Under Cover Upper East Sider (w/ Jill Kargman)

Jill Kargman, the New York Times bestselling author and Upper East Side native, walked into the Financial Tea studio with a confession: she has no idea how much money she makes. She doesn't know what she sold her TV show for, can't track her beauty spending, and has never once asked her husband for a number. But she has spent decades as an embedded anthropologist of New York's wealthiest enclave, and what she has observed is a set of social and psychological traps that drain money, time, and identity from women who otherwise have plenty of both.

The cost of belonging to the mom cult

Kargman described the Upper East Side mom economy as a subscription service you never signed up for. The group lunches, the birthday parties, the Paperless Post invitations for 14 women to meet at a restaurant for a $150 prefix lunch that balloons to $200 after tax and tip. Then comes the group gift: a Venmo request for $250 to chip in on a Chanel bag for the birthday mom. "You're giving one sixteenth of an Hermès tote," Kargman said. "And I'm not even having quality time because it's so many women."