00:00Hi, everyone. My name is Kimberly Wilson, and I am the senior money and careers editor here
00:12at Essence. And I am joined by my fellow money and business girl, Jasmine Browley,
00:19contributing to Senator. Hey, Jasmine. Hey there. Okay, so now the celebrities are great,
00:26but we know that nothing moves without the money. So we've got the money team to give you the best
00:32of 2023 from a money and careers perspective. And there were some power moves being made in 2023.
00:40And if I'm being not honest, all of them were not great, but they were power moves nonetheless. So
00:46speaking of money, let's be for real, Jez. The rent is too high. Groceries are too high. Gas is too high.
00:54And the list goes on and on. But there is a bright side when it comes to spending money.
00:59And I'd say that that bright side is girl math. What do you think?
01:03I agree. Girl math is everything.
01:06I know that I'm guilty of it. So if I have cash in my wallet, or if I'm just carrying cash on me,
01:12period, it's free. Whatever I spend money on, it's free, right? Or a thing that I do is if I'm
01:18under budget between each pay period, anything I spend money on before that next pay period is
01:24extra. And that's basically free for me too. So some people call it impulse spending. I call it
01:30algebra. But that is girl math.
01:33I agree. A couple of examples of those girl math equations that I have lived in my own life is if I
01:40be a really expensive coat, I buy that, especially if it's on sale, instead of buying four other
01:45coats, you know, for they can balance this out. For those who don't know girl math, it essentially
01:50was a trend that took over social media with women just trading jokes about internal calculations
01:58that they make. Sometimes they're silly, but sometimes not so silly. It's the way that we
02:02rationalize our spending in this consumerism society. So it's less math and more so feminine
02:09logic, I want to say. So girl math was all the thing in 2023. And that's really not the only thing
02:16that went down this year in the money and business realm. I'm actually going to toss it to my girl Jazz
02:20to talk more about the elephant in the room, which is inflation.
02:24Oh my gosh, inflation, aka the rising cost of literally everything. I feel like, you know,
02:31you just never have enough money for everything. And everything is a little bit more expensive.
02:36Blame inflation, it's not you. To give context, before the pandemic in 2018, inflation sat at about
02:411.81%. But by the summer of 2022, it was at 9.1%. That's more than triple than what it was
02:50less than four years ago. And it was reflected in everything from the cost of food and gas to
02:55mortgages and rent. Now, inflation has come down, but we're still feeling the pain. We actually talked
03:01about this in our story about households having to pay about $5,000 more this year to maintain the
03:06way of life that they had last year. Again, if you feel like you don't have enough money to cover
03:11things, and if you feel like you're getting charged $100 every time you walk out the door,
03:15you're not exaggerating. Another topic that we wanted to talk about that was key is Magic Johnson
03:22becoming a billionaire. Yes, that is a billionaire with a B. Everyone's favorite baller turned
03:31businessman, Magic Johnson, finally became a billionaire this year. And after more than 30
03:36years of success and everything from restaurants, real estate, movie theaters, and even life insurance,
03:43Magic crossed the billion dollar threshold this year, and we could not be more proud.
03:47Can you believe he wasn't already a billionaire all this time, Kim? I can't even believe it,
03:52but shout out to Magic Johnson. He is money goals for real. And speaking of money goals,
03:58shout out to Richelieu Dennis, our fearless leader. Earlier this year, the New Voices Foundation
04:04actually convened more than 75 black and brown founders. So we're talking Miel Organics,
04:11we're talking Beatrice Dixon from Honeypot. All of these founders convened to open the NASDAQ
04:19Bell for the first time in history. So shout out to just Richelieu and the New Voices team for
04:24continuing to trailblaze and make history. For me, I know that was super exciting to see,
04:29and it was just such a momentous occasion that we all kind of got to witness history being made
04:35at the forefront. And Jazzy, I know you actually wrote that story. So shout out to you for even
04:40amplifying what went down at NASDAQ. Absolutely. It was, to your point, it was an incredible moment,
04:46and congratulations to the big boss man. Well, let's talk about the other elephant in the room,
04:52AI. Artificial intelligence has been at the tip of everyone's tongue for good reason. And although
04:58the sophisticated technology is aiming to make things smarter in our lives easier, it may push some
05:04people out of the job. We recently wrote a piece about a new phenomenon affecting people in the
05:09workplace called SOBO, or fear of becoming obsolete. Kim, have you had any concerns about AI?
05:16Listen, I saw the movie Megan, and that movie, I don't know how I feel about AI. It's a little too
05:24realistic for me. So I think that we do have some concerns if that is where AI will transition to
05:31in the future. Absolutely. I definitely agree. I've seen some form of AI and some artificial
05:37intelligent, artificially intelligent villain in movies for years. And I really feel like we've
05:43been getting like little warning signs for decades. So I don't know. But at this point,
05:49we don't have a choice but to embrace it because it's here. We're getting closer and closer.
05:54We can't end the year when we think about entrepreneurship and business moves.
05:58We just can't end our recap without talking about how epic our Power 40 list was. For our
06:05inaugural Power 40 list, we showcase people who are moving the culture forward. And all of them
06:12are making global, local, national impact. So we featured LeBron James. We featured Danita Johnson
06:21from DC United. We had J. Cole in the team of Dreamville. Maverick Carter from Spring Hill.
06:28Sheila Johnson. The list was extremely dope. I'm so glad that Essence was able to kind of showcase
06:34heavy hitters.
06:35heavy hitters.
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