Episode 28: Escaping Financial Patriarchy – with financial planner Dr. Jay Zigmont

The Discussion

Amy Allebest: All across the globe and routinely throughout human history, women’s financial activities have been restricted. We’ve been denied ownership of our property, we’ve been denied our earnings, we’ve been paid at lower wages and restricted from positions of financial leadership. And still today in the United States of America, countless women are being underpaid or encouraged not to work and not to manage their finances at all, instead vesting that power in the men whom we’ve been taught to defer to when it comes to the “masculine” subject of money. With systems like these in place for not just decades, but for centuries or even millennia, how can there be any question that patriarchy is contorting our financial reality? Longtime listeners know that this is a topic that we’ve explored before, but with money looming so largely in our lives and consistently intersecting with systems of oppression, I’ve been wanting to dig deeper into really understanding patriarchy’s impact on our bank accounts, and learn what we can do about it. I’m very excited to be discussing these topics today with the author of the book The Childfree Guide to Life and Money, Dr. Jay Zigmont. Welcome, Jay! 

Jay Zigmont: Thanks for having me. This is gonna be a fun conversation. 

AA: Jay Zigmont, PhD, MBA, and CFP, is the founder of Childfree Wealth, a life and financial planning firm dedicated to helping childfree and permanently childless people. Childfree Wealth is the first and currently the only life and financial planning firm dedicated to serving childfree people. Jay is also the author of the forthcoming book, The Childfree Guide to Life and Money, and the co-host of the Childfree Wealth Podcast. His PhD was in adult learning from the University of Connecticut, and he’s been featured in Fortune, Forbes, MarketWatch, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Business Insider, CNBC, and many other publications. So, that’s awesome. You’ve got your credentials established, Jay, and I wonder if you could introduce yourself now more personally. Tell us where you’re from, who you are as a person, and why you’re so passionate about the work that you do today. 

JZ: Yes. I’m actually located just outside of Nashville, and my wife and I are childfree, which, just for definition purposes, means that we don’t have kids and aren’t planning on kids ever. We can have some different definitions around childfree versus childless, whether it’s by choice or not, but whatever term works for you. And when I was studying to become a CFP, what was surprising to me is that there was zero mention of not having kids in any of the education. So I really got started on the research question, like, are we weird? I’m a PhD, like that’s my area, but my wife and I are two PhDs. We’re weird. We’ll sit around at night talking about research studies. We’re weird, but are we weird for being childfree, the life we’re living, where it’s going? And come to find out, about 25% of the US are childfree or permanently childless, so it’s not like it’s a small group, but I didn’t even know the term childfree existed or what it was. And then what I found out as I dove deeper is that just about all the advice out there assumes you either do have kids or will have kids. So, you know, we talk about the standard life script or the American dream, which says that you have to have the house, the two and a half kids, all that fun stuff. But that’s all systems. And boy, you and I can have fun on where those systems come from and the history of it, but those are built in and there’s almost no way to take them out of the financial system unless we break it and go a couple different directions, which is where my research comes from. And when you start talking about “I’m gonna live a life that’s different from that script,” it changes just about everything about your life and finances. It’s a taboo topic to talk about. I joke that I talk about two taboo topics at once, being childfree and being wealthy. Those are the two bad ones to talk about, but hey, let’s do it.

AA: Hmm. Interesting. Oh, that’s really fascinating. Well, let’s start out the conversation, because this is specifically– and I know that we could have taken lots of different angles, but because this is Breaking Down Patriarchy podcast, we’re going to focus on those topics that you do write about and think about. So let’s start with the big picture and then we’ll zoom in as we go, but maybe you could describe for us the ways that patriarchy is actively affecting our finances. What are the specific places that it shows up? 

JZ: So, okay, we’re recording this in December and I just gotta start with politics on this one. The reproductive rights and attacks on that, and this whole thing around the childless cat ladies, all the other things. There are these assumptions in there that if you choose to go a different path, or if it’s not by choice, whether it is, it just seems to break the system. And once you start realizing that it breaks the system, the question then becomes, “Well, why are they fighting so hard to keep it?” I posted online talking about being childfree, and somebody said to me, “Well, you childfree people voted to have these policies. You need to have kids so we have taxpayers and warriors.” And I’m like, these are just the roles you’re giving to kids before they’re even born, and you start realizing that these basic assumptions are part of the system. 

And we start challenging it. My question I always ask my clients is, “Whose voice is in your head saying you gotta do that?” And it’s often not yours, let’s be real on that. It might be family, might be religion, might be politics, might be other things, but there’s that pressure. And the problem is that it hurts people, both men and women. And I’m a financial person, so I have to use numbers. Pew Research just did a study of this, looking at childfree folks, and there was a side note in one of their research studies that I’m like, “You missed the whole point.” And what it said was that if you look at median income for parents, men and women, the gender gap is about $1,800 a month. Right? That’s huge. If you look at it in childfree couples, it’s $160. 

AA: Whoa. 

