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So money episode 1950 ask Farnoosh.
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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 yourself. 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.
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Welcome to so Money everybody. I'm Farnoosh Tarabi. It is February 27, 2026. As I was saying the title of this episode, episode 1950, I had to stop because there's not much left to go till 2000. So what are we gonna do everybody for the 2000th episode? Like where? I don't know. It's a pret big milestone. I'm not thinking what kind of episode are we going to do like topic wise. But should we go somewhere fabulous and record from there? People go to exotic islands for their 50th birthdays. I'm taking submissions, I'm taking suggestions. My DMs are open. I promise I won't do 2000 lessons learned about money in 2000 episodes. I won't bore you with that. It will never end. So I'm starting off the show today with a story about insomnia. I could not sleep the other night and I don't know what it was. It was Tuesday evening. I don't think I had any caffeine in my system. Definitely no alcohol. I didn't have any anxiety. There was no like big deadline or I couldn't get anxiety over nothing. But there. It wasn't that, but it was just like my eyes would not shut firmly. It was this fluttering of my eyelids and, and my brain was just not powering down. And I did buy magnesium a while ago and on the back of the bottle with the instructions it was like take four before you go to bed. And I thought that was a little rude. I was like, what? That's a lot. Can you just relax a bit? Can we just make the pill bigger or liquid form? Like can. What's, what is going on here? So then I went and looked into it and they're like, you can take two, but four? I'm going to work my way up. I had not taken magnesium that night, so maybe that was the thing. In any case, I think it was at this point well past midnight. And I finally accepted that sleep was never to return. And I did what everyone does at midnight when they have surrendered. I open my bedside drawer and you know the drawer, we all have it. It's not organized. It's like your junk drawer in your bedroom. It's not curated. It's like an archeological dig site of your early adulthood potentially. There's like old birthday cards, old sticks of gum, a few photographs that somehow survived many moves. I found some hair scrunchies from the 90s, a pen that does not work, but you just keep because it's nice and buried under all of it. I'm talking like at the bottom of all these layers of things, I found something that made me really happy. And it was a relic. A business card. My very first full time benefits paying job at New York 1 NEWS in New York City. Remember business cards, thick cardstock, slightly raised lettering. It's giving. I have health insurance. I just got a 401K. It's like I, I'm legit now. I have some stability. I don't need to take the Greyhound home every weekend and go sit in my parents living room and avoid the temptation of being in New York City and just hope that my presence in Massachusetts will mean that my Money will sit in my bank account until I go back to New York on Sunday night and repeat and spend my weekdays at my desk. Anyway, I just sat there looking at it. And that job was. I know this is cliche to say, but it was a dream job. I will say that it was also brutal. It had me on my knees many days. It brought me to my knees more than once. I was a young reporter. I was tasked with conceptualizing ideas, writing them, producing them, shooting them, editing them. It was scrappy before. Scrappy was a compliment. And I remember one morning, I'm rushing out of the subway. I just come up the stairs I'm heading. I'm making a beeline to the building where my office is. It's about a giant Avenue block. And I was wearing a shoe that had a strap in the back. And it fell off. And it not only fell off my foot, it fell into a subway grate, but it was one of those subway grates that it didn't go all the way down to the subway. It was just like, I could see it, but I couldn't reach it. And I'm looking around. It's 9am none of the stores are open, although there's a huge banana republic, like, to my right. And I'm thinking, what do I do? Do I hop to work with one shoe? They already think I'm an idiot. And then I spot a utility worker who had a truck with him and all the things, all the MacGyver things in his truck. And I flagged him down and I begged him. I said, you're never gonna believe this. He goes, oh, I've heard. Oh. He's like, oh, yeah, that happens. Because it's New York and everyone's rushing everywhere, so people lose shoes sometimes. And so he knew. He, like, immediately went into, I'll say it again, MacGyver mode. He got some rope together, and I don't remember how he did it. It was in a blink of an eye. I had my shoe back. And it was an important day because I think I had an interview with Barbara Corcoran that day. So I think she would have found it funny, though. She's a. She's a cool gal. Anyway, where was I? So I have this business card, and I got really reflective, and so I went on Instagram. I took a photo of it and I posted it on Instagram, and I shared the story with everybody and talked about losing my shoe and blah, blah, blah. But at the end of it, I asked my community, asked my followers, I said, what was your first job. And I got a lot of responses. What was interesting about the responses was that you would never believe based on who was writing, that this was their first job because