← So Money with Farnoosh Torabi
So Money with Farnoosh Torabi
1797: Ask Farnoosh: Navigating Financial Uncertainty: Tariffs, Recession Fears, and Smart Money Moves
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- [00:00]
Farnoosh Torabi
Come on down to Boost Mobile and turn your tax refund into six months of savings.
- [00:04]
Georgia Lee Hussey
Nope, all wrong. You're on the radio touting Boost Mobile's 5G network.
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Farnoosh Torabi
You gotta use your radio voice like this. Come on down to Boost Mobile and.
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Georgia Lee Hussey
Get six months free when you buy. Six months on our best unlimited plans. Now you go. This is just how my voice sounds. Just say it like you mean it.
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Farnoosh Torabi
Okay.
- [00:20]
Georgia Lee Hussey
Plus, enter to win up to $10,000 and double your tax refund. Oh my.
- [00:25]
Farnoosh Torabi
Requires upfront payment, taxes and fees. Extra terms and exclusions apply.
- [00:28]
Georgia Lee Hussey
Visit boostmobile.com for full on our terms and sweeps details.
- [00:32]
Farnoosh Torabi
You may have heard me talk about how my word for 2025 is relax. This coming from the woman who wrote a book about fear and panic. You know, this is going to take some dedication on my part. I'm working hard to eliminate unnecessary stress and honestly, I think we all deserve that. As my friend Susie says, let it be easy. I'm leaning into all the ways we can simplify. Whether it's automating finances, outsourcing tasks, or finding little ways to take things off my plate. And if you've ever thought about hosting your home on Airbnb, but get stressed out thinking about managing the whole thing, there's good news. Airbnb's new co host network makes it easy. With the Co Host Network, you can hire a local experienced co host to take care of it all for you. They handle guest communication, reservations, and even on site support. Some co hosts can even help style your space to make it extra inviting. So if you have a secondary property or travel often throughout the year and want to make some extra cash without taking on extra work, this is your sign. Find the right co host for you@airbnb.com host so money episode 1797 ask Farnoosh. You're listening to so Money with award winning money guru Farnoosh Torabi. Each day get a 30 minute dose of financial inspiration from the world's top business minds, authors, influencers and from Farnoosh herself. Looking for ways to save on gas or double your double coupons. Sorry, you're in the wrong place. Seeking profound ways to live a richer, happier life. Welcome to SO Money. Welcome to so Money everybody. I'm Farnoosh Tarabi. It is Friday, March 6, 2025. So much to discuss today. What a week it's been a roller coaster of a ride. If you've been watching the news coming out of the White House, you've been watching the stock market. So today I'm bringing on my trusted friend Georgia Lee Hussey, who's the founder of Modernist Financial Wealth Manager, to help us make sense. Because it's not making sense, right? I know a lot of us are concerned about our retirement accounts. We're concerned about our jobs. And Georgia, as always, brings fresh perspective and insights that show us what we should really be caring about, what we should really be paying attention to right now. So hang tight for Georgia to give you a sneak preview of what's to come later in the show. What you've been asking me this week we have listener questions that have to do with health savings accounts, how to maximize an hsa, Are they always worth it? How to co mingle your finances or not. When you are dating someone and you're thinking about moving in, one partner wants to invest in a home, you're not going to be investing in the home. But how do you protect yourself in case you break up? In case you missed any of our episodes this week, on Wednesday we talked about how to protect your money on social media. This is unfortunately a big problem right now where a lot of us are shopping for discounted goods and we're looking for savings on social media marketplaces. I know I've sold a lot of furniture on social media marketplaces. I've also purchased things. But unfortunately this is fertile ground for scam artists. So on Wednesday we talked about how to think before you click and how to outsmart social media scammers. What are the most popular scams they're trying to execute, how people are getting caught up and what you can do if you're a victim. Also this week we talked about survival, motherhood and money. The trifecta what happens when everything falls apart. My guest, Emma Paty, is the author of a new book that's coming out called Tilt. It's a fiction book, but it's rooted in a lot of scary truth about financial precarity and climate change and being a mother. Amidst all of that, we talk about how does financial instability shape our sense of survival? Especially when something as disastrous as an earthquake, for example, or if you're in LA and a wildfire brushes through your neighborhood and destroys everything that you have, what can you then rely on? What are your resources if not money? I want to thank everybody who's left a review recently for the so Money podcast and I'm going to pick a reviewer this week to receive a free 15 minute money session with me as well as a free 30 day trial of our so Money members club. This week we're going