Riding the L train to work, Zoey’s brain was abuzz.
How did she ever get the idea that Henry was simply working there as a barista? Didn’t Barbara say that? She reviewed their Monday lunchtime conversation. No, what Barbara said was, the older guy you see in there, in the mornings, making the coffee. That was it. It was Zoey herself who’d made the assumption that Henry was an employee, based on all the times she’d seen him puttering around behind the counter, making people espresso drinks. And he didn’t act like he owned the place.
Barbara must have known, though, right? Why didn’t she mention it? And what was her point in pushing Zoey to go talk to him? She felt like chasing her boss down the moment she got to work and asking her.
But she didn’t. In fact, once she arrived at the thirty-third floor, she went out of her way to avoid all contact with Barbara.
It was Thursday, and Zoey had not talked with her boss since Monday. That was no accident. She didn’t want to be evasive, but she dreaded the idea of having The Talk—the one about her leaving to take that new job at Jessica’s media agency uptown.
Not that she’d actually made the decision yet. Which was why she’d been avoiding Jessica as well. Though she had to admit, it really did seem too golden an opportunity to pass up. She was tired of the feeling of running in circles, never getting ahead, seeing no end in sight. (She was even dreaming about it, for heaven’s sake!) And those school loans didn’t feel as if they were getting any smaller each month. If anything, they felt like they were growing larger.
Which made her think of what Georgia had said about how “the miracle of compound interest” cut both ways: Debt can compound, too, and once it starts, it can grow pretty fast and get pretty scary.
Ha, thought Zoey. Tell me about it. Although Georgia and Baron certainly seemed like they’d turned things around for themselves, didn’t they, and in a big way. Based, at least in part, on advice from Henry!
Which she could appreciate, because he did seem to have a lot of answers. Still, there was something missing in everything he’d said, something that didn’t quite fit. And whatever it was, it was nagging at her.
And so her thoughts went, round and round, as she shaved sentences and shaped paragraphs and put in place the final puzzle pieces for their spring issue.
“Are we hungry yet?”
Zoey swiveled on her chair to face Barbara. Was it past one already?
“Thanks, Barbara, but I think I’m going to pass.” She had a protein bar in her top desk drawer; that would have to do it for today.
“Your call,” said Barbara.
Zoey bent over her work again. About a minute later, she glanced back up over her shoulder. Barbara’s face was still there, looking at her.
“So. You talk with Henry?”
Zoey sighed. “In fact, I have. Barbara, why didn’t you tell me he owns the place!”
“That’s his business,” Barbara replied. “Not mine. And anyway, you didn’t ask.”
“Very funny.” Zoey thought for a moment, then said, “Why exactly were you pushing me into talking to him?”
Barbara shrugged. “Like I said, he sees things differently. You were going on and on about not being able to afford things, and frankly it was getting old.”
Zoey laughed and noted a slight twinkle about her boss’s eyes—about as close as Barbara ever got to laughing herself.
“Besides,” Barbara added, “I didn’t push you. Nudged, maybe.”
“Noodge,” replied Zoey.
“Ha.” Barbara paused, then said, “So?”
“So, what?”
“So what do you think about all that stuff Henry’s no doubt been telling you the past few days?”
Zoey sighed. “I don’t know, Barbara.” She looked at her laptop, then turned back to face her boss again. “I’m . . . not really great with money.”
Barbara came around to the front of the half partition, leaned back against it, and shook her head slowly. “Zoey, Zoey.”
“What,” said Zoey, trying not to sound defensive.
“Look,” said Barbara. “Normally I make it a rule not to stick my nose into my team members’ private lives. But I’m going to tell you something every woman needs to hear. Okay?”
Barbara hated being called “boss,” but she didn’t take the bait. “I’m serious here. You listening?”
“I’m listening,” said Zoey.
