← So Money with Farnoosh Torabi
So Money with Farnoosh Torabi
1924: Best of So Money 2025: Money, Health, and Big Transitions in Midlife
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Stay alive and enjoy Unlimited Wireless for $25 a month forever with Boost Mobile. After 30 gigs, customers may experience lower speeds. Customers will pay $25 a month as long as they remain active on the Boost Mobile Unlimited plan. So Money Episode 1924 Our Year in Review the Best of Managing Money through Midlife. You're listening to so Money with award winning money guru Farnoosh Torabi. Each day get a 30 minute do.
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Inspiration from the world's top business minds.
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Authors, influencers and from Farnoosh yourselves. 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 back to so Money everybody. I'm Farnoosh Tarabi. We're continuing our look back at some of the most popular and impactful shows of the year. And and today's theme is one that hits home for many of us. Managing money through midlife. Because midlife is a lot, right? It's your late 30s, your 40s and 50s. When life is accelerating, there's more on your plate. Maybe you have kids, maybe you have also aging parents. Maybe you're navigating career transitions, relationship transitions, health issues, and sometimes all of it at once. This year we had some exceptional guests who brought insight and real practical advice for this stage of life. And and today we're revisiting a few standout moments, conversations about menopause and healthcare gaps, rebuilding after divorce money through the ADHD lens, and what it really means to be in the sandwich generation. Let's start with a topic that affects half the population, yet we're still wildly unprepared for it. One of the most important conversations, and that is Menopause, Money and Medical Gaps Episode 1799 with Tamsen Fadal. One of the most important conversations we had this year was with Tamsin. She's an Emmy winning journalist and menopause advocate. We learned that more than a million women in the US Enter menopause every year and so many of them are blindsided by symptoms, confusion, and a medical system that often is not trained to guide them through it. Tamsen has had a career spanning more than three decades in TV news and now she's focused on empowering women through midlife health changes. She has a best selling book called how to Menopause. Take charge of your health, reclaim your life and feel even better than before. She also produced a groundbreaking documentary called the M Factor which confronts the societal and medical shortcomings around menopause and advocates for a revolution in women's health. In this excerpt, you'll hear us talk about why women are so unprepared, why getting diagnosed and treated can be really frustrating, and why the burden too often falls back on women to advocate for themselves. Take a listen. 1.3 million women in this country enter menopause every single year. I know we're so unprepared. We don't know what's coming. And to your point, the medical community is not always the best first place to go. We have to go through the medical community. But we may, it may take several tries. What have you learned most about that piece of the journey? Getting diagnosed, getting the right treatment. What is your advice for women? And maybe it even starts with knowing your body and recognizing that these symptoms are not just to be brushed over.
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D
Yeah, I think that the first thing is that we've put the onus back on women and we have to take control of that narrative for a number of reasons. There are not enough doctors. First of all, there are doctors that do not know enough about menopause, were never trained about it in, in medical school, left. They're not aware of what's happening at this time in life. Most doctors are very clear up until we get to midlife and then women Just drop off that. And that's by doctor's own admission. That's why OBGYN is telling me over and over across the country, across the world. I got, I don't know, just like a chapter or a week or hardly anything about menopause. We just knew that it was this time your periods end. That was really disturbing when I found that out. And that's really what set me out to, to work on a documentary, to work on a book. Because I thought, wow, if we're putting the pressure back on women to know all this, I'm certainly not a doctor, I don't know. But I wanted to create some kind of template for women so that they could be able to go, okay, here's what's happening to me. I get it. I'm not alone, I'm not crazy and I know what I need to do. Find a doctor that, that has actually understanding about this, willing to talk about options, and then I can take my matters into my own hands if I decide it's not going to go the route of hormone therapy. But lifestyle is important to me as well. But I have to tell you, I've had doctors thank me for helping them bring this message out there. And that makes me feel good because that shows me we're all in this together, that there's no ego go about it, that there's all of us just trying to do the same thing together to help women not suffer.
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B
I want to get to the how to more of it. But just to double click on this issue a little bit more because I like to always understand things. Why do you think that the menopause education was so lacking. Has been so lacking. What do you think? What do you think is the reasoning behind that? Because I will tell you, there's a lot of education about how to get, when you're getting your period, the first sort of thing stage of womanhood and then this one is okay, whatever, let them fend for themselves. What is going on?
