← HerMoney with Jean Chatzky
HerMoney with Jean Chatzky
EP 498: The Personal Finance Tips That Really Matter, According to Carl Richards
00:38:44
Planning for your future self, spending with intention, and why “enough” isn’t a number.
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- [00:01]
A
Our Finance Fix program was built to help women like you feel confident about your finances, from everyday spending to long term retirement planning. With our personalized step by step retirement calculation, you'll finally have a plan that works for you. And right now we've got a special limited time offer. Get 25% off with code fall25 at checkout, you'll learn how to rethink your spending, uncover hidden savings and build a retirement strategy tailored to your life. Just go to financefix.com that's fix with two x's and register with the code fall25 for 25% off. See you in class.
- [00:44]
B
This episode is brought to you by Amazon Business. We could all use more Time Amazon Business offers smart business buying solutions so you can spend more time growing your business and less time doing the admin. I can see why they call it smart. Learn more@amazonbusiness.com.
- [01:05]
C
So now suddenly we've gotten to this point where instead of thinking you were going to retire at 60 and then start tapping the retirement money, you are going to a have a sense of purpose for a lot longer. Because believe me, this retirement concept is other than some of the sort of manual labor jobs, this retirement concept is overblown.
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B
Hey everyone.
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A
Welcome to Her Money. I'm Jean Chatsky. On this show, we spend a lot of time talking about women's struggles with money. The gaps, the stress, the silence. But let's also recognize how far we've come. In recent years, women have made some pretty incredible strides, not just in how we manage our money, but how we talk about it. Loudly, proudly, proudly, publicly. Scroll TikTok and you'll land on Fintok, the financial corner of the platform where millions of Americans get their daily doses of money advice. The New York Times says people are even leaning on chatbots to figure out how to save smarter, maybe even pick some stocks. I'm not quite sure about that. But here's the paradox. When it comes to real face to face conversations about money with the people that we love most, yeah, we don't do it. We clam up. A 2024 survey from Bankrate found that only 38% of Americans feel comfortable talking about their bank balances with their family or close friends. For comparison, people are more willing to discuss politics, religion, health, even their love lives. In other words, basically everything else. So today we are going to change that because Carl Richards is in the house. Carl is one of my all time favorite people to talk to about how we talk about money. You may know him as the creator of the beloved Sketch Guy column in the New York Times. His simple hand drawn illustrations have helped not millions of people untangle complex financial ideas. He's also a CFP, the director of investor education for the BAM Alliance, a network of more than 130 independent wealth management firms. And it's been a couple of years since Carl joined us last. But his voice and his wisdom are always around because every time he comes on, he challenges the way we think about money, not just how we manage it. And now he's out with a new book. It's called you'd reimagining wealth through 101 simple sketches. His big mission is to spark one million meaningful money conversations. That's a tongue twister, but let's start with this one. We're going to take a very quick break. Back in a sec. So you all know I don't rave about things unless I really mean it. And I have to say I finally tried the Fits Everyone collection from Skin Skims. My daughter has been telling me about it for such a long time, but now I totally get the hype. I've always had issues with underwear. It's too tight, it's too bulky, it leaves lines under everything. I can't stand the lines. This is a game changer. The fabric is soft. I can't believe how comfortable it is. This is the kind of feel good upgrade that is small but seriously meaningful when we all deserve a few small upgrades in our lives. So if you haven't tried Skims yet, take this as your sign. The Fits Everybody collection lives up to the name. It really does fit and flatter everybody. Shop Skims Fits everybody collection@skims.com and after you place your order, be sure to let them know we sent you select podcast in the survey and be sure to select our show in the dropdown menu that follows. Many people can't tell you exactly how many financial accounts they have or even what they're worth. 401ks from old jobs, scattered savings accounts, investments they haven't checked in years. And when you don't have the full picture, you will leave money on the table. That's where Monarch money comes in. It's an all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together cleanly. Clearly, all in one place. My producer Hailey uses it every single day and she's been loving one feature in particular. Monarch automatically separates your monthly spending into fixed and flexible categories. Her mortgage and gym membership are fixed, but groceries, dining out. Everything else is flexible and that gives her some wiggle room. Don't let financial opportunity slip through the cracks in your life. Use code hermoney@monimalmoney.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off@monimalmoney.com with code HERMONEY. Carl, welcome back. Great to have you.