Barbara came over and perched herself on the corner of Zoey’s desk. “The myths of money,” she said. “This is what they didn’t teach you in journalism school, and they don’t teach it in business school, either.” She glanced down at Zoey’s desk. “You taking notes?”
Zoey turned to her open laptop again, sat with both hands poised to type, and looked back up at Barbara. “The myths of money,” she repeated. “What they don’t teach you in school.”
Barbara nodded. “Okay, then. First is the idea that making more income will make you rich.”
Zoey opened a new file and typed a boxed headline:
MYTH #1:
Make more money and you’ll be rich.
“Henry probably talked about this already, right?” said Barbara. “How much you earn has almost no bearing on whether or not you’ll become financially solid.
“Most people think they have an income problem. They don’t. They have a spending problem. Don’t get me wrong, a healthy income is a thing of beauty. But chasing after the bigger dollar is not necessarily the solution to your money problems.”
As she typed, Zoey struggled not to reveal anything on her face. Guilt, for instance. Did Barbara somehow know she was considering that job uptown? It was possible. The New York media world was like high school: everyone knew everyone else’s business.
“When you grow your income bigger,” Barbara continued, “you just take whatever money problems you have and make those bigger, too. Because your money problems come from your money habits, and those don’t change just because your income goes up. The solution to your money problems isn’t more money; it’s new habits.
“You with me so far?”
“I’m with you,” Zoey said as she typed. Although she wasn’t, not really. She followed the logic of it, all right—but Zoey still could not wrap her head around this whole idea. Her money problem was that she didn’t have enough! How would making more possibly not fix that?
“What makes you financially set for life isn’t bigger income; it’s smart saving and investing. Which brings us to the second myth: that you need to have a lot of extra cash first. You’ve heard the saying ‘It takes money to make money’?”
Zoey nodded.
“That’s not only not true, it’s so not true that it’s Myth #2.”
Zoey inserted a page break and typed another boxed headline.
MYTH #2:
It takes money to make money.
“ ‘I don’t make enough to invest’—you know how many women I’ve heard say this?” said Barbara. “It makes me want to scream. It’s like they’re saying, ‘Without some big windfall, there’s no way I’ll ever get ahead.’ As if financial security were some kind of exclusive club with outrageous membership fees.
“And none of that is true. You don’t need a huge chunk of money to build wealth. Did Henry show you his charts—five dollars a day, ten dollars a day, and so forth?”
Zoey nodded.
“Well, he’s not just blowing smoke. Those numbers don’t lie. The power of compound interest is as real as gravity. And for most people who’ve built financial security, that’s exactly how they did it: a dollar at a time. It doesn’t take a big stake to start with. What it takes is facing the reality of your situation and deciding to do something about it.
“And you need to stop telling yourself, ‘I’m no good with money,’ because you don’t have to be a mathematical genius or Wall Street wizard, either. What you need is the capacity to be honest with yourself. Which is a rare commodity these days. But not with you, Zoey. It’s what I’ve always liked about you: you don’t BS. You’re a consistently honest person.”
Zoey felt her face flush. She took her hands off the keyboard. “I get your point, Barbara, I really do. But, I don’t know . . . I don’t want to feel like my life revolves around money.”
“Of course not,” said Barbara. “But that’s not the idea. The idea is to set yourself up so your life won’t revolve around the lack of money. Which, by the way, no one else is going to do for you.
“Because here’s the thing, Zoey, and this is the next myth, maybe the biggest one of all: the idea that when the chips are down and times get tough, someone else—a husband, advisor, big handsome knight galloping up on his mighty steed, whatever—that someone other than your own sweet self is going to take care of you and be your safety net. That someone else will take care of you.”
Zoey typed.
MYTH #3:
Someone else will take care of you.
“Not that people actually say this out loud,” Barbara went on, “because most don’t—but they’re saying it with their choices and behavior. ‘My boyfriend, my husband, my father, my financial advisor, takes care of my finances.’ Or: ‘Oh, it’ll all take care of itself.’ I’ve got news for you: No he doesn’t, and no it won’t.”
