13 things I read this month and loved

Hey friends,

October was a bit of a whirlwind: new projects, old projects, some spent on planes (of course) and, finally, fall weather in New York. Thank god.

I wrote a couple new articles (which hopefully will come out soon!) and shot a bunch of new YouTube content, including a video in which I ate a $60 loaf of bread. Spoiler: I was prepared to be a hater and unfortunately it was quite good.

I also flew to Amsterdam at the beginning of the month to meet my best friend’s new baby, which was such a singular and special experience. There is something very surreal about watching someone you’ve known and loved for so long create an entirely new human being. I also ate approximately one almond croissant per day and cat-sat two extremely adorable, extremely needy cats, so it was a productive trip all around.

We’re entering my birth month, so of course I’ve been reflecting more on the past year. Professionally, it has been life-changing for me, but has also included some fairly intense stretches of burnout and a few real emotional lows, which I’m realizing aren’t necessarily unrelated to all the good stuff.

I keep wondering whether anyone ever actually reaches this mythical state of “balance,” or is in a continuous state of flux. I’m publishing an essay on this very topic (it relates to money, don’t worry!) in a few weeks.

What I wrote this month

What happens when you’re too rich to hear no?:On the psychology of extreme wealth, the AI apocalypse, and what happens to your brain when money can protect you from almost every consequence.

[PAID] The economy is getting worse. Now what?: When economic conditions should actually change your financial plan, when you should leave it completely alone, and how to stop letting every scary headline convince you that you need to DO SOMETHING.

[PAID] 10 simple money tricks that actually work: The behavioral-finance hacks I actually use to spend less, save more and make better decisions without turning my entire life into a spreadsheet.

ICYMI: I will always publish my main essays for free, but paid subscribers get the tactical guides, frameworks and systems for actually applying everything I write about to their own money.

So if you like the cultural/economic analysis but occasionally finish one of my essays thinking, okay Hanna, but what am I supposed to DO about any of this? — that is basically what the paid subscription is for.

What else I’ve been up to

I hosted a new NerdWallet video, Why You Can’t Leave the House For Under $100, which is about something I complain about constantly: why simply existing outside your apartment has gotten so expensive. We get into the disappearance of affordable third places, the rise of memberships and private clubs, and the fact that social connection itself is becoming something you have to pay to access.

As I mentioned last month, I’m co-hosting the Markets Brew podcast on Thursdays and Fridays, where I talk about the macroeconomy, and, crucially, how culture impacts the markets, and vice versa. One recent episode I think you’ll like: Bumble’s $13B Decline Reveals a Bigger Dating App Problem — John and I talk about the business model of dating apps and whether an industry designed to help you stop using its product was always going to have a bit of a problem.

I also chatted with Charlotte Cowles for The Cut about budgeting for the end times — which was more fun (and hopeful!) than the topic sounds.

13 things I read and loved this month

1. “I Went Shopping. When Did I Become an Unpaid Employee?” — Nutmeg Phantasy

I write a lot about convenience culture, and this article gets at another byproduct of it: A lot of “convenience” is really just businesses making you do work they used to pay someone else to do. We scan our own groceries, check ourselves into hotels, and spend 45 minutes fighting an automated customer-service bot. Of course, this connects to enshittification and companies’ endless pursuit of profit and efficiency at the sacrifice of *our* (the consumer) money and time.

Related: this Atlantic piece on convenience and loneliness, which I also loved.

2. “After Work, We’ll Have Each Other” — Asterisk Magazine

This piece argues that work gives us more than a paycheck (AKA structure, identity, community) and therefore AI-driven job displacement threatens something deeper than income. Which I do, like, 95% agree with in concept, but I do think we’re sort of giving the modern workplace way too much credit for actually delivering those things. A lot of people spend the majority of their waking hours in jobs they don’t find meaningful. Let the record show I am *super* AI displacing thousands of people from their jobs But maybe it’s also worth asking “what would people choose to do with their lives if economic survival weren’t the primary organizing principle?”

3. “Life Under the Algorithm” — Dissent Magazine

Nightmare fuel! I’ve written before about surveillance pricing, how algorithms know how badly you need a plane ticket, groceries or an apartment and calculate the maximum price you’ll tolerate. But what happens when it goes even further? Say, an algorithm knows exactly how badly you need a job and can use that information to determine the minimum salary you’ll accept? How will we know what a fair price, or salary, or number is anymore?

4. “An Underappreciated Problem With Dating Apps” — The Atlantic

Apps make dating more transactional, full stop, and aren’t actually designed for the way people actually form relationships. Compatibility is often something people build, not something an algorithm can perfectly identify before two people have even met. We’ve commercialized meeting people at exactly the same time that many of the places where people used to meet organically (hello, third places!) have gone away.

5. “Playing the Wrong Game” — Of Dollars and Data

The dangerous thing about an optimization game is that it tells you very clearly how to win, but not about what winning costs you. It’s easy to measure dollars in your bank account, how many social media followers you have, and where your job title is on the career ladder. Relationships, time, curiosity, peace, enoughness? Much harder.