JZ: Which means that statistically there’s no gap. We can analyze a whole bunch of reasons why the gender wage gap exists, but I’ve got data that says that if you’re not following the standard norms, you’re following your own path, whatever the reason you’re on that, women do better, men do better, and they’re happier. And I get it, you know, there are a lot of people on here and people judge having kids versus not. I’m not voting on whether you have kids or not. My wife and I, for us, she had a 50-50 chance of dying if she got pregnant, and that kind of made our choice for us. But what you’re seeing is that people that are childfree, 94% of them say they’re happy. That’s a huge number. I mean, the general population, it’s not like half. The gender wage gap disappears, happiness increases, and they get to live their best life. So then why does the system keep pushing people in another direction? 

You and I could do 50 research studies and talk about the history of it, but you start seeing it and you realize that money, motivations, and patriarchy go hand in hand. And unfortunately, a lot of it goes back to, you know, the men have to make the money, the women have their roles, blah, blah, blah, which is just BS. It’s just not the way we should do it. What we find is that something like 80% of our followers are women. Most of the people that reach out to us are either single women or couples, but the woman is usually the one reaching out. And what we find is that they’re taking control of their life and living their own thing and kind of bucking the system. But the system pushes back, too. If you ask childfree people “What’s the worst thing about being childfree?” The answer is everybody else’s judgment. And I’m like, “Why are we doing that?” 

AA: For sure. Well let’s dig down deeper into the gender wage gap. What are the wage disparities between men and women right now with different demographics? You just gave us one that was mind-blowing. Is the gap widening or narrowing? What’s causing the changes in the gender wage gap? 

AA: Yeah. Do you know information about why women don’t negotiate wealth? 

JZ: It’s interesting. When you look at the data, I don’t have the specifics, this is not my number one area of study, but what I see is that it’s almost like men expect to get more and they feel the right to do it. So I don’t know if it’s that women negotiate less, but it may be that men are more aggressive in their negotiation. Like a chicken and egg moment. But you see it a lot, you know, when we have clients that are negotiating for their job positions. To us, it doesn’t matter who you are, we’re going to have the same thing. And it’s interesting because a lot of the women are like, “Well, it’s a good enough position. Why do I have to negotiate for more?” I’m like, “Because the company owes you money. The company’s expecting you to negotiate.” And to men, that’s kinda just what we do. And to women, it’s like, “But I mean, they were nice to me and they were fair. Why ask for more?” That’s because you’re owed it. And that’s where you get stuck. 

So if we take a standard couple, a man and a woman married, often we get into these roles and roles of expectations around managing money. We call in our world the CFO spouse versus the non-CFO spouse. It does not have to be gendered, but that’s the expectation. “Hey, I grew up that way. My dad always managed the money, my mother never knew anything about it.” And then you have cases where women are like, “My parents divorced and I realized that I need to understand my money.” And it’s interesting because when you bring couples together and you’re starting to talk about how they’re managing money, I don’t care, really, which one of them pays the bills, writes the check, that doesn’t matter. But are we both in the decision-making process? Because if we’re gonna say, “All right, we’ll go classic, the man has to make the decisions,” all that, it’s all on them. 

But the other thing is that it’s an opportunity for financial infidelity, and people don’t talk about that enough. If one person in the couple, don’t care which but it’s usually the man, is managing the money, they could be hiding money, whether it’s a bad business decision, taxes a whole huge amount. And what happens is that it works until it doesn’t, you know? For example, I had a couple where the husband became disabled and didn’t have the mental capacity to handle it, and the wife was like, “What do I do? How do I do this? How do I figure out finances?” Her first phone call to me, she’s in the ER, her husband may be dying, and she’s like, “How do I pay my bills?” 

AA: Oh my gosh. 

JZ: You’re realizing that the weight is on men inappropriately, and we haven’t done things together. And that’s the hard part, is that it’s not fair on either. And I can give you an example from my personal life. My wife and I embrace the gardener and the rose, where one’s growing, one’s providing support. And when you get two PhDs, there’s always a problem. How do you get two careers at the same level at the same time, same place, and in academia? You have the person who gets the tenure track job and then you have the “trailing spouse,” which is just a terrible term, but we’ll let it go. And we started realizing that for a couple, for you both to have the top of your life, your top of your career, top of your goals, it’s probably not going to happen at the same time. That’s just a reality check. So, what my wife and I do is we embrace the gardener and the rose. We take turns who’s providing support and who’s growing. She’s the rose right now. She got offered a job 1,200 miles away. We packed up the dogs and went, you know, being childfree, it’s not that hard. I think the hardest part was putting two mastiffs in the back of a Prius. So you gotta see that, I mean, that was fun. But what surprised me was how many friends, families, and others, mostly men, said, “You’re going to move for your wife’s job?” 

AA: Wow. 

JZ: And I’m like, “Why not?” Now, by the way, in the gardener and the rose, we have it set up so that every five to seven years you switch roles, so everybody gets a turn to grow. But I am still amazed at the people like, “You did that for your wife?” And I’m like, “I did that for a person who is my partner. Why does it matter her gender?” But you see these things. I’ve had other people like, “Well, you’re not the man in the family.” Okay, forget it. I’m not going to get into arguments. When you start pulling it apart, you can see that these patterns are all created and perpetuated by the system. 