- [06:33]
D
Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. I think first of all, ageism plays a big role into all of it, right? That women in midlife are just not as important as once they're past their reproductive years. I think that's a really a big one. And I don't think that we can understate that and I don't think that we can pretend that's not happening. We watch how women after 40 or 45 are in a lot of different areas. Is the narrative shifting?
- [06:54]
E
Yes.
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D
Is it shifting fast enough? Never for Me, but we're going to get there. Two, there was a lot women were getting hormones and were having treatment for menopause until a study came out, a study called the whi that really got a lot of women confused and a lot of women scared about using hormones. And I think that really did a lot to all of us. It was 2002. It was a study that had started in 1993. It was supposed to last for 10 years, halted prematurely. And then there were two reasons that that were given for stopping the study, that they said that that hormone therapy showed no benefits in reducing heart disease and was linked to increased risk of breast cancer. Result was widespread panic. Women like literally were calling doctor's offices, throwing away their hormones. Lo and behold, there were a lot of issues with that study that have since come forward. But we have never been able to walk back the damage that study has done of scaring women.
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B
Yeah, I remember from your documentary the M Factor, it was said that of all of the women who are eligible for hormone replacement, only a minuscule amount are actually on hrt. And I forget, I don't want to, I don't want to say the statistics incorrectly, but it was staggeringly low.
- [08:09]
D
Staggering. It went from approximately like 40% down to 4% of hormone therapy. Just dropped off immediately. Conversation stopped. And that's the problem. So the conversation stopped with doctors in medical schools, with women in society, with community. So I think that what's the fear that it's starting?
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B
Oh sure, it can be scary when you think about this particular stage of your life and all that's wrapped with it, like you're getting quote unquote older. To your point, you're less valued in society. Maybe you're also as a woman, I know, I hear from a lot of women in my audience in their 40s and 50s and beyond, it's think lifes are very different. They're empty nesters, maybe they're getting divorced. They're blending families. They're dealing with more grief in their lives from their parents getting older or dying. And so with all of that, it's just one of those things like when we're afraid of something, we just don't face it. But as I say, when you're afraid of something, that's when you have to lean in because it's probably really important.
- [09:09]
D
A hundred percent and it is scary. Look, and this is the time that we don't have a roadmap for. It's a time that I certainly, you know, as somebody that came from news was like what I don't want to, I'm not going get older, I can't age because they're not going to want me anymore. So I do think there's a lot of things that we have just accepted for a very long time and I think not until recently have I seen people go, you know what, we're not accepting that anymore because it impacts our health, it impacts our long term health, it impacts all these different areas of our lives and that's not okay. And it's not just about menopause and symptoms. It's also about mindset, it's also about workplace. It's all the things that we want going forward in our lives that we want to be amazing and we have to allow be and do the best that we can for women.
- [09:53]
B
That was Tamsen Fadal. If you wanna go back and keep listening, head to episode 1799. We dive deeper into practical questions like how do we advocate for cost effective healthcare during this period? What lifestyle changes can really help and what do we need to know about hormone therapy, including why access is still such a major hurdle and how to make informed decisions without fear. Driving the bus now another major midlife reality for many people is this. Sometimes life doesn't change, it breaks open. And when a relationship ends, it's not only emotional, it can completely reshape your financial foundation. Which brings me to my next guest from episode 1835. We sat down with Elizabeth Cronice McLaughlin on how to rebuild after a divorce. This was a powerful deep dive in what it takes to pick up the pieces, all those financial pieces after a marriage ends. Elizabeth is a former Wall street lawyer, a leadership consultant, single mom, and the founder of the Gaia Leadership Group. Now, from the outside, Elizabeth's life looked pretty perfect. Elite career, national media appearances, a thriving business. But behind the scene, she was carrying deep financial insecurity, credit card debt and the emotional weight of divorce and single motherhood. And even while running a nearly seven figure company. In this deeply personal conversation, she shares how financial education helped her pay off $50,000 of debt in six months. She built emergency savings and began teaching her kids what she was never taught. In this passage, you'll hear us talk about something that doesn't get enough attention in financial comeback stories. The psychology of money and how emotional healing is can be a critical part of financial recovery. And then Elizabeth shares how she's translating all of this into real world money skills for her kids.
