Gaby Dunn Wants to Talk About How Money Makes Us Crazy

Comedian, writer, and YouTube star Gaby Dunn is bad with money. So bad, in fact, that her podcast exploring her financial incompetence, Bad With Money, is now in its third season.

It’s not just another show about how to get rich or dig yourself out of credit card debt. “Those shows exist and they’re fine if they’re for you, but we’re not here to treat money as just a practical issue,” Dunn, now 29, explained in her very first episode. "Money isn’t practical. It makes everyone psychotic."

What Dunn wants to talk about is why it's so hard to get your finances in order—from the bad money habits you may have learned from your parents to the shame and secrecy that comes from talking about how much you have (or don't have) in the first place.

Instead of posing as a know-it-all expert, Dunn mixes self-deprecation and humor with a big dose of straight talk. She rails at “bullshit gender norms” that hold women and transgender people back in the workplace, cops to her own privilege as “a white lady” and proudly calls Bad With Money “the podcast that really annoys your privileged friends.”

And she never shies away from from voicing her outraged response as her guest experts explain all the ways our financial system is imbalanced, flawed, and sometimes even "evil."

Melding her own personal experiences with those of marginalized communities, Dunn organizes the show “through a very queer lens,” in an effort to disrupt what she calls the overarching heteronormativity of our financial systems. For example, “women are on track to have most of the wealth globally by 2020, but no financial services are really marketed towards us. We’ve been historically shut out—it can be insurmountable or overwhelming, but I want to even the playing field,” she says.

Guests like bisexual Argentinian actress Stephanie Beatriz have discussed immigration, writer and activist Carrie Wade has discussed disability, and New Yorker writer Jane Mayer exposed the way in which billionaires control the government—all topics that can help inspire money-related conversations between friends and family.

“For most of my life I kept most of my financial foibles to myself. Not having money was my secret,” Dunn, who is openly polyamorous and bisexual, said in the first episode of her podcast, which aired in 2016. Despite a huge social media following, an immensely popular comedy show on YouTube, and bylines in places like BuzzFeed, she was still in debt and overwhelmed by how to save money.

“I was struggling immensely,” Dunn says, “I don’t have a lot of family support, I was not very good at saving money and I was literally looking for quarters in my car trying to figure out how to pay rent.”

In on episode, Dunn interviews passersby on the street, asking their favorite sex position and how much money is in their bank accounts. Guess which question embarrassed people more?

Dunn has also called her student loan company on air, spoken on the record with her family about their finances and interviewed her (now ex) boyfriend about his perspective on her lack of financial responsibility.

Despite Dunn's ongoing efforts to strip away the taboos that come with talking about money, the conversations haven’t gotten easier. “I’m mortified everyday,” Dunn laughs. “I can’t go back and listen to old episodes because I can't believe the things I said, like calling my bank and letting them read my statements on the air. It’s a nightmare—I can’t believe I did any of it.”

While talking about money hasn't gotten easier, it has helped Dunn take baby steps to improve her finances. She says she's learned to scan bills and bank statements for unnecessary purchases (in her case, overpaying for parking meters) and save as little as a dollar a week (hey, that’s $52 at the end of the year you wouldn’t have had!).

The third season of Bad With Money, which began in April, is less about Dunn phoning her student loan officer and more about broader issues, ranging from student loan forgiveness to the implications of taxation of marijuana—all told through expert perspectives of people who are often ignored in the finance world, like an out trans financial advisor and two queer men who are used to being the only LGBTQ people in any professional financial setting.

With the focus off Dunn—whose book Bad With Money comes out in 2019—and more on the issues that make money such a prodigious topic, one may be curious: Is she still bad with money?

“Yes, absolutely,” Dunn says. “I’m horrible. Online shopping is a nightmare.”

Follow Melissa Kravitz on Twitter.