← So Money with Farnoosh Torabi
So Money with Farnoosh Torabi
1929: Ask Farnoosh: Real Money Questions for an Uncertain Start to 2026
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I gotta tell you, I saw when you asked AI about probiotics. No judgment, but I think Ollie can help. Probiotics are the good bacteria that support your digestive and immune system. Just two gummies a day to bring balance to your gut. So save the AI for drafting that reply to your ex. That's gonna take guts. Go to o l l y.com to learn more. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Ali so money episode 1929 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 back to so Money everybody. I'm Farnoosh Tarabi. Happy new year. Happy 2026. I know I'm not really supposed to say that anymore. It's January 9th and according to Larry David, we have up until January 3rd to wish everybody we want a a Happy New Year. I actually had to go to ChatGPT the other day like yesterday and go, what's an alternative to Happy New Year so I can email someone and not sound like a broken record or clueless. And these were ChatGPT's recommendations. It was like, dear, so and I hope you're easing into the new year easily. I Hope you're doing well at the start of the new year. Like you just can't say happy New Year. I guess that's the etiquette. Anyway, I just want to start the show today by saying that I've got no plans for you right now. I don't have any 30 day cleanse. I don't have a two week trial, I don't have a checklist. There's no urgency, no challenge, no reset, no demands. I'm not gonna ask you to reinvent your life, your financial life by the end of this month. No, not here. I'm just gonna instead give you permission. This whole month is just about resetting. That's what I'm doing. I never really was like a resolutions person. I do like the idea of setting int and using January to think about what I liked about 2025 and what I would like to add in 2026. My daughter asked us at dinner the other night, so what are our goals? She's my type, a kid for 2026. And we all went around the table. But honestly we all just gave answers that were very transactional. Almost like I was like, I'd like a new bed, I'd like to redo my bedroom. My son, I think said that he would like to attend the World cup games in New Jersey. So what does that say about us? We're moving slow in January. As I said the other day, the January train has left the station. I am not on it. I am just listening. I'm learning. I'm trying to get centered. I'm feeling cautiously optimistic. I am feeling more grounded. I am always curious and I'm trying to just work on my patience. I'll have us all know that what typically happens in the markets, at least in January, historically January has had this reputation for what's called the quote unquote January effect. The January effect, where stocks, especially the small cap stocks tend to perform really well because investors at, at the beginning of the month are putting fresh capital to work typically after the end of the year selling and tax loss harvesting. We talked about that towards the end of the year. But January's performance is not destiny. And trying to read the year based on what's going on right now in the news, especially with what's going on right now in the news. If you're following the news right now, you're probably not very optimist optimistic about what's going to happen in 2026. That's a mistake. Don't lean too much on headlines and the markets especially don't reward us for reading too much into them. As we say, history doesn't repeat. It rhymes, right? So instead of asking, what's the market going to do this year, just think about what kind of an investor you want to be. I like to be a long term investor. I want to be measured. I want to adjust for risk. I want to make sure that I am prepared when I retire. So all this to say, let's use this month to reconnect with our financial values. Let's try to revisit some money decisions that maybe we've left over from the previous year and use this show as a tool to guide you every single week. Now, we've got many questions in the mailbag from a young person in the audience who's, I think, doing a lot of things right. But still, you can't help it. When you're in your mid-20s, you feel like your life is starting, it's racing by in some ways and you want to make sure that in 10 years you have something to show for it. Those were her words and also my words that I used 20 years ago. 20 years ago, I sat in my room in my apartment in New York City. I just wanted to make sure that in 10 years I wasn't going to still be living in that studio because I wanted to feel like I was upwardly mobile or human. We want to feel like we're progressing. That's what we all want. We're moving the needle, we're moving the dial, we're kicking the ball closer. Some finishing goal post. And the goalpost keeps changing. But we like progress. It makes us feel successful. It makes us feel like we're achieving. But sometimes when your finances are not in the best of shapes, or when you're not making as much money as you'd like, or you do have a lot of debt, it feels like you're never going to get ahead, you're always going to be