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C
Jean, always, always a pleasure. So excited to have this conversation.
- [06:19]
A
I want to unpack fin talk for a minute and the rise of interest in money and investing, especially among younger generations, because we know that when it comes to sitting down and actually talking about money with people, not people on a screen, but actual people, it's harder than it looks. Why do you think there's this disconnect between people who talk about money publicly and doing it privately?
- [06:52]
C
Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about this lately and I've been thinking, I'm sure you have too. Like what to make of the sort of finance influencer scene. I think I've settled on the idea that for all the dangerous advice, there might be anything that serves as an entry point into having these conversations, into thinking about money is better than nothing, right? Like better than what we had before. So rather than thinking of it as junk food, I think of it as an appetizer, right? Like sort of a way into the conversation. But to your question, I think this is an age old problem and largely in our era, I think the problem is that when you, if you were taught anything about money, you were taught that it was a math problem, right? It was a spreadsheet, a calculator. And that's true, money does show up in math and formulas and spreadsheets and calculators. But what didn't sort of match up with our experience was math and spreadsheets are always rational, right? Like two plus two always equals four.
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A
Yep.
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C
Two plus two never equals envy, you know. And I think what happened is we went into the conversation and the conversations we see in public are largely still this way, right? Like a lot about the math, the numbers, which budgeting app to use and all of those things are really, really important. But then we go to have a conversation with a friend or a spouse or partner or a child and we're suddenly feeling all our feelings, right?
- [08:44]
A
And look, I take a little bit of issue with that business bank rate study that I cited in the, in the opening to this show. I honestly don't think you have to talk about your bank balance with anybody except perhaps your spouse, right? Your bank balance is not really having a conversation about money and how to manage money and how to, how to nudge your Resources in a way that you grow them, but also use them to get the life that you want. Right. It's. It's more of. I think we're missing more of the carpentry conversations, the conversations about how you put the pieces together to get to the goal.
- [09:31]
C
Yeah. You use that word nudge, and it's interesting because that implies bumping up against something. And I think that's the part that we're kind of confused by. It's like we touched an electric fence that we didn't know was electric, you know, and. And some of those trade offs that we have to sort of bump up against a nudge in, like, a meaningful life. All of those. That language. When we're looking at how our use of capital, and I would extend beyond money, but certainly our use of capital aligns with what's important to us. That alignment is. Bumping is bumpy. Right. It's clumsy. It involves friction. It's called being human.
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A
Right.
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C
Like, so sorting that out and then you add a layer to it. Anytime there's anybody else involved, the business partner, a spouse, a partner, a child, they have maybe a slightly different view of what's important. It's as if we've been debating, and I think we've just added fuel to the debate. Like we've been debating whether to take a plane, a train, or an automobile on a trip, and maybe even more specifically, which plane, which automobile, and we haven't. The part that we're missing that you're pointing to is we haven't decided where we're going yet. And so that endless debate, although valuable and entertaining and can even be interesting, until we get clear about where we're going, we're gonna keep having the same experience where we're sort of frustrated with it and feel like it's not serving us right.
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A
You have called your new work a conversation grenade. Very in keeping with your personality. I think it's something designed to spark big, sometimes uncomfortable money talks. Can you just unpack why you think it's important to blow things up?
