← HerMoney with Jean Chatzky
HerMoney with Jean Chatzky
Ep 455: Let’s Stress Less in 2025
00:47:44
A playbook for a less stressful year ahead.
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- [00:00]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [00:21]
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- [01:03]
Jean Chatzky
Hey everyone, thanks so much for joining me today on hermoney. I'm Jean Chatzky and I gotta say, this holiday season has been stressful. And if you're like me, it's not just this year. The holidays are always a little stressful. And then having that blissfully quiet week between Christmas and New Year, all of a sudden here comes the craziness of 2025 and whatever year we are entering into. And if it feels like you're feeling more holiday stress than your male partner, well, you probably are. A 2023 poll from Yahoo News and YouGov found women, 43% of women said that their stress level, their level of anxiety increases during the holidays. Only about a third third of men said the same thing. Go figure. I know why this is. It's because as women, we take it all on. We're the ones who ready the house for guests. We buy the perfect gifts for friends and family and teachers. We cook an amazing meal. We make cookies for the cookie swaps. We are the ones who take it on ourselves to make sure that everyone has a picture perfect holiday. No wonder we are stressed. And that's why today I wanted to bring a stress expert onto the show so that we can give you a prescription, if you will, for entering the new year with a little less stress. Because when we are less stressed, we have more space in our brains, more space in our lives to manage our needs, our financial needs. And rather than just focusing on what seems like a never ending list of things to do, we Have a little bit of room to start planning for the future. Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe is a multi award winning education psychology instructor and resiliency expert. I love that. She is also the author of Stress Wisely how to Be well in an Unwell World and Calm within the Storm the Path to everyday resiliency. Dr. Robin, welcome. So nice to meet you. So glad to have you here. We need your help.
- [03:39]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Oh, I'm so thrilled to be here with you and to have this conversation today.
- [03:44]
Jean Chatzky
Tell me about your path. I mean, how does one become a resiliency and stress expert?
- [03:54]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Well, to put it this way, I was someone who very much learned things the hard way. So I love when people talk about learning styles and they say, oh, I learned by doing, I learned by listening, by seeing. I really found a way of learning the hard way. So my adolescence was a very difficult, dark season for myself and for my family. I really struggled with school. Now I had a catastrophic car accident actually when I was 16, which radically transformed the trajectory of my life. And after that accident, I ended up re enrolling in school because I had already dropped out of high school. And I used education to build a comeback, to find a way to build a big bright future. And the area when I got into the university and started studying psychology and behaviorism, I used that as a through line, as somebody who had lived with addictions, lived with mental health challenges, lived with stigma of being a high school dropout. So I had this experience where I was then able to learn informally in my personal life, but then professionally was able to study this in a university setting. Now I get to work with groups all around the world, sharing that information from somebody who has been, who's gone through it. So somebody who has lived it, but also has learned from it. And now I want to be of service learning and sharing that learning with people all around the world.
- [05:18]
Jean Chatzky
I have done some research into resiliency over the years and one of the most fascinating things that I learned about it is that like optimism, like gratitude, we're born with about 50% of the resilience that we're ever going to get. But the rest can be cultivated.
- [05:36]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Yes.
- [05:37]
Jean Chatzky
Do you think you, I mean, your, your experience as a teenager was so awful.
- [05:43]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Yeah.
- [05:44]
Jean Chatzky
Do you think you were born with above average resilience or did you grab at something else to get you going?
- [05:55]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Yeah, I love that perspective. So what I see in the work that I do is that first and foremost, like, nobody really wants to be resilient. Right. When I talk to people about their lived experiences. Nobody wants to have to be in these situations. Yet we will find ourselves in different seasons and situations. And the question is, what do we do? Where do we go from here? And very much in my lived experience, what I do know to be true is that the lessons I learned in my family system, I grew up with a mother who had this steadfast confidence in me that I could do hard things. So even though things had got derailed, even though I was really lost, I still had this belief system. So I believe that yes, there are obviously like, we're well resourced in certain ways that we have basic capacity to be able to do hard things. But then it's these other areas that really set us up for success. So we know what to do when we need to do it, when it counts the most.