behind. And so you get scared. Am I ever going to wake up one day and have something actually meaningful to show for all this work that I'm doing, work at my job, work in my financial life, work in investing in myself. Will it actually amount to something that I can be proud of in the next decade or so? And that's something that I had a big conversation with David Bach about at the beginning of this week. If you missed that episode, go back and check it out. He's the author of the Automatic Millionaire, which has been revised after 20 years, came out this week. And it's also A conversation that I had, as I said, with a listener who's in her 20s this week. We have questions about where to put your cash right now. You don't want to risk it in the stock market necessarily. This is cash that you want to have access to in the event of an emergency, where to park money safely. Right now we have questions about health, savings accounts, HSAs, some credit related questions, lots in store. But first, let's talk about some of the financial headlines that were stirring this week, caught my attention I think are worth repeating here on the show. Firstly, this is interesting. Grocery prices went up during COVID and they've pretty much stayed high since COVID They've just stayed high, what's called like a stagflation at the grocery stores. Dairy supplies especially though, are seeing some price hikes and that's due to a decline in supplies. There's been some recent reporting that found dairy supplies are tightening, which is putting upward pressure on prices for things like milk and butter and cheese. Not to panic, this is not about scarcity in the dramatic sense. It's just about supply chain shifts and labor costs and production adjustments. So what does this mean for us if we're big on cheese, which is me included? I tried to cut back on cheese last year just because I was curious to see what that would do for my inflammation and my gastro stuff. And you know, it's true for me at least less cheese means less bloating. However, there's a new book out. Have you heard about this new book that came out actually this week called Eat yout Ice Cream? Yeah, Eat yout Ice Cream by Zeke Emanuel. He's a professor at University of Pennsylvania. It's six simple rules for a long and healthy life and one is to embrace dairy that actually ice cream can be a pretty healthy dessert. But this book is also positioning itself as the antithesis of the very popular book by Peter Attia called Outlive the Science and Art of Longevity. I watched a clip of the author Zeke Emanuel, CBS with Nora o'. Donnell. And Professor Emanuel was none too happy with Peter Attia and his book Outlive, although he said we do agree on a lot of things. But I very much disagree with a lot of his points in that book and mostly that he doesn't spend a lot of time in the book Outlive, talking about the importance of emotional social connections to help you live longer, healthier lives. That's such a big part of it. And it was just completely ignored in the 300 pages of that book. So Wrote eat your ice cream to be a counterpoint to that book. Okay, Dairy is going up in price. So listen, food inflation doesn't always move in straight lines. I want everyone to know that this is just news this week. It could change next week, next month. So it doesn't mean we have to like suddenly adjust our budgets or our eating habits. And by the way, you can freeze milk, you can freeze dairy. So when it goes on sale or if you see it on discount somewhere, or if you shop in bulk, this was a tip I got back in the day when I was doing a lot of savings stories and videos at Yahoo. Finance. I hosted a show there called Financially fit. And we would go to the grocery stores and we would interview supermarket experts and savings experts and they're like, did you know that you can freeze milk and you can freeze cheese if it gets to that point, and suddenly there's milk flation everywhere. Dairyflation for a long time, that might be something we might consider doing. Especially we have big families or my kids, I remember when they were a lot younger, we were going through two gallons of milk every few days. And even now, 8 years old, 11 years old, they're not drinking as much milk, but we're buying probably maybe three to four half gallons of milk a week. But just also a reminder, when these prices in the grocery stores go up, there's also an effect on eating out too. So that's another area where if you wanted to cut back, you could as a result of the food inflation. All right, this headline I had to read twice because I was like, what's he really gonna do? But President Trump says he wants to ban Wall street from buying homes, which just seemed. Whenever. Have you seen a sentence with the word Trump Ban and Wall Street, Those words in it. He loves Wall Street. So this headline grabbing a lot of attention. My brother actually texted it to me today and he was like, look at this, rejoice. And I was like, yeah, let's just hold on a second. I'm not holding my breath. But the idea behind this, and if it is real and it is true, and there's no strings attached, it's great. The idea is to restrict institutional investors from purchasing single