of broke, my mom was on the less broke side of broke, and I grew up not really understanding that Fresno was not indicative of how things worked in the rest of the world.”
I survived capitalism and all I got was this lousy t-shirt
Madeline then shares an intimate story about the challenges of running a business in the volatile fashion industry, and her experiences with a partner who owned multiple fashion brands — shedding light on the unique dynamics of an industry characterized by extreme highs and lows.
“I think the way we think about money, you just think that every financial failure of yourself, of your business, is a failure of yourself, as a human being. Like, you have morally or ethically failed.” Speaking of her then partner, she says “I think that really affected how he viewed himself as a provider, in almost like a very patriarchal sense. You run a business, you’re a provider, and if you fail to provide, what worth or value do you have for society?” Her partner ended up filing for bankruptcy and trying to sell his business to a friend but took his own life during the process.
In highlighting the emotional connection people often have with their businesses and the emotional burden that was exemplified by her partner’s struggle with the guilt of providing for employees, Madeline stresses the importance of separating personal identity from business outcomes and embracing self-acceptance, highlighting the need to emotionally disconnect to survive the tumultuous world of entrepreneurship.
From traditional capitalism to ethical entrepreneurship
Madeline provides a thought-provoking perspective to Tori’s question, “How do you run an ethical company.” She describes her journey through two distinct phases, which she’s dubbed “the doomed periods.” In the initial phase, she embraced the traditional capitalist structure, aiming for relentless growth and profit maximization. It was a cooperative system, with everyone making 100% commission on their sales. But what she thought was a fair and equitable system instead recreated the hustle culture that she had come to loathe. In her own words, “It was a catastrophe.”
This realization prompted her to transition into the second phase, where she explored a more needs-based rather than ability-based. This system ended up creating a policing culture that was even worse.
She finally settled on a combination of cooperative and needs-based models, emphasizing ethical practices and sustainability until finally settling into her current approach, which combines the best elements of both phases.
Taking control of your finances
Switching gears, Madeline shares her personal journey of how she struggled to make ends meet and highlights the importance of taking control and making a plan when faced with mounting credit card debt and limited income.
“The world we live in, you have to make imperfect decisions. People know the perfect, pure way to exist, but we don’t live in a perfect, pure world. That’s why people hate the Dave Ramseys of the world. They’re like, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, I’m not supposed to go into credit card debt. But here we are, so help.”
The conversation turns to student loans and the common dilemma facing many young people today — the pressure to get a degree to get a good job versus the burden of student debt. Madeline emphasizes the importance of having a plan and understanding the long-term implications of student loans, encouraging listeners to make informed decisions regarding their education and finances. “I think that’s the number one thing I learned about money, even at my most broke, is that you need some sort of plan, and you need to be sticking to it. And, step one is to stop the bleeding.”
So, just how do you stop the bleeding? Madeline shares practical advice on the strategies that worked for her when she was in survival mode (and trying to get out):
- If you have to use a credit card, use a 0% APR Card if your credit score allows. These cards can provide a temporary reprieve from high-interest charges, giving you time to manage your finances effectively.
- Consolidate your loans. consolidating high-interest debts into a single, lower-interest loan can make monthly payments more manageable.
- Create a plan. Knowing how you’ll tackle your debt and what your budget allows for is essential to avoid falling further into financial trouble.
- Review your expenses. Small changes can free up money for essential payments.
- Negotiate with service providers. Don’t hesitate to negotiate with service providers to reduce expenses. It might feel daunting, but it can lead to significant savings.
- Be flexible. Your financial plan should be flexible to adapt to changes in your life or financial circumstances. Regularly review and update your budget as needed.
Madeline and Tori continue their discussion about managing personal finances, having open conversations about money, capitalism and more in this week’s episode.
Madeline’s Links:
I Survived Capitalism and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt
Pick Me Up, I’m Scared Podcast
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Meet Madeline
Madeline Pendleton is the CEO and founder of Tunnel Vision, an L.A.-based clothing company with a progressive, employee-centered approach to business. In addition to her entrepreneurial success, Madeline has garnered a massive following on TikTok, where she shares stories and advice based on her
experience growing up in California’s punk scene, escaping poverty, and building a community-minded company.
Transcript:
Tori Dunlap:
Hi, team. Before we get into this episode, just a quick content warning that we do discuss suicide in this episode, so if that is not something that you want to hear about today or something that triggers you, feel free to skip it. We will see you back here next week. Thank you.
Madeline Pendleton:
We know that poverty is a feature of capitalism. We also know poverty is a policy choice. And we see this anywhere that a government has decided to implement fighting poverty as a policy decision, they succeed. We know that the fact that people live in poverty and the fact that with, quote, unquote “good jobs” still can’t afford to make ends meet, those are all policy decisions.
Tori Dunlap:
Hello. Welcome back. Welcome back to the show. If you’re an oldie but a goodie, welcome back. If you’re new here, welcome. This is a show called Financial Feminist. It’s a show where we talk about how money affects women differently and how we can fight the patriarchy by getting rich.
Today on the show, our guest is Madeline hell scape who has an incredible new book out all about how to survive capitalism and how to get even a lousy T-shirt doing it. But today we talk about so many things, how to understand your emotional connection to money, how to navigate tough times as a business owner, including trying to avoid layoffs, surviving on truly nothing and how you go about actually figuring out how to manage your personal finances when you are completely broke and have very little money. And we also talk about how to overcome all of the emotional narratives you’ve been believing about money. This is a really, really special episode. We’re really excited to have Madeline on the show. Let’s go ahead and get into it. But first, a word from our sponsors. Where are you based, by the way?
Madeline Pendleton:
Los Angeles.
Tori Dunlap:
I heard a train in the background, and I was like, that sounds lovely.
Madeline Pendleton:
It’s Los Angeles.