they're not doing anything remotely similar to what their first job was. I, on the other hand, my work is very related to that first job. But we had a friend of mine who's an accountant whose first job was a bodyguard. There was a consumer finance expert whose first job was working at the Kiehl's flagship store in New York. A personal finance expert said her first job was working on a cruise ship. A world class chef began as a writer's assistant. An interior designer began her career as a newspaper reporter. And it what struck me was just how unpredictable the arc of a career really is. The government finds that the average person is going to change jobs around 12 times in their lifetime. Many of us will pivot entire industries. And so I say this because I think that there's a lot of pressure that we put upon ourselves to try to find the quote, unquote, perfect job or a job that meets all this criteria. Or maybe you're in a job right now that doesn't feel aligned or right, whether you're 22 or 35 or 50. I think we have to treat the jobs that we are in as just like recognizing them for what they are. And it's really just a present chapter. It's not permanent. You're never going to see the whole map. And I think that's the point. The goal isn't to be able to foresee your future. The goal is to keep moving. And this is still where you're going to be learning. The important thing is to show up, handle the pressure, know when to quit too, if that is what needs to be done. But failing in small ways is okay at work. I failed so much at New York One every day. And I remember going into like my sixth job at this point. I'm at CBS now filling in for an anchor. And I go into the ladies room and I see the morning news anchor who is like a big deal, okay? And I'm a little taken aback because I've only ever seen her at the anchor desk and now she's like washing her hands in the washroom. So I got shy, but she was very lovely. And hi, Farnoosh. And I couldn't believe she knew my name. I was like, hi, Kate. And she's, how's it going? And I'm like, it's all right. I feel like I'm messing up a lot. And she goes, farnoosh, I mess up every single day. And I'll never forget that because I thought failure was not allowed at that level, that when you got to that level of being the morning anchor in the number one news market in the country, that you were perfection. And you were hired because you had a perfect streak. So that was very relieving to me and validating to me. Failure is really just part of the road and it's building your muscle for the bigger challenges. That anchor, by the way, Kate Sullivan, she's been on the podcast. She's now a really good friend of mine and she's gone on to have her own business. She, in 2018, became the executive producer and host of To Dine for with Kate Sullivan on American Public Television, pbs and create. This was something that she designed herself. And I remember sitting with her in New York for lunch one day and she wanted some advice because she had left the broadcasting industry and wanted to do her own thing and wasn't sure what to do or how to do it. And then she goes and does this incredible thing. And so anything is possible. Believe that. Where are. Even if it doesn't feel like a fit, there is something to learn and something to take with you for the next opportunity. And there will be another opportunity. So that's my story. We're going to get to your mailbag. Today. We have questions about health, savings accounts, managing money in your 30s and your 40s. Much more. First, though, some financial headlines. If you are looking for cheerful financial news this week, listen, I tried. I really did. What I found were instead product recalls, tax scams, and a headline that I promise you I did not make up, and I quote, is the US Tax code anti feminist, which I'm sure it is. We will save that existential spiral for another episode. Here is what did stand out to me, though, as I was scouring the news in the Washington Post, which, by the way, operating now with a very lean newsroom, sadly has reported on the rise of artificial intelligence deepfake scams targeting taxpayers. I wanted to share this because it's very timely. The FTC says Americans lost more than $10 billion to fraud last year. That's a record. And AI is making these schemes more sophisticated. Here's how they're doing it. They're mimicking voices and they can spoof official numbers and they create urgency. That feels really terrifying. So the lesson here is really simple. When someone calls you and says they're from the IRS and they sound legit and it's coming from what seems like an IRS number and because you like reverse looked it up as you were trying to quickly verify, just hang up. Because here's why the IRS will never call you demanding payment. They will not threaten you over the phone. They won't even gently ask you for money over the phone. They they won't ask for gift cards. They won't ask for crypto. If you get a call from the irs, hang up immediately. If it's really important, they will send you official mail in the mail. Okay. Next, a story from the San Francisco Chronicle. A Marin based lender suddenly collapses and leaves investors panicking. The article says that Pacific Private Money, a Nevada based real estate lender and investment firm, has suddenly collapsed. Investors say they have been told that most of the more than $100 million they have tied up in the company is likely gone. This company was a once prominent real estate lending firm. Bloomberg followed up with a broader piece explaining how there's this growth of private markets and I guess this bank is among them that's got obscured data that regulators typically rely on to identify systemic risk. And so there's less trans and when the investments are have and when the investments are not so transparent, it becomes harder to see the cracks forming.