AA: Mm-hmm. That’s so interesting. Well, first of all, no one would have even batted an eye or asked a question if your wife had moved for your job. And that demonstrates how that’s still the default. And this is just highlighting for me, too, it’s really interesting how if you had children, I mean, it’s obvious that the bulk of the domestic labor and the childcare does fall to the woman, which does pull her out of her job usually to some degree, right? And so then it does create that expectation that she would move for the man. The man’s career becomes primary when children are born, which is why I guess it can stay more of an egalitarian partnership if you remove that variable. If you remove the childcare, then if you have that as a value, it does make it easier. But nevertheless, like you just said, even with your partnership where there are no kids, it’s like, “Wait what? You’re moving for the woman?” It’s so interesting how it highlights the issue differently. 

JZ: Yeah. A couple of my colleagues run a podcast called Modern Husbands, and they designed it because they wanted to talk about, “Hey, you don’t have to follow gender roles and gender norms and all that.” In their cases they had kids, they’re taking care of their kids, like, “it’s okay to split it as appropriate for whatever works for that couple.” But it was interesting that they had to create a podcast just to talk about that concept. It’s so foreign. And my childfree couples we’re like, “Yeah, whatever.” You know, 50% LGBTQ+ are childfree. So gender, to me, doesn’t matter. You see that because they’re childfree, they get rid of that part, right? But then there’s still the baggage that comes with it. So if we go to the next step, there’s an interesting dynamic, which is caregiving in the bigger picture, especially around parents, so caregiving of your parents. 

AA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. 

JZ: When we look and we talk to our soloists – single, no kids – who are women, they’re often expected like, “Oh, you don’t have kids, you can take care of Mom.” I’ve been caring for my mother since I was 16 and she’s been disabled in all different ways. And I’m like, okay, but it’s just an automatic expectation. And I’m like, “How is that fair?” How does the caregiving responsibility– we can talk about kids, no kids, I just generalize it: the caregiving always goes on the woman. And I think the challenge there is that if we don’t figure out how to split the duties, figure out how to manage it, figure out how to work the finance, nobody’s happy. Happiness and caregiving, like, if you look at the data, one of my colleagues, Jordan Grumet, just wrote a book called The Purpose Code, and he talks about it as the myth of joyful parenthood, which is this thought that if I put all my time and effort and support in having kids, and he has two kids, that I’ll get something out of it. And by the way, the data says no, you’re not guaranteed. And what you’re seeing is that there are all these assumptions of caregiving roles, what you get out of it, what the expectations are… Why gender is still in it is a good question. And to be frank, with my clients, it’s not. We see very few of the classical gender roles in our clients. Probably less than 10%. 

AA: That’s really interesting. I also want to circle back to the garden and the rose idea. I’ve never heard that term before you, and I’m just curious where that came from. And did you come up with that cycle of the five to seven years on your own just because that’s what’s going to work with your specific careers? Or is that something that people could adopt and implement in their partnerships? 

JZ: Yeah. I’m not going to take credit for making it. Originally it was called the garden and the flower. The way I say it is that my wife is just not any flower, so she’s the rose. So that’s why we do that. The concept behind it is that somebody provides support, and if you look at the nuclear family structure, it’s designed around somebody having to provide support. It’s usually women, but there’s somebody at home, the woman behind the man or whatever you want to call it, because there’s stuff you have to do, like literally gardening, literally taking care of animals. And the reason we do the switch is we try to figure this out for childfree people. How do you embrace it? And the problem is that if you don’t have a planned switch, somebody is going to have resentment and is going to be subordinate. When you have the built-in switch, you know you’re going to get your turn, and it doesn’t always have to be about a career. For my wife and I, when it’s my turn to be the rose, I’m going to get in a boat and travel the world. It’s not about the career. I have others that, you know, sometimes it’s worked, sometimes it’s not. But because you have a planned switch, it allows the rose to be a little more selfish, which is intentional. Go grow, we gotta move, we gotta go, I’ll support you, whatever we gotta do. And we find that it works. I think the flip side is this concept of the 80% relationship, where you each give up 20%. So you get 80% of what you want. And I’m like, that just built 20% resentment. That’s the reality check. 

I was talking about the gardener and the rose on another podcast, and they had kids, the person I was speaking with, and he said, “Well, that’s kind of what me and my wife do. I’m taking care of the kids right now.” I said, “Fine. Did you have a conversation about it? Did you have a conversation about your roles? When you’re going to switch? How are you going to do that?” He goes, “No, we didn’t do any of that.” That’s the difference. And if you really want to pull apart the patriarchy stuff, it’s that assumption of who does what. If we have a conversation and you decide you want to be the gardener or you want to take care of the kids, awesome! If it’s for you, your reasons, your life, your choice. It’s when you don’t have those conversations and you don’t have a plan around it and you just fall to default choices, it’s a problem. 