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C
Yeah. I have to admit that I'm slightly like. I love that framing. And I've been slight. Every time I use the word grenade, I get slightly uncomfortable. But where I felt better about it is when people use the word like a love bomb. Like, that's the nature in which I mean it. All I mean is that you toss this book into a room or you toss a sketch into and conversations break out. And to your point, there's a part of me that gets a little frustrated Every once in a while. And I can hear myself saying to myself and to anybody else who will listen, because this, my work is largely an adventure journal, not a self help book, you know, so like all of this is about me, you know, and my struggles and my problems. But I hear myself saying, like, what are we even talking about? Like at the end of the day and at the end of our lives, the it's settled doctrine, at this point, you're not going to take it with you, right? And it's not going to matter to you. What's going to matter to you is the time that you spent with the people that you love or the contribution you made to your local communities. That grows outward too, right? Like it's either the contribution you made to make people's lives better or time and experiences you had with the people you love. That's what's going to matter. And we have lost the plot, right? Like we put money at the center, money and work at the center. And we, it's become the organizing principle of our lives. And we fit. I'll fit the kids in, right?
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A
I'll fit.
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C
Sleep in.
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A
Yeah.
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C
I'll fit. Health in. And I think we just lost the plot. We became the servant.
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A
How do you flip that back?
- [12:58]
C
Yeah, I think we just start talking about it, right? Like gently. Sometimes it's a punch in the nose for me, like a bucket of cold water right on my face. But more often it's a gentle, empathetic hug, right? Can we, Hey, I noticed, right? Like I can give you an example. And this has to do with time. But. And I've always, like the checkbook and the calendar never lie. If I want to know how you really, what you really care about, I can ask you and you'll tell me. And that's called a stated preference. But I can even more importantly, watch what you do. And that's called a revealed preference. And revealed preferences are stronger signals than stated preferences. So the checkbook and the calendar never lie. And one time I measured, I had somebody install some software on my computer that measured where I spent my time, like what websites I was on. It's called rescue time. And I made some claims about. Before we did this, we designed an experiment, 30 days. And I said, okay, I never check email after 5 because the kids are around, right? I never check it on the weekend. I don't care about sports enough to spend much. I love sports, but I don't care enough to spend much time in espn. I don't care about politics at all. And I would certainly never tune into the other, whichever one is the other for you. Those are the claims I made. Then they measured my time for a month and then they came back with my stated preferences versus my revealed, my actual what I said versus what I actually did. And Gene, I can't really. I mean, I've shared the story enough now that I don't cry anymore about it, but it took a while because it was horrific.
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A
Yeah.
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C
You know, it was like, so crazy to think the number one most important thing to me in my life is time with my family, mainly outside. And I think anybody who knows me would probably tell you that's at least what I say. And it's what I try to do. And I remember saying during that month to my daughter, hey, I can't go on that mountain bike ride with you. And then when it came back and I was like an hour a day on espn.
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A
Wow.
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C
You know, there's nothing wrong with ESPN necessarily, but it did that. That was not my value.
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A
Yes, I, I would be very, very frightened to do this experiment because I go down these rabbit holes. I think I'm working right. But I actually am going. I'm going down these, these rabbit holes to different news sites, different shopping sites. I get diverted. I don't want to measure how much time it takes out of my day. Because you're right, those are the things that, that, that are not so important. And I think the same is largely true. When you say the checkbook doesn't lie. I mean, I often will point people to an exercise of looking back at their spending over a month to see where the money has gone and to ask themselves just a simple. Would you do that again? Would you buy it again? For me, I find I don't do a lot of, like, little frittering away, but I, I find that I look, I like to shop like I. For me, it's sport. I like to sort of, you know, meander through the stores on a Sunday and maybe I'll spend some money and maybe I won't. And often I don't really care about that stuff. In the end, sometimes I do. I never get mad at myself for what I spend in the grocery stor. Because I like cooking dinner for my family. Right. So that's always okay. Even if I'm loading up on ingredients on a daily basis. Like, that doesn't bother me, but it's the random shopping that sometimes does.
- [16:33]
C
I just think that's interesting just to sort of. You use that word. I love that. It's the first time it's dawned on me that a nudge involves a little bit of a bump. And the idea of bumping up against something is always interesting to me. And I think that's the whole point is every single person I've taken through that exercise, whether it's time or money, and specifically with money, they are, I would use the word shocked.