Tori Dunlap:
You by a train station?
Madeline Pendleton:
Yeah, I’m right by the train tracks. And I grew up by the train tracks, so it helps comfort me to sleep. It’s like a nostalgic sound.
Tori Dunlap:
Yep. Totally. Your business is based in LA too, right?
Madeline Pendleton:
Yes, correct. I’m in our photo studio right now, actually.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. No, Kristen was asking and was like, “All the jewelry in the back. It looks great.”
Madeline Pendleton:
Yeah. It’s photo studio.
Tori Dunlap:
We are thrilled to have. Can you share a little bit about your story growing up? Especially how you learned or maybe didn’t learn about money.
Madeline Pendleton:
Yeah. I’m from Fresno, California, which when I was living there, it felt like a really normal place. And it wasn’t until I left Fresno that I realized other people think of Fresno as being a very sad, dirty, Dickensian popper is what they are picturing happening there. And it was a real shock for me because growing up, I didn’t think that I was poor. I didn’t even really think that we were low income in any way. And it wasn’t until I left that I was like, “Oh, this is what other people mean when they talk about money, when they talk about rich people.” I thought a rich person was someone with a two-story house. I didn’t realize what rich meant. I grew up there and I was raised primarily by my dad the first 12 years of my life who struggled with money. And we lived off and on with my grandparents who also struggled with money. It was like a mutually beneficial arrangement.
And then when I was around 12 or 13, I went to go live with my mom full time. And she was probably what we would consider solidly middle class. She was living with her new husband; they had a two-income household. And it was a big change in quality of life in terms of financial stability. But I didn’t really get along with my mother, so I only lived there until I was 17, and then I moved out and got my own apartment because our house was a war zone.
I had this really interesting upbringing because I grew up broke, I guess, with my dad, but I didn’t super understand that’s what was happening. One part just because he was such a good parent, he made everything sound fun. Going to the laundromat was exciting, moving from one apartment to another was exciting, moving in with grandma and grandpa was exciting. And I never knew it was because we didn’t have money. But yeah, I think that’s my upbringing and my start.
And the only lesson I really learned about money from anybody is that my mother taught me about credit scores. And that was the one thing we ever talked about, credit scores. And I know that my mother utilized credit a lot because people often say my first full sentence I ever said as a baby was charge it in line at the department store. I guess I came from a place where everybody was pretty broke. My dad was on the broker side of broke, my mom was on the less broke side of broke, just pretty lower middle class, I would say. And I grew up not really understanding that Fresno was not indicative of how things worked in the rest of the world.
Tori Dunlap:
I can’t believe the charge it story. Wow. Yeah, first full sentence is like-
Madeline Pendleton:
Yes, charge it.
Tori Dunlap:
Yep. Credit card, here you go. I just picture it in your little ravioli baby fist, “Here, charge it.” Your book, hell of a name. I fucking loved it when I saw it. I Survived Capitalism and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt. One of the things that we’ve talked about so much in the show and that I talk about in my book is it’s like how do we progress towards getting our financial shit together under capitalism when this is all seemingly a hellscape? And you share in the book about being a survivor of capitalism, how you’ve dealt with a lot of loss, including, and we’ll put a trigger warning on the top, but I’m so sorry, the loss of your partner to suicide as a result of very severe financial stress. Can you share more about, of course, how this impacted you to write this book and build the platform you’ve built?
Madeline Pendleton:
Yeah, of course. I had a partner who owned a few businesses. And I own a business. And in fashion, which is the industry both for businesses are in, fashion is a very notoriously volatile industry. And there are good years and it seems like you’re on top of the world, and there are bad years that are the most stressful things you’ve ever imagined. And that’s why we see so many fashion companies get bought up by these huge mega corporations, because that’s how they survive the bad years with a lot of financial backing. It is a very challenging industry to be in. Number one, during recessions for example, or slow times, the first thing people cut is purchasing new clothes because it’s not necessary. And number two, just the way fashion works is if you have a really good year, you can’t even enjoy it because that means the next two or three years you’ll be a little passe. Your brand is too passe now, it hit too hard and you’ve got to ride out the bad years. It is notoriously terrifying to exist in as an industry.
And he ran four fashion brands. He owned four fashion brands; one he started in 1985 that was pretty popular. But he dealt with it. He dealt with the good years, the bad years. And when we met, it was in the middle of a decline for the brands. It was one of those had hit hard, was now on the downswing, and he was very, very stressed out trying to manage the financial aspects of this business. And I can relate to it now. Now that I have my business and it’s been around a while, it is very stressful. Making it through a hard year is devastating.
And I think the way we think about money, you just think about every financial failure of yourself, of your business is a failure of yourself as a human being, like you have morally or ethically failed. And it’s easier to run a business when you’re a calloused person where you look at the line items on the spreadsheet and you go, “Cool, we need to cut $30,000 from our budget this month. Let’s just fire people.” But for him, my partner, Drew, who died, he could not bring himself to fire people. And that’s something I relate to. I feel the same way. For him, carrying the financial stress, he also, because he was a human and had a good heart, he had this whole guilt for what it meant to take care of his employees, what it meant for people to rely on him. I think that really affected how he viewed himself as a provider in almost a very patriarchal sense. Run a business, you’re a provider. And if you fail to provide, what worth or value do you have for society?
That was something that I really noticed in the wake of his death. He committed suicide when he was in the middle of filing for bankruptcy and selling his business in the process to a friend. And it just broke my heart because one thing I learned from that experience is that businesses fail. I’ve worked for a lot of businesses that have gone out of business. It’s common for businesses to fail. But you can’t attach your personal identity to your business that much. And I’ve had businesses fail, actually. The business I run now, Tunnel Vision, is my second business. My first business did also fail. And I think that’s the most important thing. We are so emotionally connected to money, but sometimes to survive, you need to emotionally disconnect and distance yourself from it.
