It’s that time of year! Plutus Award nominations are open!

The Plutus Awards are industry awards for creators who work in independent financial media. In years past, you guys have helped nominate me for so many different categories — some nominations were a surprise even to me!

Thank you for that. Times a million. Getting nominated for these awards have really helped my career, in addition to being a great honor.

This year, if I could ask you for one more favor, it would be to nominate Mom Autism Money for Best Personal Finance Content for Underserved Communities.

How to Nominate

To nominate Mom Autism Money, you would use this form.

At the top, you’ll fill out some very basic info about yourself.

Then, if you scroll down to ‘Best Personal Finance Content for Underserved Communities,’ you should see the Mom Autism Money URL already entered.

If for some reason it isn’t, simply type this in the box: https://momautismmoney.com

If you crush on content from other PF creators, you can enter them in the form for the remaining categories, too. But if you don’t, it’s okay to leave the rest of them blank before you hit ‘Submit.’

Catch Up on Mom Autism Money

Want to check out some of the latest episodes? Here are a bunch of our faves from Season Two! Be sure to follow or subscribe to Mom Autism Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, etc. so you’ll be notified each time a new episode goes live.

How to Successfully Apply to SSI

So far, this is our most popular episode this season! Brought to you by CalABLE, in this episode we speak with Dena Gassner about her proven strategy for successfully making it through the SSI/SSDI application process.

It’s centered around Autism, but her framework can be applied to any disability.

 

Autism in the Latino Community

This one just went live today!

Brought to you by ABLE United, it’s part one of an engaging, two-part discussion about Autism in the Latino community with self-advocate and editor Arianne Garcia and researcher Dr. Kristina Lopez. I learned a TON from this one, personally.

 

Retirement Planning

OMGosh, retirement planning when you have a disabled child is OVERWHELMING. Luckily, Joe Saul-Sehy and Brenton Harrison joined us to break everything down. So much great info that we broke it down into two episodes!

TBH, there are large chunks of these episodes that are great for anyone to listen to — whether or not you have an Autistic child.

More Mom Autism Money

We’ve covered a lot this season, and we’re excited to cover a lot more, too. Here are some of our other Season Two episodes:

• Career & Entrepreneurship Resources through Vocational Rehab.
• Travel & Entrepreneurship with The Autistic Travel Goddess.
• Career & Life Skills for Aspie Young Adults.
• Autism Acceptance vs Autism Awareness.

Thank you!

Thank you all so much for your support over the years. When I started writing online, I never thought it would replace my day job. But it did. And you all made that happen. I am eternally grateful.

And thank you for taking a couple minutes to nominate today. Your continued support truly means the world.

For International Women’s Day, Lovepop reached out to me to see if I’d like some cards on the house. I was thrilled to take the opportunity — Lovepop cards are so beautiful, unique and fun!

The problem? Well, this International Women’s Day, this is what we had to celebrate:

On International Womens Day, I’m doing some research for an internal Women in Tech conference speech. I’ve learned that:

Women lost $800 billion in earnings in 2020

13 million women worldwide did not return to work in 2021

The pandemic set back gender equality by 36 years

— Liz @ Chief Mom Officer (@LizOfficer) March 8, 2022

Bummer. I know.

And to a certain degree, I’ve been one of those women. With truncated work hours, I had a hard time getting my order in in time for the celebration.

The good news? A lot of Lovepop’s cards for International Women’s Day can double for Mother’s Day Cards. So I’m here today to share my haul with you. Be forewarned: Everything is super cute!

Savings Tip: Give Lovepop your email address to get 10% off your first order. Also keep an eye out for sale items and 5 for $50 deals. All of the cards listed below fall into one of those two categories.

Cherry Blossom Pop-Up Card

Saw this card and fell in love! Which should be no surprise for those of you who remember my love of Japan. The magic of cherry blossom season is real, and I love how it’s captured in this card.

Mother’s Day Dragonfly Pop-Up Card

This card is specifically for moms! The dragonfly’s wings are so intricate, and the watercolor background is gorgeous.

Butterfly Basket Pop-Up Card

Give mom a bouquet of flowers and butterflies with this butterfly basket card! This card is particularly full and has so many tiny details that make it just perfect.

Mom & Baby Elephant Pop-Up Card

I love these next two for new moms especially. The mom & baby elephant in this card are so cute, and the added horizon line in the background really makes it.

Mom & Baby Bunny Pop-Up Card

Another adorable card for new moms! Again, the background adds a lot, with bunnies peeking out of their holes and bunny ears peeking out from behind the hills.

Have you ever bought Lovepop cards before? Share your favorites in the comments!

This has been a really hard pandemic, friends.

And I feel like it’s been particularly difficult for parents. Anyone with aging parents. And all others who are high-risk for other reasons.

As a mom, I often feel like all the responsibility — societal and familial — has been pushed onto my shoulders. It’s a crushing weight none of us mothers volunteered for. And while I keep hoping the burden will get lighter, over time it only seems to compound.

The first time we watched Encanto, I got chills when I heard this song.