family homes, something many people blame for rising home prices and fewer options for everyday buyers. Institutional ownership has increased in our country. It distorts local housing markets. This is not the only reason, of course, housing has become so expensive. We're dealing obviously with decades of under building zoning restrictions, higher interest rates of reduction in supply, wage growth that hasn't kept pace with home prices. So this proposal taps into a lot of the frustration across the country with home prices. It's not a silver bullet, but it is. It's a nice headline considering all the other headlines out there. I'm Farnish Tarabi, host of so Money and this episode is sponsored by Gelt 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 Gilt comes in. Gilt 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. 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Buying a home on your goals list in 2026 you to listen to our episode next week with researchers at Bankrate on their housing survey in America. Sticking with housing, Wall Street Journal found that more home purchase agreements are falling apart. This is not good, right? Have any of you ever gone to buy a home, put in the offer, gotten pretty close to closing and then had to pull out for whatever reason? Maybe you lost your job, maybe you split up with your partner. It happens more often than you think. I've heard anecdotes just locally here whenever you Because I follow real estate pretty closely here because I'm obsessed like that and I'll notice a house goes into contract but then never closes and then I'll look into it. I'll might meet the agent, I'll say what happened? Oh, had to pull out because they were getting divorced and buying a home can Be stressful. And it's like a make or break for a lot of couples anyway. In the Wall Street Journal, they found that about 15% of home purchase agreements today are now being canceled, which is an increase from this time last year. Buyers are getting cold feet. And again, the reasons are maybe some splitting up perhaps, but job security fears for sure, economic anxiety, sticker shock. So maybe in the beginning you're more hopeful that you can make the purchase work. You do the mortgage math, the tax math, the insurance math. But then you look even closer and you're like, oh, wait a minute, though. Utility costs, maintenance costs, and then you think about how the insurance costs could go up every year. Many people are backing out of a deal because it just is no longer feeling right. The math is not mathing. And I think that's what you have to do. Better do it before you sign the paperwork than when you're in the house now and your mortgage is due. And then it's way more expensive and costly and timely to sell. But I think this story really is just another sign of a softening job market, a weakening economy. Even the buyers who are making offers right now, who are they? Some of them are pulling out at the last minute. And this is a big story. So this is everywhere right now. Wage garnishment is beginning for student loan borrowers very soon. This is serious for borrowers who are in default. If this applies to you or someone you love, here's some clarification. There are options. There's loan rehabilitation. There's income driven repayment, negotiated settlements. But you don't want to ignore this, right? It's only going to make it worse. The Education Department said that it expects the first wage of wage garnishment notices to be sent this week and that notices will increase in scale monthly. It is, according to the Wall Street Journal, the latest step by the Trump administration to get federal student loan borrowers back into repayment after an ext forbearance period that began in the pandemic. There are nearly 3 million federal student loan borrowers that are in default status recently in default status. What that means is that they basically haven't made payments in more than 270 days or approximately nine months. And that's according to Education Department data. If you're at risk, make sure you're on some sort of a manageable payment plan. The Education Department will use your most recent tax return to determine how much you can afford to pay on an income driven repayment plan. If you expect to earn more in the year ahead. You might want to consider applying for a plan before filing your 2025 tax return. That's according to advice in the Wall Street Journal this week. As I mentioned, we kicked off the new year new episodes with David Bach, author of the Automatic Millionaire, which has been revamped, Revised for its 20th anniversary edition. David was in the city. He now lives in Italy, and he's an old friend. We actually first met when I was 24 years old. So I've known him for 22 years. Nicest guy. I first met him virtually through the television, through the tube. He was on Oprah. And I remember watching him on my little TV on my desktop at work. I was a business news producer at the time in New York. We all had little TVs. Can you imagine, like, part of your job is watching the news? That was my job. And I remember watching him on Oprah releasing this book and just hearing him first talk about all these, like, concepts