- [06:56]
Jean Chatzky
So interesting that you say that nobody wants to be resilient. I'm going to read right out of your bio for a second. It says that you quote, help individuals and organizations leverage hope as a tool to cultivate their capacity for every day resiliency. And your podcast is called Resiliency Redefined. So how do you define it? And why do you think most people define it wrong?
- [07:24]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
I think intuitively when we think about resiliency, I think we understand like, we all know kind of what it is, but we actually don't really know what we're all talking about. So for me, when we think about redefining it again, it's interrupting that narrative that says you're either, as you already shared, born with it or you're not born with it. Right? It's either some people are just better at the hard parts in life. And what we know is that our lived experience, what our everyday looks like actually is more indicative of could you navigate something difficult if you were faced in that situation? So, for example, how I look at it and what we were able to discover with 20 years of research in this field was that a sense of belonging that you need to have a home team, someone in your corner that you are willing to fight for or they're willing to fight for you. Our sense of connection, having somebody look after you and you look after them is crucial. And it even goes as far as this. There's a tool in psychology research with children that's called the ACE course. So it's adverse childhood experience. And what this tool shows with quite high predictability is if kids have these experiences, it's going to be harder for them to be grownups.
- [08:39]
Kelly Haltgren
Right?
- [08:39]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
It'll just be harder for them as they age. But what they often neglect to say is that one caring, consistent champion in a child's life, gene can offer them a hedge of protection from all of those negative outcomes. If one person says, I see you, I got you, and I'm not going to let this become a life sentence for you, right? So we know the power of being in the having that right person in your corner. So belonging was one of the five pillars. The second is perspective. It's our ability to see the big picture but also manage our perceptions at the same time. So for example, it's like, you know, speaking of finances, it's this like this absolute natural pull that some days you wake up and it's like, I want to save for the future. And maybe a little bit later in the day you oscillate to we only live once. And I want to treat myself like that literally is just part of the lived experience that we oscillate between these systems of like, wanting to save, being responsible, what we call responsible, but also wanting to enjoy the everyday. So perspective is this ability to know how to make what matters most matter most.
- [09:49]
Jean Chatzky
You know, that makes me think of an experience that I just had this morning because I think perspective is so important. And we're gonna get to the other three of the five pillars, by the way. So I don't want people to think I'm gonna leave them hanging, but I went to the gym this morning. I have a friend at the gym. She's a 62 year old woman. She just got job eliminated after more than 30 years at the same company. And, and she said she, she turned to a mentor of hers, somebody who has been through a situation like this and they said to her, you are going to have more opportunity than you have time.
- [10:32]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Yes.
- [10:32]
Jean Chatzky
And I just thought that was so amazing because it allowed her to shift her mind from this. Oh my God, what am I gonna do to. Oh my God, I'm gonna be able to choose what I want to do. And I think that gave her a little boost of resiliency.
- [10:53]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Yes, absolutely. And I live for those little shifts, those little perspective shifts, when all of a sudden you just have that key piece of information or, or that idea shared by a caring mentor or even maybe you hear a quote or see something or hear something on a podcast where all of a sudden you literally feel a shift. And those shifts allow us to like see things in a particular way that will then help us make the next right choice so we don't have to figure everything out. It's literally what's in front of me. And what is going to make this make the most sense for me to be able to show up boldly, bravely, especially in uncertainty.
- [11:35]
Jean Chatzky
The third pillar that you talk about is acceptance. How does that work?
- [11:40]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Oh, so acceptance is such a goodie. Because what we see about resilient person is that they are able to decipher their controllables. They control the controllables. And even just that ability to see, okay, what is within my control and what is outside of my control, and then put your energy, your agency, your influence into what's within reason for you radically transform situations. And when you take a moment to think about, okay, let's look at the big world, how much is actually within my control? Very little. What do we worry about most of that stuff? So it's understanding that it's like my attitude, right? For example, your friend who just shared, like, all of a sudden, this shift to this feeling of abundance that I'll have all of this time, or these opportunities I get to pick. Right? It's. These are the things within our control. Again, what's outside of our control is essentially what everybody else does, including our loved ones. So it's recognizing, where do I have agency and what can I let go of? And what's so interesting, people carry so much, so much burden, so much stress, so much uncertainty of things that they have no agency over. And once we. Again, as you described in your opening, once we kind of create a little bit more spaciousness, it's remarkable how different we can feel.