Zoey thought about Georgia Dawson saying, I had no idea how overextended we were. About her own mother saying, Your father looks after all that.
“There’s no Prince Charming coming with a big bag of cash. You have to be your own Prince Charming, Zoey.
“And by the way, this is just as true for men as it is for women. The world is full of men who expect that someone—their lawyer, their broker, their company, the next US president—someone else is going to watch out for their financial future. And it’s simply not true.
“Your wealth is exactly like your health. Your health doesn’t just happen; it’s not something that takes care of itself as you go through life. You can’t leave your health in someone else’s hands, and the same goes for your wealth. They’re both completely in your hands. No one else’s.”
Zoey finished typing and considered all that for a moment. She looked up at Barbara. “But you did say this is something every woman needs to hear.”
Barbara nodded. “Let me tell you about us. About women.
“In this enlightened world of ours, women still earn on average 20 percent less than men. Women are hurt more than men are by corporate downsizing, spend about ten more years out of the workforce handling responsibilities such as child-rearing and caring for elderly parents, as a result accumulating 34 percent less in their retirement accounts than men, and their Social Security benefits are significantly lower. And yet, get this: since women live on average about seven years longer than men, and half of all marriages end in divorce, the odds are strong that any given woman will end up spending her “golden years” on her own. Eighty percent of married men die married; 80 percent of married women die widowed! And four out of five widows living in poverty were not poor . . . until their husbands died.”
She paused to let Zoey’s typing catch up.
Zoey wasn’t even sure why she was taking all this down. It sure was depressing. It made her think again about her mom, about how tired she always seemed these days, the recurring backaches she hadn’t even mentioned (but Zoey’s father had, in another rare phone moment), and now that flu she couldn’t seem to shake. How on earth would she manage if Zoey’s father were gone?
“You’re following me?” said Barbara.
Zoey looked up. “Um, yeah. It’s not what you’d call a subtle point.”
“No,” said Barbara, “and it isn’t pretty, either. But it’s important. I know it’s hard for you to see this now, in your twenties. The concept of ‘retirement’ still seems a lifetime away. None of it seems real, I know. But it truly does go by in the blink of an eye. And far too many women suddenly wake up one day to find themselves alone, broke, all their options behind them, and thinking, ‘How the hell did I end up here?’ ”
Zoey’s mind flashed once more on that Monday morning image on the West Concourse wall, of the ship beached in the desert. She could imagine the captain of that ship asking himself the very same question.
After Barbara left her to her work, Zoey had been bent over her desk for only about an hour when it hit her: the thing that had been bugging her. She realized she did have one more question for Henry. It was so obvious, she practically slapped herself in the forehead.
She’d asked the man a handful of questions that morning. About whether 10 percent interest was a realistic expectation. About taxation. But those were really Jeffrey’s questions, not hers. And concerning Jeffrey’s biggest objection, the He’s a seventy-year-old barista, what does he know? question . . . well, Georgia had certainly cleared that one up, hadn’t she. The man wasn’t a barista after all: he owned the place. And his little dissertation on “making it automatic” seemed to handle Zoey’s own concerns about whether she’d ever have the discipline to “pay herself first” for any length of time.
Yet none of those were what was really bugging her.
She needed to talk to Henry again.
What had the kid at the coffee shop said the day before, when she dropped in on her way back home? Whenever he wants. Usually around three, but could be later. Or earlier.
She glanced at the clock on her laptop’s menu bar. Two fifteen. Could she still catch him? Maybe—if she tore out of there immediately.
Zoey didn’t understand her own sense of urgency. What did it really matter? But make sense or not, she needed to ask that question and hear his answer. And she needed to do it now.
She popped her laptop into her bag and dashed over to Barbara’s office to let her boss know she was leaving early. “Something’s come up!” she called out behind her as she made for the elevator.