that I'd never heard of before. Things like pay yourself first, automatic payments, paying your mortgage, making a 13th payment on your mortgage, et cetera, et cetera, automating all your bills. I was like, that's brilliant. And I was a producer at the time and at this show in New York. And I reached out and I booked him on my show and I leveraged my job to be able to meet David Bock. And then from there, the rest is history. We stayed in touch and we've become friends. And so definitely listen to that episode. It's probably one of the last interviews he'll ever really give about personal finance. He's more or less entering retirement with this new updated book of his. And I was just very grateful to be able to sit down with him in New York for a very long time and talk to him about where he started and where he is today. His advice and how that has changed, if it has changed over the many years, especially with all of the ups and downs that the world has gone through. Of course, back then the big shift was the web and automation technology. Now it's AI. And back then we didn't have things like the inflation necessarily that we do today, or what feels like just unprecedented in affordability. Yeah, like people can't even just like leave their parents homes. It's a. It's tough out there. And so does his advice still hold? Interesting conversation. I definitely think to start the new year, I really advise that one to be the first episode. Then also this week, a conversation that I like. A little surprise and delight on the podcast. And this was it. Terry Trespicio, my friend, came on to talk about the career and financial superpower you probably never thought you needed or you even haven't. You do have it. It's inside of you. This is the thing. We all have this. It's super accessible to all of us. It's free. You don't need to pay for it. It's in you. You can do this. And it's called writing. And it's not called asking ChatGPT to write for you. You can give ChatGPT your ideas, your thoughts, your personal ideas, and let it clean it up, as Terry calls it. Let ChatGPT be the Roomba of your writing process, but have it start with you. And that's a lot of people are skipping that step right now, right? They're going to AI and they're like, write me an email. In this episode, we talk about how to, in this very rinse and repeat world of AI, bring your magic to your world of thought leadership. Emailing, posting on LinkedIn, creating a website with compelling copy for your business, creating a sales sheet. Whatever it is, whatever you're doing that requires writing things down. It could be your journal, it could be personal, right? It doesn't matter what it's for, but the process of writing it unleashes the most important stuff in life. Critical thinking, empathy, processing, and ultimately agency. Because when you have ideas, have something to say, you have confidence. There is importance and significance there. And when you don't write it down, you don't have something to say. You have to hear Terry break it down. She does it better than I do, and that's why she's my guest. But writing helps us with everything from negotiating to advocating to clarifying our thinking, especially around money, especially around our work, our personal endeavors. So if you want leverage in life, this one is a must. Listen. Again, a great episode to start the new year with. So if you haven't caught up with the show, make some time. This weekend, David Bach, followed by Terry Trisio. All right, let's hit the mailbag. First up, Amanda has a question about HELOCs. Shortly after securing a home equity line of credit, is there an advisable time period after opening up a HELOC to wait to open a new credit card? For context, Amanda says, we are embarking on a new home addition, hence the reason we got the heloc. And I'd like to change credit cards to a better travel card to maximize rewards from our upcoming expenses, but I don't want to jeopardize our new line of credit. Thanks so much. Happy New Year. Love your show. All right, Amanda, So, yes, you can open a new credit card after securing a heloc, but your timing does matter. So once your HELOC is finalized and funded, the biggest risk has passed. You've gone through the application process. They've checked your credit. When you apply for this credit card, you might see a small, temporary dip in your credit score, because, again, going through that application process for this credit card, there's going to be a hard inquiry on your credit report. Though, as I said, you already took out this heloc. Assuming that it's open, you can take money out of it. Now. The application process is done. You've closed on this heloc. It's not going to impact your interest rate on the HELOC or your access to the heloc. That process is done. You've moved on. What will happen potentially is your credit score could take a dip, but it would be temporary. If you're not applying for another major loan, another credit card, right away, no big deal. This is fine to do in my book, but I'd say that once you open up this credit card, if there is something else you want to apply for, I would wait, like, 60 days to do that. In the meantime, keep debt to