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A
Yeah.
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C
Like definitely surprised at what they find.
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A
Well, so we run this coaching program called Finance Fix. And the first thing we do with people, we have them guess their spending, we have them guess that everybody's wrong, everybody is wrong all the time. And then we use technology, we aggregate their expenses and. Yeah. Shocked. Open mouthed, shocked. Oh my God, I can't believe. I can't believe I did that.
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C
Yeah. And so to me that's the like, if there was a Venn diagram that said your money and your life and there was this overlap, those are the moments where there is no overlap.
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Right.
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C
Like your money, your use of capital isn't lining up with what you say is important to you. That gap, when there's a gap between how you use them, I just call it like welcome. Right? Like, yeah, it's called being human. And like you said, we kind of run away from that information. But I would submit that we like to the degree that we can handle it with lots of periods of rest in between and plenty of warm baths or the sauna or whatever you need. We want that exposure because then what we can do is say, interesting quick story because you mentioned food. A good friend of mine wrote the book with his then wife. The whole 30. The whole 30 books. So Dallas and Melissa. Dallas is a good friend. I took Dallas through this exercise. I said, just go track for 30 days. And I remember we were at a very nice like farm to table restaurant. When I suggested doing this, he came back 30 days later and he used the word horrific. And it was about how much money he spent on food. Now here's a guy that his whole career, first of all, he cares deeply about food, loves good quality food. His whole career was about food. His book was about food. Right. Like, and so at first it was like shock. And he again, he used the word horrified. But then as he processed it, he was like, wait. And that's one of my core values.
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A
It's what he cares about. One of his things.
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C
Yeah. So he started to get some alignment around it and say, you know, I don't. But you know, this other thing over here, I don't really, I don't really like that. So it was just a Process of saying, I'm going to spend more on the stuff that I care about and value, and I'm going to feel okay when I do it. I often refer to it as getting full value. Like when you go to put the credit card down at the dinner with your friends at your favorite restaurant, because that's a bunch of core values. Great food, experience, your good friends. Like, you place that with happiness and it's an investment. Get full value. Don't be like, oh, geez, I can't believe it was that much. Get full value for it. And then when you go to the other place where you're like, yeah, I don't really like that. Feel really good about not buying anything, there's like, that's the idea, right?
- [19:38]
A
And if you have the dinner with the friends and the check bothers you, but the time that you spent with your friends was enjoyable, you just have to choose a different restaurant. Right? You have to. You just have to figure out, okay, I'm not a $30 entree person, I'm a $20 entree person. So let's find that place. Right? Or go on a walk. Exactly.
- [20:03]
C
Like, I love that idea of what we're doing here is not saying, do I care about the restaurant? Or eating out. We say, what's the value? I'm trying to express, yeah, Friendship, quality experiences, beautiful food. Okay, but if it didn't include beautiful food, it was friendship, quality experience. You could then say, oh, interesting. That's one way of expressing it. The restaurant. Are there other ways? Right. And so now we're creating. And it turns out it might be cheaper, but that's not really even the point. The point is, how are we investing in that value that sits underneath the spending? And back to your very first question, like, how do we get better at this? We start exposing ourselves to that information and start asking. We just start, look, it's happening everywhere. Just simple mindfulness awareness. Practice around your use of money.
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A
You have a sketch in the book that calls out how many people are turning to ChatGPT and algorithms for financial advice. We'll post it with the notes for this episode because it's worth looking at. And you write, humans don't fit neatly into algorithms. As a financial planner, how do you view the advice that's being generated by ChatGPT? By perplexity, by Claude? By AI. In general.