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so, cautionary tale here. They apparently were offering high rates of return. And we've heard this before, right? If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And this is Marin County. A lot of wealthy people. Which it just goes to show you that we think that the people most most likely to fall for scams are people who live in scarcity, but it's also people who are very wealthy. It doesn't matter. This is human nature. It's like chasing the dollar, believing in things that are too good to be true. It's universal. This was the same area where we saw the failures of Silicon Valley Bank a few years ago and Signature bank, remember? All right, I did find some positive news because we need joy wherever we can find it. Doritos introduces protein chips. I cannot verify the macros in the ingredients, but if higher protein snacks are the highlight of the week, I will eat it. That was a joke. All right. The headlines, not exactly soothing. So let's move to your questions. The first one is about health savings accounts. HSAs. It was a very thoughtful question that actually came in earlier this week from a member of our so many members club. And it gets to the tension between optimism, optimization and security. So here's what I mean. Health savings accounts are often called the holy grail of tax advantaged accounts. And it's because they offer what's called this triple tax advantage. One, they offer tax deductible contributions, two tax free growth and three tax free withdrawals for qualified medical expenses. There's no other account that gives you that trifecta. But you have to be enrolled in a high deductible health care plan to be able to open a health Savings account and contribute to it. And this is where people hesitate because healthcare costs are real. Medical debt is one of the leading causes of bankruptcy in our country. And so the idea of choosing a plan with a higher deductible can feel very risky depending on who you are, your health state, your family situation. So the question is, should I open up a high deductible health plan so that I can take advantage of this health savings account over here, which is not only going to save me money today, but it's going to be a huge benefit to me potentially in retirement as well, because, oh, here's the other thing. You can choose to have the money that you contribute to a health savings account, which you will never lose if you don't use it, by the way. It's not like a flex savings account where the account goes to zero at the end of the year. Use it or lose it. Health savings accounts, the money carries over year over year. You can actually opt to invest that money as well. And so some people use HSAs, the unused portion of it, as retirement money. They plan to let it ride the market until they reach age 65. At which point if you, when you turn 65 and you have money sitting in your HSA, you can make penalty free withdrawals. You don't have to use that money towards health expenses. You will just pay federal income tax on those withdrawals. Still, it's a nice supplement to your retirement, right? So people are like, I like that, I want that. But a high deductible healthcare plan, not so much. And so the other night in my group, we're talking and the question becomes, okay, maybe you've got this great healthcare plan. It's not high deductible, it's low deductible. It's whatever it is. And so maybe you could find a really affordable high deductible health plan that is like a backup healthcare plan that you have, that you can afford it, it's not a big deal. And really the reason you have it is, is so that you can open up an hsa. There is no workaround to access an HSA without the hdhp, but there may be a version of a high deductible health plan that feels manageable to you and would allow you to then open up, this has, start funding that and really get the advantage of that today and in the future. And just to put some numbers to this, if you're 35 and you're maxing out your contributions annually to an HSA and the HSA is earning let's say 6% annually, which is pretty conservative. That account could grow into six figures by retirement. And Fidelity estimates that the average 65 year old couple retiring today is going to need about $315,000 for health care expenses in retirement. And so if you were to use that HSA money for healthcare expenses in retirement, by the way, that's tax free, right? You don't have to pay taxes on that. If you wanted to use it for other reasons, you pay income tax. Something to think about. You'd have to do the math. Now, speaking of my so many members club, I hosted a webinar this week on financial resilience throughout the decades from your 20s to your 70s. And one thing that struck me is how often we talk about financial planning as though it's just this like one time. Not you just like do your own plan, plan and then you walk away. You put everything on and then you automate everything and you walk away and you start living your life. That's fine. Except here's the thing, life shifts. Life happens. And your plan needs to shift and happen as life does. And sometimes we don't update things. And so this is what this webinar was really about, was thinking through the decades and we know already what to expect in some regards, right. And this is very general. Not everybody follows the