AA: This is now tying back to another thing that you said earlier, too. I’ll just use my own marriage as an example. We were a very typical Mormon couple in that we got married super young and had kids right away. We were pregnant at our college graduation, married and pregnant, started right away, and we just fell into certain gender roles by default. Because even though we were very, I would say, personality-wise and in our relationship very equally yoked, he was like, “I don’t mind managing the finances. I’m good at it, I like it, and I don’t mind it.” So it was kind of a favor he was doing to me because it’s kind of a pain to do. But just as you described, what can happen is that it doesn’t serve either person well because then I never learned to do it. So let’s say that at the beginning, even if we had been really intentional and like, “Okay, I’ll support you for a while. I’ll be the gardener, you be the rose.” For a while, that supporting role meant that I didn’t really have to learn all of the finance stuff because he was taking the lead, he was growing in his financial literacy, starting his own business and stuff. But because we never planned to swap, there was never going to be a time where I would have to learn that stuff. And I see that in so many of my friends that come from a similar background. And it usually doesn’t happen until there’s a divorce, or like you said, until there’s a medical emergency. Something really bad happens and they’re like, “Oh crap, I’m 40 years old and I don’t know how to pay my bills,” or, “actually, I don’t know where the insurance information is.” The supporting partner can become so stunted in their growth because they’re just supporting. If you never swap, you never have to grow in those ways. So what started out being like, “I’ll be the hero, I’ll take that on for you,” actually ends up damaging them accidentally, even if you’re not intending to. 

JZ: When it comes to budgeting, I’m just going to use as an example because it’s a basic building block of finance, one person can make the budget, but the other person has to be involved in it. And what we say is that we want you to have a weekly budget meeting, and the person who did not make the budget must make one change each time. I don’t care. It could be $20, it could be a category. I don’t care. Because that shows that you’re part of it. Versus the “Oh, you got it. You take care of it.” I’ve been dealing with so many people right now that either had a death in the family or loss or divorce, and they’re just lost. Completely. And it’s become a little bit of a tirade of mine. Everybody needs to understand it. 

And what we’ve dealt with with some of our couples is that when they’re having trouble budgeting and having trouble getting on the same page, we’ll force them for six months to switch who does the budget, which sounds crazy, but like, “No, your turn. You do this.” And the rule is that the person who’s doing the budget gets to figure out which software you use, how you want to account. I don’t care how you do the budget, but you’re responsible for it. At the end of the six months, we’ll have a discussion. Are we switching back where we’re going? But you have to understand it because then you’re realizing, “Oh, you’re right. This electric bill is going up considerably. I never look at it because I don’t have to.” You start seeing it. I’ve done that with couples, and nine times out of ten, people are like, “This was the best experience ever.” One out of ten is like, hey, sometimes people are just not great with numbers and it might be too much of a learning curve too quickly. Okay, we need to build a structure for it. But if we’re going to do that, how do we build that as part of the process? 

I had a gentleman reach out, kind of an older couple, always standard roles, and he’s like, “Look, if I die, I don’t understand how my wife’s going to manage this.” If we have a couple, we always have both members come to the meeting, and we started working on it. And at first you would hear nothing out of her, she just kinda sat there. And then she started to ask questions, and then she started giving her feedback. That’s what it takes, and it just takes some time. But your example’s exactly right. If you just fall into the gender roles or the norms or whatever else it is, you don’t know, and let’s be real, some of us are better at things than others. I do the cooking in the house. I happen to be better at that. I don’t like picking up the phone to call people to ask for things, and my wife’s like, “I don’t care. I’ll call.” So she calls the people, and I make dinner. It sounds silly, but it doesn’t matter who’s doing the roles. You figure out where your strengths are, you figure out how to lean on each other and take turns. Gender has nothing to do with that. 

AA: Yeah. Love it.

Okay. Let’s talk a little bit more about the subject of your book, The Childfree Guide to Life and Money. The book is primarily a practical financial guide for people without children, and I would really recommend it to anyone listening who falls into that category, but also it’s interesting because there are some of these things that are broadly applicable that we’ve been talking about already. You talk about this life script, the assumed life script that you go to school, you go to college, you get a job, you get married, you have kids, and then you retire and then you pass on your wealth. And in the book, you describe how this script is reinforced in everything from religious institutions to our tax code, and it’s a really powerful force, this paradigm in our life. I’m wondering how patriarchy affects that life script, and where are the forces for you? Because I know where that comes from for me, but where does that come from for you? 

JZ: Let me give you a silly example, but it happened to us. My wife and I went to get married, let me see, I ain’t gonna mess up this question now, 16 years ago. We went to go get married, and she was raised in the Catholic Church, and her family had said, “Hey, happy to pay for the wedding,” kind of going back to the roles again, “We can have that as long as you get married in a Catholic church.” I was raised Methodist but I’m fine with a Catholic church, it doesn’t matter to me which one we have it in. I said, “Fine, we’ll do the Catholic church.” Now, my wife was an altar girl, she was very active in this community, it was part of her life. We go to the priest and you have to do all those meetings beforehand and work through the process. And he says, “You have to agree to raise your kids Catholic.” And we said, “That’s fine, we’re not having any, we’ll agree to raise them Catholic.” 

AA: Haha! That’s funny. 

JZ: He said, “Oh no, you have to agree to have kids and raise them Catholic.” 

AA: Oh wow. 

JZ: Three priests later, we couldn’t get married in a Catholic church. 

AA: Wow. Oh my goodness.