- [21:24]
C
Yeah. Well, two quick thoughts. The first is that this sketch, I drew that sketch 10 years ago, like, back during, like, the dawn of Robo advice, right? And I was curious, like, is it still, when it came up as one of the ones in the draft of the book, I was like, is this still true? So I thought no better way to find out than to talk to Chat GPT about it. So I uploaded the essay, I described the sketch and what Chat said was, this is more important than it's ever been, right? And what we worked on was a little bit, little nuance, which was what you read. You know, we don't fit in the box. But life, money and markets are messy. Algorithms can analyze patterns brilliantly. But here's the point. They can't feel the anxiety of a major investment decision or the pride of achieving a financial goal or the responsibility of providing for family, like all of those. I remember working on that line and was like, that's exactly what we're talking about. So. And the second thing I would say is I'm a huge fan and super excited about self driving money. Like, I think we're really close and I can't wait. But I've been in a Waymo recently and it was incredible. In fact, I'll tell you, it was way safer, it felt way safer than the Uber right before. But I still had to tell it where to go. And maybe even more importantly, as we drove through Los Angeles, if I saw something that I was like, oh, you know what, I changed my mind, I'd like to go that direction. Or can you stop here? I want to get out of that store. Which happened. I was still the one that needed to tell it, to do it. And so I think those things can exist at the same time. So I would just be very, very careful. I think to your point, it's early days in terms of specific financial advice, but we're getting there. And this is great, like in the hands of anybody, this will help us make better decisions. And we're back to where we started. What's it all for, right? Why are we doing it? Because who cares if you build the best design port? I've never been to an efficient portfolio party. I've been to a mortgage payoff party. There's a reason, right? One of them connects at a visceral level to something that is human. And chat, no AI tool is ever going to tell you pay off your 3% mortgage, you'll feel better. And that might be great advice for you.
- [23:48]
A
We're going to take a very quick break, Carl. When we come back, we're going to dig a little bit more into these wacky markets and investing during these strange times. Back in a sec. Hey everyone. Jean Chatzky with some very exciting news. The Hermoney Patreon is now live for the very first time. You'll be able to unlock bonus episodes, ad free listening and even deeper dives into your questions all all in one place. Here's the best part. We're giving you a seven day free trial so you can check it out risk free. That means you can be there for our very first Patreon bonus episode dropping on the 15th and see exactly what we've been working on behind the scenes. So if you've ever thought I wish I could get more Hermoney, well you can just head to patreon.com hermoney start your free trial and become one of our Patreon first subscribers. We can't wait to see you there. Right now at the Home Depot shop.
- [24:51]
C
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- [25:03]
A
Ice only at the Home Depot. You'll have perfectly chilled drinks for every gathering. Don't miss fall appliance savings at the Home Depot offer valid October 2nd through October 22nd. US only C store online for details. We are back with our friend Carl Richards. He's got a new book out. It's called you'd Money. It's a collection of sketches and essays and his work. As you know, we're big fans over here. Carl, can we dig into the stock market? The volatility is up. I just ran some historical numbers for the book that I'm in the middle of writing and we've got simultaneously major banks sounding the alarm on the possibility of a recession, if not this year in fairly short order. How do we deal with the ups and the downs and the roller coasters and the emotion of of it all?
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C
Yeah, what a sort of classic age old question, right? And it sounds like you have the data on volatility, but what I always start this conversation with is that it doesn't really matter whether it's actually more uncertain. It certainly feels that way to all of us. And since perception is reality, that's all that matters. The truth is the data says the same thing, right? There's a reason we all feel this way and I think even underneath what's showing up in the equity markets, is this a bigger piece of uncertainty that we're all feeling? Is this move from traditionally collective solutions like pensions, even Social Security, These collective solutions have all moved to individual solutions and the predictable path of progress that you and I saw our parents live and even to a large degree we lived isn't so predictable anymore. So you got all that, right? All that. So what do you do? So I think the first thing to realize is that volatility is built into all of the historical data that helps us build portfolios, right? Markets have gone up and gone down for a long time. And so to the degree that you can take the weighty evidence of history and projected into the future, it shouldn't surprise us when markets go up and down, right? Like just at a base level, it should. No, it surprises us when or why. Don't get me wrong. Like I would never pretend to know when or exactly why. But the fact that it happens shouldn't come as a surprise because it's built into the data and therefore the portfolio. If you design a portfolio based on your values and goals, based on weighty evidence of history, your portfolio should match where you're trying to get to. Right? But that's a little bit like Churchill's quote about democracy. What I just described is the Churchill said democracy is the worst form of government ever created by the mind of man, except for all the others, right? And what I just described is the worst way to invest your money ever created, except for all the others. Because there's no way to in the end get rid of all that volatility. So that's point number one. Point number two is guess what? You don't have to. There's nothing un American. There's nothing about not having large amount of exposure in the equity markets, Right. You can just pull other levers.