- [11:52]
C
I think this is a really important point that your listeners may want to hear about. One of the Things that happens in Budget Dog is you get a session with a therapist who focuses on financial issues. And I had never done a lot of therapy in other areas, but I'd never done anything related to the psychology of money and money management. And that one session was revolutionary to me. And I came out of it with a really deep understanding of the self sabotage mode that I had been in. And also what came out of that was I had mantras that were about what I could do with my money and what was possible for me that I started repeating every day. Now, I don't want to get too Stuart Smalley on everybody because it sounds that way, but I will tell you that the thing of saying to yourself, I can build a complete financial foundation. I am worthy of having money, my children are worthy of stability, and so am I. Saying those things to yourself every day really does have an impact because you're building up your own self confidence to be able to make good decisions. And I think part of what was going on with me was that I had so little faith in myself that, as you said, it was scary to even look at where I was. And once I started to have this sense of, I can do this right, I am worthy of this, and I happen to think we all are.
- [13:16]
B
Right?
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C
Like, it's not like I'm magically worthy of it. I think all of us are worthy of financial security and deserving of it. And deserving of it. Yes. And I'm a big proponent of universal basic income and other things. We could talk about other ways in which this plays out in our culture, but I think it's very important if you've struggled with a sense of unworthiness about money, to really make the conscious choice to build yourself up. Because that I had a moment at the very beginning when I was looking at how far in debt I was and my extreme negative net worth. It was really frightening when I looked like hundreds of thousands of dollars in the red. And when I finally looked at it and realized that I actually could acquire the skills to dig myself out and way more, everything started to click into place. And I'm not saying that you can rescue yourself from that level of debt in a matter of a year or two. There's definitely things I'm still working on there. But simultaneously I've managed to eradicate all my credit card debt, build an emergency savings, invest in my retirement, have a taxable brokerage account that I invest a couple hundred dollars into every week, and to start to really save money for the first time in my Life. And even though that doubt, rather still sometimes creeps in, to be able to be where I am now at 54, and say, oh, I may not actually have to work until I die. I may not actually have to be afraid of ending up homeless. Right. Because these were things that were running around in my head for a really long time. And I think you have to choose to create your own courage at certain moments. That was something that I had to consciously work on every day and that I still, frankly, have to consciously work on at least once a week. I may not be doing the mantras every day any longer, but there are moments where I'm like. And then I'm like, no, here we are. I'm worthy of this. I can build a solid financial foundation. I'm doing the work.
- [15:11]
B
This is such an important message, you coming on here. I'm just thinking about, had you heard someone like you 10 years ago on a podcast, right. Lay it all out and say, I have this much. I had this much in debt. I was this buried in bills, and I got educated, and it was scary. But then I did the thing and I addressed my trauma, and I'm not alone. And I have two children and I'm single parenting. Like, what an inspiration. What an inspiration. Do you know, like, this is gonna. You're gonna change people's lives. And I also wanna know how you're seeing it manifest through your kids. Yeah, I'm really curious to see what, maybe what they're. What you think they're picking up on.
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A
Yeah.
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What you talked about.
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C
Yeah. This is a really important question also, because one of the things that I realized, and it makes me so sad now when I think about it, but that if my parents. And again, I got to say, I adore my father. He's an amazing man, and he just simply, I think, generationally dropped the ball with me. And I can't really blame him for that because of how he was raised. Right. But when I think about how different my life would have been if someone had simply sat me down and said, this is how you do a budget. This is the percentage that you want to live on here. You want to put 30% into your investments. This is what I do with my kids anyway. 10% into your savings. If you don't have an emergency savings built up, and then you want. You want to live on the 60. These are the guidelines I've given my kids. Other people may have different guidelines, but to be able to say to them, you have to save and invest some of your money and then to set them up because this was another choice I did. I set them up with greenlight accounts. So my kids are already now at 11 and 13 investing in Vanguard index funds and it's only 150 bucks. They've gotten there from saving their allowance or something like that. But they check it like daily. And they. I've also said to them, you are not allowed to take money out of your investments to buy an electric scooter. You're not allowed to take money out of your investments when you decide you want a new, you know, mike for your gaming setup, which my son just bought yesterday from saving his allowance. You have to leave your investments in there for the long haul. And things are going to go up and things are going to go down, but we're going to dollar cost average it. I get this explicit with them about this stuff because I don't want them to ever feel as disempowered and afraid of their own choices as I did. Now it does mean we have some very serious discussions in this house now about how we're going to spend our money. And I say to them, we're ordering too much takeout. Again, doordash is where we tend to blow the budget from time to time. And I do say things to them like we are saving money for X our summer vacation at the shore. And in order to do that, we can't go spend $300 at the mall this weekend on new clothes. Again, raising growing kids, sometimes you don't have a choice in these things, but we do. We're very explicit about it in the house. And I also have gone to the point, which never happened in my house growing up, of sharing in an age appropriate way, I guess is the way to put it, like our financial picture, because they're a part of my family, right? We are a family together. And so they are interested, for instance, when we launch a new program in my company to know how it's doing. And I will say with them, to them, we had a great day today. We had three more sales and that's fantastic. Or we're revising our website and it's costing this much money. And sometimes they care and sometimes they're like, that's great, mom, whatever. But what I really want to be able to do is cultivate in an environment where you don't have to be ashamed to talk about money and you don't. It's not scary. And it's also something that is foundational to taking care of yourself.