same path, right. But we know that in certain decades there are certain mindsets or certain kind of evolutions that happen and that the earlier you do start to save and invest, the more of that will serve you in your later years. So let's talk about the 30s and the 40s. So I'm going to focus on the 30 year olds and the 40 year olds and I'll give you some checklists. So in your 30s. I've dubbed this the expansion era with some guardrails. So if you think about my life in my 30s, this is when a lot of stuff started to happen. A lot of accumulation of just life events. It's one thing after the other. It's like marriage and then home ownership and then child number one and child number two. And then my career started to expand and my husband switched jobs multiple times. And we ultimately, on my 40th birthday, we almost like right after that we bid on a home in the suburbs. Crazy. And so that's what I mean by expansion. Like it's, you're inviting into your life a lot of new and big things. And if you are someone who wants to invite children into your life, that costs, right? The USDA averages that raising a kid over the years, not through college, but just until College costs over $230,000 a year. I will ast risk this though, because you'll hear later in March we have a guest on who will talk about how this statistic is questionable at best because what we don't often hear is that people spend more money on their kids the more money they make. And we need to be cognizant of that. And part of that big baby industrial complex and the price that we pay to think that we're being good parents and provide a good life for our kids, it seeps its way sometimes into this six figure price tag and it doesn't really have to cost $230,000 on average. But let's talk about all the things outside of having kids, right? Housing costs have surged nationwide. Your income in your 30s, though typically does go up, which is a good thing. But then your expenses go up as well if you're not intentional cost creep. And so let's talk about how much we should have saved for retirement by our 30s. Fidelity suggests having about one times your salary, one whole salary saved by your early to mid-30s as a benchmark. Don't kill the messenger. I'm just telling you what Fidelity thinks. And this is actually echoed across the financial services industry. It tracks because if you think about retirement being potentially 25 to 30 years and you wanting to replace your income in retirement and your income right before retirement is probably going to be a little bit more than what you're making in your 30s, you're going to have to start the savings process early and well, protection also becomes really essential in your 30s now that maybe you are a parent as well. People in their 30s. This was an interesting statistic. According to the Social Security administration, more than 25% of today's 20 year olds will experience disability before retirement age. So by the time you're 30 and if you don't have like disability insurance, maybe if you're depending on your line of work, you might want to think about getting it because disability insurance will help to replace your income, at least most of it. In the event that you cannot do your job due to a disability. And disability can be a physical injury, but it can also be mental. So at this point in your 30s, retirement savings is a must. If you have not been doing this in your 20s, I would say start to invest 15 to 20% of your income towards retirement. Emergency savings, three to six months. Think about term life insurance, but only if you have dependents like kids. Although I'd Say life insurance is more important. This is the time of your life where things like a will and naming guardians for your children if you have them is vital. And again, if you have kids starting that College savings account, a 529 is very appropriate. But I would still prioritize retirement. If you are finding that saving for retirement is hard or you're just eking it out, don't worry about the 529 right now. Now in your 40s, I call this your oxygen mask decade. The 40s are intense, y'. All. It's for some it's because they've got the kids that are growing up, but they've also got their parents that are getting older and they're sandwiched in the middle and they're taking care of maybe both of those generations. Fidelity, good old fidelity, suggests roughly three times your salary saved by your mid-40s as a benchmark. As far as other things in this era, healthcare planning is very important to start thinking about your health care planning in your 50s and 60s, but in terms of thinking about your healthcare costs as you age. But what can you do now? What sort of investments can you make now to make sure that when you hit retirement that you either have a nest egg for your healthcare costs specifically, or you have an insurance plan or annuity or something to make sure that there is money set aside for your health care costs specifically? Because Medicare, Medicaid, not always enough. Right. Long term care can exceed $90,000 per year in many regions. So your to do list in your 40s for retirement you want at this point in your 40s and I'll give you all the decades to get to there. Like you don't have to have this at 40, you could have this at 49. So three times your salary saved in a retirement account or multiple retirement accounts, the accumulation of your retirement accounts. If you aren't able to, if you have not been very steady with your retirement contributions in the past at this point, try to max out those retirement contributions, whatever the annual max is, try to hit that max. If