JZ: And I thought that maybe it was just because it was a while ago. I had somebody online the other day like, “Yep, it happened to us about six months ago.” This is that system. And I’ll tell my clients, like, “Whose voice is in your head saying you gotta do it?” Religion has a huge, huge impact, but we couldn’t even get married in the church she grew up in. 

AA: That’s crazy. 

JZ: We told them, “Hey, she’s going to die.” And they’re like, “Uh huh.”

AA: Are you serious? 

JZ: We had family members saying, “Just lie to the priest.” I’m like, “Nuh uh, I’m not lying to a priest. I don’t believe in that religion, but you go to hell for that.” But that’s how strong it is. 

AA: Huh.

JZ: But it’s completely overlooked. 

AA: Oh my goodness. No, that’s really shocking. And it shouldn’t be an issue even if you said we’ve chosen not to have children, but the fact that you do on top of that have a medical reason that it could endanger her life, that is shocking to me. Wow. That’s kind of heartbreaking for her. That’s awful. 

JZ: Well, and that’s what happens in life if you are childless, meaning not by choice. 

AA: Sure. 

it doesn’t matter who’s doing the roles. You figure out where your strengths are, you figure out how to lean on each other and take turns.
Gender has nothing to do with that. 

JZ: People go, “I feel bad for you because you didn’t have kids.” If you’re childfree, they’re like, “Oh, you hate kids.” And they just start making judgements. I think neither of those are good judgements. Let’s just be real on that. But that’s all coming from this system. And like, “Well, who’s going to take care of it when you’re older?” And all these things that are just built in there. I was on another podcast that just came out today, and we were in the comments section which, you know, is always entertaining. And somebody in the comments was like, “I’m going to disagree with you. The system’s not made for parents.” I’m like, no, the system does not support parents either. It is true. The system does not work for parents or anyone disabled or anyone needing a caregiver. It is, though, designed to support the standard life script that says you go to school, get married, have kids. Both of those can be true. I’m not saying people should not have kids. It’s up to you. I don’t get a vote, that’s your life. But the system’s built around it. If you look at our tax code, you get child tax credits. I don’t get those. Now, by the way, that’s a bad financial deal because it’s $3,600, you get a tax credit, and it costs you $18,000 a year to raise a kid. 

But what happens is that the systems are designed to encourage behaviors they want. And the “they” being the patriarchy, the government, I don’t know how you pull those apart, let’s be real on that. And what you see is that if more people are childfree, the constant growth of the economy won’t happen. Well, that impacts pocketbooks, that’s dollars in the pocket. Somebody said to me, “If you don’t have kids, social security’s going to fall apart.” I’m like, “Social security’s going to fall apart on its own. That’s a separate issue.” But if you’re talking about just population growth, we can fix that with immigration. And somebody even said to me, “No, I mean, we want kids like you,” meaning white kids. I’m like, “Did you just say that out loud?” Are you really surprised? 

AA: Wow. 

JZ: Somebody who worked for me, I was working in healthcare, and she stops me in the hall and she’s like, “I’ve been thinking about you and your wife. You’re both very smart. You need to have kids.” And I’m like, “Who in the world do you think you are?” That you’re going to your boss and saying, “Hey, I’ve been thinking about your personal life.” But these are the norms. Now what happens is that for women, they’re judged very heavily for not having kids. There’s a childfree convention, and I was on a panel of just guys, because most of the childfree community is women. And they said, “Why do men hate on women so much for not having kids?” And I said to the host, “Listen, you’re missing it. They hate on everybody for not having kids. They’re in my DMs and socials too, they just feel comfortable saying it to women.” We talk about all of these other things, but I’m like, “I get it too.” And I don’t get it to the level my wife does, but as you start pulling it apart, you realize that the younger generations we go, look at Gen Z. You look at your kids, they’re all going to stop and pause and go, “Should I have kids?” It’s not a default choice. And the problem is, this is where you as a parent get a choice, do you support them making their own choice or do you “Well, I want grandkids”? There was an article recently, I think it was The New York Times, of people being mad because they’re not grandparents because they’re not getting grandkids. And I’m like, well then you’re not supporting… how do we break the system? 

I got my PhD, completed it at about the same time, the same Christmas, as when my sister announced that she was pregnant with her first kid. Now, my wife is a little bit of a wise guy, she says to my mother, “Which are you more proud of: Jay and his PhD or his sister having her first kid?” You can guess what the answer was.

AA: Yikes. Oh boy. That’s bold. 

JZ: But that’s the system, the life script permeating everything. The best I’ve heard from a parent is that if you’re going to have kids, it has to be two enthusiastic “yes”es, a mindful choice from both of them. Love that. And for people that have a mindful choice not to, that’s awesome too. If you’re seeing a theme, my whole theme is, cool, yes, that’s what the script says, but what do you want? And how do you and your spouse have that conversation in a mindful way? 

AA: Mm-hmm. If I can ask you personally, how do you push back against those stigmas and those really thoughtless comments and judgements that you’ve confronted? How do you deal with that? 

JZ: So, in this political world, as a company, we had to have a conversation about this. Where are we comfortable sticking our neck out and doing this? Because a lot of companies, Walmart included, have cut out their DEI programs. 