- [18:53]
A
Right?
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C
Self care. Yeah, exactly.
- [18:56]
B
Empowerment it's personal hygiene. Hygiene.
- [18:58]
D
Exactly.
- [18:59]
C
Exactly.
- [19:00]
B
That was Elizabeth Cronice McLaughlin, episode 1835. One of the most powerful messages here is that financial recovery is not just numbers and math, right? It's mindset, it's courage, it's literacy. It's learning to look at your life without shame. And when you do that work, it's hard work. It doesn't just change your bank account, it changes the emotional temperature of your entire household. I'm Farnoosh Tarabi, host of so Money, and this episode is sponsored by ghlt. Feeling like your CPA is always one step behind, causing you to miss valuable tax advantages? Questioning if your tax plan is truly as optimized as it should be? That's where GELT comes in. GELT is a tax planning and strategy solution for you and your business. They're the modern alternative for entrepreneurs who feel like their CPA is reactive, not tech forward and maybe not asking the bigger strategic questions about how your business is growing. What I love about GELT is this. They make taxes part of the business plan. With GELT, your partner in taxes, CPAs and AI align your tax strategy to how your business grows. That includes the real levers that matter. Choosing the right entity structure, maximizing retirement contributions, and uncovering hidden credits and deductions, all handled alongside your business and personal compliance. And GILT is proactive. Your tax strategy gets revisited every quarter by a dedicated cpa, not just a tax time. No more slow replies, no more surprises, no more spreadsheets and email chaos. Just a slick dashboard, clear next steps and year round support. Schedule a call@joingelt.com today and learn how your taxes can become a lever for growth. That's join G-E-L-T.com and schedule your discovery call today. Farnish tarabi listeners get 10% off their first year of service. Just mention my name on your intake form. Going online without ExpressVPN is kind of like leaving your laptop unattended at a coffee shop while you run to the bathroom. Most of the time you're probably fine, but all it takes is one moment, one bad actor, and suddenly your personal information is gone. Anytime you connect to an unencrypted network, like at cafes, hotels or airports, your data isn't secure. Anyone else on that same network can potentially access your passwords, bank logins, or credit card details. And it doesn't take a sophisticated hacker to do it. With some cheap hardware and basic skills, even a teenager could pull it off. That's why everyone needs ExpressVPN it creates a secure encrypted tunnel between your device and the Internet, keeping your information private. You can use it whenever traveling or working from public wi fi. It works on all your devices, phones, laptops, tablets, so you're covered wherever you go. And the security is top notch. Their encryption is so strong it would take a hacker with a supercomputer over a billion years to break. And as someone who deals with finances and personal data every day, I know that protecting that information isn't optional, it's essential. Secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com somoney that's E X P R E S S vpn.com somoney to find out how you can get up to four extra months. Expressvpn.com somoney.
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Of course he did.
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B
All right, next I want to talk about a midlife shift that surprises a lot of people. Many in midlife are diagnosed with ADHD and it can completely reframe how they've experienced money, organization, follow through, and even self worth. In episode 1841, we explored ADHD at the intersection of our financial lives with Nicole Stanley, a financial expert and founder of Arise Financial Coaching. Nicole was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult and that diagnosis reshaped her understanding of herself, her money habits, and how she now supports clients who feel like traditional budgeting advice just doesn't stick. This conversation is very personal and practical. We talk about how ADHD shapes early money behaviors, why conventional tools often don't work for neurodivergent brains, and how to build systems rooted in self, compassion, automation, and, yeah, dopamine. In this excerpt, Nicole shares what led to her diagnosis. And then we get into what actually motivates the ADHD brain when it comes to money.