Tori Dunlap:
Totally.
Madeline Pendleton:
And that also comes with self-acceptance to be like, “I’m bad at this,” or, “This is too hard for me.” And that’s okay.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Oh, man. First of all, I’m so sorry. I think that that is something that I wish was discussed more because I think entrepreneurship gets glamorized a lot on social media, or it’s just very easy to look at all of the #girlboss sides of running a business. And I feel so much pressure in the same way of when people rely on you, that’s terrifying. And I feel this deep capital R responsibility with every decision I make, with every dollar we make of how can I make sure that I’m taking care of not only our 4 million members of our community with social media and everything, but also the people who are directly reliant, our employees, on us making money?
Madeline Pendleton:
Totally. And that’s what I experience now. Everybody knows business was down in 2023. And I just looked at the numbers from Forbes and I heard colloquially from other business owners in my industry last year that on average, most of the people I knew were down 60% for the year, 6-0. Very, very intense. Forbes came out with their numbers. And I think that they said that retail was down 32% and apparel was down 21%. And our brand was down 13%, which felt like a crisis to me until I saw those numbers. And so-
Tori Dunlap:
Until you see the numbers. Yeah.
Madeline Pendleton:
Yeah. Everybody’s struggling right now and it is really hard to look your employees in the eye and be like, “I can control so much, but I can’t control the economy. I can control what we do in these four walls, but I can’t control how much money people have in their pockets out there on the street, how comfortable people feel shopping, how comfortable people feel spending.” And it is a great deal of responsibility, but I think it’s important to have that rational outlook where you’re like, “I can only do what I can do in here. I can’t make people spend money when they’re broke.”
Tori Dunlap:
Right. Right. Nor do we want to do that, nor do I want you to give me your last dollar. I don’t want that.
Madeline Pendleton:
Exactly. And I’ve had people say, “I really want to buy your book, but I’d have to buy it on credit. Should I?” And I’m like, “No, please, just go to the library. Just go to the library.”
Tori Dunlap:
Go to the library. Right. Don’t, it’s not worth it.
Madeline Pendleton:
Borrow it from a friend if you can.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, yeah, I’m the same way. I heard, “I have credit card debt and I’m so stressed, and your book will help me get out of it, right?” And I’m like, “Yes, it will, but don’t go into more credit card debt trying to buy my book.”
Madeline Pendleton:
Exactly.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, totally. We did some deep dives in working for small businesses, and even though they’re often lauded as ethical workplaces or more ethical than, say, these big corporations, we found that they have higher rates of abuse. Did you experience this working for other small businesses before your company? And if you had to guess, why do you think this is?
Madeline Pendleton:
Oh, 100% I did. I actually talk about this. I have a chapter in my book called When You’re Here, You’re Family. And it’s all about my experiences working not at Olive Garden, but for small businesses.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I have a quote in my book that’s, “As soon as somebody tells you we’re a family, that is a massive red flag.”
Madeline Pendleton:
Yeah. Get out of there.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s a massive red flag. Yeah.
Madeline Pendleton:
Yes. I actually had one of our employees the other day was like, “Well, I think sometimes we view this as a family-like environment.” And I was like, “Absolutely not. Shut it down. This is not your family; these are your coworkers. You don’t have to love these people. We show up and we hope we don’t kill each other long enough to get a paycheck.” Absolutely not.
Tori Dunlap:
Right. And I hope you’re happy here and we respect each other, but yeah, this should not be a family.
Madeline Pendleton:
No, this is not a family. I especially don’t want it to be like my family. Oh, gosh. Too volatile. But yeah, no, I had a lot of experiences working for small businesses. I think for me, I have ADHD so I found pretty early that working for small businesses was fun for me because it allowed me to wear a lot of different hats, do a lot of different tasks, bounce around from thing to thing, and it just really matched how my brain worked. But because of that, I got really familiar with small business structure.
And what I learned is most people who start small businesses do so because for some reason, whatever reason, they don’t quite fit into the traditional work world. And that can be a really cool thing. I’ve had bosses who ran their own small businesses who didn’t fit in because they were just kooky and zany and artsy and fun. And I loved those kinds of bosses. But then you also have people who are like, “Well, I couldn’t work a traditional job because I’m too hard headed. I can’t take orders. I don’t collaborate. It needs to be just all me on my own.” And those bosses were usually the worst bosses in my experience. They were impossible to please, they were fighting with you at every turn. And it was hard to just show up and get your job done.
Yeah, in that chapter in my book, I also talk about how small businesses you are more likely to face these kind of workplace violations and abuse. And it’s harder, I think, as an employee in those businesses because you’re probably not unionized. Who knows how many coworkers you’ve had. I’ve worked for businesses where it was just me and the owner. Who would I even go in together with to collectively try to bargain or bring something to somebody’s attention? I know HR departments aren’t great, but you don’t even have an HR department to report complaints to. And it’s very, very challenging in those situations. I say this in the book too, the small business and the idea of the American myth, the tale of America, capitalism, yay, hot dogs, apple pie. They’re like, “And you, the small business owner, you are the shining epitome of the American dream.”
Tori Dunlap:
The future of America. Yeah, yeah.
Madeline Pendleton:
Right. And it’s like, well, this ignores a few things. One, it seems like all of our policy decisions are designed to squash small business at every turn. And we see increasing moves towards monopolization backed by heavy financing in these big capital groups. Two, I had a partner who literally died because he was a small business owner. We do not have support for people in these roles. And three, yeah, you have the girl boss culture that goes along with it that encourages the types of people to start small businesses are often the ones who are like, “Well, I’m going to get rich no matter what the cost. I’m going to be the next Jeff Bezos.” And they might not be the next Jeff Bezos, but they’re trying to get there, and that means that I think the idea of starting small business appeals to a lot of people who maybe have very calloused intentions and don’t have a very human-centric approach.