- [13:05]
Jean Chatzky
I think that's especially true around the holidays when there are so many expectations of us from family members, from friends, for how we're gonna show up, when we're gonna show up, what we're supposed to do, when we're gonna show up, how much we're supposed to give or participate and. And understanding that these may be the expectations they have of you doesn't mean that you have to conform to those expectations is incredibly freeing.
- [13:41]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Yeah, it's a form of, like, you're part of the rebellion. Right? That's what I love when people, like, say, hey, I'm gonna put the needs in of my family and of myself. This is my job to look after this particular group. And you know what? People might not like it. And it's interesting. The only people who will object to your boundaries are the ones that are taking advantage of you. Because people who see your boundary and say, hey, you know what? That feels good, and it gives them permission that they say, I'm not gonna do that or this doesn't work for our family this year. And again, people who honor and respect your boundaries, they're going to be like, you go sister. They're going to celebrate it. They're going to encourage you. The people who, you know, use guilt as gasoline, right. The people who like, oh, you know, you're breaking her heart or I can't believe you would do that, or you're interrupting tradition, saying like, you're breaking tradition really. Like, we don't need to be like bullied by dead ancestors, right? Like I don't, you know, yes, perhaps there's some traditions we want to keep alive, but some might not serve us anymore. And we don't need to be bullied. Bullied by people of the past.
- [14:50]
Jean Chatzky
There are two more pillars, hope and humor. Those are surprising to me. How do they factor in?
- [14:57]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Well, hope absolutely fundamentally changes our psychology and our physiology. And hope is a strategy. It's a state that allows spaciousness. It allows the body to use its resources of energy, of focus in a very economical way. It takes so much more for our nervous systems to worry, to be under threat, to overthink everything. But when we lean into trusting the process, even something as simple as saying, you know what, I don't know what this is going to look like, I don't know what's all that going to happen, but I trust myself, I trust that I'm well resourced to manage whatever comes my way and lean into living hope filled. We actually use our resources in a better way so we're not expending all this cognitive and physiological energy into things that are going to deplete us. Hope actually increases things like oxytocin and dopamine. So it's literally like we have these little pharmacies within our head and our heart that actually allow us to use and preserve our energy in a more efficient way.
- [16:05]
Jean Chatzky
Can we just dig into when hope doesn't work for a second? Because I have a lot of money rules, as my listeners know, and one of my money rules is, is that hope is not an investment strategy. Because hoping that you're saving money, that's not going to do it for you. You actually have to do something. So where's the line between where hope helps us and where hope tongue twister gets in our way?
- [16:32]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Yes. So I would say that notion of hoping you're using a strategy is more of what we call like an optimistic. That's more optimism. I'm not going to, I'm just going to like, you know, kind of throw caution to the wind and like be optimistic that it's going to land Versus hope is a state. So hope is a state that says, you know what, I am capable of making sound, wise financial decisions for my future. So hope is more, if you think about it as like this big kind of container in which we operate and something like optimism. And in that case that what you described, that would be like maladaptive optimism. Right. To me, that would be more of ignorance or avoidance than it is actually of just that. I'm going to choose to look at the bright side. Well, no, the bright side requires action and hope drives us to action. Hope is this motivator, it's this fuel that allows us to like, you know what, if I do this well and I put the right things in place, I'm trusting it's going to work. So I completely agree with you. And I think right now there's a lot of misconceptions, especially with this toxic positivity of just like rainbows and unicorns and sparkles. It's like, no, put in the work. When you put in the work in the right way, that's to me is living truly hope filled. That because you're trusting the processes versus just blindly kind of throwing that forward. Which I think again is actually more ignorance in some cases and not in a mean way. It's just people don't realize that they're actually missing out on ways to feel safer, to feel more stable, to have a sense of soundness when they put the right behaviors into practice.
