What Wealth Really Buys and What It Doesn’t

Two alarms go off across the same city, and the day splits: one morning sprints through breakfast prep, school runs, and budget math; the other flows with nannies, a chef, and a tennis lesson on the calendar. We use these parallel routines to explore how privilege changes not just outcomes but mindset - how decisions feel when every choice has a price tag versus when most frictions are outsourced. It’s not a guilt trip or a fairy tale. It’s an honest inventory of access, stress, and the stories we tell ourselves to cope.

We get real about healthcare: why a rash becomes a concierge text for some and a two-week referral maze plus co-pays for others. We talk about credit and car loans, the quiet humiliation of “you do not qualify,” and the way interest rates end up choosing for you. We unpack gratitude culture - how working people already celebrate small wins - and argue that those with abundance owe a deeper practice of grace: fair treatment, less performance, more listening. If you’re hiding wealth while carrying a Birkin, the signal is louder than you think.

Family dynamics surface the sharpest edges. Adult children can hold pain and still take responsibility. Respect doesn’t mean silence, but it does mean decency. We sit with the reality that many of us repeat what we were raised with - nannies, distance, expectations - until we decide to break the pattern. The throughline is ownership: of budgets and boundaries, of influence and impact, of the next decade regardless of the last one. Comfort and joy aren’t the same. Joy takes practice - small acts, honest talk, and choosing substance over status.

If this conversation made you think about your own life, share it with a friend, subscribe for more candid episodes -- and remember, at the end of the day, it really is All About The JOY! 

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Music By Geovane Bruno, Moments, 3481
Editing by Team A-J
Host, Carmen Lezeth


DISCLAIMER: As always, please do your own research and understand that the opinions in this podcast and livestream are meant for entertainment purposes only. States and other areas may have different rules and regulations governing certain aspects discussed in this podcast. Nothing in our podcast or livestream is meant to be medical or legal advice. Please use common sense, and when in doubt, ask a professional for advice, assistance, help and guidance.

Chapters

• 0:10 Two Mornings, Two Realities
• 2:46 Wealth’s Ease Versus Working Budgets
• 5:18 Healthcare, Access, And Hidden Costs
• 10:54 Credit, Loans, And Humiliation
• 14:25 Status, Secrecy, And Responsibility
• 18:45 Adult Children And Accountability
• 23:00 Choosing Grace, Gratitude, And Joy