Tori Dunlap:
Exploitative. Right, right.
Madeline Pendleton:
Right. These are the people that this is appealing to in a lot of ways. We’re not sending our best to the small business arena unfortunately a lot of the time.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, I didn’t expect to talk about this, but I would love… What you just said, something that I am dealing with very acutely right now that I am so deeply frustrated by, and also it’s important for me to do right by in terms of the kind of feminist company we are and what we want to build. We have a family leave policy in place, and we’re defining it better of how many months of paid leave. What does that look like? And we’re trying to figure out what is the opportune amount? And when you’re trying to figure that out, I would love to get everybody who has a kid, adopts a kid, whatever, a year of PTO, but I’m a small business, that is very, very difficult, even six months to say, “Yes, please take the time and the bonding time, but also the recoup time that you need.” But also understanding that, okay, not only am I paying somebody who isn’t working for me right now, but also I’m paying somebody to replace them. And we live in a country where that’s on a business owner to do.
Now, normally I’m like, “Oh yeah, okay, I’m going to go work at fucking Amazon. Amazon can pay for my maternity leave.” But for small businesses, that’s just, to your point, such a hard thing because even as I’m trying to make the right decision that feels both good for me as someone who’s trying to do right in the world but also right by our employees, it’s shitty that every other country is paying for this, and yet this is our responsibility even as small business owners. I don’t know. Do you have any thoughts on that? I just find that that’s the perfect example of one of these policies that I’m like, “Yes, of course. I’m a feminist company. I’m trying to figure out what to do, but I also have to balance. At the end of the day, we don’t have the budget to pay for that long of a leave.” I don’t know if I have a question here, but just, yeah, tell me about that kind of friction.
Madeline Pendleton:
That’s been a hard central theme of me running a business is that you have to balance the longevity of the business with every decision. And I hate that. I hate knowing that because the reality is if the business folds, all of us lose our jobs here.
Tori Dunlap:
Everybody’s fucked. Right, right, right.
Madeline Pendleton:
Everybody’s screwed, so it doesn’t benefit anybody for the business to close. And I think there are the things we want to be able to do and there are other things that are realistic, and I often try to find creative workarounds. Our business is 100% women or non-binary people so we have talked about this as a group group. “Well, if somebody decides they want to have a child, how are we going to proceed with this?” And I think the thing that we ended up on is you can take time off as you need, obviously, but also we would provide on site childcare. We would just hire one person to come in and watch everybody’s kids on site. And that’s actually a cheaper expense for us because if somebody has to stay home and take care of their children on their own, we’d have to hire somebody to replace them anyway. I try to find these creative workarounds. But for us, obviously it’s theoretical at this stage.
The closest thing I will say we’ve had to that is that we’ve had people go through major life issues and they need to take two months off paid. And we allow that, that’s totally fine. We just have this rule you can take as much time as you need, but if you start to annoy your coworkers, they will tell you. And the annoying the coworkers is a very socially motivated thing because, one, it depends on how legitimate your need for time off is in the eyes of your coworker. You go through a divorce, for example, all your coworkers are like, “Yes, that is a major life change. Take two months, get your shit together. Of course we’ve got your back.” But if you’re like, “I don’t know, I just thought it would be fun to just not work and there’s not any real reason.”
Tori Dunlap:
Go to Bali.
Madeline Pendleton:
Right. And you’re like, that would be fine if that’s the only time you took off all year. But if you do that and also you took off 10, 12 weeks of vacation throughout the year, just regularly, you might start to annoy your coworkers. And your coworkers might be like, “I really don’t enjoy covering your work this much, so we need to come up with another solution.” We do deal with that in our workplace definitely. We have an unlimited paid time off policy, but I always say a real one, not the sketchy tech bro way. You’re allowed to take it.
Tori Dunlap:
Yep. Us as well.
Madeline Pendleton:
Yeah. But there is a social thing that comes along with it. But if you upset your coworkers, they will come together and they will say, “Hey, this is a problem we’ve identified and we need to come up with a solution because this is not sustainable.” And so yeah, I think that that’s the way we’ve handled and addressed it. The time off is just one element of what you’re talking about. You want to be the company that offers health insurance, but you have to offer health insurance because our government doesn’t provide health insurance. You know?
Tori Dunlap:
Right, right. That’s what I mean is that friction point of, to your point earlier about it’s hard enough to succeed as a small business, yet all of these things like universal healthcare and paid family leave and these things that should be basic human rights are now requirements of businesses. And again, if you’re this huge corporation, I don’t fucking care; you need to pay it. But then now you uniquely for me as a business owner, I’m like, “Oh, gosh.” This is fucked on both sides because you’re asking a woman-owned business who’s trying to do the best that they can to pay for this, and then of course you’re not giving it to the employees. Yeah, that’s for me the rub there is it’s just all of these things that should be coming from our government aren’t.
Madeline Pendleton:
No, and then you get even more upset when you’re a small business owner and you look at these massive corporations, you look at Walmart, you look at Amazon, their effective tax rates are so low. You know people who have worked for those companies who have not gotten health insurance who’ve been paid minimum wage. And at a certain point, you’re like, “I am subsidizing people like Jeff Bezos,” you know?
Tori Dunlap:
Yep.
Madeline Pendleton:
“Having multiple yachts.” And how is that not frustrating? And why is it fair that my employees have to suffer at all that Jeff Bezos’ employees, for example, have to suffer as much as they do? Why is that fair? And this guy just gets to take the profit at the end of the year and walk off scot-free when that profit should have been either, one, reinvested into his workers, paying their health insurance, taking care of them, paying them better wage, or two, paid in a fair share of taxes that would help facilitate businesses like ours that are smaller being able to have more operating money and not have to spend. I don’t even know what percentage of our monthly income goes to healthcare. I guess it would be something like 2% of our monthly revenue going just to pay our employees’ healthcare.