AA: Yes. 

JZ: They’re not talking about any of this. We’ve decided no, no, no, we’re going to be loud, proud, we’re going to be out there, we’re going to talk about it. We’ve got to impose and do that. But I feel a little weird, and I’ve had this discussion with my team, and I’m a straight white male, married, and it feels a little weird to be talking about some of these issues, but I can give it a voice in a different way without holding back other people’s voices. I can go talk to those men and be like, “Stop. Let’s embrace childfree people. Let’s talk about it, let’s have this conversation.” And part of what I’m doing is this. Just going out there and talking about it. But I’ll tell you that it’s not easy. I had a reporter tell me that he thinks he’s not allowed to use the word “childfree” in print because he’s worried that it’s like the word “suicide” and they’re worried people will do it. And I’m like, “What? Huh?” 

AA: I don’t get it. 

JZ: For my book I went on Amazon to do ads, because of course you have to do ads. They turned down the ad twice because the word “childfree” was in it. 

AA: Really? Wow. That’s surprising. 

JZ: So when you’re talking about pushing back, that’s literally what I’m doing every day. I spend half my time talking to childfree people about their finances, and the other half is talking to financial people and the public about childfree people. They have to have a voice, because there’s a lot of women in the childfree community, they’ve done a lot of research, great stuff, but they’re worried about their safety right now. Their physical safety. We had to actually make plans, we’re still in the middle of it for quite a few of our clients. They’re like, “Hey, I have to move to a different state, move to a different country.” Especially those of the LGBTQ+ community. So I said to my team, “I’m going to go out there and take the bullets for you.” I hope they’re not real bullets, but I’m going to go take the bullets because someone has to give this audience a voice. Because what’s going to happen, and it’ll happen in your comment section, every time I do the podcast, people are like… it’s always one that gets a lot of engagement, let’s call it that. But I did an article and it was posted on Yahoo News or whatever, the common section, which is a dumpster fire of people with their judgments and all this and blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, all we’re doing is living our best life, and we want you to live your best life and be okay with it. This is the struggle women have had forever. It’s the same type of thing, we’ve just got a little different flavor on it. 

AA: Mm-hmm. And it is very much part of that patriarchal tradition that women have dealt with. As you’ve been talking, I’ve been thinking of the Bible stories that I was raised on, and you probably were too, in the Christian tradition of women who were childless, and the phrase comes to my mind, and I don’t remember which Bible woman this was, but “Give me a child lest I die.” lThat desperation to produce children. Because by the time these stories were being written, that really truly was what your worth was as a woman, was to be a producer of people, like a baby factory. That was your worth as a woman. So the pressure is on a man too, that he wants a big posterity, but that was literally all women were seen as being good for, and we’re still feeling echoes of that. It seems like it’s still present, and I guess that’s why those criticisms that we’re seeing even from politicians now, it’s coming from the conservative, religious right, that is so critical of that alternate script. 

JZ: So let me pull something out from somebody from the LDS community. I had somebody reach out to me and we’re talking, she’s in her mid-twenties, and interestingly enough, religion has a huge impact on this stuff, just what you’re taught. And she said it this way, and I almost fell in my chair. She said, “Look, my husband and I had the discussion, we don’t want to have kids. It’s not part of what we want. But raised strongly in the LDS community,” she says, “I wish I had a medical reason I couldn’t have kids.” And I was like, “What do you mean?” That’s kind of like wishing for cancer. You don’t do that. And she’s like, “Look, my family just cannot understand it, accept it, it just doesn’t compute. If I had a medical reason, they still might not like it, but they would at least understand that.” And I was like, so here’s somebody in her mid-twenties who knows what she wants, very strong, not comfortable in her own skin, and now having these faith issues. And I’m like, “Wow, I’m going to give you a hug, I’m going to give you some support. And when your parents freak out, come back and I’ll give you another hug.” In my first book, Portraits of Childfree Wealth, there are 26 stories of being childfree. I’m like, “Give your parents this book so they can see what people’s lives are really like,” because they just can’t imagine anything else. And what you see in these stories, over and over again– there’s another religious story, this is a Baptist church and it’s like, “Every Sunday I went and all they talked about was being a good mom, being a good dad. Honor your mother, be fruitful and multiply.” She got to a point in her early twenties and she’s like, “I didn’t realize it was a choice not to have kids.” 

AA: Oh yeah. That doesn’t surprise me at all. That’s 100% how I was raised, and you just described my community completely. It doesn’t surprise me. 

JZ: And I think the hard part is, for most people, we’ve internalized it to a point where we’re not sure if it’s us or them. I had somebody the other day, a Black woman from a different culture from mine, and she’s like, “Hey, I want you to be mindful of my culture.” I said, “A hundred percent. But I’m going to ask you, is that your culture making the decision or are you making the decision? You can make your decision because of your culture, that’s fine. But if they already made it for you…” And it was interesting because she had this moment, she’s like, “Huh, I don’t know. I’m getting where you’re going. But in my culture, we always do this.” And I’m like, “Yeah, I appreciate that. I understand, I recognize your culture. The challenge is, is that what you want?”