- [18:12]
Jean Chatzky
And finally on the list, you've got humor. How does that factor in? I mean, I think I know, right? You've got to be able to laugh when you fall down 100.
- [18:20]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Jean, this is a wee bit of a wild card. So one of the things that we learned about resilient folks is they are funny. But Jean, it's a dark humor. Like, it is not just like light, airy type of humor. I mean, like, things could be pretty chaotic and heavy, even scary and overwhelming. And they're like, well, here you go. Right. Like they're just able to like pivot into this place of just being able to like lighten the moment and what we know. Absolutely. It doesn't solve your problems, but it gives people a moment of reprieve. So it just interrupts the relentlessness of the fear of the stress. So, for example, one of the most interesting research findings we came upon, and people reference me for this the most out of all my books.
- [19:04]
Jean Chatzky
I know what you're going to say. Cause I love this.
- [19:07]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Yes. So, like, we found that people who swear, like, curse or cuss not at somebody more just throwing it out into the universe, they live longer. Right. Like, it actually has to do with temperament that people can express emotion and let it go versus the people that bottle and brew and just get so stuck in all of the little irritants and stressors and turbulence of our days. It's just this idea of just letting things go better and. Yeah. So resilient people are able just to roll with things more than the average person.
- [19:42]
Jean Chatzky
It made me feel so good to learn this because I went to summer camp when I was nine for the first time. Overnight camp, came home cursing like a sailor. Never stop. You know, I think I present as very nice. And when something goes wrong and I'm like, shit. I think I surprise people. I. I know sometimes I. I throw people off, but I. It makes me feel better just to like, let it go.
- [20:10]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Yeah. There was actually a remarkable study that was done in psychology, and it was pain thresholding. Okay. So pain thresholding. And again, this. These are things that I appreciate, the 50s and the 60s in psychology research, because we would never do it now, what they did decades ago, but what they would do is they would actually like inflict pain on someone. And in this particular case, it was cold water submersion, which is kind of funny because people now do that for fun. Yeah. Although I don't know if it. I always joke that I'm like, does what? Like cold water submersion. Does it work if they don't post it on social media? Because the only people I know who do it are people who then post it on social media. But anyway, they would put like their hands in frigid water, like as cold as human possible. And then they would have them say what they call soft swear words, like shoot and sugar or whatever you want your silly soft swear word to be.
- [20:59]
Mint Mobile Announcer
Right.
- [20:59]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Fudge. Exactly.
- [21:00]
Jean Chatzky
Fiddlesticks.
- [21:01]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Fiddlesticks, yes, all of those. But then, Jean, they actually had them, like actually use real swear words. And they can withhold pain longer if you're actually using proper swear words than if you are actually using just those kind of. Those little kind of sparkle swear words. So I love the fact that it has something to do with this threshold of expression and tolerance. So when you stub your toe and you say something very off color, it's actually your body's way of processing emotion versus if you stub your toe and you say fiddlesticks, like that emotion is still sitting in your body to get Rid of it.
- [21:36]
Jean Chatzky
So fun. Welcome to Hermoney, the podcast where we invite you to curse with Mandan. We're going to take a very quick break, Robin, but when we come back, I want to talk about now that we know what goes into resiliency, how to cultivate more of it to get us through, through this season. We're going to be right back. We are back with Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe. We're talking about stress. We're talking about resiliency and how to stress a little less, become more resilient as you go forward into 2025. And you have a prescription in your book Stress Wisely for reducing stress. And I'd love to just explore a few parts of that if we can. You talk about the five forces of recovery, solitude and connection are the first. First of all, why do we need a prescription for recovery? And how'd you come up with this?