Tori Dunlap:
Yep. Yeah. I think one of the things that is so striking to me about your work that I would love to talk about in the thread of, okay, how do I run an ethical company while also understanding if I don’t make money, none of this happens? Is this idea of how do I build a company as an alternative to capitalism? I would love for you to talk about what you tried and what worked and what didn’t, and then where you’re at now.
Madeline Pendleton:
Oh yeah, I tried so many different approaches to this, oh my God. I think a lot of people like to paint the idea of a collective or anti-capitalist system as being idealistic or utopian, and nothing could be further from the truth. It’s still real life. It comes with its own set of struggles, but we are taking that more egalitarian humanitarian focus. And ideally, at the end of the day, the end result is better for more people. From just a purely utilitarian standpoint, we’re doing more good for more people. But that, again, doesn’t mean it’s utopian in any capacity.
To get where we are today, I tried a few different things. I talk about these in the book too. I call them the doomed periods. The very first thing I tried was to run my business more collectively and that everything we sold, every employee who worked at the business exchanged a certain number of hours they worked for the ability to sell products, a corresponding number of products on the website. You’ve got a base pay. We all got the same base pay. And then the amount of hours we worked would correlate with, okay, you can sell five products on the website. And collectively, all of our labor together went into photographing them, listing them, shipping them out when they sold, et cetera. And theoretically, this sounds super fair. This is great. You really do, as a worker, own your means of production. It’s all on you.
But what I realized is that some people who worked very hard ended up getting punished because they lacked a specific skill set. The people who better had this innate understanding of the consumer and what the consumer wanted were able to provide products that were more in demand, and people who worked so, so hard, but that’s just not the particular skill they had, they would make hardly anything. And I noticed that, and I was like, “Oh, this is not fair because everybody is working just as hard as each other,” but you can’t teach somebody to have this market knowledge or this forecasting ability or this trending ability. Some people just have it and some people don’t. And it’s not fair to punish people who don’t, in my opinion.
We switched out of that model, which was a catastrophe, and then we tried a second model that was more need based where we just had candid conversations with each other like, “Well, how much do you feel you need given your knowledge you have of our sales to be comfortable? What kind of expenses do you have?” And we have this really comparative analysis of each other. Well, that person’s still paying student loans, so they need a little bit more, or that person has to have a car payment or this person’s parents help them a little more so they have a safety net so they need a little less. And as you can imagine, this was also a nightmare. We got down to where we were talking about differences in pay that were just pennies, like 50 cents difference per hour.
Because we all have different experiences and different backgrounds, people had different understandings of what their amount of need was, for example. One person might say, “Well, I need to live in a place where rent is $1,500 a month.” And people who grew up poor would just look at them like they had grown a second head and be like, “What? Aren’t you just renting a room in someone’s house for $800? Why do you need a $1,500 studio apartment to yourself? I’ve never lived in that.” This became very, very difficult because obviously money is relative.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and the judgment of other people too.
Madeline Pendleton:
Right. It created a very policing culture. And I’m like, “Okay, this is even worse.” Somehow we took a bad thing and we made it worse. And it was awful. And trying to keep up with everybody’s views of what they needed and what they could do, it ended up actually draining the company of a lot of money. And this is the one time in the history of the company where I looked at it, and I was like, “Everybody has to leave because the business can’t afford anybody.” And we had maybe eight employees at that time, and everybody got laid off. And I’m happy to say all but two of them got hired back within the next following years. One person chose not to. They started their own thing, and they were doing fine, and the other person just moved a little further away and it wasn’t as realistic for them. But they still were like, “If there’s ever a way I could come back.” That was a real challenge, and it did drain us completely.
And after that happened, the first person I hired back, it was just me and them. I was like, “We’re going to keep this so easy, but we are just going to make the same amount every single day we work. And I’m going to work five days a week and you work four days a week. I will be making a little more because I’m working an extra day, but that’s what the business can afford. And I need to pay my bills, otherwise there is no business because I’m the captain of the ship. And we’ll get you here for four days and we’ll figure it out.” And that person now has been with the company for maybe 10 years. A really long time. Almost 10 years.
You make these hard decisions, but I think ultimately it did end up on something that is extremely egalitarian. And now we’re going through tough times again. Everything’s down. We’re trying to make it through another potentially worse year according to forecasting, which is dreadful and terrifying. And we are, for the first time in almost a decade since that happened, looking at people like, man, we’re trying desperately to avoid layoffs. How do we do this in the most fair way possible? And it might end up being that we all collectively cut hours as a group or… I don’t know. There’s just all these creative options we constantly try to do to keep it egalitarian and fair. And we vote on things as a group too, and we talk about it all together whenever we can so everybody’s not surprised.
Tori Dunlap:
One of my other favorite parts of your book is truly what to do when you are broke. And even I struggle as a financial expert answering that question because I always go back to if you’re absolutely broke, it’s not like, oh, I still have a Netflix subscription kind of broke but truly I am just struggling to survive, there’s not a lot I feel like I can tell you because it has to come from systemic support and systemic change, but that’s not unfortunately where we’re at. Talk to me about a piece of financial advice you would share with someone in a similar situation as you of getting out of thousands of dollars of debt of being capital B broke.
Madeline Pendleton:
Yeah. Okay, I deal with this too because the one thing people will ask me sometimes where I’m like, “I don’t think I can answer this,” is people who are living on disability insurance because disability is so criminally low in our country. And I’m not a-
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, and it incentivizes you to not make more money because then you… It’s just horrible. Yeah, it’s awful.