you have an hsa, we talked about these earlier. Take advantage of it. Set clear college funding boundaries. Your kids are getting older, maybe they're getting close to college age. Have a conversation about what that affordability will look like. The reality of affording college. Look at the costs, stack it against your cash flow. What are the holes? How are you going to fill it? And imagine you're not going to take out any student loans. What's that going to look like really? Stress test that Stress test, going to college without student loans, can you do it? And how would you? Because that could be a great gift to your kid and the rest of their life is to help them graduate without student loans. And that doesn't mean that you sacrifice your retirement or your savings to get them there. It's just that you got to get really creative and think outside. And you just, you gotta think outside in alternative ways. And I think too, since we're talking about the sandwich generation, we talked about the kids. Now let's talk about your parents. Initiating caregiving conversations with your aging parents or any loved one who is financially, potentially financially dependent on you. And even if not, it's really not about whether you're supporting them. It's more that if something happens to them and you as their child, you would want to be involved. Like having as much information now would be so helpful because then in a crisis moment, you're not scrambling. I often hear my friends, one of their parents passes away or is in the hospital for an extended period of time and their other parent is not even sure where to pay the mortgage or how to pay for the lawn care because they weren't involved in those dealings. And how can we expect now the child, the adult child, to step in and help out? So before things get catastrophic, have these conversations down. It might take a few conversations. All right. Our friend April is trying to decide if she should keep a 10 year old car and run it into the ground or buy a new used one. She says we don't drive many miles anymore and so I'm considering a lease. How best to choose? Okay, so April, I love this question. I'm in the same camp. I am trying to decide whether to lease or to buy. I'm still figuring it out for myself. But here are the questions that I am asking myself. What do I feel comfortable paying every month towards a vehicle? And this is irrespective of whether I'm buying or leasing. But financially, what do I want to allocate towards car payments? Because either way I'm going to have a car payment. I'm not buying a house, I'm not buying a car fully in cash. I'm going to finance it if I do buy it, or I'm going to lease it and I'll have that monthly payment. So what do I want to pay? And you right now, April, sounds like you don't have a car payment because you have an older car. I assume you're done paying off that car. So are you okay with having a new cost every month and what can you afford? So if you don't want to invite new costs into your life, then you stick with the car that you have. But if you're ready to spend a little bit more on a car, then of course you got to choose whether you're going to buy or lease. And car payments plus maintenance and insurance are best kept to no more than 15% of your monthly budget. So narrow down that number. Before you go any further. The other question you got to ask yourself, I'm asking myself this is why do I want to buy or why is what do I want in a car? So for us this would be our second car. So it doesn't have to be as fully loaded and childproof and all the things and heavy duty like our SUV that we have, that's our day to day car that we drive in every day with the kids. For us we want a supplemental car that we probably wouldn't use every day. This may be your full time car. So do you want this car because you want it to last you for another 10 years, because you like the idea of not having that car payment eventually? Do you want to essentially replicate your previous experience in that case you really want to shop for a quality car. It may cost more upfront, but it'll last. Or do you want, and it does sound like you want this, an occasional car, a low mileage, because you're a low mileage driver now. And by the way, a lot of us have become low mileage drivers in the pandemic. And is that going to sustain? Is that going to endure? It may not. So just be sure that you're not judging your car needs based on the last 15 months that things could go back to quote unquote normal. And you may need a car that will and you may need to, and you may be a more higher mileage driver, but if you are going to be this low mileage driver, you probably don't need a heavy duty car. You may want to, you could go, you maybe you like the idea of driving something new every three years. And in that case I would say you're more the profile of a leaser. Now, whether to buy or lease, here's something to really consider. How important is liquidity to you now? Yeah, you could finance a car, put down 20% and keep more of your money in cash and have that car payment. You could still be liquid and buy a car. But if you lease, you might be more liquid than financing a car because in some cases you don't have to put down as much and sometimes the monthly car payment is less. So think about that. What do you have in savings? If buying a car is going to compromise savings because you have to put more down to finance it, then maybe you lease. Because for everybody right now, I would argue for most people, unless you're super rich, super cash flush, that you need cash. We've learned, if nothing else, we've