to say thank you to Sarah. Sarah R831, who left a review recently calling the show practical and timely. Here's her review. I look forward to listening to so Money when it lands in my podcast feed several times per week. Farnisha's advice is practical and timely. She has guests that enlighten and add to my financial knowledge. I appreciate that she is also a midlife woman and speaks from that perspective. Perspective. Thank you so much, Sarah. I love that you love hearing about my midlife musings. I think that's a lot of us in this audience. And even if you're not where I am in my life stage, even if you're in your 20s and 30s or older, you would appreciate the perspective. I know, certainly I love to hear from my friends who are further along in life, you know, 10 years older, 15 years older. I have to ask them, what would you tell yourself 15 years ago? And so I try to bring some of that to the show as well. All right, so much to cover in this episode. We're going to talk about a range of financial topics from current political and economic uncertainties. If you've been reading the headlines, you know, looking at President Trump's tariff proposals or not, are we headed for a recession? How to stay vigilant in this financial market, why credit unions might be the place to park your cash, and so much more. Let's do this. Georgia Lee Hussey, welcome back to so Money. Welcome back to Ask Farnoosh. And Georgia, have you been?
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Georgia Lee Hussey
I am watching a lot of PBS documentaries from the 80s about civil rights heroes. That's how I'm dealing with this. It's satisfying, actually. Very hopeful.
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Farnoosh Torabi
I'm watching White Lotus.
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Georgia Lee Hussey
I will admit I just got back from Kauai, where I was in a very light White Lotus situation. Wow. I've never seen it, but I know enough about the cultural narrative to understand.
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Farnoosh Torabi
This season they're in Bali. Season two was Italy, Sicily, I think, and then it was Hawaii. But anyway, I get you. It's about trying to stay positive and hopeful in this moment. As we're recording, we have just learned that President Trump is reeling back his tariff proposal, or he announced it the day before and now he's like, actually, no. Which brings me to the first thing I wanted to talk to you about. A lot of economists and people who are watching the markets and smart people are, are believing that the Trump administration, with their tariff proposals, they are intentionally trying to create a recession. Why? Because then they can get what they really want, which is lower Interest rates, cheaper borrowing. Is there any logic to this? Why would a president intentionally try to bring down the US Economy?
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Georgia Lee Hussey
There is are a lot of theories on what he's doing right now. I think before the election I had the fear that Project 2025 is like if he does 40% of it, it's going to be terrifying. He seems to be using it as a step by step playbook and a lot of it is about having the economic and social argument to unwind the systems we currently have in place. And he's manufacturing that argument right now. If you fire half of the IRS in the middle of the tax season, are you going to make people even more unhappy with how government operates? Yes. Are people going to remember? Because it's because you fired all the people who work there and that's why nobody will answer the phone. Like there's an interesting capacity to use time to separate the effect from the cause. And I think that's personally, I think that's the play. It is about securing low tax rates or sometimes he says no tax rate. I don't know how a government operates without collecting taxes, but low tax rates for the wealthy, which we already have some of the lowest rates in the world and even lower tax rates for corporations. And then deregulating seems like he wants to deregulate all the industries. I'm looking at the stock deregulation in my own industry and it's terrifying. It looks like it's just going to make it so easy for more Ponzi schemes. And yeah, the consumer is not his. The middle class and the working class, these are not the behaviors of an administration that is interested in the working class, let alone the middle class or people in poverty. They are doing a very effective job of manufacturing a crisis.
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Farnoosh Torabi
I think what you said about deregulation is important. As someone who is watching everything and I'm also now on the Persona of my friends and family and audience, people who reach out to me, very confused, very afraid, what should I do? The word bankruptcy has been thrown around quite a bit in the last couple of weeks. People are so terrified that they're like, maybe we should just declare bankruptcy and get ahead of it now before things get materially worse. Others are emailing me and saying, do we just put our money in CDs? And so I think that if there is a piece of advice we should give people is that we have to be more hyper vigilant about the contracts that we sign. The professionals that we work with, I. E. Tax professionals, financial professionals, with this push towards More deregulation, which has never favored the consumer's interest.