Madeline Pendleton:
It’s awful. People are living off of $1,200 a month usually if they can even get it right. That’s the amount I feel like most people receive. And it’s hard. How do you tell somebody who is incapable of working maybe physically, but then also because if they work, they will lose this disability insurance, how do you tell them to survive on $1,200 a month in the country the way it is? And the one thing I will say is maybe counterintuitive, but I think that even on a small budget… I know it sounds annoying when people are like, “Just budget, budget, budget, budget.” Budgeting isn’t going to solve anything if you have an income too low to support yourself, but budgeting helped me the most when I had the least because I was a little more conscious of where my money was going, at least. I could make decisions about what bill got paid, what bill was more important, what I could try to negotiate down, what I could cut.
It does seem like a slap in the face when someone’s like, “I am so poor. What do I do?” And you’re like, “Well, the obvious answer is that you should not be this poor. We should have options in place to support people like you. But given that that does not exist, the only option you have is to budget.” And it’s not a great option, but it’s the only one you’ve got, to look at your $1,200 a month or whatever and try to solve an impossible math problem. And the solution is you need more money, but we can’t invent more money for you so here we are. And it’s a bad option, but it’s the only one you got.
Tori Dunlap:
Right. Well, and you mentioned in the book too of using credit cards as a mean of survival. And of course, I’m out here as a financial expert being like, “We don’t want to go into credit card debt if we don’t have to,” but if you absolutely need to, let’s talk about doing this in a way that causes the least amount of long-term harm.
Madeline Pendleton:
Right. Yeah, the credit card thing, credit cards really got me. I had cars that were breaking down all the time. I didn’t understand much about cars. Just from medical issues and cars alone, I had $65,000 of total debt, but that also included car loans, my personal loans from trying to consolidate debt in the past, my student loans, which were around $30,000 of that. I had $25,000 of credit card debt at one point at a 25% interest rate. And it was absolutely killing me, but I needed to do that to survive at the time. And it’s hard. It’s a lot easier to get into credit card debt than it is to get out of it, that’s for sure. But again, the only way I got myself out of that credit card debt was by aggressively budgeting it and viewing it as a situation to be tackled as quickly as possible because it was killing me. And it was getting worse and worse by the month.
Yeah, in a perfect world, you don’t ever leave a balance on your credit card. But we don’t live in a perfect world. And even with my business, it’s like my business utilizes financing, which can be scary and stressful, right?
Tori Dunlap:
Right.
Madeline Pendleton:
It’s like the world we live in, you have to make imperfect decisions. And I think any financial advice that doesn’t take into account the fact that people know the perfect, pure way to exist, but we don’t live in a perfect, pure world. That’s why people hate the Dave Ramseys of the world. We’re like, “Yeah, yeah, for sure. I’m not supposed to go into credit card debt, but here we are so help.”
Tori Dunlap:
Right. I’m not supposed to take out student loans, but you also are telling me that I need a degree to get a good job, so which one is it?
Madeline Pendleton:
Yeah, exactly.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, and I think with credit cards, there are different options of, okay, if you have a high enough credit score, can you take out a 0% APR credit card for a while and transfer it over? Or can you consolidate and take out a loan? But I think the important thing is to always have a plan to do that because I’ve realized… A lot of people ask me, “What is the solution here?” It’s like, what is the get out of jail free card? And I’m like, “Unfortunately, there is no get out of jail free card, it’s just you have to have a plan so that you’re not postponing the inevitable and then realizing, oh, the six months of 0% have already gone by but I don’t have any sort of plan after that.”
Madeline Pendleton:
Yeah, I think that’s the number one thing I learned about money even at my most broke is that you need some sort of plan and you need to be sticking to it. And step one is to stop the bleeding. You have to look in your life. If you find yourself in a position like that where you’re relying on credit cards to get by, you need to understand, one, give yourself grace, let go of the shame, but you also need to use that as a wake up call to look at your personal finances and be like, “Okay, there has to be something that changes here. Maybe what changes is I get a second job.” Even though I acknowledge it’s horrible that we exist in a system where you could work full time, for example, at a job and not be able to pay your bills. But maybe you just got to be like, “That’s what it is. And I’m going to survive and I’m going to take up a second job.”
What I ended up doing when I was earning $19,000 a year and had $65,000 of debt is I made my budget and I went through every single line item of my expenses, and I called and talked to every single service provider I had and I negotiated down my car insurance. I traded my car in to get a cheaper car. I also negotiated down my internet bill and my phone bill. And that helped me. I had been overspending $450 a month before I even took into account things like my groceries or the gas in my car. And just by doing those few things, I was able to get a budget surplus for the first time. I was using a credit card when emergencies came about because I was not able to save any money. And at a certain point, I ended up getting so in the hole that then I was using a credit card to pay bills and utilities.
And when I looked at my life, I was like, “There’s nothing I can cut. I’m living so frugally. I’m doing nothing.” But then you look at these bills that you’re like, “Well, that just feels like that’s how much that bill is,” and it turns out you do have some wiggle room there. You can negotiate that down a little bit. And it’s a frustrating experience, but the one thing that I did take from Dave Ramsey is to be angry at the banks. And I found that to be the one refreshing thing about him when I was learning about money. I was like, “Why does this Republican rich dude hate banks so much?”
Tori Dunlap:
Evangelical Christian.
Madeline Pendleton:
I know. He’s like, “That bank is there to make money off of you.” And I was like, “You know what? I fuck with this a little. Okay, sir. All right.” This is like when you’re at Thanksgiving and your weird grandfather says one thing you randomly agree with and you didn’t expect it. And you’re like, “Yes, grandfather. I too hate the banks.” What? Okay.
I think that when you use that to motivate you and you’re like, “Fuck these companies. I’m not letting them get a dime out of me that I don’t have to give them,” and you start negotiating things down, changing things around in your budget, that was ultimately the most freeing thing for me. But I was able to do that because I had a plan. Because I made my budget and my plan was to cut out that $450 a month of extra spending I was doing. And I would not have known it was exactly $450 unless I’d sat down and made that budget.