- [28:34]
A
Like what? I mean, you know, when we're talking about our investments helping us get where we want to go, helping us save for retirement, not having exposure to the equity markets comes at a, at a sizable cost. And the cost is just that, you have to save a whole lot more.
- [28:58]
C
Sure. The question, and I want to make sure I state it really clearly, you don't have to have a large exposure to the equity markets. And to be honest, you don't have to have any if you wanted to. You just pull other levers, you save more, you retire differently. Like you can replicate some of the old fashioned pension style products. I know that's some of the work that you're thinking really carefully about. But here's the deal, right? Like it doesn't matter if, if your plan says you need to be 70% in the equity markets as a 35 year old and that's totally possible and maybe even a good idea, but you have proven that you cannot sleep at night despite all of the evidence. Like you're super smart, you've read all of Gene's work, you've read everybody's work that you should and it still causes you massive anxiety. Well, right, that's a, that's a different type of help. And maybe, maybe you've proven to yourself because the only thing that if you can't stick with it.
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A
Yep.
- [29:58]
C
There's no sense in doing it.
- [30:01]
A
Yeah, right. No, I think that makes, I think that makes total sense. On that note, as we are saving for retirement these days, as we're accumulating money, there are a lot of solutions that can sort of help us manage the portfolio building of it all. There are target date funds, Are they perfect solutions? They are not perfect solutions, but they're pretty good. Right. You can put your money in them if you can stay the course and if you save sufficiently, you can get where you want to go. Are there other ways that you suggest that people solve this problem? Right. Using a financial advisor, I think is a fantastic way to do it. But if you want to DIY it, what are your go to methods for building a simple portfolio that people can generally live with?
- [31:01]
C
Yeah. So it doesn't have to do with portfolio construction per se, but one of my favorite solutions for this challenge of saying, look, I'm not sure I want to take that much risk or I'm not sure about the equity markets or the economy's got me really scared is to change the definition of retirement a bit. Right. And I saw this a lot with clients, like instead of thinking and in fact I was just having this conversation with somebody who is 52 and convinced that he's got to work eight more years, hates his job, but in eight more years, right, he'll be able to basically 59 and a half, just a little bit beyond that. Now we, I know there are some other ways to tap into retirement account, but just for the sake of simplicity, 52 years old, doesn't like his job at all, has been saying this for 15 years, right? Like, hasn't liked his job forever. He's just like, I've just got to stick it out. Because he thinks that he's gonna work till he's 60 and then retire and be done. We had this conversation. We're like, well, are there things that you would like to do? Is there a job that you would like to do? He's like, I'd love to teach at the university, he's got his PhD. He's like, I'd love To just teach, just teach. Don't, don't do any of the admin stuff. Don't do, just teach at the university. I'm like, well, how, you know, when we went through the numbers, we're like, could you get paid enough to teach to cover your expenditures and you didn't have to save for retirement anymore? Let's say pretend like you didn't save for retirement anymore, it was just your living expenses. Could you. And how long would you like to teach? He's like, well, I could see myself doing that. He's like, I don't want to really retire. I just don't want to be in this job anymore. So suddenly he's like, look, I could from 52 to 70, I could see myself teaching 75 even. He's like, I've got friends, professor friends of mine that were set in their 70s. I would love to be that. I'd love to do that. I could go through lots of examples like that. The doctor who wants to teach at the med school, another friend of mine who always wanted to work at a plant, I guess you call them a plant nursery, right? There's a really cool nursery here that gives health benefits, health insurance benefits for anybody who works 30 hours or more. So that was another one. So now suddenly we've gotten to this point where instead of thinking you were going to retire at 60 and then start tapping the retirement money, you are going to a, have a sense of purpose for a lot longer. Because believe me, this retirement concept is other than some of the sort of manual labor jobs, this retirement concept is overblown. Like most people who go full gas with a sense of identity and purpose tied up in their jobs and then try to retire, find that it's not what they hoped it was, right? They've got to fill that hole somehow. So if we start thinking about that a little earlier. So A, a sense of purpose and identity, B, you relieve a bunch of pressure on the portfolio, right?
