Alex Schinasi’s father sketched the first Hulken on a hotel notepad in Paris because he was tired of breaking his shoulders carrying shopping bags. Six years later, Vogue named it the "it" bag of summer, and everyone wants to get their hands on one. Alex is building it toward a hundred million dollar brand with fewer than ten employees and no outside investors.

She runs it with her husband Johnny, also hosts the Unfinished Business podcast, and is raising three kids in Lisbon.

In this episode, she sits down with me to break down how she actually affords the lifestyle.

Alex and I walk through how she funded a physical product business without raising a dollar, the manufacturer relationship that let her front inventory before she had sold any of it, and how she and Johnny knew the company could finally afford to pay them. Plus, what her podcast costs to produce every month and why this fall is the first time it might pay for itself, why she takes out insurance on any purchase order above $250,000, and what her two previous exits actually did for her finances.

Alex reveals the AI infrastructure that’s part of her minimum viable company framework, including her chief of staff Freddie, who is not a person, and an entirely new business she announces on the show for the first time.

She gets into the Lisbon schools that cost a quarter of what New York private schools do, the thing about moving to Europe that genuinely surprised her, what her parties actually cost, and what she's working toward affording next.

Download Ashley's 'Become Your Own CFO' bundle (https://www.thefiscalfemme.com/cfo-bundle) for everything you need to manage the money you make in a strategic and financially savvy way.

Follow Alex on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-schinasi-16b6abb/) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/alexschinasi/).

Listen to the Unfinished Business podcast (https://www.youtube.com/@UnfinishedBizPodcast).

Shop Hulken (https://hulken.com).

Learn more about Northstone (https://northstone-ai.com), the AI infrastructure company Alex announces on this episode.

Check out Ashley's Money Club (https://www.thefiscalfemme.com/money-club) to join a community of women unabashedly going after their money goals.

Take this quiz to get a personalized Wealth Building Blueprint (https://bit.ly/4v94g2C)

Paige Connell is raising four kids outside Boston and has become a refreshingly transparent voice on what childcare actually costs after posting her own bill on a whim. She's the creator behind She's A Paige Turner, host of the Just Us Girls Pod, and an advocate for affordable childcare and paid leave.

She and her husband became parents through foster care in 2019, six months before the pandemic, and she has since gone from a corporate job to a content business that replaced her salary and then doubled it. In this episode, she sits down with me to break down how she actually affords it.

Paige and I walk through the $60,000 to $70,000 a year her family spends on childcare, her household’s income trajectory, the freelance sales job she worked at night and on weekends to cover daycare, and why childcare costs are so hard for anyone to find in the first place.

Paige reveals the unpaid labor snowball that started after kids, the spreadsheet she and her husband used to divide the invisible work, and the time equity assessment that finally explained why she was so burnt out. She gets into the motherhood penalty and the fatherhood bonus, the one thing about her finances that people would never guess, and what she's working toward affording next.

Download Ashley's free 'Get Paid What You're Worth' negotiation guide (https://www.thefiscalfemme.com/get-paid).

Follow Paige at @shesapaigeturner on Instagram(https://www.instagram.com/sheisapaigeturner/), TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@sheisapaigeturner), and YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@sheisapaigeturner).

Subscribe to her Substack (https://substack.com/@sheisapaigeturner).

Check out Ashley's Money Club (https://www.thefiscalfemme.com/money-club) to join a community of women unabashedly going after their money goals.

Take this quiz to get a personalized Wealth Building Blueprint (https://bit.ly/4v94g2C)

Brittany Valdes has been at Microsoft for thirteen years, and in that time she has also built a nonprofit, an AI-powered renovation company with her husband, and an AI academy for women. She is a fourth-generation entrepreneur raising three boys and 23 chickens in Miami.

In this episode, she breaks down how she actually affords the lifestyle, starting with a number almost nobody can name.

Brit and I walk through the household system that runs it all: the $180,000 a year her family lives on, and why everything the businesses earn above that goes toward renovations, vacations, and investments. She shares how she and her husband run their budget like a P&L, the quarterly check-ins that keep it honest, and the small swaps she made to protect the number.

