enRICHed: volume 170
happy year of the fire horse
Sunday February 22, 2026
Volume 170
Hey Besties,
After these past few weeks sharing Well Endowed and meeting besties across the country, I’m excited to announce I have ONE LAST book tour stop left! If you haven’t had the chance to hangout with me IRL yet — join me at my final stop in Austin, TX on February 26th. This tour has been full of laughs, learnings, and even a surprise pre-Valentine’s Day proposal! I’m serious! My book tour stop was someone’s decoy event so they could propose! I am so grateful for all of the excitement about Well Endowed and I am so glad so many of you are diving into it! Texan besties, I can’t wait to see y’all in Austin! You can grab your tickets HERE!
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As a reminder:
HYCU, pronounced haiku: how the news impacts you and your wallet, aka How You Can Use
The Prosperitea: think discount codes, non-boring finance articles, sales, and personal links from the week. The fun stuff 😉
We love your comments, but please remember to keep it positive! And don’t take investing advice from anyone who isn’t your registered financial advisor!
Now that you’re up to speed, let’s get you enRICHed.
Tax the Rich, Maybe For Real? 😳
If you’ve been wondering when people are going to stand up for the little guy in this economy, your dreams might just be coming true. All across the country, states are looking to start implementing wealth taxes to address the growing disparity in the nation that’s making it harder for the average American to afford the cost of living.
In California, the state’s healthcare workers’ unions is hoping to pass an initiative in the November election that would enact a one-time 5% tax on billionaires’ assets. What would they do with that tax money? Basically, these medical professionals are hoping that this tax would offset the upcoming Medicaid cuts that will affect billions of California residents and hike their premiums and co-pays.
On the other coast, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled two new budget proposals for the city: his promised 2% wealth tax on New Yorkers who make $1 million or more annually, plus an increased tax rate on corporations; he also announced his backup plan, which would be a 9.5% property tax increase that would affect homeowners and corporations who own their offices in the city. Again, because I know there’s a lot of noise around this, the property tax would only happen if the wealth tax doesn’t get approved.
It’s not just these two states, either. The governors of Rhode Island and Washington (one of the nine states without an income tax) are considering a millionaire tax to help close those budget deficits. Rhode Island is considering the tax to help with food assistance programs after that budget was slashed under President Trump, while Washington is hoping to take advantage of that Seattle millionaire money to reduce tax burden for other residents, small businesses and property owners in the state.
HYCU; More money in the state budget means more opportunity for services and infrastructure in your neighborhood that could help lower your monthly budget, like New York City’s free bus plan, universal childcare, and rent freezes, or California’s dream of preventing hikes on your medical bill. In some cases it could mean less property taxes if you’re a homeowner, or less taxes on your small business. But don’t get too excited. This is also basically a huge gamble on billionaires’ morals — whether they’ll actually stay and comply, whether they’ll take the jobs with them, and how nice they want to be. Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel has already threatened to leave California and take all his job postings with him, while other billionaires have already packed up and moved to Miami. This would not only impact people’s jobs and income, but also the larger economy of the state. It’s all just proposals right now, and the billionaires’ threats are just tantrums. But as the election date gets closer, we’ll really begin to see what’s for real.
ChatGPT (Good Performance Time) 🤖
We’ve seen AI-generated Slack messages, we’ve seen AI-generated resignation letters, and now, it’s the big one: many managers are using AI to help them determine staff raises, promotions, and layoffs, according to reporting from The Hill.
A 2025 survey of 1,342 US managers found that 94% used programs like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini “to make decisions about the people who report to them,” with 6 out of 10 respondents also saying that they used AI tools to assess whether a direct report should be promoted, given a raise, laid off or fired.
It’s not just a manager issue, either — HR is using it, too. Is this a bad thing? In theory, AI would remove all the preconceived judgments and company politics that always end up playing a role in determining who gets promoted and who gets a raise, but AI isn’t an objective tool — it’s just aggregating whatever is getting fed to it, which is still often biased. So your comp request isn’t actually better off in the hands of Claude.
HYCU; This doesn’t mean your career is out of your control now. Having good relationships, a reputation for strong performance at work, and specific data to back up your argument is still the biggest key to leveraging that raise or making a case for your promotion. But it might be helpful to frame your written self-reviews in a way that gives you more of an advantage in the AI database. Specifically, write down all your accomplishments as well as your unique strengths, and when requesting peer reviews, be sure to reaffirm all the specific wins you had this year, so there’s a clear story and pattern across your reviews. The study also didn’t clarify exactly how managers are using AI for these decisions — they could be using it to organize data for their reviews, or just directly asking who deserves more money. Modern performance reviews, require modern solutions.
Miles To Go… ✈️
Buckle up, United Airlines loyalists, because huge changes are coming to its frequent flyer program, and you might just be losing out on a ton of perks soon.
United Airlines is making some of the biggest changes to its MileagePlus program in more than a decade, with the TLDR being that cardholders are now going to be heavily favored over non-cardholders.
Travelers who have the United Airlines credit card will earn more miles and get higher discounts compared with those without the card, and customers who don’t have one of the cards or elite status won’t earn any miles if they book in basic economy. There’s a cash bonus for card holders, more miles per dollar spent, and a ton more flashy new things exclusively for credit card holders.
HYCU; This goes into effect April 2, so if you’re looking to book a vacation and still take advantage of the current frequent flyer system, you have about a month and a half to get that flight reserved. United isn’t the only airline that’s been rolling out changes like this — plenty of airlines are pushing into the credit card space, paring down frequent flyer benefits and giving them exclusively to cardholders. Between dynamic pricing, new checked bag fees (remember when those were free?), and everything else, finding an actually affordable flight is like finding a needle in a haystack. My recommendation? Take advantage of hacks like student discounts, buying in pairs as opposed to solo, and using sites like Skyscanner to find where the cheapest flights are. Don’t forget to set up trackers on your resorts, vacation packages, and hotels, too!
Kim C. asks, “Why do you recommend index funds instead of index ETFs? Is it not now generally accepted that ETFs are more tax efficient? Thank you for your content.”
Hey bestie! Great question — I think there might be a bit of a misunderstanding with the lingo! You’re thinking of mutual funds vs. ETFs. Index funds can be *either* index tracking mutual funds or index tracking ETFs. And since we’re here, let’s go over some of the differences between the two:
ETFs are generally more tax-efficient than mutual funds, including index-tracking mutual funds. The structure of ETFs allows them to avoid most taxable distributions that mutual funds can’t escape, which is a real advantage for taxable accounts. ETFs can do something called “in-kind redemptions” where they can shed their least tax-efficient holdings without triggering capital gains for remaining shareholders. Index mutual funds don’t have this superpower, so they might pass along some taxable distributions even when you’re just holding (not selling).
But the choice between index-tracking mutual funds and index-tracking ETFs isn’t just about taxes. For retirement accounts like 401(k)s and IRAs, the tax efficiency advantage disappears since you’re not paying taxes on gains anyway until withdrawal. In these accounts, you might find index mutual funds with lower expense ratios or better automatic investing features.
The practical stuff matters too. Many brokerages make it easier to set up automatic investments with mutual funds since you can invest exact dollar amounts rather than buying whole shares. If you’re dollar-cost averaging with small amounts regularly, mutual funds can be more convenient.
That all being said, for taxable accounts though, you’re spot on that ETFs often make more sense from a tax perspective, assuming the expense ratios are comparable.
Hope this helps!
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