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E
It's funny because, so I'm a late diagnosed ADHD woman, which I know many people who listen to ADHD podcasts are late diagnosed like me, because when we were younger there was more of a focus on men or boys with ADHD and there was much less literature about how it presented in girls. So I grew up believing I was just a little bit of a space cadet, a little disorganized, very disorganized, very forgetful. I struggled in school and those were never red flags for anyone, including me. I remember coaches making jokes about ADHD or making jokes about me being a space cadet and thinking just chalking it up to maybe I'm just not as smart as other people. That was how I took it. And so I feel like I made it through public school, nothing special. And I had managed for most of my adult life with all the traits I have now. They just weren't as disruptive in a way that became unmanageable. Like I said, I was very messy, very forgetful, got bad grades. Those things were manageable. I also had some relationship struggles. These are all very common for people with adhd. But it was when I became a mother that my neurodivergence became no longer manageable for me. Now, I didn't know it at the time, I didn't know this is the reason why, but I felt this overwhelming amount of overwhelming Overwhelm is the only way I can think about it when I became a mom, and some of that was postpartum depression and anxiety, which now my therapist wonders, was that just undiagnosed severe ADHD your whole life anyway. But there was just a lot of tasks that required follow through. And things that didn't come naturally to me were very obvious when I became a mom. So why was I forgetting to my kids nagging at me, asking for something and forgetting over and over again.
- [27:17]
A
Right.
- [27:17]
E
Being all over the place in the house. Like, these are just kind of small examples. But they compound to this feeling of I'm a failure, I really suck at this. Why is this easier for everybody else, not me? Fast forward a few years to when I actually brought on my first employee in my business. And you spend a lot of time when you have a small business with one employee, a ton of time. Probably spend at least 20 hours with someone and these things that would come up where I would be forgetful, impulsive. The three things about ADHD are impulse control, executive functioning and working memory. Which is always the most ADHD thing that I forget the third one. But when I was talking to her a lot about my struggles in parenting with my daughter, who has very similar traits to me, and my own struggles with myself and with work, she started just slightly like nudging. Have you ever read about adhd? Have you ever read about how it presents in women? And I remember thinking like, no, like that's not real, that's no way.
- [28:21]
B
I just need to work harder.
- [28:22]
E
I'm just gonna work harder.
- [28:24]
D
Yes.
- [28:25]
B
Overcompensate, right?
- [28:27]
E
Yeah. And it got to the point in my parenting that I was looking up traits about my children. And as they're explaining the traits I'm going through, they're talking about how this is ADHD in children and how ADHD manifests in young girls. And I'm like, but this is normal, this is normal. And I remember telling my husband, this is not. This was me. They're telling me this is this. But that was me my whole life. What are you talking. Nobody told me these things. And so I had a bit of an existential crisis once I found out and started reading because I didn't want to be a self diagnosed person. I wanted someone to evaluate me, really see for sure. Instead of doing like a TikTok quiz, I was like, I am going to find the most serious ADHD person in my city and I'm gonna go to that person. So I booked a six and a half hour mental Examination with somebody who just specializes in diagnosing ADHD and put me through a lot of tests. He had. He interviews your family, your friends to find out more about how these things manifest. And at the end of the whole day, okay, I look at him, and I was like, so tell me, right?
- [29:41]
B
How did I do?
- [29:42]
E
How did I do?
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B
You felt confident, right? I think you said, yes.
- [29:46]
E
There was a moment with this one attention test that I was like, I am killing this. And I told him I was killing it, and he wrote it in my psych eval. He was like, interestingly enough, Ms. Stanley said she was, quote, crushing it, when, in fact, she did very poorly. So I asked him at the end, so how'd I do? And he goes with this, like, bewildered look on his face. Like, I think. And I was like, okay, but, like, how bad is it? How bad? Just tell me. Okay, okay, let me show you the data. And he pulls open, like, my results, and he goes, this is. And this is a example of a chart of how severe someone's ADHD is. And so what this means is if I were to line up a hundred women with ADHD from the least ADHD to the most, you would be number 99. I think that when. When you tell someone with ADHD you should do this thing, because you should, it really doesn't hit for us.
- [30:38]
B
We don't ever use that word.
- [30:40]
E
Okay, great. I should floss every day. I don't. Right? Like, I know all. I still don't know the end. Okay? This is, like, personal. I still don't see the future in which my flossing helps me. Like, I can't connect to it. Therefore, I struggle to floss. I might know all the reasons why, but I'm not emotionally connected to the end goal. And so I think that the first step of getting an adhder to be motivated is to get them really excited about the carrot at the end. Not, what are all the things they have to do to get to where.
- [31:13]
A
They want to go.
