enRICHed: volume 185
apparently there’s 19g of protein in having an aperol spritz with your friends
Sunday June 07, 2026
Volume 185
Hi besties & congratulations to my recently graduated BFFs!
Graduating college is such a weird time because one second everyone’s throwing you a party…and the next second you’re expected to understand taxes, credit scores, salary negotiations, health insurance, retirement accounts, and how to survive on an entry-level salary. Cute!
This week on Networth & Chill, I’m talking about all the financial advice I desperately wish someone had given me when I graduated college. We’re getting into the money basics every new grad actually needs to know, from budgeting and student loans to emergency funds, investing, and why negotiating your first salary matters way more than people realize. I’m also breaking down how to build healthy financial habits early, navigate the absolute chaos that is the 2026 job market, and set yourself up for long-term financial stability even if you still feel like you have no idea what you’re doing.
If you’re navigating post-grad life or feel like you just didn’t get off on the right foot financially… this episode is for you!
New episodes of the podcast drop every single Wednesday so be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel HERE or follow Networth and Chill wherever you get your podcasts!
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.
Anthropic’s Deb Ball 👑💃
In case you haven’t heard, there’s a big company set to make its debut at the stock market deb ball: none other than artificial intelligence giant Anthropic, which is known for its coding assistant Claude Code.
This week, the startup surprised everyone by filing for IPO, just days after it announced that it is now valued at $965 billion, a statement which came right after they raised $65 billion in funding to power the growing demand for its AI products. This is their claim, but it isn’t a corroborated fact — the SEC still needs to review Anthropic’s filing, which is still a secret until they’re approved.
An IPO is basically when a private company debuts to become an eligible publicly-traded stock. Or, to quote The Summer I Turned Pretty, it’s when a private company comes of age and is presented to society. Just instead of white dresses and escort dances, people wear business suits and ring the NASDAQ bell. But there’s drama over this debut, because Anthropic’s is coming much earlier than expected. Why? Their rival, OpenAI (of ChatGPT fame), is also trying to make a debut in the autumn, and now the two are fighting to make sure that they’re named the diamond of the season.
It’s not just ego that makes them want to debut first, though — there’s real money at stake here. Going public is huge for a company, because now they don’t have to just rely on one line of investor funding; the whole world can give them money, and it makes a huge difference in their financial portfolio. With all the hype around AI right now, if Anthropic IPOs first, there’s a huge chance that people will begin investing in them pretty quickly, and won’t have the same kind of cash later in the year to deploy, when OpenAI hits the market.
HYCU; If you are planning on becoming a billionaire by betting it all on Anthropic’s IPO, I’d sit on that dream for a moment. However, if you’re invested in mutual funds and ETFs, you’ll probably end up getting a bit of Anthropic in your portfolio, so if you’re keen to hop on the AI wave, choosing a good tech or index fund is a smart way of getting in on the Anthropic debut (and the OpenAI debut) without having to weather the volatility of a single company. That being said, plenty of critics have commented on the viability of the AI bubble right now, so the future of this industry isn’t a sure-thing, so I wouldn’t invest any crucial rainy-day funds into this.
Another Big Debut 👗🩰
Speaking of more controversial IPOs, so many finance bros online think the SpaceX IPO is about to be the hottest party in town, when in fact, they are not party guests…they are party favors.
If you didn’t know, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is about to go public next week, and there’s so much noise around it. It’s going to be the largest IPO in history, at $1.8 trillion. Google is paying them $920 million per month for 32 months to use their compute capacity at xAI data centers. And Fidelity is rewriting the rules for SpaceX to make it easier for small investors to get in on the launch.
But here’s the issue. Private investors bought in years ago and they’ve been sitting on this equity for a decade. Now, they wanna cash out — and all of a sudden, retail investors are allowed to participate. Yeah. You can participate in holding the bag, while the guys who got in at the beginning participate in getting rich.
Let’s look at the actual numbers. SpaceX grew revenue by 15% in the first quarter of 2026. But losses? Up 700% year over year. And they’re claiming this company is worth 107 times sales. For reference, Meta went public at 28 times sales with 88% growth. Yikes.
Also did I mention SpaceX is reserving 30% of its shares for retail investors, three times larger than the average IPO? Musk and his cronies are very literally betting that his Stans are gonna invest in this thing whether or not it’s a good investment. Double yikes.
HYCU; Regular people think they’re finally getting access, but in reality, this is just a way to use their hard earned dollars as the exit strategy for the insiders who’ve been able to access this investment much earlier on, and when there was a lot more value to be gained. SpaceX will also likely get added to major indices (turns out the plural version of index isn’t indexes, and yes, it confused me too the first time I saw it spelled out) much sooner than a newly public company would, which means they’ll be in your retirement accounts if you invest in index tracking ETFs or mutual funds. Triple yikes.
Reading The Zoom Room 💻👀
Speaking of AI fever, there’s a new tool being implemented across workplaces that might soon change how we show up to the virtual meeting. Technology like MorphCast is being rolled out to survey employees’ behavior and productivity, specifically tracking user facial expressions and watching to see if they’re mad or not paying attention.