Transcript

Carmen Lezeth: 0:10

Hey everyone, welcome to All About the Joy. This is Carmen Talk. So the difference is kind of stark, right? On the one hand, let's just pretend let's pretend I have two kids. And here's how my morning goes. And then we'll talk about your morning. So I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is get up, I go to the kitchen, I'm going to make my coffee, and I'm going to check the news, kind of check any of the headlines or whatever. Uh I am going to think about what I might want for breakfast for myself, but more importantly, I'm realizing I have to have breakfast for the kids when they get up. They're going to get up in about an hour. Okay. I then will turn around and go back to my bedroom and I'm going to make my bed because I always make my bed. If I have time, I'm going to throw some laundry in the washing machine, you know, if I have things separated out, or at least I'm going to separate things in different piles and at some point do laundry, but I know that's something in the back of my head, the to-do list. Uh then I go and get the kids up and I tell them they have to get ready. I take out their clothes, whatever it is they need, put it out there, you know, have to deal with making sure they have their book bags or whatever. I then go back down to the kitchen and make sure that I make them uh lunch. Because they're gonna have lunch and I get their breakfast ready. At the same time, I'm screaming up to them, you know, uh to make sure they move it along. Because in this scenario, the younger kids, right? Um, then I am debating whether or not I'll have time to actually get on the treadmill, but I probably am not gonna have any time. Then I realize, oh my God, we're running late. They eat, I finish my hair or whatever it is, and we get in the car, and I'm going to now have to drive them in traffic to school, drop them off at school, and then I have to go to work and I have to get here to work on time, right? By nine o'clock. Okay. So let's just, let's just pretend that's like, I mean, that's kind of sort of what happens, except mine, it's the kids for me and my part. But let that's, I would say, a normal person's regular morning who has like two kids, and let's just say a single mom. Because you're you're kind of like a single mom too, right? You are okay. I mean, I know you are, but okay. So here's the difference for you and and how things happen from my perspective. You get up in the morning and you come down and your coffee is handed to you, right? You get up at whatever time you need to because the nannies have already shown up to get the kids up, to get them dressed, to get them their food, you know, to get them their breakfast, and their lunches have already been made because the chef is here, right? I'm not gonna say his name, but the chef is here, right? So I'm not gonna say his name because you keep firing them. So, but you turn around and um you don't have to worry about whether or not you're gonna work out or not, because the tennis instructor is showing up in about 20 minutes, and you're going to go on your tennis courts to play a round of tennis or whatever it is you say, right? And that's totally good because the kids are gonna be driven to school as they always are by the chauffeur, by the driver, whatever, and the nannies are going to accompany them. And you still are not even dressed yet, let alone do you have to worry about doing laundry because housekeepers have already shown up, right? You have two housekeepers, you have two housekeepers, let's just be honest, two housekeepers on a regular basis. And you don't have to worry about all that stuff. So that is why we have two different worlds. And I don't think either one of those worlds are better or worse. And I know that if people were listening in on this conversation, they would be like, Carmen, you're crazy. Like, of course, I would want the world where we have tennis courts and the pool and a chauffeur and a housekeeper. But the truth is, is you're sitting here talking to me because you're so miserable about your life. And I wish I could say that I have not had this conversation many times with so many different people that I have worked for. And so I don't know if maybe I should be a therapist or something, because I could be raking in some serious money from you people, but but let me give you another example of what you don't understand. There's a reason why I'm telling you all this, okay? Let's say you have to go to the doctors. We've had this experience before, right? You have to go to the doctors because you're not feeling well or whatever. You think something remember, remember when you thought something you you were like, this is cancer or whatever. And I was like, it's not cancer. I was like, you don't need a doctor to tell you that. Whatever. You were having some rash or something, some eczema or whatever it was. I don't know. But you're what you what did you do? You just turned around and looked on your phone because you have your doctor's direct phone number and you were able to call them and they got you in that day. They didn't even flinch. No big deal. You got in, you got out. By the end of the day, we were no longer talking about your supposed cancer on your arm or whatever it was, right? That you hyperventilated about for about 20 minutes, right? And made everyone miserable because you were in a bad mood. But I digress. I digress. So if I have to go to the doctors, right? Remember, I hurt my hand and I was in a lot of pain or whatever. Okay. I had to not only call my primary care physician first and schedule a time to see her, which was like in two weeks. And if it was really bad, I could have gone to urgent care, but then that would have been a whole different other deductible. I never call the doctors without doing a calculation in my head of how much it's going to cost me. Right? Because I have to go through my insurance and my insurance doesn't cover things. So I have to get a referral from my doctor in order to go see whatever the hand doctor person was, right? And all of those have co-pays. So on top of it all, not only are you completely covered because you have money, you I live on a strict budget. And so when something out of the norm happens, and this is most everyone, yes, we'll go to the doctors, but only if we absolutely have to. And if I'm calling the doctors, it's because I absolutely have to and I'm in pain. And then they say there's an appointment in two weeks. And then your primary care physician will tell you, yes, you should go to this other doctor, or no, you don't need to just wrap it or something. And of course, I had to go to another doctor and had to wait another two weeks to see him. Both of those were co-pays, and then I had deductibles to pay. So I was like out of pocket one month, a thousand dollars that I wasn't planning on. Now, a thousand dollars to you is like, I guess like a dollar to me. Like if somebody asks me for a dollar, I'm like, yeah, here's your dollar. You know what I mean? Like, whatever, you know? But if somebody asks me for a