- [31:15]
E
What is the thing you're trying to get to? Why is the sexiest the most fun thing you've ever thought of? That's something worth saying. Oh, I might. Yeah, I might negotiate some of my bills.
- [31:28]
B
Yeah.
- [31:28]
E
Yeah.
- [31:28]
D
Okay.
- [31:29]
E
Maybe I'll change banks. Right? Like, it makes those tasks in between seem much more doable because there's such a juicy carrot at the end. So I think the first thing is connecting with your goals emotionally and then making sure that the process in which you get them. The process, all the steps that you have to take have some built in dopamine or rewards along the way. We talk about this at. In terms of how do we build more dopamine into your relationship with money? And it can come in just little strategies which I've talked about on this podcast before that I really like to use a little strategy like overestimate every single bill so that every month when you look back at your bills, you find extra money. It's just a different dopamine experience versus oh crap, I underestimated again. Now I have less for my goals and now, you know, blah blah, blah, you feel like a failure.
- [32:26]
B
Which, if I can interrupt just for a second because I'm, I'm selfishly taking notes on all this because I'm a mom to a child with adhd. I, I'm not self di. I might be self diagnosed as well, but he's definitely. We've done the tests.
- [32:41]
C
Yep.
- [32:41]
B
And first of all, what you said about the word should, that's a trigger word, is that it's like I have. I'm remembering it now as you said it, like, okay, that big surrender. There is an adventurousness and an entrepreneurship that is inherent to a lot of people with adhd. And this word should or no feels very limiting and that makes it feel like they have to fight more to get what they want. And then the other thing about the. Sorry, I lost my train of thought. What were you saying about dopamine? Built in awards, connecting with your goals. Ugh, I lost my train of thought there. But anyway. But yeah, I can totally relate to what you're saying. Just observing a young person in my house who has this. And I'm just thinking as he gets older, what a gift to be able to give him these. This model that you're creating for your clients.
- [33:33]
E
What's cool about it too? I would say something that really helped my self esteem around this topic because the first few months was really low self esteem for me. I looked at every failure in my life, could see clearly how ADHD was a part of it, looked at failed relationships, regrets I had. I felt really low for a time. And so one of the books my husband read, I forget the author, but it's called Hunters in a Farmer's World. And it's about how ADHD is not a dysfunction. Right. It's actually a evolutionary trait that we need as humans to survive. When we used to live in clans, there were those who farmed, those who tended, who could do those monotonous tasks that it takes to care. And then there were Those that were gifted with hunting, right? Which is they had to be, they had to be distractible, right? Because they needed to notice when there were predators, they needed to notice when there was danger. They needed to be impulsive because when they saw an opportunity, they needed to pounce on it. They also needed to be able to get in that state where they're focused, so hyper focused on their goal that the whole world falls away. It's why people with ADHD are seven times more likely to become small business owners and so.
- [35:05]
B
And explorers and. Yeah, it's so true. It's so true. We need people with adhd.
- [35:11]
E
Yes. And so I think it's really important, as people see, there's a lot of negative statistics about people with ADHD and money. We're more likely to be in debt, we're more likely to die early, we're more likely to have health problems, addiction, incarceration. I remember when my psychiatrist told me, he said, with your outcomes, with your outcomes that you're married, happily with children, with the severity of your adhd, it's almost a bit of a statistical anomaly, right? You're really lucky. And so I, I think that there are a lot of negative messages to people with adhd. And I think that what I want to be doing is talking about a lot of the positive things that come from your ADHD as well when it comes to money, right? The things about you that actually make it easier than others because you're able to get in that hyperfocused state when you have a goal that you can taste, when you're able to feel like you've figured something out, you become more almost obsessive about it, right. When you are able to depersonalize finances and financial success and to say, this is a game I'm playing and I want to win, right? That is a completely different mode and level unlock for people with adhd. The problem is that because most people don't have it, it's not the language that our culture talks in with money. And so it's important for us to engage with narratives that inspire us, that make us feel heard, be feeling free to say, oh, that doesn't work for me, I'm going to find another way. Not that doesn't work for me. Therefore I suck at this. I think if I can give someone with ADHD that type of mentality with money, I have no doubts that they can be successful.