credit utilization low, meaning less than 30%, ideally less than 10%. And then, of course, always be paying your balances down aggressively, ideally in full every month. And then I don't think you should have anything to worry about. All right, next up is our friend Martine, who emails me and says farnoosh whenever I hear a story about an entrepreneur who, quote, unquote, quits their job to pursue a dream for two, three, four years while they're working to get the business launched or profitable. I often hear them say it took them X number of years before they could pay themselves. But what does this actually mean? Were they living off of their savings the whole time, off of charity? Does it mean they were living on some kind of loan? Because certainly they were spending some of the money on themselves during that period before their business was making money. Rent, food, clothing, car repair, et cetera. Can you help me understand what this really means? Yeah, this is such a good question. And it's confusing, right? Because how can you actually do that, not pay yourself until your business is in a, say, profitable place? You're not taking a salary from the business. The truth is, it's a combination or one of or all of the things you just described. I just interviewed a guy in town here In Montclair, New Jersey, who's opening up a business related to cannabis. Actually, we are covering a lot of the local economy here in Montclair for the Montclair pod. If you're in the area, you might want to subscribe, describe. But we were curious about the cannabis industry because we have literally no businesses here that are cannabis, that are in the cannabis market. Even though you could. I won't get into the reasons why, but long story short, this one entrepreneur was telling us he quit his job and is starting this business. And the business has all of these costs. He's not making any money selling anything yet. And so I said, well, I gotta ask you the big question. How are you doing this, actually? And I was not mean about it. I was like, tell us, like, how you're actually doing it. And I suggested a few things. I was like, I'm gonna just throw some ideas out there. Whether it's that you're living at home with your parents and they're supporting you, which is totally fine. Whether it's that you left your job with some savings, whether it's your side gigging, moonlighting, on the weekends, the evenings, whatever. And he goes, honestly, it's a combination of those things. He said, I left my TV career with a bit of savings. I'm home now living with my parents, so I don't have rent and I drive Uber. So those are the three things that I did that I have done do. And in the meantime, I'm raising money from friends and family, little bits to try to seed fund this business of mine. So that's what they do. It's really. Some people take out loans, business loans, but they are not technically paying themselves a salary. Maybe they are taking a little bit out and paying for meals, like business meals, and they're. While they are eating, while they're working, maybe that's considered a business meal. They're working it out with their accountant. I don't know. But yeah, certainly they would have to have savings. We talk about it all the time. It's really important to have financial Runway before you quit your job to start a business. So if that means that you have to simultaneously work and use your earnings from your day job to then slowly build the business on the side, so be it. Or some people will just work their day job to the bone, save and save and save and save, and then quit and then take all of that savings, put it in the. Put it towards the business as well as does themselves. Like, they'll take part of that and put it towards their cost of living. They'll work it out to say, like a year's worth of living expenses. The rest they put towards the business. And then on top of that, maybe they do some fundraising. On top of that, maybe they raise money from friends and family, they reduce their expenses immensely, they go back and live home with their parents. It's any combination of things. But that's what they're doing. They're not lying. Well, maybe some of them are, because I'd be silly to say that all entrepreneurs are honest. We know that. There was just that couple I was reading about watching, actually. Do you guys hear this? This married couple in Texas that pretended to be home improvement home construction people and swindled a bunch of people out of millions of dollars. $5 million, I believe they stole and promised to sell people like dream homes. And these homes were. Were shit. And they actually pleaded guilty. I don't know the details beyond just what I riffed. So you can look into it. It' I think on Good Morning America this week. And they look like a lovely couple. I try. I would have trusted them to be honest. If you had just seen them on social media, be like, yeah, they look like a delightful couple. Their teeth are pearly white. They look honest. I don't know. Gotta be careful out there. All right, next question is about health savings accounts. Our friend in the audience turned 65 this year and went on Medicare and her husband has a health