Brunch & Budget

It’s probably the question I get most asked by clients – should I buy a house or keep renting? In this week’s show, we discuss the history of home buying in the United States, how and why it’s become part of the American Dream, and the industries and parts of the economy that rely on […]

So it’s happening. Dyalekt and I are hiring a financial planner. And we’re going to talk about the whole process in a series of radio show episodes. I read a very slap-in-the-face article about why financial planners might be hypocrites of their own profession. If I believe in the financial planning process so much, why […]

There’s been a new trend in the workforce and it’s been dubbed the “gig economy.” You’ve seen it everywhere – Uber, Lyft, Instacart, Fancy Hands, Task Rabbit, etc. But companies like Uber have been under fire for hiring their drivers as independent contractors when they should be considered employees. We talk with Matt Close of […]

This week, we are excited to have Michael Roderick of Small Pond Enterprises on the show to talk about how he went from being a full time English teacher to a Broadway Producer in less than two years. Yes, forreal. It happened. He did it. When Michael is not producing Broadway shows, he is helping […]

We had an incredible time at the Bondfire Radio Audio Festival! We had a very special Brunch & Budget show, where Dyalekt and I revealed our biggest money mistakes and biggest money triumphs. Then we turned to our live audience and asked some of them to share what theirs were!! The bravery, empathy, and community […]

It’s such a leap of faith to start your own business and another big leap of faith to take it to the next level. Sometimes, it feels like just when you’re about to hit your stride, you just need more money. This is where a small business loan could come in and banks are no […]

Think getting down on one knee and shoving a diamond ring in someone’s face is romantic? Do you remember when your mom started buying you deodorant or told you it was time to start shaving your legs? Do you think a breakfast without bacon shouldn’t even count as breakfast? Are you afraid of getting herpes? […]

Whether you work a full time job or you work for yourself, it seems like everyone these days has a side hustle. It could be directly related to the job you do on the regular, or something completely unrelated. It could be something you hope becomes full time or something you’re doing just to make […]

ON AIR SPECIAL! Lilit does a live critique of Brunch & Budget’s website. If you want your website critiqued live on a future show, email me at pam@brunchandbudget.com. Lilit Kalachyan-Nurse has a thing or two to say about how to brand and market your business. A small business owner herself, Lilit has dedicated her career […]

Retirement is a concept that really came from the 1930’s and the birth of Social Security. The logic was that after spending your whole life doing back breaking labor, the government would help take care of you in your old age. The concept of retirement then became something that companies and businesses began to take […]

We’ve all heard stories in history class of a country’s currency being nearly worthless and it’s happened as recently as 2009 to Zimbabwe, where their Zim Dollar exchange rate was 700 billion to 1 US dollar. Could this ever happen to the US? On this Independence Day show, we talk about what happens when a […]

Dyalekt and I finally got solar panels installed on our roof. Besides it being a year-long process in NYC (just FYI if you decide to commit), was it worth it? Does it make sense and is it cost efficient for you to consider using the sun for energy? Which big companies use solar? Where is […]

NYC has approximately 2 million residents (out of 8 million) in rent stabilized apartments, often the elderly and families who have been in their homes for a long time. On Monday, 6/14, the rent stabilization laws in NYC expired. Technically, the state government says. The renewal has been going back and forth in Albany and […]

If you haven’t heard, Colorado legalized the possession of marijuana as of January, 2014. We wanted to check in and see how the state has been doing from a fiscal perspective, now that it’s been a year and a half and the state hasn’t experienced a total drug-induced meltdown since they passed the law. In […]

Sherita Rankins is a model, host, actress, and director of finance at a non-profit. Oh, and she blogs about it. If your head is spinning just reading all the things she does, listen to this week’s show to find out how she juggles it all, what her top tips are to maximize your productivity, save […]

For every one person in prison, there are two people who were formerly incarcerated. That means there are 5 million people in the United States who have to check that box on a job application, 5 million people who struggle to find and keep a place to live, 5 million people who are immediately identified […]

This whole prison industrial complex thing runs deep and starts early. While the anecdote that the prison industry uses 3rd grade standardized test results to predict how many prison beds it will need to build hasn’t been proven (mostly because it sounds like no one will fess up), factors like illiteracy, truancy, and suspensions are […]

Last week, Dyalekt summed up the prison industrial complex in one word: Slavery. 2.3 million Americans are in prison today and 60% of them are people of color. This week, we have special guest Stephanie Damon-Moore, a law student at NYU who has dedicated her studies to abolishing the prison system, join us on the […]

To mark our 50th episode, we will be starting a 4-part series on the Prison Industrial Complex. In Part 1 of the PIC series, we talk about Prison as a Business: From corporations like the Corrections Corporation of America being publicly traded on the stock exchange to companies like Wendy’s, Walmart, Starbucks, and Verizon using […]

I just wrote about this a few weeks ago (http://brunchandbudget.com/why-your-money-personality-matters-as-much-as-your-budgeting-skills/), but it’s such an important thing to get that we are going to do a whole radio show about it! Budgeting is not one size fits all, but most people treat it that way, so they end up trying, and then quickly abandoning their budgeting […]