We talk about the egg business her sons run at $8 a dozen, and what happened when they learned that feed and electricity come out of their revenue.

Brit reveals exactly how AI puts money back in her pocket every month, from the QuickBooks subscription she replaced by building her own version on Claude to the hours of follow-up work she no longer does by hand. She gives her best advice for three types of people: someone intimidated by AI, someone trying to get promoted, and someone who wants AI to be their first employee.

Plus the family history that shaped all of it, what ten days in Hawaii actually took, and the early retirement she is planning in the next five years.

Join The Mother of AI Academy at themotherofai.com and use the code FISCALFEMME for 10% off.

Download Ashley's 'Become Your Own CFO' bundle (https://www.thefiscalfemme.com/cfo-bundle) for everything you need to manage the money you make in a strategic and financially savvy way.

Learn more about The Mom Economy, Brit's 501c3 supporting female founders with benefits and parental leave, at themomeconomy.com. Follow Brit on Instagram at @themotherofai.

Check out Ashley's Money Club (https://www.thefiscalfemme.com/money-club) to join a community of women unabashedly going after their money goals.

Take this quiz to get a personalized Wealth Building Blueprint (https://bit.ly/4v94g2C)

Claire Wasserman is the founder of Ladies Get Paid, an author, and a career coach with a master's certificate in financial psychology. She bootstrapped her business to seven figures, built a community of over 100,000 women, and got a $300,000 advance for her book. She is also, right now, raising twins in Los Angeles on food stamps.

In this episode, she sits down with me for the most honest money conversation we have had on this show.

Claire and I walk through her whole earning journey, from trading salary for equity at a startup that later sold for $12.9 million, to the seven-figure years of brand sponsorships and thousand-person conferences, to the $300K book advance.

Then the part almost nobody says out loud: how the pandemic broke her business model, why a family medical crisis drained their finances, and how they ended up $150K in debt

Claire reveals what it actually feels like to swipe an EBT card, the half-price apartment her grandfather wrote into a building's deed, and why the shame around food hits differently than every other benefit.

She gets into how childcare math forced her and her wife to renegotiate everything including their sleep, her lightning round of negotiation advice, and why she thinks being in the middle of healing makes her a better coach.

Download Ashley's free "Get Paid What You're Worth" negotiation guide (https://www.thefiscalfemme.com/get-paid).

Learn more about Claire's work and coaching at ladiesgetpaid.com, subscribe to her Substack, and follow her on Instagram at @clairegetspaid and @ladiesgetpaid.

Check out Ashley's Money Club (https://www.thefiscalfemme.com/money-club) to join a community of women unabashedly going after their money goals.

Take this quiz to get a personalized Wealth Building Blueprint (https://bit.ly/4v94g2C)

Erika Velazquez Alpern has built the same business twice under the same name. The first time, she shut it down when the math stopped working and went in-house at Morning Brew. The second time, she waited until she had a signed contract in hand, because despite what you may think, many entrepreneurs are risk averse.

She spent her career in brand and media at places like The Guardian and The Boston Globe, and today she is a fractional CMO, the founder of Tactile, and a mom raising two kids and a pup in Brooklyn. In this episode, she sits down with me to break down how she actually affords the lifestyle.

Erika and I walk through the real math of working for yourself: the six-figure salary she left, the anchor client that paid her more per month than her full-time job did, the $170,000 her business brought in its first year back, and how it feels when a good month approaches $30,000 and a slow one barely clears $5,000.

Erika reveals what raising two kids in Brooklyn actually costs, starting with $3,500 a month for a private twos program and camps that run $600 to $800 a week. She gets into the marketing money she has watched businesses light on fire, exactly what she would do with a $0 budget, a $1,000 budget, and a $10,000 budget, the dream job she turned down because the math didn’t make sense, and the thing about her finances that would surprise you most.

Download Ashley's 'Become Your Own CFO' bundle (https://www.thefiscalfemme.com/cfo-bundle) for everything you need to manage the money you make in a strategic and financially savvy way.

Learn more about Erika's work at wearetactile.com, and come to one of her events. Follow her on Instagram at @erikaalpern.

Check out Ashley's Money Club (https://www.thefiscalfemme.com/money-club) to join a community of women unabashedly going after their money goals.