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Georgia Lee Hussey
Yes. And I think that's a wonderful focus and I certainly am very aware of who has a third party authority. Looking at them in addition to the regulators, it's terrifying to me that the SEC says they're only going to look at businesses like mine once every seven years. Do you know how much scary stuff you can hide?
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Farnoosh Torabi
Wow.
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Georgia Lee Hussey
And how much you can rip people off in that period? I'm not regulated by the SEC yet. I'm regulated by the state of Oregon, which I'm very grateful for right now. But this actually, in addition to thinking about who we hire, I'm thinking about where we bank. And given some of the really irresponsible talk coming out of the current administration, we are continuing to encourage people to move their banking money to credit unions that are state regulated, that are regulated and insured by a different entity than the fdic. They're NCUA insured. And there is some thought that especially if you're in a blue state based credit unions could have more support. In the same way that when the Republicans tried to pull back the healthcare supports in the aca, the states came in and the blue states specifically came in and supported healthcare for their folks. And then there's a. There's a sense that at the state level the same thing could happen at credit unions and banks a lot. Most of our clients are already with credit unions because we love them so much and they're so much cheaper and they're so much more flexible and their tech is really good and all that.
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Farnoosh Torabi
And just to clarify, your clients are high net worth. So we don't always associate high net worth people with credit unions.
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Georgia Lee Hussey
They're very high net worth. I find that they get much better service and deals from their credit union than they get from any private bank because most of the private banks now that First Republic is gone, are still transactional sales organizations. There are some great people working in private banking, especially in trust departments, but credit unions are just great. Legally, as a member, I am a shareholder and they have to return their profit to me. Therefore they don't charge me fees and I get all my ATM fees refunded and I can have as many savings accounts for my hilarious savings account structures that we recommend everybody run. That's a way that you can take an action. Now that is probably just good generally and also good if banking system gets.
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Farnoosh Torabi
Deregulated even more, you can find a credit union. I'm going to put the link in our show Notes by going to mapping.ncua.gov you can actually search by your address. You can search by the credit union name. This is a website that looks to be run by the National Credit Union Administration.
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Georgia Lee Hussey
Yes. And they're the ones who insure deposits at the same level that FDIC insurance is. The other one I would recommend is we use a lot is Mighty Deposits. And then you can search based on the deposits, are they supporting small business owners, people of color, women, small farmers? You can search both banks and credit unions on that. And I like that one a lot.
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Farnoosh Torabi
We'll put that link in as well. We have questions from the audience today about some HSA related questions. One time you were on the show and we had a pretty viral clip about HSAs. So let's revisit like Health Savings Accounts later in the show and how they're beneficial for us today and in the future. And then we also have a question about protecting your finances when you're about to move in with a partner and the partner is going to become a homeowner and you're not smart. Things you might want to do ahead of getting into entangling your life and finances with another person. But before we do that, we were talking about what we wanted to talk about on this show. And you had a wonderful idea, Georgia, of talking about our ancestors and the wisdom that they used to weather tough times. So I'm a daughter of immigrants. I don't know a whole lot about my grandparents, to be very honest. They both passed away on both sides. I never met my dad's dad. And being from Iran, as you can imagine, there wasn't a lot of visiting. And they came as much as they could to the US in the early days in the 80s and 90s. But then it got harder as they got older. So I don't know a whole lot about my grandparents other than this. And I wrote about this in a healthy state of panic, which was that when their freedoms were being threatened in Iran, and I'm talking like in the late 70s, the regime change, they made the hard decision to basically kick their kids out of the country. Not all of them left, but my dad and my mom were an example of that. For my mom, she was 17. Her choices at that point were either, you know, stay in the country, marry someone, your parents find you. There was no prospect for education. There was definitely no prospect for working. So it was like for us in America, it was as though we were living in the little women era where your only economic hope is marriage. And so my mom met My dad, who had ambitions to come to the States and get his degree here and then maybe move back to Iran, but as things got worse in Iran and my dad was getting educated here and he's with my mom now, they realized that they probably should stay in America. Although that was a whole rigmarole. Like, that wasn't a guarantee to them. They