savings account every year. Previously, his company has contributed an amount of for him and an amount for our listener, who, by the way, Remember, just turned 65 this year and went on Medicare. So the question is, should I move the amount that would be considered as a contribution for me? That money that the company has been contributing for me is still in the account and someone told me that I should move it or else that would be considered as a contribution for me. Is this true? And if so, where and how do I move it to ensure we are in compliance with HSA requirements? So once you're on Medicare, you personally can't make new HSA contributions anymore, including ones that an employer might have been making on your behalf. But you don't need to move or carve out any. It's already in the hsa. If the account is in your partner's name, the whole balance becomes your partner's balance and it can stay right where it is. The thing you want to double check, though, is if there are any contributions made going forward. If your husband is still on a qualifying high deductible. Plan and not on Medicare himself. He can keep contributing, but only up to the individual limit, not the family limit. Once you because now you're and so if his employer keeps contributing at the family level after now you're on Medicare. That's fixable. But you have to go to the HSA provider to remove the excess contribution before your taxes are filed. So the HSA provider typically is the department to talk to. So long story short, you don't have to take the money out. Just make sure contributions were adjusted after your Medicare start date. And if you're not sure, you can contact your husband's HR department or have him contact the HR department or the HSA custodian can may be able to clear it up quickly. And last but not least, Toby wants to know where to park $20,000 safely. So Toby got a nice lump sum as a huge gift to mainly help with a down payment on a home in the future. Toby writes, I'm 29. I'm not really thinking about buying a house in the near future and I've been advised that I should not invest this money, but rather put it somewhere where it is safe. I'm thinking about opening up a new savings account because all my current bank accounts have really low interest rates. Rates. I'm curious, what other factors should I consider when choosing a savings account? Why wouldn't people just choose the highest interest rate? I've also been told that CDs are a good place to park your cash, but I'm not really sure what the differences are. All right. When you're choosing, first of all, I want to know who told you you shouldn't invest and why? Maybe you can follow up with me on that then. Okay, but if this person told you not to invest because they're like against investing on principle because it's risky, I don't want that to be the reason you don't invest. Investing is important. And if this money, since you don't want to put it in real estate, if this is money that could help you secure your future in other ways, like in your retirement and there is a gap in your financial plan, you could consider right now, tax season, tax filing season, April 15th. Right. If you were to open up, up, let's say a Roth IRA or a traditional IRA, and by April 15, if you contribute, is it true by April 15, 2026 you can contribute and have that count towards your 2025 tax return and get that deduction or that tax benefit if it's a Roth ira. So I'm just saying Don't, I don't know. I'm just saying I don't want to just brush over that. Because if you're investing for the long term for retirement and you're 29, so you've got a long horizon in, it's not without risk investing. But it's not to say that it is the wrong place to put your money. If you don't have retirement savings and you're 29 going on 30, it's definitely something to think about and plan for. You want to know about where to put savings and that's a valid question. So let's talk about HYSAs high yield savings accounts and CDs and the pros and cons and the differences. So right now, now 2026, we don't know everything. But there is a strong feeling that we're going to see interest rates lower in 2026. We saw the Fed lower interest rates in Q4, 2025 thought is that might happen again in 2026. And the quickest impact we'll usually see is in the deposits market, the savings market. So that being said, High yield Savings accounts right now are hovering around 4 to 4 and a half percent on average. I don't think they're go drop to 1% or 2% this year. Maybe they'll dip below 4% but still decent, still better than nothing percent which is what most savings accounts offer. So if you find a good high yield savings account at a reputable bank that is FDIC insured, where there are a lot of conveniences like accessible ATMs, zero balance transfer, zero, no fees, all that good stuff, I would consider that a good option. You could put some of that money in there and that would be something that would be accessible to you in the event of say an emergency. It's liquid and it's quote unquote safe. Right now a CD, you might find CDs that. Now a CD, a certificate of deposit you can find at virtually any bank, any brokerage, credit union and they usually are