- [22:38]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Yeah, so our, this is what I think is so fascinating about stress is the fact that stress is actually our greatest ally. Stress is our first line of defense. It lets us know that this makes me feel good or this isn't okay. I feel safe or I don't feel safe. So stress in itself isn't bad. It's actually extremely productive. It's the doses of cortisol that we're getting on a daily basis that's actually putting us into the place called distress, which means we have, we're basically overworked and under rested. Right. Like we are working our nervous system so hard, we're not giving it a chance to get realigned. That's why everything, for example, Gene, feels urgent. Everything feels like it's an evaluation. Everything. We feel judged, we feel super sensitive to criticism. We're just trying to control all of these moving parts because your body's just trying to make you feel safe. It's like, if I can just do the holidays perfect enough, nobody will have anything that they can criticize me about, which means they will love me, which means I'll be accepted and seen and valued. Like the narrative underneath behavior. It's pretty remarkable. What we know about the stress system is that it's like trying to get our attention. So it's giving us all these cues, these markers, that feeling of urgency and why I really put a lot of energy into focusing on this is because it, it's not sustainable. Living the dream shouldn't be killing us. And right now we're sicker than we've ever been before. Even though we have more information about health and well being that's ever been available to us because it's just these doses of chronic cortisol that are putting us into distress. And then to top it all off, there's all this misinformation about what we're supposed to be doing with it. And I can give you an example. Just this morning, my 20 year old, I have three teenagers and my 20 year old, he's in second year university, he said, hey, I just saw this thing on TikTok and it says our water isn't hydrated and we need to put in this new machine. We need to use this little filter so we can get water that's more hydrated. And he's like, it does. Something feels wrong about this, mom. And I paused and I said, hunter, I love your critical thinking. You're absolutely right. Something is wrong with this. Water literally is two hydrogen molecules. It's oxygen, one oxygen, two hydrogens. You can't not have hydrated water. Right. Like it's so ridiculous. But what happens is we get so caught up in these stress and these hype cycles, we feel awful all the time. And then somebody jumps in there in 30 seconds says I can fix you by if you buy my product. And we are inundated with misinformation because I promise you. And this is what was interesting. There was a study that came out from Dublin City university, gene. And 98% of the reels on social media about well being and stress management, 98% of the strategies are not scientifically valid. Not scientific, like 2%. So my gentle invitation, just for folks who are listening for your first go, if you're not doing everything you're hearing on social media, don't worry, it won't work anyway. So you can like absolve yourself from that guilt of like, oh, I'm not drinking hydronate. You're drinking, you're drinking fine. Water is fine as it is.
- [26:01]
Jean Chatzky
We are a show about money.
- [26:04]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Yes.
- [26:04]
Jean Chatzky
And I have been tracking the levels of financial stress. There are big studies that come out each and every year. PwC does one. MetLife does one. That have chronicled that our level of financial stress speaks specifically.
- [26:19]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Yeah.
- [26:20]
Jean Chatzky
Has been rising. How do you deal with that?
- [26:25]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
I love this question. One of the most interesting things, when we were studying financial stress in the book Stress Wisely, people were more comfortable. Are you ready for this? People were more comfortable talking about their sexual behavior, religion, politics and drug use, prior drug use. They were more comfortable talking about those topics than they were about money. And everyone always like, oh, you know, don't Talk about politics, don't talk about religion. It's like, yeah, don't talk about money is the bigger thing that we need to be like, demystifying. So if we grow up in cultures where it's shameful to talk about money and there's. You can never get it right because if you have too much of it, you can't talk about it. If you don't have enough of it, you can't talk about it. Like, we are setting ourselves up with these landmines when it comes to money conversations. And anytime when we're not talking about things and educating each other and explaining and exploring, you're going to build up these behaviors that put us in this risk zone. And that's why financial stress is so significant, because we're not talking about it.
- [27:36]
Jean Chatzky
So is talking about it really the cure? I mean, you know, as we go through your prescription for reducing stress, and I had said the first step is solitude and connection. How does that. As you take us through the elements, can you apply them to financial stress specifically?