I think about this all the time because money itself is probably the greatest optimization trap of all. There is always another dollar to earn and another benchmark to hit. At some point you have to decide whether you are actually building the life you want or simply becoming extremely good at accumulating.

6. “Mothers for Sale” — The Atlantic

A deeply reported examination of the commercial surrogacy industry in the U.S., a topic that’s extremely emotionally charged, complicated and uncomfortable.

I’m broadly sympathetic to reproductive autonomy, including the right to choose surrogacy and to be compensated for it. But there’s a really clear economic power imbalance here, that can very easily be exploited (and is, by many agencies). At what point does “choice” become inseparable from the economic circumstances shaping it? I have no answers here, but it’s a thought-provoking topic.

7. “My On-Again, Off-Again Relationship” — Megan Nolan / Sex Happens

I loved this first-person reflection on what it’s like to have income volatility, to earn less than a partner, to need financial help … and how all of that affects identity, shame, autonomy, and relationships, etc. Perhaps we should be a little less weird about dependence generally. Almost everyone depends on someone; we just have very different cultural judgments about whether that someone is a partner, a parent, an employer or a trust fund.

8. “Art Auctions” — The Point Magazine

The art market fascinates me. At a certain level, you’re buying more than just an object … you’re buying scarcity, status, access, and participation in an elite social world that agrees the object has value. A useful reminder that value is both extremely real and completely made up. Fun!

9. “Women Aren’t Nags — We’re Just Fed Up” — Harper’s Bazaar

When we talk about financial equality in relationships, we need to talk about more than just income parity. Because that’s the base level. There’s also the admin work, the emotional labor (*literally* called labor!!) which is unpaid and disproportionally falls on the woman. I’ve written about this before.

10. “Private Schools Are Bad for Society” — Hamilton Nolan

Opened for the spicy title, but the argument was actually interesting. Nolan essentially makes a point about the privatization of opportunity: when people with money can simply purchase better schools, neighborhoods, health care, childcare and networks, they become less dependent on the public systems everyone else relies upon.

I don’t know that I follow the argument all the way to “ban private schools,” but the question he raises is important: What happens to public goods when the people with the most power no longer need them?

11. “How Everything Became Gambling” — NYT Magazine

You know I was going to include at least one gambling story. It’s always worth bringing up (again!) how football games, elections, celebrity behavior, geopolitical events … every uncertain future outcome can become something you put money on. Instead of simply living with the fact that we don’t know what happens next, we’re encouraged to form a position and bet money behind it. Not good!

12. “How AI Replaced Me” — Oakland Review of Books

Can AI replace your job? Or more importantly, is it better than the person it’s replacing? This essay gets at what I think will become one of the defining tensions of the AI economy: A company can call something a “productivity gain” when what it really means is fewer workers producing a worse product more cheaply.

13. “Did Ambition Cost Me My Marriage?” — April Lockhart, The Cut

I have many thoughts here … as a society we encourage women to earn money and build their careers but struggle to reckon with a woman who becomes significantly more successful than her male partner. Listen, I’m not here to argue about content creation as a job or anything like that … but I have noticed people attacking wealthy, very public-facing influencers who are clearly the breadwinners in their households in a way I have not seen them do for a man.

What else I’m consuming

📚Books

Operation Mincemeat: (6.5/10) Interesting piece of history I knew nothing about, but I feel like I’ve been reading too many historical nonfiction books recently and need a balm. Also I can’t believe this was turned into a Broadway musical??

Butcher Boy: (4.5/10) Dark, strange, interesting. It reminded me a little of A Clockwork Orange thematically, although I did not like it nearly as much.

That’s all for October … really not been on my reading grind.

📺Watching

You Can See Everything

I mean … where do I begin. No spoilers, I promise, mostly because I left the theater no closer to understanding exactly what had happened than when I walked in.

For one, Nathan Fielder is a genius and this movie really does build upon his existing body of work (for the uninitiated, highly recommend this episode and this episode of Nathan For You and the second season the The Rehearsal).

Overall, it had me thinking a lot about how it’s pretty much impossible to ever fully know another person. You can observe someone constantly. You can know their habits, their history, their relationships, their choices. You can, theoretically, “see everything.” And you can still know almost nothing about their interior life.

🎧 Listening

Miffed It — Way Dynamic

The best (and worst) thing I bought this month

BEST: A $200 flight change that allowed me to beat jet lag and have one extra day at home before a five-day, eight-hours-a-day video shoot.

WORST: $20 bone broth from Goop Kitchen. I don’t want to talk about it.

Anyway, thank you for being here — for reading, replying, forwarding these essays to your friends and supporting me.

If you’re not subscribed yet, I publish free essays every other Wednesday. And if you want the practical guides, frameworks and full archive, you can become a paid subscriber below.

See you next month.

Hanna

Parting thought: The funniest tweet I saw this month.