Okay, fine, I got chills every subsequent time we watched Encanto, too.

I felt seen. I don’t often feel like I can talk to many people about this pressure, but here were all my emotions in animated form:

I mean, just look how she grabs Hercules’ sword midair without thinking. If that isn’t a metaphor for what mothers have been doing these past two years I dunno what is.

Talking Pandemic Motherhood on So Money

I’ve been toying with the idea of talking about this for a while. The truth is, it’s hard.

There are so many expectations on us as women. From the responsibilities we must shoulder to the degree to which we’re allowed to be angry and frustrated without social consequences. I mean, in some work environments I worry that even just talking about the fact that I’m a mother at all will negatively impact my opportunities.

Because these expectations are widespread, though, I know I’m not alone. So I decided to start talking about the past couple years, as scary as that may be.

I recently sat down with Farnoosh Torabi for an episode of her podcast, So Money. We got real  about the past two years, how that has impacted my career as a working mom, and solutions we could explore in an effort to make a better tomorrow for everyone.

Be sure to give it a listen.

Too Ambitious

Farnoosh and I initially got to talking because of an article I wrote for Stefanie O’Connell Rodriguez’s Too Ambitious bulletin. You can check it out here.

Too Ambitious is a phenomenal, thought-provoking read each and every time. Here are some other features you should check out:

• “The worst they can say is no” is bad negotiation advice. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t negotiate.

• “I Want to Work and Grow With My Country”: Ukraine’s Entrepreneurs Share Their Stories

• Maybe It’s Expected For a White Man to Ask For More. For Me as a Black Woman, It’s Not.

• I Don’t Want To Change My Personality Just To Be Taken Seriously

 

Latest Episode of Mom Autism Money

Okay, so this might not necessarily be related to motherhood for everyone.

But it is an important listen for just about everyone.

For the latest episode of Mom Autism Money, Joyce and I sat down with social work expert Dena Gassner to learn the best ways to successfully apply for SSI or SSDI.

One of the reasons you may apply for SSI or SSDI is when your disability impacts your ability to work a full-time job.

Having SSI or SSDI isn’t only a matter of cash payments. Sometimes receiving SSI or SSDI is a necessary step before you can get health insurance that will fully cover your needs, or other related programs you may need to get by.

The process of securing SSI/SSDI isn’t transparent and can take years. In fact, Dena thinks they do it that way on purpose.

But she has created a system that has helped countless families successfully work through the application process. And she shares it with us this week.

We obviously talk about it in context of Autism, but this overarching framework applies to all kinds of disabilities, including those who now find themselves with Long COVID.

Give it a listen. If you don’t need this information in the near future, there’s a high likelihood you’ll know someone who will. Whether that’s your aging parents or your bestie who ‘only’ had a ‘mild’ case of Omicron.

COVID Numbers

I want this pandemic to be over.

So.

So.

Badly.

But if there’s anything I’ve learned over the course of my life, it’s that just because I want something to be true doesn’t mean it is. Optimism can be a good thing, but only when it’s buffered by some somber realism.

The CDC has been putting out some real surprising maps lately, showing the entire country is green or low-risk. But that’s incredibly misleading.

Less than two months ago, the CDC changed their metrics. This whole pandemic, we’ve been measuring risk by the amount of positive cases in our communities — or community transmission.

But less than two months ago, the CDC changed those metrics to something along the lines of ‘low-risk means we have enough beds for you to die in.’

That’s a problem. Because death and/or hospitalization is a lagging indicator. The people that are in those beds when we finally get to a ‘red’ zone under these metrics? They will have caught the virus weeks to a month ago ish.

I’m not an epidemiologist. Please do your own research and learn how to vet traditional or nontraditional media outlets for any biases they may hold. And for the love of Pete, do not listen to Leana Wen.

That means that for two weeks prior, when everything was supposedly ‘green’ and people were running around inside with no masks on, the virus was probably raging.

Spread of this thing works exponentially.

And by the time we arrive to the ‘red’ point, there would be a critical shortage of hospital beds for all those people who got infected when they  thought everything was ‘green.’

This is not a guaranteed outcome. I pray that’s not what happens.

But it is one very real possibility. Given our track record with mortality rates with this virus in our country, it’s one we should be preparing for.

The tiniest silver lining is, at least for the time being, the CDC does provide a map using the old metrics.

Reporting of positive cases is sorely lacking right now. But even so, you can see that there are parts of the country that are actually very, very red if we were to measure by the metrics we had been using from the beginning: Community transmission.

The metrics that they switched out on everyone two months ago.

 

Please be careful, everyone. Even if you’re up to date on boosters, there’s still a chance you could get Long COVID even after a ‘mild’ infection.

And there’s definitely the possibility that you could remain asymptomatic and spread this thing to someone who is immunocompromised or otherwise high-risk. Or to a parent of a kid under 5 who still can’t get vaccinated.

And their outcome might not be as good as yours.

So at the absolute least, please wear a mask. Even if you’re not ‘required’ to.

Because it’s not just about our own, individual personal risks. It’s about how our decisions affect the personal risk of others.