- [27:56]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Yes, absolutely. So the first ring and the reason why solitude is such an important form of recovery or an intervention to stress wisely is because you actually have to get off autopilot. So most of the spending, most of our thoughts, our narratives around money are happening and we're on autopilot. We're not even like being aware of the thoughts of even the behaviors. We're just going through the motions. So what solitude does, and it can take many forms. It could be journaling, it could just be like meditation. It could just be slowing down. So as soon as we slow down, we're going to start to re regulate our nervous system and we're going to have the opportunity for clarity, for reflection, for like, lessons learned, right? Like, so we have to slow down. And most of the solitude practices that we do invite us to slow down. So this isn't like solitude. We have to go to the side of a mountain and meditate. Like, no, it could literally just be like, wow, my day is getting away from me. I'm just going to take two minutes and check in. Like, check in and what am I doing? Or even, for example, that feeling of, oh, I have to get the perfect gift for that person. Just pause and just ask, why do I have to get the perfect gift? Because if this person was like, really in alignment with you, like, you wouldn't have to get the perfect gift to impress them or to feel important. If you're in, if you're in connection, in simpatico, the it's just going to be being in community. Which leads us to that second part of a force of recovery, which is true connection. And I think so many people struggle to fit in in an attempt to really feel deep connection, which you get from that sense of belonging and that sense of mattering. So again, finding people where you being you and all of your messy parts and being in community with the right people, some of those other pressures, they just don't exist in that space.
- [29:51]
Jean Chatzky
The next part of this prescription is nature. Do you mean like take a walk in the woods?
- [29:58]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Oh, anything to do to get outside. And this is why this connects to financial stress. When we're indoors all day long and we're on computer screens and we're just always surrounded by these, think about it as 90 degree angles. When we're always indoors, it creates this mindset of lacking. Right? There's always more that we could be doing, should be doing. We're getting inundated with all of this messaging and we feel a sense of scarcity when we're indoors. And what happens to the human condition as soon as we go outside and it doesn't even have to be in a forest, it's literally as soon as we go outdoors, our body naturally shifts to a place of abundance, this feeling of sufficiency. Even if the weather is terrible and even if it's the no good rotten day, we, when we are outdoors, our brain literally processes just this vastness around us, which shifts us out of scarcity to a place of sufficiency. So again, it's not solving the money dilemma. What it's doing is it's just kind of putting things in perspective, right? So it's just allowing our nervous system to calm down. It takes away some of that feeling of competition. And especially we talk about this with women. Women at the top, they're collaborating. Women at the bottom are competing. And as soon as we go outdoors and we just take in the bigger world, it shifts our perspective.
- [31:20]
Jean Chatzky
Music is on the list. Surprisingly now I, I use music as a motivator. I use music when I run. I sometimes I'm not a music in the background when I work kind of person, but maybe you are and maybe it helps.
- [31:36]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
So what's remarkable and why music is a force of recovery to help regulate these nervous systems is because it actually allows our brain to process emotion. So when we have music, for example, as you said, you can use it as a motivator, right? So you listen to that really lively playlist when you're going for a run or Another really amazing. When I'm doing really deep work and like time on task work like writing or preparing something creatively, I always listen to movie soundtracks, like just the instrumental in the background because there's this natural rising and fall of the cadence of music. It just allows our brains to do what they do best. Which is.
- [32:13]
Jean Chatzky
Okay, which ones you gotta tell us because we need, we need to put em on our Spotify list.
- [32:18]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Yeah. So I, Hans Zimmer is probably one of the most gifted composers of I believe, of our lives right now. And any one of his soundtracks, Gladiator, Inception, like any of them, if you just have that in the background when you're doing deep work, it's going to activate this other level for you just to hit this really amazing place of focus, time on task and you'll get into flow very quickly. And the trick as a behaviorist is we want to pair behavior. So every time I hear like even just the first few riffs of, of for example, Gladiator, like my brain is like it is go time, it is deep work and I get excited to do the task in front of me.
