Hi y’all —
There are a lot of things that suck about being a girl: period cramps, wage inequality, cat calls, etc. But there are also perks, like that moment when you take off your bra at the end of the day, the strange magic of a women’s bathroom on a Saturday night and, of course, girl culture.
Girl culture is super viral right now. Last month, everyone online was obsessed with “girl dinner;” now, the fervor has turned to “girl math.”
Girl math revolves around justifying your spending habits in creative ways, like subscribing to the idea that if you buy clothes and later return them, you’re actually making money. Or if you pay someone back for dinner out of your Venmo balance, it qualifies as a free meal.
This puts me in a weird position because I’m both a girl and a personal finance reporter. The journalist in me knows that math doesn't add up. But the attitude behind it? That's something I'm on board with.
Is there a way to incorporate girl math into my own life without going broke?
First I called Priya Milani, founder and CEO of Stash Wealth, to find out why girl math is resonating with so many people. Her theory is that it’s popular because we all do it, girl or not.
“It's kind of what social media was built for: It’s entertaining and brings awareness to a topic that I don't think people would talk about otherwise,” Milani says.
Victoria Sado, a certified financial planner at Ellevest, told me the same thing: Girl math is universal because “everyone goes through their own process to justify splurges and spending — and it may defy someone else’s logic of dollar-and-cents budgeting.”
This is especially true during times of economic uncertainty, when the reigning financial advice is to cut back on frivolous things like shopping for clothes or, God forbid, ordering avocado toast. Sado says that’s where a unique bias comes into play: These quote-unquote “frivolous” expenditures are often coded as feminine.
Even though there’s research that shows men are statistically just as likely to splurge as women and spend more money on average when they treat themselves, it’s women who get stigmatized for their spending. Sado says women are told constantly that they spend too much, can’t invest well and are bad with money.
“‘Girl math’ is a defense against that,” she adds. “It says, ‘Hey, we know this math doesn’t exactly add up, but it’s not because we don’t know how to do math.’ And it says we deserve these splurges and small treats.”