You have to think about your budget as a plan, and you have to think about your overall debt and finances as a plan. And I still have the spreadsheet that I worked on when I started looking at my debt and my plans to pay it off and month by month the progress I made on there for years. And it took years. It’s not going to happen overnight. But having that plan kept me on track.
And it also helped with my impulse issues a little. I have a DH ADHD, so I struggle with impulse spending, but when you have that plan and someone’s like, “Do you want to go out to dinner tonight?” My instinct is like, “Yes, and I’m going to impulse order too entrees.” And then it’s like you hit your hand and you’re like, “Bad Madeline. No, you cannot afford that right now. Look at your plan.” And then I look at the plan, and I’m like, “I have $12 realistically I can spend on dinner tonight. Do you want to go to a taco truck? Because I could get a taco and a beverage and tip well and still be out the door and we can have the same experience for a lot less.” And so we think of planning as being restrictive, but it can also be freeing in a lot of ways because I was free to make that decision without guilt or shame. I knew how much I was allowed to spend.
Tori Dunlap:
Yep. I was just about to say, I say this all the time, is that nothing tastes worse than that pina colada on a beach vacation with a side of guilt knowing that you have credit card debt waiting for you. It’s like, no, I want you to hopefully plan for experiences. And we hope you’re not, again, in a situation where you can’t have anything nice, but the budget is the plan to get you where you want to go. It’s like a gas gauge in your car. You wouldn’t get in a car without knowing how far you can get without running out of gas. And so yeah, it’s just the plan that exists to help you make those kind of decisions.
Madeline Pendleton:
Exactly. And your plan also has to be something flexible. When things change in your life, you have to be as on top of it as you can. I look at my budget multiple times a month even now that I consider myself pretty financially stable. When I was budgeting, I looked at my budget every single day. The way I got over my impulse spending is I gave myself a separate bank account for my allowance, the money I was allowed to spend on things I didn’t need. And I look at that every single time I go out. There’s no overdraft ability on that. It’s not linked to any of my accounts. And that thing will get down to 12 cents sometimes. But I’m like, that’s just allowance; it’s allowed to be 12 cents. It’s extra money I’m spending on goodies I don’t need. But those are all elements of my plan, and I keep track of them now every single day to monthly at least. And I think that feels really different for somebody who’s just been… I’m going to say intuitively spending their whole life without a mission or a place that they’re trying to get to, a destination in mind. But it has been the single thing that has helped my personal finances along in their journey the most.
Tori Dunlap:
I think one of the lies that especially marginalized people are told is that because of how terrible capitalism is and because of how shit and inequal… inequitable, excuse me, and how just this is a capital telescope, so I’m not going to participate. I’m sure you’ve gotten comments like this, I get comments like this all the time, which are like, “Yeah, I don’t want to participate in this thing that feels gross because it makes me a gross person, so I’m just going to opt out. I don’t need to save. I don’t need to do any of these things because the world’s going to fucking be over. And it’s gross and I don’t want to participate.”
And what I’ve realized is I don’t want to win capitalism because that means probably I’ve exploited somebody along the way, but I don’t want to lose capitalism either because that means deep suffering to myself and to my community and to the ability I have to hopefully uplift other people. And so of course in the title of your book, and something I’ve said a lot in my book is, “I’m just trying to survive capitalism.” And I don’t know, I’m sure you get these comments. Do you get them? I just think it’s this narrative that even as good liberal people we’re fed of like, “Oh, well, it’s bullshit so you shouldn’t participate.” But I’m like, “No, but you’re hurting yourself by not participating. And that’s what they want.” I don’t know, it’s like a conspiracy theory I have.
Madeline Pendleton:
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory. I think that we know that poverty is a feature of capitalism. And we also know poverty is a policy choice. And we see this anywhere that a government has decided to implement fighting poverty as a policy decision, they succeed. We know that the fact that people live in poverty, the fact that people with, quote, unquote, “good jobs” still can’t afford to make ends meet, those are all policy decisions.
You are right to say, “Well, they win when we just let ourselves spend into oblivion with our meager money we have because everything seems futile and hopeless.” You look at the person who’s doing that, saying that, and you say, “I understand why you would feel that way,” but also the government is counting on you feeling that way so that your abject poverty becomes a motivator for more people like Jeff Bezos to start these businesses to exploit people like you who now you’ve put yourself in such a financially precarious position… Not through your fault whatsoever. You’ve put yourself there because of systemic things you don’t have much control over. And the only thing you’ve done to contribute to that is you’re like, “Well, I’m not going to fight it,” which who can blame you for that, honestly? But for whatever reason, you’ve ended up in this position where now somebody like Jeff Bezos is allowed to say, “Yeah, come work at my warehouse for $9 an hour where you don’t get bathroom breaks.” And you’re like, “Well, fuck, I guess I have to because I don’t have any other decisions.” I have no other options.
And again, that’s not your fault, but that is what those people are counting on. They are counting on you saying, “This is too big, too scary, too impossible, especially for somebody on my income to try to fight. And it is too gross and I don’t want to be a part of it.” But you don’t win in that situation. You have become a martyr to your belief system, and the only person you have hurt is yourself. And they have won. The people in power exploiting your labor have won. The people who use you as an example of what not to do so the rich get richer, they have won. I think that’s an important thing to remember. You don’t want to hurt yourself in the process because it just helps them anyway.
The way that I get the most pushback about this is usually when it comes to investing. This is hard for people to wrap their head around. And the things I always tell them are, “One, Karl Marx owned stock. If Karl Marx thinks that buying stock is okay, you probably can too. Two, in a system of capitalism, it is the closest option we have to public ownership.” My goal is that workers should own the means of production. You should own a little bit of your workplaces, whatever that means, however you can. We don’t have that option in a widespread way in capitalism, but this is the closest you can get to it so, one, rich dude doesn’t own all of Apple. We all own a little of Apple. And three, that is fair because these major corporations utilize public services that our tax dollars fund.