- [33:03]
Jean Chatzky
So smart. You've trained your brain right. Pavlovian response, trained your brain to expect that it's going to be working when you hear those first few sounds. My feet do the same thing when my running playlist goes on. There are two more acts of expression and gratitude. Let's talk about those in the minutes we have left.
- [33:24]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Yeah. So gratitude is as simple as this. What you appreciate, appreciates. Like what you appreciate will grow and what we see. The key to gratitude is to activate the feeling of fondness. So when, when gratitude becomes just like this rote memory, it's like I'm thankful for this and that, right. It doesn't really land. But if we actually like take a moment to say, what are three new things that I'm grateful for in this moment? Or what are three new things that I'm grateful in this day? We activate a feeling of fondness. We get again, we're accessing that pharmacy that we all have internally gives us some dopamine, it gives us some oxytocin, some serotonin and it just creates a sense of being like relieved and like this washing sense of our brain feeling like it can exhale, like it's crossed the finish line. So gratitude is extremely important. And again acts of expression and one of the kind of ways I love to think about this is we, we want to congratulate people, right? We want to like celebrate people out in the open, right. Just recognizing goodness, hard work, effort, those are the things that really make a difference on how we show up in our day.
- [34:32]
Jean Chatzky
This was exactly what we needed. Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe I think, I mean, I feel better going throughout my day now than I did when we started talking. And I think the folks who are listening to this conversation are going to feel exactly the same way. So thank you for that and thank you for being here.
- [34:52]
Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe
Thanks for having me. Take good care.
- [34:54]
Jean Chatzky
You, too. And we'll be right back with your mailbag. Kelly Haltgren is joining me once again. Kelly, I think of you as a pretty resilient person. Do you think of you as a resilient person?
- [35:09]
Kelly Haltgren
Well, first, thank you. I do think of myself as a resilient person in part because I don't ever think life is going to get easier as I get older. And I've learned to appreciate that when life gets a little tough, it's an opportunity to build perspective and more resilience. So I haven't been asked that in a while, and I appreciate the question, but yes is the answer, and that's why. What about you?
- [35:38]
Jean Chatzky
I also think it has something to do with the fact that you were a student athlete. I think student athletes are really resilient in general. I'm resilient for a different reason. I'm resilient because I moved a ton as a child and it just taught me to rebuild.
- [35:59]
Kelly Haltgren
Yes.
- [35:59]
Jean Chatzky
And so, you know, when my world was sort of torn down, except for my family, and my family was always there, which was amazing. But your friends mean a lot to you as you're growing up. And I learned to get along. I learned to find, adapt. Yeah, I learned to adapt. I learned to adapt, and it's really helped me a lot with work, just with the changes in the job market, the changes in building this business. I think those things have helped me a lot along the way. But I really enjoyed the conversation with Dr. Robin. I hope that we have an opportunity to have her on again. I know we've got questions and I want to jump into them.
- [36:43]
Kelly Haltgren
We do. And our first one comes from Terry, who has questions about a Safe harbor account. She writes, hi, ladies. My husband has a Safe harbor account through his employer. Could you explain how this works? His balance is 73,000. Do we have to leave it where it is or can we withdraw and invest? And I'm so glad she asked because I could use a refresher on what a Safe harbor account is, too.
- [37:05]
Jean Chatzky
It's not a term that we typically Use, that's why you don't know what it is. It's usually a term actually that employers use because when you establish a 401k, there are what are known as safe harbor provisions which make it fair for employees across the company who are making different amounts of money to contribute to the retirement plan. In a safe harbor 401k plan, employers basically have to make mandatory contributions that are either elective or that are non matching those funds vest immediately. Which is I think why Terry is asking if she can take the money out. But the answer to that question is no. As with all 401ks, you really don't have the ability to roll the money into another 401k or into an IRA until you leave the company. But you should know that because of the 100% vesting, if and when your husband leaves the company, all of the money that's in there will be his to take with you. And for that reason you want to pay attention to this 401k like you would any other 401k. And that includes making sure that you are maxing out the ability to capture the match. It includes making sure that your investments are appropriately allocated and rebalanced. It includes making sure that that you are putting as much money as you're eligible for and can afford into that account year in and year out through automatic payroll deductions. And this is going to be a big deal for your future. So you want to make sure that you are watching the care and feeding of it.