thousand dollars, I don't have that. I I have to figure that out. I have to budget that. I can come up with it, I can figure it out, but it better be a really big-time emergency, you know what I mean? So for you, there's an ease to things that most regular people have to deal with on a different level, like a different basis. It's a different way of thinking and living your life every day. Now, it's not your fault you were born into what you were born into, and it's not my fault I was born into what I was born into. But your level of compassion and empathy is very different than my level of compassion and empathy. And that's probably not fair to say, but it's still very true, right? So, I mean, I'm not asking you to agree with me, I'm just saying, you know, how about if I explain this way? Oprah used to always say, and I think she still says it now, like, write in a gratitude journal, you know, like be grateful, be grateful. Oh my God, I want to shoot people who are continuously telling poor people or working class people to be grateful. People who don't have anything and who are on strict budgets and are working every day are grateful people. You know how I know? Because whenever they get anything above and beyond, whenever they get a bonus or they get a smile from a boss, or they get a neighbor brings them over some, you know, they like uh like my my my neighbor the other day brought me um, she bought too many bananas and she didn't want them to go bad. And so she gave me like three of them and then she gave other neighbors some of them, right? It was really funny, but I was like, oh my god, yay, bananas for free. Like we walk in grace most of the time. People don't have to sit around and be grateful every single day because being grateful doesn't equal success. People try to put that on people all the time, and it drives me insane. And you've said it a few times. I think wealthy people, people in your circumstance, need to be the ones who have to act in more grace and be more grateful. Because you have so much and you forget that most people do not live the life that you live. Most people work for you to have the bare minimums, to have the bare minimums, you know, and and here's the thing: I'm not faulting anyone for their success, whether it's born into or you created your success. But if you forget what it's like, or you have never known what it's like to not have everything at your fingertips, that's why you're in this struggle. That's why you're having these issues. And that's why you're coming to me and talking to me, which I, you know, look at it, I take that as a huge compliment. I'm not trying to be rude, but what I'm trying to tell you is you've said to me more than once, you were raised right. You were raised well. I wish my children were like you. You have said that so many times. And as much as I know you think you're giving me some sort of compliment, uh the way I was raised was losing my mom at the age of 11, living on the streets and in a struggle, never having complete security and confidence and stuff and money to do anything I wanted to do. Like most people don't live in comfort that way. Most people struggle all the time. You know what? I'll I'll I'll put it this way. I had to get a loan to buy a car, right? This is when I first came out to Los Angeles. And in order to get right, because in Los Angeles at the time, especially when I first moved out here, you could not just take the bus everywhere. And I did for like the first four months, which was back in the day, and you it was just weird. You would go out of town to get into another bus to get to the other place, and it was crazy. But I did it. But I had to get a car. So in order for me to get a car, I had to go to a bank and try to get a loan. And when I went to try to get a loan, and here I am, someone who, you know, always paid my bills on time, always had a credit score of like 600 and something, usually 700. Um, you, and I say this respectfully, I know you know what a credit score is, but you don't care about your credit score. You've never had to care about your credit score, ever. People like me live and die on the credit score thing because that's what that's what we've been trained to do, to feel bad about, to feel guilty about, like, oh my God, I have too many credit cards, uh, you know, whatever. I go into a bank, I have to fill out all those applications, I have to tell them my life story, I have to beg and prove to them that I'm working, prove to them that I can pay them back. And you know what still happened? They said no. They said absolutely no. They said, and they didn't say absolutely no. They said, I'm sorry, you do not qualify. And when you ask, why don't I qualify? They're like, you don't have any collateral, you don't have um a co-signer, you have too high of a, you know, usage of credit, um, credit versus what you owe, right? So that was always like the big thing. And I'm like, yeah, but I pay my bills all the time, I'm good for it. But they don't, but they're like, yeah, but you're nobody, is basically what they're saying. You're nobody, you don't have anything, we don't trust you, we're not gonna give you a loan. You, on the other hand, you don't have to take out a loan. If you take out a loan, you take it out of your trust. You take your any money you need for your children, for the grandchildren, for anybody you want to give a gift to, for whatever extra you want to do. You just call up your people. You just call them and you tell them, I need X amount of dollars. Please transfer it over into my account tomorrow. Done done. Even if you wanted to, let's say for some reason you wanted to take out a loan, are you kidding me? The bank would be like, absolutely. You wouldn't have to lift a finger, you wouldn't have to do an application. I have other people I've worked for where we do all their applications, we do everything we need to do to submit it for them. They don't have to do any of that. They're also wealthy, but not in the same way you are, right? Like, so that's that's kind of what the difference is. So I am told no, I'm not gonna be able to get this car. So let me go on with that part of the story so you understand how it works. No, we're not gonna give you a loan. So I have to deal with the humiliation of that because that's humiliating after you spent all this time doing this application and expressing yourself and saying what you needed and why you wanted it. And, you know, you promise you're gonna pay it back and you tell them everything. And then they say, yeah, no. Because they knew right from the beginning they were gonna say no, anyways, but they made you go through the steps. And that's the thing that's so heart-wrenching when you don't have money. It's like you already knew you were gonna say no to me. Why did you make me go through all these hoops? But that's a whole other conversation, okay? But so now I have to figure out a way to get a car, and I have to now just go to the dealership and deal with them not only giving me whatever loan they want to give me, but at any rate, at any interest