My Friends Know Everything Except What I'm Invested In

Every fund I own, named, plus the message I want you to send your group chat tonight.

I know which of my friends is freezing her eggs. Which one just left her husband. Which one cried in the parking lot after her performance review, mascara on the steering wheel, before she fixed her face and drove home.

I have no idea what any of them is invested in.

These women have money. Several of them make more than I do. We have talked about pelvic floors and prenups and the specific loneliness of being the first woman in your family to earn like this.

Ask where their money lives and the room shifts.

Someone changes the subject. Someone makes a joke about being bad with numbers. And someone always says “I really need to figure that out,” and we all nod, and we order another round.

I have been guilty of this. For years I thought bringing up my portfolio at brunch would sound like showing off. Caring about money felt unfeminine. It felt like something other people did, something women like me were supposed to pretend we didn’t think about while we thought about it constantly.

Then a friend pulled out her phone at dinner and showed me how she organizes her savings. An emergency fund. A travel fund. A bucket just for angel investing. She scrolled through them the way you’d scroll through photos from a trip.

It was the first time money looked like something I could arrange rather than a test I had already failed.

That conversation changed how I moved. And I only had it because she decided to go first.

The last taboo at the table

We talk about therapy now because someone went first. Same with fertility. Same with leaving the jobs that were draining us, with divorce, with boundaries, with telling our mothers no.

Nobody has gone first on investing.

So we sit there pretending money bores us. As if the women at the table making six figures don’t also Google “how to start investing” at midnight and close the tab before anything sticks.

A few weeks ago I stopped pretending and asked some of my friends directly. One told me she already had money set aside. She was saving for a bag.

I love a bag. But I told her what I’m about to tell you: the discipline already exists. She has proven she can set money aside, month after month, toward something she wants. The skill is there. It is simply pointed at an asset that loses value the moment it leaves the store.

The silence costs us. Compound interest does not wait for us to stop feeling awkward.

Here is my proof that the awkwardness is survivable: my investment portfolio just crossed six figures. And I started exactly where you might be right now. Midnight Googling. Tab closed. Telling myself I’d figure it out later.

The best-performing stock market in the world this year, in dollar terms, is one almost nobody in your feed is talking about. I’m invested in it. I’ll tell you which one in a minute.

One of my friends went first for me. This is me going first for you.

For my paid subscribers, I will share: every account I hold, every fund by name, what I did with my book advance, how I’m buying into the best-performing stock market in the world, and the exact message to send your group chat tonight.