had to really fight for that. But their parents, my grandparents, were very supportive of that and helped them to the extent that they could. You know, giving them a little bit of money so that when they landed here fully, they could, you know, get an apartment and all of the things. And I credit my grandparents a lot for having that courage. Really, it was really like, rock hard place. Do we. They're not leaving the country, but maybe they can, through their encouragement, give their kids a better life by saying, maybe you should go 6,000 miles away to a new country and start over. And so I'm very grateful for that. And I think right now we had an episode about people thinking about leaving the US because they're not happy here. And I would not want to compare that to the strife that my grandparents suffered in so many millions of Iranians in the late 70s with the regime takeover. But it is in the atmosphere now. You know, people wondering about am I even. Just had a conversation with a so money member in the club who's newly divorced, has a son who's still in school, and she's contemplating whether live in South Carolina or North Carolina. And she said, you know, does the politics of your state matter when it comes to your financial life? And that we. The answer was absolutely. She said, I could save money living in South Carolina, get a bigger house for less money, but then my rights as a woman, as a parent to a son who might need some special help from school, Department of Education. The word on the street is they're going to dismantle that. I'm like, yes, all of that is worth fearing.
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Georgia Lee Hussey
Yes, exactly.
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Farnoosh Torabi
I'd love to hear a little bit about your lineage and your ancestry. I know that your grandmother was a sharecropper's daughter, and you have a colleague whose family in the Ukraine, like, how are all these people thinking about their futures and their present financially?
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Georgia Lee Hussey
Yeah, it's an. It's such an interesting question. It's so essential to the work we do with our clients. We talk a lot about discovering our money stories, and this is a quintessential money story. What are the behaviors we've inherited or heard about from our family that helped them survive? Um, you can sometimes hear stories about, like, making a little light of grandma's propensity to save the wax paper from cereal boxes. But then you think about that and you're like, oh, that was wise action at the time. You couldn't buy wax paper. That was ridiculous to go out and buy something like that that you could find. And that shows up in how we behave now, often unconsciously. Now I'm like, oh, that used to be an unconscious thing we were trying to overcome in a place of plenty. And now I'm reconsidering that position to say, oh, no, those are the wise ancestors that knew something we didn't know when things were simpler, but that we're still humans trying to operate and take care of our families. My grandmother. So my family's all from rural North Carolina. It's one of the poorest counties in America. And it used to be a bluish state county. It's gone red because most of. As you may know, most of North Carolina has been gerrymandered out of recognition, basically. Many people have been disenfranchised there in the long legacy of Jim Crow. And they. So my grandmother, I can't tell you how many times that we'd come home and there would be just like a bushel of peaches on the porch, or there would be pecans on the porch, or there'd be a cooler with shrimp. And what I saw happening is that we as a family was going, we're going to get something. We would bring back more for others, and that would be. We would basically gift shrimp, pecans, Christmas trees. Didn't matter what you were going to get because everything was rural, so you had to go a long ways to buy things. And then her community of farmers would just drop things at her house because her family had been known for generations. So I think about that as what is mutual aid when we have more than enough, do we check in to see if our neighbor needs some, or do we continue this behavior of, like, just throwing stuff away that we don't need? I think there's a lot of actual. Some beauty in this moment of being more intentional and conscious about how we're using our resources and our assets. I've done these. This work. And if anybody wants to download the tools that help you discover your money story, you can go to Free Tools for the People on our website@modernistuniversity.com and you can download them for free. And they help you understand these stories. What did your mama teach you about money? What did your father teach you about money. I did this in a group with all women of color and there were several women of Caribbean descent and they all talked about their mother's hiding money around the house cash. And then they realized that they all also did it themselves, but they weren't conscious of why they and then they realized, oh, my mother and my grandmother used to tell me that you the bank would run out of money so you had to make sure you had extra. And because they wanted to make sure that it wasn't stolen, that was hidden everywhere. And I think don't go hiding money around your house and make sure if you put it somewhere you can remember where that on earth you put it. But wisdom when the banking system feels unstable just having some cash on hand, or if there's some kind of climate issue or big storm, just have some cash. This is not a revolutionary idea, but I think we've gotten into the habit of easy access plastic as dollars. And I think there's some space to buffer ourselves a little bit from uncertainty.