Take this quiz to get a personalized Wealth Building Blueprint (https://bit.ly/4v94g2C)

This episode kicks off the sister series. My guest is my little sister Ariel, the person who inspires more of my content than anyone else. She's a homeowner, a sales rep, a mom to my adorable nephew, and living proof that anyone's money story can turn around. Because hers started with a call to tell me the bank was broken. It was not the bank.

Ariel and I relive the full journey, from the negative balance to the $300 that made her feel rich, to the night out that ended with her trying to pay with a pet store card. We get into the money experiments I've run on her over the years: the credit cards in the freezer, and the 401(k) contribution I set to 15% that she didn't fully notice until years later. Today there are six figures in that retirement account.

Ariel reveals what it's actually like having a money expert as a sister (annoying, then useful), a brand-new secret she'd been keeping even from me, and she gets her very first money homework assignment on the show. This is the first of many. We've got her home purchase, her tiny wedding, and the great pet insurance debate all coming in future episodes.

Download Ashley's free guide to save $1,000 in one month

Take this quiz to get a personalized Wealth Building Blueprint.

Check out Ashley's Money Club to join a community of women unabashedly going after their money goals.

Heather Boneparth left a 14-year legal career to go all-in on the wealth management firm she owns with her husband Doug. Together they write The Joint Account, a weekly newsletter helping thousands of couples talk about money, and they're the co-authors of the new book Money Together.

In this episode, she sits down with me to break down the real numbers behind her career change, raising two kids, and running a family business with her spouse.

Heather and I walk through her income journey, from her first $81,000 salary in New York City while carrying $217,000 in student loan debt, to the $200,000-plus compensation and roughly $50,000 in healthcare benefits she walked away from, to the 18-24 months of living expenses they banked before she made the leap. She shares their household income range today, what childcare cost them in the city, and why quarterly money dates are the system that holds it all together.

Heather reveals the COVID power dynamic that left her resenting her husband and inspired the book, how financial support from parents is an "existential safety net" and why the rest of us get so angry about it. She also gives her top tips for couples at three different life stages and shares what she's working toward affording next.

Download Ashley's free guide on how to save $1,000 this month (https://www.thefiscalfemme.com/save-1000-this-month).

Order Heather and Doug’s book, Money Together (https://domoneytogether.com/).

Subscribe to their free Joint Account newsletter (https://www.readthejointaccount.com/)

Check out Ashley's Money Club (https://www.thefiscalfemme.com/money-club) to join a community of women unabashedly going after their money goals.

Take this quiz to get a personalized Wealth Building Blueprint (https://bit.ly/4v94g2C)

Viviana Vazquez is the first-gen Latina creator behind OverGenPoverty. She grew up in New York City watching her dad support a family of five on less than $30,000 a year, became the family breadwinner on a teacher's salary, and today she and her husband Xavi have a combined net worth of $510,000. She's a former teacher turned full-time business owner and co-host of the Tech Quiero Más podcast. In this episode, she sits down with me to break down how she actually affords the lifestyle.

Viviana and I walk through her income climb, from a $57,000 teaching salary to earning $185,000 in tech, and the $130,000 in revenue her business has already brought in this year. She breaks down her actual payday routine with Xavi down to the dollar, shares exactly what makes up her $510K net worth, and takes us inside their World Cup trip to Mexico they spent three years saving for.

Viviana reveals what it really costs to be the first, from helping her parents pay off $80,000 in debt to taping her dad's credit cards, how she and Xavi turned a college friendship into a wealth-building partnership with two weddings and a People magazine feature along the way, and what she's working toward affording next.

Download Ashley's free "Get Paid What You're Worth" negotiation guide (https://www.thefiscalfemme.com/get-paid).

Follow Viviana on Instagram at @overgenpoverty (https://www.instagram.com/overgenpoverty).

Listen to Tech Quiero Más wherever you get your podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/techquiero-m%C3%A1s/id1877341355).

Check out Ashley's Money Club (https://www.thefiscalfemme.com/money-club) to join a community of women unabashedly going after their money goals.

Take this quiz to get a personalized Wealth Building Blueprint (https://bit.ly/4v94g2C)