- [37:00]
B
That was Nicole Stanley episode 1841. And I want to really underscore this. If traditional financial advice has not worked for you. It doesn't mean you're broken. It doesn't mean you're not bright. It just may mean that the system you're trying to use isn't designed for you for how your brain works. The goal isn't to shame yourself into better habits or force yourself into better habits. It's to build supports that actually match your wiring. And finally, what is more midlife than the sandwich generation? Raising kids while also stepping into supporting aging parents. Financial caregiving is one of the most emotionally intense and logistically complicated money roles that we can step into, and it often hits families fast. In episode 1874, I sat down with Beth Pinsker. She's a financial planning columnist at MarketWatch. She's a certified financial planner and the author of a new book called My Mother's A Guide to Financial Caregiving. Beth is also a mother, and inside the book she takes us through her personal journey of being a mom while managing her mother's finances during a health crisis and the maze that so many families face, including keeping documents current, understanding long term care realities, and advocating for loved ones when institutions push back. In this excerpt, I wanted to share one of the most critical and time sensitive parts of caregiving planning, and that is the power of attorney. You'll hear Beth talk about what it is, why you need it before a crisis, and why even when you have it, you may still have to fight to use it. Take a listen.
- [38:44]
A
The very first thing you need is power of attorney. It is absolutely the most important thing that you need, and you need it now for everybody in your family. And the good news is, for the most part, you can get it for free and download it from the Internet. It's probably best if you go to a lawyer and get a whole set of documents all at once. But you can take care of a power of attorney with a download. Fill it out, get it notarized, and you're good to go. But you need to do it for everybody over 18. My son turned 18 and I marched him down to the notary with a stack of papers. And that's just how we roll in my house, because we know about all of this. But those things need to also be kept up to date. So if your parents did their paperwork 15 years ago and then moved like my parents did from Pennsylvania to New Jersey to Florida, the Pennsylvania power of attorney is not good in Florida and it's not good after five years. So you have to keep up on these things with everybody. You think you have an aunt in Chicago who's going to One day need you to do something for her. You need to make sure she has a power of attorney. Because the options are you download it for free from the Internet or pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $90 to get like a customized one. Or you pay $18,000 to $20,000 to go to court. Yeah. So those are your options. Think about it that way. I could do this for free right now and have peace of mind, or if something bad happens, I have to go to court for months and get guardianship or conservatorship, whichever your state calls it, because it changes. But you have to go to court, and it's hard. And then the number one mistake people make is they take that power of attorney if they get it, and they put it in the safe deposit box. And the safe deposit box doesn't always have somebody else's name on it. And so even to get the power of attorney that would authorize you to be in the safe deposit box, you have to get in the safe deposit box first. And so you have to go to court in order to get power of attorney to get into the safe deposit box to get. Get the power of attorney. So don't keep that.
- [41:01]
B
It's not just like stated in your. It's not just stated in your estate plan.
- [41:06]
A
And no power of attorney. And the power of attorney and the health care proxy are for before somebody dies. Those.
- [41:15]
C
Right, right.
- [41:16]
B
Things are a living will. That's what that is.
- [41:19]
A
Living will is a statement of your wishes. But the health care proxy is what actually allows you to. To make decisions for another human being. And then you also need this form called a HIPAA waiver, which allows somebody else to have access to your medical records. And those are things you need before somebody dies. And then those things, like the minute somebody dies, those things go out of force. Power of attorney does not work for a person who is deceased. That's when you need the will or the trust. My mom had all of these things, but that didn't make it any easier for me. So power of attorney is this document that says, I, Beth Pinsker, say that my son can have my permission to take care of my banking needs, go in my safe deposit box, buy and sell property for me, whatever it is that I allow him to have the permission to do. And then you have to get the. Or when you want to use that power of attorney, the person who, like my son, would have to go down to the bank or call the bank and say, I need to enforce this power of attorney, when I went to do that for my mom. I took the forms, I went to the window, I said, my mom's in the hospital. I need to use her power of attorney. I need to be able to write checks to pay the caregivers. And they said, no, no, you can't do that. They're like, you have to go to court. I'm like, but no, I have this power of attorney. They're like, no, you can't.
- [42:47]
B
No.
- [42:49]
A
And we went this whole back and forth for this, what seemed like to me an interminable amount of time. But I was like, I know these are good. I'm a professional. I do this for a living. I had my mother go to a proper attorney. They were drawn up in the last five years. I know this is good. They can't. It took me two two hour visits on subsequent days. I had to make appointments for to get those enforced. They wouldn't take them.
- [43:19]
B
Why were they just.
- [43:21]
A
This is what banks do.
- [43:22]
B
Competent. It was just incompetence.