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Farnoosh Torabi
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Georgia Lee Hussey
Hey, you know what would make your customer service help desk way better? Dumping it and then switching to intercom. But you're not quite ready to make that change. We get it.
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Farnoosh Torabi
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- [23:54]
Georgia Lee Hussey
Happier and gets you off the customer service rep hiring Treadmill Fin by Intercon, the leading customer service AI agent now.
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Farnoosh Torabi
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Georgia Lee Hussey
Or packages and set access windows for.
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Farnoosh Torabi
Planned guests or even the dog walker.
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Georgia Lee Hussey
Without interrupting your day, visit ADT.com when.
- [24:23]
Farnoosh Torabi
Every second counts count on ADT requires ADT Complete Pro Monitoring Plan and compatible devices. Copyright 2025 ADT LLC. All rights reserved. That is so interesting because you also hear about people who, let's say, were the children of the depression era and then they grow up. Like to your point, they're doing things they don't really even understand. Why we call them penny pinching. Yes, what I'm hearing is that it's important to understand the context in which your family had to do that and realizing that your present day world is different. Yes, but how should that appreciation manifest in your life today?
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Georgia Lee Hussey
And I don't know, Farnoosh, I think we're asking these questions in a way I've never had to ask them in my life. If I I've been going back to the civil rights era in America because it's reminding me that there was a whole huge portion of our country that lived unbanked, unsupported, without services, without educations. This is not new. So what did they do? And so I'm trying to filter the wise action of these ancestors, whether they're mine or the civil rights movement or the Native American folk people, whatever it might be, and think about what is relevant now. So it's a filtering process, it's a reflection process. I think it requires conversation, as in all good things like we're having right now, and also saying, oh, my grandmother did that, but was my grandmother nice or not? And how did that influence how I that behavior? Because sometimes people will react to that kind of penny pinching or let's say resource management or whatever you want to call it, really negatively, like a child like that. And they could become profligate spenders because they hated the fact that their parent was always controlling them. So it's also, there might still be something wise under there. Despite the sort of family dynamics, a.
- [26:18]
Farnoosh Torabi
Lot of people are worried about a recession. What do you say to that? I feel like we've asked this every six months on the show and you're on because recession chatter never dies, especially with our recent history in this country. So what are the better questions to be asking maybe than oh, are we going to be having a recession?
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Georgia Lee Hussey
I think there's a lot of basic financial housekeeping that is really great to be doing right now. Pay down your debt, build up your cash, sell your extra stuff, do a little spring cleaning. It's March, flowers are blooming, clean out the attic, go on Facebook Marketplace, like who knows what might be helpful. So that's one thing we're recommending. The second thing that we're considering is moving your money to organizations that are legally required to take care of you, like credit unions in a way that shareholder based banks just aren't. They're, they're focused as shareholders, not their individual consumers. If you can take advantage of the there's been a little dip in interest rates and mortgages and HELOCs. Now might be a great time to get a teaser on your HELOC. Some credit unions we're seeing are doing like a 5% teaser for the first year and then it floats after that. So that can save you a little bit of interest. And then I have a friend who's renting out a room in her house. She's really busy and works a lot, so it's not a big deal. And it's creating a little Extra cash. Clients are in a different position. They have significant wealth and means. So I am heavily encouraging those folks to just donate large chunks of money while the market is still up and just do it now. Don't let's. We are not waiting till the end of the year and we're using appreciated stock to do it, or mutual funds, whatever they've got. And if you're managing a portfolio, maintenance of portfolios is a big focus and has been for us for probably the past six, nine months. Because the US Market's been volatile and it's been bumping for so long, I'm like, I don't want to own too much US Stock more than I intend. International markets have been growing again for various reasons that are related to what Trump is up to. International stock is up for the first time in a while because of some of the work that number 47 is up to. And so we're selling off US holdings, making sure we rebalance properly. We're buying individual bonds or buying them now because I want those higher yielding bonds. So that's kind of some of the stuff we are doing. Yeah.