Here’s how these softwares work: basically, they take over a device’s camera and “watch” you through the lens, and then spit out pretty freakishly accurate readings about your mood and focus. They’re being used to check if McDonald’s customers in Portugal are in the mood for a coupon, or if students are swiping around on their laptops in class. Companies can tell if you’re amused, impatient, or bored. And then your school or manager can take a look at all that information.
There are obvious issues with this that already have people worried. One study revealed that 98% of women said they were told to smile at work at some point in their careers — 15% said that it happened weekly or even more frequently. And we know that issues like this have real consequences, with people losing out on promotions and raises just because they’re being unfairly scrutinized. Naturally, people are worried software like this will only make it harder for already-marginalized workers to get fairly compensated.
HYCU; We can expect more surveillance tools like these to get rolled out into the office, but don’t let it stop you from getting paid properly! The first rule of thumb is making sure all your personal stuff stays on your personal laptop — we know that HR is already tracking everything on the company devices, so you should never make the rookie mistake of doing anything not work-related on the work computer. If behavior is part of your promotion criteria, make sure you’re also intermittently showing up to the business events that matter, whether it’s the holiday party, a department-wide happy hour, or a business trip with a lot of higher ups. Looking tired and annoyed on one Monday morning meeting doesn’t erase the fact that you showed up IRL at highly-visible events and made everyone fall in love with you. The bottom line is that you shouldn’t let your performance be based entirely off of grainy, glitchy team meetings where you look like you want to fall back asleep.
The Mid-Life Career Crisis 😓💼
If you’re feeling like your career hit a rut all of a sudden, you’re not alone. The Wall Street Journal shared a new study this week that surveyed 1.3 million professionals across different industries, and the data found that about 25% go at least five years without a promotion or significant raise before they reach their peak earning years.
This isn’t really a generational issue, but millennials in their 30s and early 40s are feeling the brunt of it right now, because they’re at the point in their careers where they hit this mid-career stall. And it’s proof that it was never about us being lazy or eating too much avocado toast — there’s a systemic issue that’s preventing young professionals from ascending the corporate ladder.
We’re at a unique point in history because it’s also harder to job-hop. Up until immediately post-COVID, common wisdom was that you needed to go up our out every two years. Either you needed to get a promotion/raise or leave. It proved to have a bigger payout in the long term, but now, we’re beginning to see the earnings between job-hoppers and job-stayers converge. So it’s no longer true. That’s what makes the rut feel so much worse — there’s less of a chance that leaving your stale gig will guarantee you more dollars on the other side.
HYCU; It can be incredibly frustrating to feel like you’re hitting a pay ceiling at your job, and there’s nowhere to turn to make money. But it doesn’t mean your path to getting rich is over.. Instead, refocus your frustration into the more productive objective of wealth-building: use this career time to automate your contributions, optimize your investments, and figure out where your costs have crept up a little too high. If you have an exciting side hustle that you really love and believe in, build that out. Getting rich isn’t just about earning a lot — it’s about making sure your money always has a purpose, and isn’t just wasting away in your account. By using this quiet time to make your money work for you, you’ll be well-equipped to hit all of your financial goals by the time you get out of the woods.
Keerthana asks, “Hi Vivian, thanks for all your advice. I’ve read your first book and I’ve been following you for years. I learned that the robo advisor I’ve been using for my automated taxable investment account has a 0.25% service fee, which is standard for the industry, but some friends say that I should instead choose a target date fund for investing in, which will not have an associated service fee. Is this a better option? I am 30 years old, and I know that time does compounding magic, so I don’t want to lose out on the 0.25% long-term, if I could otherwise be making the same return with a target date fund. Thank you! Keerthana.”
Hey Bestie! Thanks for the kind words & great question about optimizing those fees! Your friends are partially right about target date funds not having service fees, but there’s more to the story. Target date funds do have costs — they charge expense ratios, which are built into the fund itself. These typically range from about 0.04% to 0.35% depending on the provider. So while you wouldn’t pay a separate robo-advisor fee, you’d still pay the fund’s internal expense ratio.
The real comparison is your current total cost (robo-advisor fee + underlying fund expenses) versus just the target date fund expense ratio. Many robo-advisors use low-cost index funds underneath, so you might be paying the service fee plus fund expenses versus just the target date fund expense ratio alone.
What you’re trading off is cost versus convenience. Robo-advisors automatically rebalance across multiple asset classes, adjust for your changing risk tolerance over time, and often provide tax-loss harvesting in taxable accounts. Target date funds do the age-based rebalancing but typically don’t offer the tax optimization features that can be valuable in taxable accounts.
At 30 with decades ahead, even small differences in fees can compound significantly over time. Investing $10,000 annually at 6.75% returns over 37 years would grow to over $1.5 million - and fee differences can meaningfully impact that final number.
Consider checking what your total current costs actually are, then comparing to specific target date funds from providers like Vanguard or Fidelity. The math will help you decide if the robo-advisor’s extra features are worth the potential cost difference for your situation.
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SEE YOU IN THE COMMENTS BESTIES
Love your work. Also follow you on YouTube. Keep on going!
Wow im new to Substack, THIS IS AMAZINN🙌🏻 Glad I found you