AA: Yeah. That’s great, that’s really interesting. I am familiar with that a little bit in the context of the mass non-consensual sterilization in Native American communities and Black communities too. There is a lot of pressure there. Or even like the pressure, I’m sure you know, within Jewish communities after the Holocaust to rebuild the Jewish population. Different communities will have different reasons for that pressure, I’m just realizing, of wanting to have children. But then yes, having an individual bump up against those cultural practices. How interesting! That’s complicated. 

JZ: And this is where people go, “I need to have a kid to carry on the legacy of the name or my genes.” I had somebody, a childfree couple, but he started talking about the legacy and the name and all that, and convinced her to have kids. What’s the name they’re keeping going? Smith. 

AA: Oh, haha. That’s funny. 

JZ: That name’s not going anywhere. 

AA: I think they’re okay. 

JZ: But that’s what you see. 

AA: That’s very funny. I do have to ask this question now too, because the 4B movement is causing freakouts among a lot of the people I know in the community. And again, because I think in the Mormon context there’s especially, probably similar to Catholic too, slightly different flavors, but such an emphasis on procreation, families, and having lots of children. Even a friend of mine just recently sent me an article about the 4B movement like, “It’s going to cause a catastrophe.” And even some of my secular friends are concerned about declining birth rates in countries where we’re seeing data come in of “if women choose not to partner with men and have children”– and that’s the 4B movement, I should say for listeners. The 4B movement came out of South Korea and it was women who, because of deeply oppressive, patriarchal gender norms, they’re like, “Not doing it. We’re just opting out. We are not getting married to men, we are not having children for the state. We’re not doing this.” They’re opting out, and the birth rates are declining. So there are religious and secular people who are a little bit freaking out about that. I’d love to hear your take. 

JZ: Okay, let’s be technical on this. The 4B movement is saying, “Alright, I’m not going to get married, I’m not dealing with men, I’m not having kids, and I’m going to live my own best life.” That’s the bottom line. Shortly after the election, the 4B movement started getting a little more press. My folks are like, “Yeah, we’ve been living that life forever and we just don’t call it anything.” For my soloists, they’re like, “I’ve already decided. I’m good on my own. I’m going to live my best life. I’m not going to have kids, I’m not going to get married, I’m not going to deal with men, and I’m okay with it.” And I think the challenge is when we put the name on it, the 4B movement, it’s something now that people forward articles or, you know, in the social media world. The childfree folks, remember, 32% will never marry, versus 2.5% of parents. We’re not talking about a new thing. The Pew Research Study found that in adults under 50, so 49 and under, 47% of people who don’t have kids aren’t planning on having kids. We’re talking about huge, huge percentages. Gen Z right now, the overall percentage is about 25% childfree. I really expect that by the time they’re all adults, it’s going to be maybe even double, which really sounds scary to some people. But people go, “Well it’s the 4B movement.” No it’s not! That’s a name for what people have been doing. But it scares the living daylights out of people because so much of the system is based upon constant growth, “we have to have kids, you have to keep moving the population.” 

This is where there’s a group called Population Matters, and a few others that look at population and their argument is that the Earth is already overpopulated. Now, are people located in the area where they could be living their best life? No. Where people are matters, but this is where we get into some of the really nasty stuff about the replacement theory and other things. You realize that they want certain kids, and they don’t want immigration. We go to Japan as an example. Japan historically never does a lot of immigration, like immigration to Japan is nearly zero. You have to have a certain career, your company brought you in or something. So 33% have said, “Nope, not having kids.” And they won’t call it the 4B movement, but that’s essentially what they’re doing. They’re living their own life, they’re single, and they’re trying to figure out what to do. The result is that they have a huge elderly population that doesn’t have younger folks to take care of them. This is the Social Security problem in the United States. And one politician, I can’t believe they said this, they came out and said, “I think that what should happen is that the elderly should commit seppuku.” Ritual suicide.

AA: Oh goodness. 

JZ: Because they’re a burden on the system and it’s the only way we’re going to fix this. If you look at countries and you look at their efforts to raise the population, none of them really work. Some of the Nordic countries are like, “I’ll give you money, I’ll pay for your vacation. Go hook up.” It’s not working because the system’s broken. I looked at why people choose to be childfree, and the number one result, about 30% of people are like, “I just don’t want to have kids.” Okay, fine. But then it gets into finances and medical issues and not wanting to pass on generational trauma, not wanting to pass on psychological issues, great reasons. And then we get to environmental reasons and politics, really well thought-out reasons. If I look at childfree people, and I apologize because this is going to sound a little harsh, but childfree people put a lot of thought into not having kids. They probably put more thought into not having kids than many parents put into having kids, because having kids is a default choice. It’s what you do. My wife and I got married, and like two years later people were like, “Where are the kids?” And I’m like, “Did you miss the whole backstory?” But that’s the default choice. 

Well, the problem is that if you look at the data, as women get more educated, population rates go down, fertility rates go down. Well, what are they trying to do? I just saw this the other day, it was ridiculous, I think it was Kansas and a few other red states fighting birth control again. And they were quoted in there and they said, “We have standing because this is hurting our population because we’re not having teenage pregnancies.” I’m like, “Did you just in a court filing say that we need to have teenage pregnancies?” 