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Farnoosh Torabi
All right, let's help out some listeners. Couple listeners in particular. I want to start with our listener in the audience who's blending her life and finances with her partner, Sarah. She says, hi Farnoosh. Within a year or so, I'm going to be moving into a condo with my boyfriend. He will be the one buying the condo and he's going to cover the down payment and the closing costs. He is starting the process now and hopes to purchase the condo by the summer. When I asked how he envisioned us sharing finances for the condo, he said we would split utilities and I would potentially contribute a small amount to the mortgage. He makes over twice my salary and I only have about four months of savings and I'm not able to contribute a significant financial amount. We do plan to get married eventually. How can I protect myself in the unlikely event of a breakup? I have affordable rent currently and so I'm worried about losing a good apartment in a large city with rising rent costs. I think she's right to be weary of the what ifs and I'm optimistic. She's optimistic. We want to be optimistic, but there's even time between now and the summer when he'll go to buy this house or this condo and then much more time potentially between now and they get married. So I think it's good to keep their finances separate. Right now, I don't see a need to like do any sort of co mingling. They're just living together. But I do think I've written about the importance of having a contract when you're even as roommates, whether you're in a relationship or not, Just so that the expectations are clear. I'm going to contribute 20% to the mortgage. And as a couple, maybe deciding what is owed to you. If anything, if you break up, maybe then there is a little bit of a financial reward at the end of that relationship. Like you, because you contributed 20%, you will get, I don't know, X dollars or I don't know what the arrangement would be, but these are the questions to be asking.
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Georgia Lee Hussey
Yeah. The other thing I would say, and this is I'm taking the boyfriend's perspective, but also Sarah's. In Oregon, when you move in with somebody, there is statutory law saying that you can at breaking up, you can sue somebody for alimony. Yeah. We don't have community property or common law marriage. But for example, with my previous partner, we had what's called a domestic partnership agreement, which is not the like milquetoast version of marriage that they offered the queer community for a bit. It's more saying we are entering a domestic partnership. Everything I own is mine. Everything you own is yours. Anything we acquire together, we agree to acquire together. And anything we acquire separately is separate. It's like a prenup for moving in. I don't know what state Sarah is in, but I at the time, I was the person with fewer assets than my former partner. But in that time, I also started a successful wealth management firm. And it made a lot of clarity because it protected me in case there was a separation, that we knew what the state of the union was. Even if it was. I did not want to have anything to do with legal marriage at that time. I love your idea of a contract, whether it's legal or not. Do find out whether your state has this alimony rule about living together. It's important. Oregon Org isn't one of them. And then I would say I kept a set of dishes and silverware and glasses for I think 15 years in that relationship. And they just stayed in storage. As I come from a family with lots of divorces and stuff and I was like, it was my emotion. We joked about that. I still kept these things. Hedging your bets for a minute is not. Yeah, I love that you don't care about your boyfriend. It shows that you're a pragmatic partner.
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Farnoosh Torabi
I love the idea he's buying his own house and he's Pragmatic. He's trying to build his wealth. You should, too.
- [32:48]
Georgia Lee Hussey
Yeah. Do you sublet that apartment for a bit so that you can make sure it works, or do you. Let's say Your rent is $2,000 a month, but your contribution to this place is a thousand. Most people save money when they move in together. Now, that thousand dollars a month better be going to your asset building. That would be my recommendation. I've chosen to not buy at this point. I love renting because I get extra cash. I can invest. So you can build wealth too. And honestly, it's a cheaper form of wealth a lot of times than on your real estate.
- [33:19]
Farnoosh Torabi
So I want to understand what you meant by that. So the. Let's say the mortgage is 2000amonth.
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Georgia Lee Hussey
If her rent is 2000amonth.
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Farnoosh Torabi
If her Rent is 2000amonth and she sublets it.
- [33:31]
Georgia Lee Hussey
If she sublets her place, maybe she makes money on it or not. Think about that independent. That's just the backstop in case it doesn't work out with the boyfriend. Then she can let it go and be like, no, I'm letting it go. That apartment was wonderful in its time, but it has served me well. But if it doesn't work out, then she's got a place to go back to within whatever the rules are of her building. Now, if she does move in, let's say they've agreed that she's going to contribute $1,000 a month to the new condo. Her previous rent was $2,000 a month. She now got a grand of extra cash. I would like your partner. I would be putting that to your future self and put it in liquid investments. Probably a Roth would be a great idea. If you're in the bracket I'm seeing here, max out your 401k, whatever it is, and make sure you're still investing in yourself.