rate, and uh a car that I probably don't actually want. And that's how most people have to function. Most people have to function in that way. And here's the thing: it's not, I don't want you to be like, oh my god, that's so horrible. It's terrible. It's not, it's life, it's what most people go through. But when people like yourself who have so much money and you have so much at your fingertips, when you're complaining, when you're upset, and when you're talking about things like how unfair it is, or how bad people are, or her, we're thinking you have no idea what you're talking about. You're not even feeling a tenth of what we're talking about. Now, when I turn the tables, I know what you go through. I know that the day you and I met at Barney's and had lunch together, and you went to the ladies' room and I paid for lunch, that you almost cried, and you told me, and I'll never forget this no one has ever paid for my lunch. And I felt so bad. Like I I'll always remember, I mean, that was kind of the day where we changed, right? From me working for you and us having some sort of different relationship. But I don't know what it's like to walk around constantly thinking somebody wants something from me. I don't know what that feels like. But I know that that's why you walk around constantly not wanting people to know how much money you have. You know, which is why I was laughing at you the other day when you were like, I don't want people to know that I have money, you know. And I was like, well, then that Birkin bag is probably not something you wanted to bring with you. You know, like laughing. You know, I didn't even know what a Birkin bag was until one of the housekeepers told me that it was like $30,000. Why would you walk around town with that? And don't tell me it's about quality. It's that's all about status. See, that's kind of that's my point, you know. Like, on the one hand, you don't want people to know how wealthy you are. In the next breath, you're a walking billboard for wealth, you know? And I don't know what the shame is in it to be wealthy. I don't know what that's about. I don't get it. I'm just saying, I don't get it. Um, I understand you don't want to seem conceited or you don't want to seem ungrateful or whatever, but it's almost like if you're walking around in the shame of the amount of wealth that you have, you're actually doing a disservice to all the things you could be doing with your wealth to help other people, which you do with your foundations, with everything that you try to do to help other people. And as far as your kids are concerned, listen, I this one's a hard one for me, especially because they're older than I am. So it boggles my mind. I would never scream at an adult in that fashion. Certainly not my mother, or even those people that acted as mother and father figures to me throughout the years. There is a level of respect that comes with being an elder that I don't know if it's a cultural thing, I have no idea, but I have never experienced uh something like that in my life. And I would say that at some point you have to take ownership of your own life. I'm talking about your children here. You have to take ownership of your own life and stop blaming and playing the victim because your parents did A, B, C, and D. I mean, I'm sorry, for me, it's really hard to hear someone say, you were never around, uh, you weren't there for us. As if they had no one else to go to or they couldn't come and talk to you. I don't know what happened. I'm not trying to dismiss what happened in their lives of teenagers, and I'm sure there is validity there, but it's just a weird concept. Like when I say my mother wasn't there for me, she really wasn't there for me. She was, she was dead, you know, and I and I don't mean to be so profound about it, but it's like other kids who talk about their parents not being there for them, their parents, you know, are whatever. They're working too much, right? There's there's an excuse or whatever. And I think that's what they're doing to you. They're making you feel bad because you were working at foundations and doing all this stuff, but you were also giving them everything that they needed to have, the same thing that was given to you. You were giving them the same life that you were given because that's what happens, right? Unless something breaks the mold, unless something changes, we generally end up doing what our parents used to do. So you were raised by nannies and whatever, and so your kids are too. And as much as I can understand what their pain is and what they're talking about, they are grown-ass people. Like I can understand if they were teenagers and having this all-out frecoid moment with you, but they're adults. And I think the way you reacted to them, I was heartbroken for you. I felt really bad. I mean, that's why we all kind of just walked away and got out of the house, right? Because this was a private moment. But it's one of those things that I wanted to intervene and say, grow the fuck up. Like, what is wrong with you? You can't be in your 40s and be this upset with your parents. Like, if you have issues, go to therapy. You know what I mean? If you have issues with what your parents did, you do what everyone else does, work through it. But at some point, you got to stop playing the victim. I stopped playing the victim, I think I was 12, right? 13, maybe. Like at some point, you have to be like, okay, this is my life. I'm here. My parents did the best they could. Maybe they failed at 15 different things. Maybe they made 150 mistakes. Maybe they could have done A, B, C, and D. But what I know now is that this is my life, and I have the ability to have the best life I possibly can with the cards that I've been dealt, and I'm going to walk in it with as much joy as possible. That's what your kids need to do. And I don't know if they've figured that out yet, and I doubt that they will because they are so wound up as to why their lives are so miserable and they have so much. And instead of looking within themselves, it's just easier to blame you. And that's what I think is happening. I don't think the way that you wake up in the morning and start your day, and the way that I wake up in the morning and start my day is better or worse. I don't think it's indicative of whether or not you're a good or bad parent, whether you have money or you don't have money. I don't think any of that matters. I think what does matter is that you do the absolute best you can and you give your kids and you give the people around you the best of who you can be all the time. That's what I'm doing every single day. Just doing the best I can with what I have been given. That's all we can do. That's it. And if you want to uh stop looking so wealthy, I know some places where you can shop. So funny. Hi everyone, I hope you enjoyed that one-sided conversation that actually did happen. Uh, and remember, at the end of the day, it really is all about the joy. Bye, everyone. Thanks for stopping by, all about the joy. Be better and stay beautiful, folks. Have a sweet day.