I live down the street from an Amazon distribution center. This morning, I took a funny video to post on my Instagram that’s five of these Amazon delivery trucks just driving past my street in a row like a weird parade of dystopia. My taxes fund that street, fund the light poles that light up the sidewalks while they load their trucks up, the water they use in their building, all of this is funded from my tax dollars, so in a lot of ways I’ve helped support Amazon. And why shouldn’t I get some of that back? They’re in my community taking up resources I pay for.
When you think about this and you think about, no, we all are entitled to a little bit of that profit that these companies are making, especially when they’re in our communities using our tax-funded resources, I think that’s what really helps people change their mind about it. When you look and you say, “You’re not…” You choosing not to own a small share of Amazon, for example, doesn’t hurt Amazon. Most of the time when you’re buying stock, unless it’s on an IPO, an initial public offering, you’re buying from another person. It’s a secondhand market. The only person you are hurting is yourself.
And sometimes people say, “Well, it’s exploitative even to other people because you buy and that person loses.” And that’s not necessarily true. A lot of the stock we see on the secondhand market comes from retirement accounts. We see people who have been investing in stock their entire careers, and now they’re ready to retire, which means that they want to sell some of that stock off and convert it into cash that they can use as their annual, quote, unquote, “salary” to live for the year. And now it’s your turn to buy that and do the same thing. And I think that when I explain it to people that way, they become more receptive. We have so few options here to help do things in an egalitarian way, and you owning little pieces of all these major corporations, that is so much better than you not. And it’s not enough, for sure it’s not enough, but it’s the option we have. And you’d be foolish not to take it, so please just take it.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Yeah, and the way I explained it as well is it’s like I’d rather take the money I’m getting in profit and do cool shit with it than not participate at all because, again, suffering for yourself. Yeah, that was so well said. Thank you. I am so excited for folks to read your book. Useful chapters include How to Rent an Apartment, How to Buy a House, How to Feel Happy when Everything Around You Feels Sad, of course How to Run an Ethical Business. What else can people take away from your book or what else do you hope people take away?
Madeline Pendleton:
I hope what people take away from this is that they’re not alone for financially struggling, that it’s been such a cultural taboo for so long, people don’t feel like they can talk candidly about money. I’m here to tell you it’s okay to talk candidly about money. And the more you talk to your friends and family about it, the more you’ll realize that a lot of the things you thought were things you were doing wrong that were bad about you, it’s more systemic than that. And that will help alleviate a lot of your guilt and stress and shame.
Yeah, I think that the main takeaway from the book is that money’s a math problem, sure, but money is also so deeply emotional and you can’t ignore that. Ignoring that, it’s not going to help you. You need to acknowledge that it is emotional, and then you need to do the work to let go of the guilt and shame and realize that so much of our circumstance is systemic and is not just you and your, quote, unquote, “bad decisions.” But once you realize that, what can you do to try to control the little bits you can, change the little things you can? What small decisions can you make? And that’s how you go. That’s how you start building a plan.
Tori Dunlap:
Amazing. Thank you for your expertise. Thank you for just your time. Where can people find more about you and where can people buy the book?
Madeline Pendleton:
The book is available wherever books are sold is called I Survived Capitalism and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt. And the second line is Everything I Wish I Never Had to Learn About Money. Yeah, you can get it at the great Satan itself, amazon.com. You can also get it at Barnes & Noble. They’ve been really excited about the book, so that’s cool. You can also get it at Powell’s. And there is a way also you can purchase from Powell’s with some of the proceeds going towards their strike fund because they’re trying to unionize. That is a good resource you can find online. Also, a lot of small bookstores are carrying it, I’ve been told. And you can probably check it out at your local library. There’s an audiobook version as well.
And if the book isn’t up your alley, I do have my TikTok, which is @Madeline_Pendleton where I answer people’s questions about all sorts of things with some of them, yes, including money. And I have a Twitter account. I refuse to call it the other name, which is @jeangreige, which is an X-Men reference unfortunately. It is J-E-A-N-G-R-E-I-G-E. And I have my own podcast, which is actually all about the political horrors of the world. And that is called Pick Me Up, I’m scared.
Tori Dunlap:
Madeline, thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Madeline Pendleton:
Thank you.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you so much to Madeline for joining us and you all for listening. You can get her book, I Survived Capitalism and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt anywhere you get your books. You can also find more information about her in the show notes. Thank you for being here, financial feminist. We so appreciate you as always, and we’ll talk to you soon.
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist a Her First $100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristen Fields. Associate Producer, Tamisha Grant. Research by Ariel Johnson. Audio and Video Engineering by Alyssa Medcalf. Marketing and Operations by Karina Patel, Amanda Leffew, Elizabeth McCumber, Masha Bachmetyeva, Taylor Cho, Kailyn Sprinkle, Sasha Bonnar, Claire Coronan, Daryl Ann Inman, and Janelle Reasoner. Promotional Graphics by Mary Stratton. Photography by Sarah Wolf, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her first $100K team and community for supporting this show. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First $100K our guests and episode show notes, visit financialfeministpodcast.com.
Tori Dunlap
Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over one million women negotiate salary, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.
Tori’s work has been featured on Good Morning America, the New York Times, BBC, TIME, PEOPLE, CNN, New York Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, BuzzFeed, and more.
With a dedicated following of almost 250,000 on Instagram and more than 1.6 million on TikTok —and multiple instances of her story going viral—Tori’s unique take on financial advice has made her the go-to voice for ambitious millennial women. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women.”
An honors graduate of the University of Portland, Tori currently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys eating fried chicken, going to barre classes, and attempting to naturally work John Mulaney bits into conversation.
