Raise your hand if money is a source of stress in your life? Raise your hand if you’re unsure about investing? Raise your hand if you feel alone being in credit card debt? Robin Hauser’s film “$AVVY” touches on these topics that we should all definitely be talking about, and it’s empowering. She also has a film coming up called “Thaw” that explores the rising trend of elective egg freezing and the global billion dollar industry it has spawned. Robin is a speaker as well as a documentarian, and recently spoke at an event for Working for Women, an organization that helps women find their financial independence.
I was introduced to Robin through this organization, and I’m so happy to have met her and seen this film. You can watch “$AVVY” online, as well as donate to “Thaw” through her gofundme page, or just a direct donation. She is working on raising $350,000, and all donations that go through her non-profit organization are tax deductible. Learn more about “Thaw,” and watch the sizzle reel for it here.
What brought you to $AVVY?
I got divorced seven years ago. I grew up with a father who was an investment counselor, I have a college degree and I have my MBA in business. I even worked as a stockbroker in the international stock market, yet I still felt unprepared to handle my finances all by myself when I got divorced. I thought to myself, ‘this is crazy,’ and thought if I’m in this situation where I’m sort of intimidated and unsure about certain things in the financial world, there must be other women that feel the same way too. And it made me wonder why we abdicate major financial decisions to somebody else in our life and how that can be dangerous to do.
How did you assemble your experts and the topics you wanted to cover? All of these women were great.
So the first thing we thought about was what are the major issues that absolutely have to be covered in this film? Not necessarily exclusive to women, but issues that the majority of women tend to face. One is credit card debt. The other is student loans. Right now, there are more women who graduate from college, so student loan debt is now more of an issue for women. There is also financial abuse, and how if you’re not financially independent, you might be in a situation where it’s really hard to get out of a relationship because you are financially dependent on that person. Divorce was obviously important to me by just going through a divorce. And then investing was a big thing that we wanted to cover because women in general are quite good investors, yet tend to not invest due to a lack of confidence. When women do invest, we tend to have higher results than men do. I wanted to get into investing and why is it that women get intimidated to invest. People think that we’re risk adverse, but we’re not, we’re actually risk aware.
I love how you gathered women of all ages from college-age in your twenties to the elderly.
That was on purpose, right? We knew that this film could potentially speak to a lot of people. Once we had our segments and we knew what we needed to cover, we just started looking for stories. Thanks to the internet, we were able to really dig into reading different articles, finding people who seemed like they had a story. It’s always easier to find somebody who’s already been exposed in the public eye because then we knew they probably wouldn’t worry as much about being in a film. So that’s how we found Caitlin Boston because she had posted to Instagram and YouTube, and she got so many likes when she paid off her student loan. We found Yanely Espinal because of Next Gen Personal Finance. I had been connected with the organization and I loved what they were doing. They were a wonderful support to the film and they eventually came on as executive producers. That’s how we learned about Yanely. She was dynamic and amazing, so it was fun to have her and her story in there.
With financial abuse, we found Tonya Rapley because she was posting a lot on social media for her My Fab Finance organization. We didn’t even know about her financial abuse situation until we started interviewing her. She had such a compelling story that we asked her permission to highlight that in the film.
Before we found the women from Tennis to Stocks Investment Club, we had a different women’s investment group in New York City with whom we had different conversations. We thought we had them on board for the film, but what happened was that COVID hit and we were in the middle of making the film. I couldn’t get to New York because I couldn’t afford to quarantine my team for three weeks. So we had to pivot by going back to the drawing boards and figuring out who we might be able to find. I said just any investment group in California would do, as long as we can drive to them. So one of my producers was able to find this group of women in Sacramento that was the Tennis to Stocks Investment Club. An article had been written about them in their paper, and that’s how we found them.
How was the editing process and working with your editor Shirley Thompson?
We were supposed to meet in person, but Shirley lives in Honolulu, and because of COVID, they were really keeping things closed over there. So she couldn’t get to me and I couldn’t get to her. We almost ended up making the film almost exclusively remotely. But for the editing of this film, it was interesting. We were able to edit it starting with little story pods. For instance, we knew certain characters probably would come in more than once in the film, like Yanely Espinal and Caitlin Boston. Shirley did a wonderful job of putting together these story pods based on our characters. Pods were made from stories like with the women’s investment group or Tonya’s story with financial abuse. Then we literally sat down with post it notes thinking ‘well who can come first? What’s the story to start things out and it won’t be too depressing or too heavy?’ We also wanted to make sure we elevated the inspirational side to these stories. We thought Yanely was perfect for that. So then we really worked together on what sections should come in where, and whose story should come in the beginning and then be revisited a little bit at the end. So that’s how we worked together.
What do you hope people see in your film?
Well I hope they see themselves a little bit in these scenarios. What I really hope is that they are inspired to take the reigns of their financial lives. I think so many women are intimidated by money. I understand that. I’ve been there. Yet it’s incredibly empowering when you are able to say, ‘hey, I know if I can afford to buy that coat because I know how much money I have and I know how much debt I have, and I know how much I’m going to get paid.’ All of that. It’s such a good feeling to be in charge of your own money. And it doesn’t matter whether you are married or not. All good kinds of relationships will allow for an open discussion about money, to have full transparency, to understand how much money you have and how much debt you have, and what your options are.
I really hope women, and men, anybody in my audience comes away from the film saying, ‘I need to be more vocal about my finances, I need to have conversations with my partner about this, and I need to have conversations with my kids about money. Also, really be inspired to say, ‘I need to stop just putting my money under the mattress, I’m going to invest a little bit, or at least put my money into a money market fund while interest rates are really high.’ When I made the film in 2019, 2020 and 2021, interest rates were so low. So all of that has dated itself a bit. However, the principles hold true, right? The principle of investing in the interest and it won’t be long until interest rates are back down. So that’s what I hope people come away with.
Can you talk about your next project, “Thaw”?
I’d love to. I’m making a film about the rising trend of elective egg freezing. The film is about women who are choosing to wait on having children. They are waiting because they want to pursue their careers, or pursue education, or maybe because they just haven’t found the right partner in whom they want to have children. More and more women are freezing their eggs so they can kick the biological clock down the road and choose to be a mother later in life. This is something I’m really passionate about. It’s fascinating. I think this has the ability to be a very commercial film. One in six couples have fertility issues. So there are so many people that will end up having to use assisted reproductive technology, or IVF in order to conceive. We’re at the stage now where we’re starting to fundraise. I’m trying to raise about 350,000 dollars. I have a non-profit so I’m able to take donations.
That’s great, I’m so excited to promote this project. Thank you for all the work you do!