- [33:51]
A
Because every year you don't have to pull money out, right? Is a year it can continue to grow, is a year that you don't have to cover, right? And decade after decade after decade. I was thinking about the same concept earlier today because I'm moderating a panel at a conference upcoming with some people who have sort of retooled their lives after the quote, unquote, big career. And there's a woman who was a high pressure powered marketing executive, now working as a flight attendant, loves it. Travel benefits that she always wanted to do and not withdrawing the money from the 401k.
- [34:43]
C
This to me is a much more powerful conversation than the particular look. Portfolio design is really important. Other options, laddering CDs. There are some amazing insurance products that can help with this sort of thing. Longevity sort of stuff. And again, careful, specialized tools require specialized expertise. And those are important discussions. But I think this discussion way more important because it gets the identity and fulfillment and meaningful life part is embedded in there as well. And if you could add five years, 10 years, in some cases 10 or 20 years to the growth of a portfolio, suddenly it relieves a bunch of that pressure. So that's actually my favorite way to think about how to solve that problem.
- [35:26]
A
I want to talk about one other concept in your book. With the time that we have left, and it's the concept of future blindness. You say that we underestimate the complexity of our future financial lives. What does that mean? And how should we be opening our eyes to the future?
- [35:47]
C
Yeah, and a lot of this was informed by Hal Hirschfield's work on, like his book Future Self. We're just notoriously, we're pretty bad at relating to somebody 10, 20, 30 years in the future. Like we, we relate to them like we do a stranger. And so that leads us to one part of future blindness, which is we're not very good at caring for that person because we don't really relate to that person. So just checking in every once in a while, that's what some of the data around those pictures that age you like, that's, that's what all those exercises are about, is just for you to start caring a bit about that person and just building that into your plan. And then the other thing that I think we're as humans, we're not very good at anticipating how we'll solve a problem before it happens. We're not very good at that. If you look at the history of risk management in the financial markets and even the economy, risk management historically has been taking something that happened that you didn't expect, but taking something like, we did this in the financial crisis, we did this in Covid. Like, we've done this over and over. We take something that's happened and we prepare for that to happen again, but we don't know what's going to happen again. But one thing that we can be hopeful about is we may not be very good at anticipating future problems. We're actually pretty good at solving them when we're in them. Sort of the old school MacGyver style, right? Like I've got bubblegum and duct tape and a screwdriver and I can put this thing back together. So I think being thoughtful, if you blend those two ideas together, you be thoughtful about what your future self might need. And it's not hard to understand what those things would be tactically. Right. Like you're thinking about healthcare and the type of house you live in and the type of travel you may want to do. And you just look around at people that are 20 years older than you and you get a sense of that. Right. And you can say things like, well, there's a 75 year old who's still skiing and there's a 75 year old who can barely move. What's the difference which one do I want to be? And Right. And then you mix that with the idea of like realizing you're going to be pretty good at solving problems when they actually come up. And I think you just hold those two things carefully. Like, I want to be thoughtful about the problems. I don't want to be so thoughtful that it ruins my life today. And I want to realize I'm going to be good when I get there. Right. I think those things can be held in tension.
- [38:11]
A
The book is called you'd Money reimagining wealth through 101 simple scale sketches. Carl, thank you. Thanks for doing this. Come back soon.