sold in terms. So there's a three cd, a six month cd, a five year cd, which means that whatever you put in a CD is more binding. So if you buy, let's say a five year cd, the interest rate that you would earn on that CD might be more than what you would get on that high Yield Savings account. But the catch is that in order to earn the entirety of that interest rate, you have to keep the money in that CD for that entire term. So five years versus the one year of the High Yield Savings Account. So. So if you are not sure what you want to do with this money, I would say go with the account that offers the most flexibility and the most liquidity, and that would be the High Yield Savings Account. If you know that you don't need to touch this money for even, let's say, six months or a year, then a CD might be a fine place to park the cash. But compare the interest rates, because I don't see a lot of difference between what sometimes a CD offers and what a High Yield Savings Account offers. But of course, the difference there, too is that a CD rate is guaranteed. A High Yield Savings Account rate is not. It can change the next day. So if you want confirmation of the rate, then CDs will do that for you. They're both, quote, unquote, safe in that they are FDIC insured. They're not volatile like stocks. But like I said, if you don't have anything for retirement yet saved, then consider this $20,000, an opportunity to start looking at some retirement savings options. You might want to even start with what you have through work. You can't put this $20,000 in a 401k through work. But if you're not already contributing to a workplace retirement account at your age, I think it's very important to get on that train. And if you don't have a 401k at work, then you can look at options like an ira, whether that's traditional, or Roth, and use some of this 20,000 to potentially invest. Get one of those filled this year before April 15th, and really get a head start on that. And last, as I promised, I did have that conversation with a listener on the phone, a young listener who said, I just want to feel like I'm doing my money right, Farnoosh. And I just want to feel like I have something to show for my hard work in the future. And I said, isn't it funny? You know, you're having this moment right now in 2026. I had this moment in 2004, 22 years ago. The human nature is. It's just so predictable. Your world today, so different from my world 22 years ago, and yet we both feel this pull to find resolve in our mid-20s. My best advice to you right now is one. One, invest your money, but also invest in yourself and think about what are the options that you want to have as you arrive in your 30s and maybe even in your 40s. But you don't even have to think that far down. You're 25. Now think about the next five years, your life. What do you want more of? Or what do you want to expand? It's not about. What additional stuff do you want. I think it's fine to think, oh, I would like a house, and I'd like to have a better car and more experiences. But also, what is the feeling that you want when you wake up when you're 30 years old? And. And what does your life look like? What does your day look like? How is your day scheduled? As I said to her, one of my things was, I just want to wake up at 35. I want to be a mom, but I don't want to have to answer to a boss. Is that possible? And she laughed. And I was like, maybe that's just me. That's just me. I'm not telling you that's what you need to think about or put on your vision board. But what are the ways you can invest your money and also in yourself to get to that version of yourself in your 30s? And then you'll be able to look back and say, you know what? Not only did I do my money right, but I have something really meaningful to show for it, because this is the life that I actually want. And I worked for it, and I got it. And that's our show, everybody. Thanks so much for tuning in. Another great week of new episodes starting on Monday. Make sure you hit that subscribe button. And if you have questions for me every Friday, I'm here for you. So email me Farnishitsomoney podcast.com. you can also DM me on Instagram. And until next time, I hope your weekend is so money. Foreign. Hey, this is Paige from Giggly Squad. We all have way too many subscriptions and bills and no good way to manage or track all of them, but now we have Experian. It's the best place to manage your finances because you can connect all of your accounts in one place, track all your spending, and you can let Experian do the work of finding ways to save you money. January is the perfect time to get your finances in order. It's the perfect New Year Reserve resolution. Let your big financial friend Experian do the work for you. So get started today with the Experian app now. Hey, it's Olivia from Ollie. I gotta tell you, I saw when you asked AI about probiotics. No judgment, but I think Ollie can help. Probiotics are the good bacteria that support your digestive and immune system. Just two gummies a day to bring balance to your gut. So save the AI from for drafting that reply to your ex. That's gonna take guts. 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