AA: Wow. 

JZ: I had to read the document and I’m like, “That was what they said.” 

AA: Oh my gosh. Crazy. 

JZ: If you want to do that, awesome. You want to have kids, we should find ways to support you. You should have a way as a couple to do this appropriately. A hundred percent agree with all that. But if people want to live a different life, that’s okay too. That’s the bottom line of everything. You live your best life, I’ll live my best life. They don’t impact each other. 

AA: Perfect. One thing that caught my eye in the book was you pointing out that our society has kind of an unspoken, unofficial single tax that results in single adults spending, I think you said $1 million in additional costs across their lifetime, and that was surprising because I would have assumed that it was more expensive to have a family than to be single. Explain that a little bit. 

JZ: Okay. And I’m going to call you out on this, you just said that it’s more expensive to have a family. We have families that just don’t involve kids.

AA: Thank you, I’m so sorry about that. That’s true. I’m glad you said that. 

JZ: For our soloists, it costs somewhere between $400,000 and $1,000,000 extra across their life to live. And let me use an example, if you’re in a couple and you get a one bedroom apartment, you split it. As a soloist, it’s all on you. Same with the electric bill, the car. So if we go back to your question about the 4B movement, we’re actually talking about people that are making a choice to go it alone financially, that’s going to cost them somewhere between a half million and a million dollars, and they’re okay with it. Now, I want you to think about that for a second. That means that they have made a conscious choice to do something harder by doing this because it matches their life, their values, whatever else it is. I had somebody else say that it was the easy way out not to have kids. I’m like, “Nuh uh.” Nobody’s life is easy right now. Let’s just be real on that. I’m not saying it’s harder or easier either way. And from a financial standpoint the judgment is, “Well you’re single. It’ll be less because you don’t have to pay for kids.” The cost for kids, $18,000, which is the national average per year, is expensive. The actual cost is things like that gender wage gap. how much time you put in all of that. Our single folks have an equivalent cost, because if you look at the total cost for a kid, it’s just shy of $400,000, so it’s about an equivalent cost, it’s just going in a different direction. And that’s where my answer is always to give some grace to everybody. Everybody’s struggling in this country. Our bills are different, they’re not easier or harder or better or worse. 

AA: Yeah, that’s really interesting. That’s really helpful to hear that explained. Well, as we close out our conversation, Jay, one theme that we’re focusing on for season five is people taking action, so I’m wondering if you have any advice or some actions that people can take to diminish the power of patriarchy and finances, and some ways that we can work against these oppressive systems in the financial world at large and in our families. 

JZ: Yeah. If I’m forced to pick one, I would say it is the pausing and saying, “Whose voice is in your head saying you have to do that?” Be mindful about that. And you’ll notice that we talked about that in couples, we talked about it in finances, we talked about it in choice in life. And I think for most people, if you stop and go, “Why am I doing this?” You may still do it, but now you’re doing it for yourself versus the system versus the structure versus what’s expected and you end up happier. Now, let’s be real also, if you’re making a choice for yourself and it goes badly, it’s on you too. But you’re having that pause. Because there’s so much that is just ingrained in us, indoctrinated, whatever word you want to use, that just that momentary pause is important. And if you’re in a couple, I want you to pause and go, “Hey, what are your roles? What are mine? What are we best at and why?” In my example, my mother taught me to cook, I enjoy cooking, so I cook. My wife doesn’t know how to cook, so she doesn’t. It’s not a gender thing. But you have an awareness of how that works. 

And for your finances, what that does is it stops you from mindlessly spending, mindlessly saving, mindlessly falling. And for the parents out there, what you can learn from childfree people is that they’re doing that stopping and thinking about it all the time. That’s actually what you want your kids to do. You’d rather your kids stop and go, “Huh, why am I making this choice?” rather than just following their friends, their family, and you can be supportive of that. So maybe the habit is to help your friends and say, “Who’s telling you you have to do that?” Pause and ask that question. Now, by the way, I will caution you, it’ll probably unearth some things you might need to go therapy for. 

AA: Haha. 

JZ: When you start looking at why you make your decisions, oof. But it’s worth the work. 

AA: Hmm. I love that. I think that is so true. To break down the patriarchy that exists in our own minds, that exists in our relationships, that we’ve internalized. Like you said, just asking those questions and making sure that we’re aligned with our own values and our own goals. That’s so powerful. Well, where can listeners pick up a copy of your book and find all the work that you do? 

JZ: Yep. So the book is The Childfree Guide to Life and Money, it’s out in stores everywhere. Please go to your local independent bookstore and buy it. Amazon’s got enough money. Go to bookshop.org, which has all the independent bookstores. We’re online at childfreewealth.com, childfreewealth on all the socials except for Twitter, because Elon Musk said that childless people should not have a vote because we don’t have a stake in the future.

AA: Oof, that’s awful. So you’re where instead? Are you on Threads? 

JZ: Everywhere but Twitter. 

AA: Everywhere else. Perfect. I love it. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Jay Zigmont. This has been a pleasure and I learned so much from you. Thank you so much for joining us today. 

JZ: Thanks for having me.

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