- [38:22]
C
Yeah, Jean, it's always a pleasure. I, I do a lot of these interviews as you do and it's always really apparent when somebody cares about the work that they're doing and cares about the people who are listening. So thanks for the work you do.
- [38:36]
A
Oh, right back at you. If you love today's episode, please take a moment to leave us a five star review you on Apple podcast. Your feedback means the world to me. And if you're ready to keep the Money conversation going, HerMoney has three amazing programs designed to help you feel more confident and in control of your money. There's Finance Fix. It's our four week coaching program that helps you rethink your spending, find hidden savings and make smarter choices for the future. Our pre retirement program runs for six weeks and walks you through building a retirement strategy that's personalized for your next chapter. Finally, there's Investing Fix, our investing club for women. It meets every other week on Zoom. It is a supportive space to learn, ask questions, grow your investing confidence and build your portfolio. And your first month is absolutely free. These programs are truly helping level the playing field for women financially. I'd love for you to join us. Her Money is produced by Hayley Pascalides and our music is provided by Video Helper. Thanks so much for listening and we'll talk soon. Earlier this episode I told you about a podcast I love to help guide my charitable giving decisions. Giving Done Right is all about how to make an impact with your giving and it tackles the question every donor is asking, how can I make the biggest difference right now? Now I want to give you a taste of the show. I hope you find it as valuable as I do. In this clip, Julie Butner, president and CEO of one of the largest food banks in the United States, reveals something that might change how you think about food assistance. Many clients are working families just like yours, people who simply can't stretch their paychecks to cover basic necessities. She explains how modern food banks have evolved beyond emergency food distribution to address root causes through health care partnerships, nutrition education and community programs. Her insights challenge common assumptions about who needs help and offer practical guidance for anyone wondering how to make their giving count, whether through volunteering your time, donating money or advocating for change. Okay, here's the episode and you can listen to more Giving Done Right wherever you get your podcasts.
- [41:15]
B
The families that we see are making trade offs. So maybe they don't get three meals seven days a week, but maybe they have one meal seven days a week. What's sad about that is there are long term implications, particularly if these households have children. Children cannot learn without proper nutrition and so if a mom or a dad is making a decision to not have a meal, that means they're making that same decision for their household. You know, we see this a lot. We celebrated last year the installation of our 100th in school market where we have choice markets that are inside of schools so that parents who are dropping or picking up their children can also pick up groceries if they're in need of food. And I hear frequently from those teachers and those administrators about the issues that they experience when children don't have good nutrition. They can't learn, they have a shorter attention span, they're sleeping in the classroom, and teachers who are stuffing their drawers full of snacks so that if somebody comes to them and is hungry, they have something, you know, they're paying for it out of their own pocket. It's certainly hurts a community. The other area where I see it really pronounced and we've been working in this space, I'm a registered dietitian by education and so nutrition is something that's personal for me, you know, not just as part of the mission. In fact, we changed our mission statement to include a statement about improving the health of the community. And we've been working with healthcare providers and payers about, you know, how can we fund intervention for community members who have chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease. So if you have a chronic disease, you have healthcare costs. When you have healthcare costs and you're lower income, that's another disruptor to your ability to purchase healthy food. I tell this anecdotal story. When I first started at the Food Bank, I met the new CEO of the Moncrief Cancer Institute, which is a cancer treatment center here in Fort Worth. I said, oh, we ought to do some work together, because oftentimes cancer patients aren't getting the right kind of nutrition. He said, we absolutely should. He said, 36% of the people that we support with cancer treatment are food insecure. I said, 36%. Wow. I had no idea. And how do you know this? And he said, well, we asked the food insecurity question. And what's interesting about this, Julie, is they don't present as food insecure, but once they come in and they're getting treatment, they become food insecure, because now they are having to make decisions about do I pay for my treatment or do I pay for my food? And so we set up an intervention with the Cancer Institute here in Fort Worth for that reason. And we've been working with healthcare providers and payers to find ways for folks who have chronic diseases that are paying for medicine or paying for doctor visits or treatments to have access to medically tailored meals.