- [43:24]
A
It was just 90% of people face this when they go to the bank. I talked to one attorney for my book. I don't know if you've had her on the show, but she's an estate attorney in Illinois, Indiana, I'm sorry, Jenny Roselle. And she had to sue a bank to accept her client's power of attorney. Because they said, no, this is, we can't accept this document. They are so super careful about allowing anybody access who's not the account holder. That banks today just make it impossible for you to execute that power of attorney. And so if you don't know that, first of all, if you don't know that you need it, you got to go to court. If you do know that you need it and you have it, you have to stamp your feet and cause a ruckus in order to get them to let you use it. And then you have to do it over and over again. Because it's not just the bank, it's the brokerage account, it's the cable company, it's the power and light company, it's the gas company, it's anybody who interacts financially with your loved one, you have to show them that power of attorney and get them to accept it. So you have to just over and over again.
- [44:40]
B
So what was the breakthrough for you? Was there a script you used? Was there a threat you made? Because this is basically the bank is interfering with the law. It sounds.
- [44:52]
A
And yes, I said, I am not leaving here until you accept this document. I know this document is good. And you have. You just basically have to accept it. I offered to have my mom get on the phone with them. I offered to have an E notary verify her signature. I offered all of these things, and they said no. And I said, then you're just going to have to accept my documents. And they spent two hours on the phone with the corporate headquarters and they faxed documents and they scanned things and they went back and forth. And she was on hold. And literally, like I'm sitting on the opposite side of her desk for two hours just holding my temperature. Because in those circumstances so much you want to blow up and yell. People yell at customer service workers all the time, right? It doesn't do any good for anybody. It just makes the situation worse. The thing I learned throughout this entire adventure with my mother, from when she was sick to after she passed away and I had to deal with then all the estate stuff, is that you just have to be relentlessly tenacious and you have to just be okay with that. And that's hard for some people. I had a friend who had to do this recently with an insurance problem, and she is the sweetest, nicest person in the world. And she hates confrontation. And she had to just relentlessly get on the phone with people and just badger them. Just over and over, the same phone call, the same customer service number. And you want to. It drives you crazy. But you need these things and they're important.
- [46:26]
B
That was BETH PINSKER, Episode 1874. And if you have nothing else from this, and if you take nothing else from this conversation, take this. You do not want to be figuring out power of attorney in an emergency. I didn't realize how tricky this was until Beth told me this is one of those do it now so future you doesn't suffer moments. Get the documents, keep them updated. Don't lock them away. Understand the institutions that your parents are working with will require with regards to this power of attorney. And be prepared even then to be relentlessly persistent when these institutions make it harder than it needs to be. Advocacy, right? Like we always say, no one cares more about your money or your parents money in this case than you. And that's our show, everybody. If today's episode hit home, I encourage you to go back and listen to the full conversations with Tamsen Fadal, Elizabeth Cronice, McLaughlin, Nicole Stanley and Beth Pinsker. We have links to those episodes in the show Notes Midlife. It can feel like you're carrying three lives at once. The life you're building, the life you're supporting, and the life you're trying to protect. But the more prepared we are, the more options we create. And options are everything. Thanks for listening, everybody. I'll see you back here on Wednesday. Where we're going to be going back down memory lane throughout 2025 for the best episodes on building wealth and planning for retirement. I hope your day is so money. When you're a forward thinker, you don't just bring your A game, you bring your AI game. Workday is the AI platform that transforms the way you manage your people, money and agents so you can transform tomorrow.
- [48:25]
E
Workday, moving business forever forward. Guys, thanks for helping me carry my Christmas tree.
- [48:30]
B
Zoe. This thing weighs a ton. Drewski, lift with your legs, man.
- [48:33]
A
Santa.
- [48:34]
B
Santa, did you get my letter? He's talking to you britches. I'm not.
- [48:37]
E
Of course he did.
- [48:39]
B
Right Santa, you know my elf Drew Ski here. He handles the nice list. And elf. I'm six three. What everyone wants is iPhone 17 and at T Mobile. You can get it on them. That center stage front camera is amazing for group selfies. Right, Mrs. Claus?
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E
I'm Mrs. Claus's much younger sister and AT T Mobile there's no trade in needed when you switch so you can.
- [48:58]
B
Keep your old phone or give it as a gift.
- [49:00]
E
And the best part, you can make the switch to T Mobile from your phone in just 15 minutes.
- [49:04]
A
Nice.
- [49:04]
B
My side of the tree is slipping.
- [49:06]
E
Kimber.
- [49:07]
B
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- [49:27]
D
Com.