- [34:18]
Farnoosh Torabi
That's a great idea. Imagine you still have that rent.
- [34:21]
Georgia Lee Hussey
Exactly.
- [34:22]
Farnoosh Torabi
And do something with it that would be helpful to you in the future. Brilliant. Love that advice. All right, let's finish with Tasha here. She has an HSA account that has about $8,500 in it that she can use this year for health related expenses. She says there's also a button on the website for this HSA that says invest your hsa. What does that mean? If I invest it, then can I not use it for medical expenses? Can I access it if I need it? She's confused. And you're the expert, Georgia, so help her out.
- [34:58]
Georgia Lee Hussey
Yeah, Tasha, what you're seeing here is the Two options for using your hsa, let's call them strategies and any structure you have in your financial life. I think it's really important for you to be clear on what's the strategy for this part of your life, this structure. So like a savings account, your emergency fund is for reserves and something random happens, you have cash, your HSA can be used for one of two things, medical expenses. Now you get a deduction to put the money in there. You can't get it on your tax return, so it's super efficient tax wise. And then you can spend that money on your medical expense. The alternative, which is what most of our clients do is they max out their hsa. They don't spend it, they invest it and they use it as an additional retirement account specifically for healthcare. And it can be very effective if you have the cash flow to do this. And so you would invest it just like your retirement accounts. Probably if you're young you would do it pretty aggressive and you just leave it alone and max it out every year. Pretend you're not going to spend it. If you do need it, you can access it in the same way that you could a Roth. But I like to pretend that you've thrown money over the wall and don't you dare go touch it. It's there for your 80 year old self when they need it. But this again assumes that you have the cash flow to be able to afford this. I would also wonder if you are needing to spend all of your hsa, make sure you're actually in the right healthcare plan. Because I often find it's cheaper to pay more premium and have lower co pays and deductibles than it is to have a plan that lets me fund an hsa. It definitely takes some calculations. We've had clients try for HSAs but then the overhead is so high that HSA isn't valuable.
- [36:43]
Farnoosh Torabi
The cost you're paying today to have access to that account because you've got racking up bills in your medical life. Yeah, I get that. So yeah, do the math. And then I wanted to understand one part, this is the part that always I get stuck with HSAs is that it's not a use it or lose it like an fsa. The money rolls over and now you're retirement. Are the withdrawals tax free even if they're not for medical expenses?
- [37:08]
Georgia Lee Hussey
That's a really my understanding is that it's for medical. So I treat it like Roth medical account. A Roth medical account, sure, on that.
- [37:16]
Farnoosh Torabi
Because I'm like you've waited so long to use this. Maybe they'll give us some freedoms. Hey, the laws could change as they are with everything else. Everything else. But thank you so much for that, Georgia. And good luck to you, Tasha. All right, that's a wrap, everybody. Thanks so much, Georgia. I really love having you on the show. Please come back again soon. Yes, I'm sure we'll have lots to talk about.
- [37:40]
Georgia Lee Hussey
Good Lord, Yes.
- [37:41]
Farnoosh Torabi
Thanks, everyone for tuning in. We'll see you on Monday. And I hope your weekend is so money.
- [38:20]
Georgia Lee Hussey
5G si cuatro telephonos aura Enos Planes.
- [38:23]
Farnoosh Torabi
Alinter Camier Telephonos the Apple, Samsung or Google.
- [38:26]
Georgia Lee Hussey
And Qualcare. Condition Solo and Verizon.
- [38:29]
Farnoosh Torabi
Race the rudders.
- [38:31]
Georgia Lee Hussey
Race the sails.
- [38:32]
Farnoosh Torabi
Race the sails. Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching.
- [38:36]
Georgia Lee Hussey
Over.
- [38:36]
Farnoosh Torabi
Roger. Wait. Is that an enterprise sales solution?
- [38:41]
Georgia Lee Hussey
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Farnoosh Torabi
On your next campaign.
- [38:53]
Georgia Lee Hussey
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