- [39:11]
Kelly Haltgren
Awesome. Thank you Jean. And our next question comes from an anonymous listener, which is always fine. Just let us know who is wondering if it would make sense to convert an IRA into a Roth. I turned 60 years old this year, work full time as an executive assistant and anticipate working until I'm 70 to get the full Social Security benefits. I'm single, have no children, am estranged from my sibling and both parents are deceased. So I'm out here living a safe la vida loca while trying to save more for retirement. My total combined assets are a little over 400,000 401k, a rollover IRA and a self managed Iraq, plus about 9,000 in savings, some of which is in a high yield savings account that I set up biweekly automatic contributions for. I was considering converting the self managed IRA into a Roth IRA but I was told that whether I convert my 401k or either IRA accounts I will have to pay taxes because it's considered a withdrawal. I don't want to pay taxes exclamation point. I currently owe the IRS about 3,000 and New York State tax about 2,000 for an early withdrawal. At the time, I was 58 of 100,000 doll for a 20% down payment, 64,000 for a co op that I purchased in 2022. I underestimated the amount of taxes I would have to pay for the 100,000 withdrawal to lower my tax liability. My tax accountant suggested that I open an ira, which I did, and that lowered my tax debt from 10,000 to 6,000. I anticipate, fingers crossed, she writes, that I should be done paying both sometime next year. Is there any, any way to legally avoid paying conversion tax aside from opening a fresh Roth IRA account with pre tax dollars slash deductions from my paycheck?
- [40:56]
Jean Chatzky
Oh, I wish there was. That would be a wonderful thing if there was a way to avoid paying taxes on this. I mean, the only real way to avoid it is if you take a huge loss in your ira, which is nothing that we would hope that you would see, then the tax liability would be greatly reduced. Essentially, when you convert a traditional IRA into a Roth, you're paying taxes on the income. If you don't have any income because you haven't made any money on the investments, then you wouldn't really be taxed on the conversion. But based on how the markets have done recently, there's pretty much not even a prayer of that. But the latter part of your question gets you somewhere. It's really good to have a mix of traditional assets and Roth assets in retirement. So I might think about, once you've satisfied this preexisting debt, just making Roth contributions for the next 10 years until you retire. Uh, you will pay the taxes on that money at current tax rates. Some people will tell you, oh, well, tax rates right now are really low, and they're expected to stay lower under the new Trump administration. And so if they go up in the future, you would have been better off paying them down the road. I think that you are probably in pretty good shape making Roth contributions for the next 10 years, knowing that you've got a chunk of your money that is protected from that tax burden and that you've got assets that are diversified from a tax perspective as well as from a traditional asset allocation perspective. And that's what I would do. And by the way, it's what I am doing. So I have a 401k through her money, and I have been making Roth contributions into that 401k for the past couple of years. And it's just because I want to balance out my holdings in that way. So that's what I would do.
- [43:12]
Kelly Haltgren
Fantastic. Thank you Jean.
- [43:14]
Jean Chatzky
Absolutely. If you've got any other questions, we'd love to have them send them to us by emailing mailbaghermoney.com thanks to Dr. Robin Hanley Defoe for a terrific conversation on controlling our stress. If you love this episode, please give us a five star review on Apple Podcasts. We always value your feedback and if you want to keep the financial conversations going, join me for a deeper dive. HerMoney has two incredible programs, Finance Fix, which is an eight week program designed to give you the ultimate money makeover, and Investing Fix, which is our investing club for women that meets bi weekly on Zoom. With both programs, we are leveling the playing fields for women's financial confidence and power. I would love to see you there. We'd like to thank our sponsor, Edelman Financial Engines. Her money is produced by Hayley Pascalides. Our music is provided by Video Helper and our show comes to you through Megaphone. This podcast is also part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network. You can find us and other shows like us@airwave media.com thanks for joining us and we'll talk soon.