learned over the last 15 months, again, big reminder that cash is queen, cash is king, that cash buys you options, that if you lose your job, which many of us did, or you want to leave your job, which many of us wanted to do in the last 15 months or so, that cash affords you that opportunity to make a decision that is truly aligned with what you want. And it buys you time, gives you the time to maintain your lifestyle, keep the lights on as you make really big decisions for yourself. So having cash, I think, at the end of the day is so important when it comes to making these big purchasing decisions or leasing decisions. How is this going to compromise your cash situation? So those are the questions to answer. I have to say, this is a really conundrum for me. It's because for so many years, all I've been hearing, it's been drilled into my head is, buy a used car or go for the new car, but buy it and drive it into the ground. That's what we're doing with this first car that we own. And now in the suburbs, it's looking like we could really need a second car with all the different schedules and running around after the pandemic. And so can you just get something that's maybe a little fun? Because it's going to be for me. So maybe I lease something. I feel like the personal finance gods and goddesses are going to frown upon that. But guess what? New world, new rules. And I have written about this, that there are lots of reasons why leasing would might make sense for someone, and there's no shame in that. God, can we get. Where can we stop the shame? I think that's what's holding me back, is that I feel like I'm disappointing people or that I'm not being true to the personal finance wisdom of old. Whatever. You can change rules, do what you want. If you can afford it and it works for you, do that, period. All right, I'm not dropping the mic just yet. I want to get to one more question, and this is from our friend Allie, who just started a career with a $10,000 bonus. So what would you do, Farnoosh? Pay off Student loans, Invest in crypto, buy some stocks. All right, Ally, I'm going to tell you that for someone who just started her career or his career, I assume you're going to sign up for your workplace 401k if you have one. If your company's giving you a bonus, I would assume they have some sort of workplace retirement set up. This comes out of your paycheck, so you don't need to use this bonus to invest for retirement, AKA stocks. So that crosses that off your list. Do you have a savings cushion or rainy day of at least four to six months? You didn't say if I should save with this money, and I'm going to tell you I think you should save it and just park it in cash. I'm going to guess that not many people in their 20s have a lot of cash in the bank, but this $10,000 could cover you for at least a few months, if not longer. If you decide to switch jobs or if you just want to move to a new place and you need the first and last month's rent ready to. And so saving your money in your 20s, you may not know what it can be used for, but it will be helpful at some point and you're going to be thankful you have it. A thought on crypto A few thoughts on crypto. I respect cryptocurrency as a growing investment category. We don't know a ton about it, right? It's new. And so crypto is definitively an alternative investment. It is not something to dabble in until you've covered your bases. Your 401k, a Roth IRA, you've filled your savings account. You've paid off credit card debt. I just finished a piece on how one person's bitcoin investment is somebody else's art collection or another form of alternative investment that has little or not much strong historical data to help guide the investment decision. That's what alternative investments are. They're not tried and true. They're highly speculative. And I'm not saying there's not room for this in your life, in your financial life, but only after you've covered your bases and when you can then appreciate this for what it is, which is a total gamble. This isn't saying that bitcoin is a good or bad investment. It's not saying that bitcoin and crypto is not going to become the new form of money. It may very well. But this is an area of investing that really only makes sense once you've covered all your other bases. Because it's extra. This is extra. I know this bonus might feel like extra. So if you've got the savings, you don't have credit card debt, you've got the 401k going. Sure. Maybe open up a portfolio of crypto. At that point, I've got no opinions because it's got to be personal. Whatever you pursue as an alternative investment, here's what I want to say. Pick something that gets you excited, that you're not just going to be consumed by the value, the market value, but by the experience of it. So crypto excites a lot of people. It's an opportunity to step into an investment category that's new and thriving, to learn about the blockchain that can be exciting for somebody. And so if this is not just an investment but also an educational experience for you, an opportunity to be a part of history. Cool. That's cool. I like to invest alternatively in other things, like art. Bought some art pieces for our home recently which may or may not appreciate, but in the meantime, I'm gonna appreciate the heck out of them. In our home, I like to give some investments to founders to startup companies. Again, there no idea if the company's gonna make money. Historically it probably won't. But I like knowing that my money can go to support someone's dreams. And even if those dreams don't come true, they keep me involved in the journey and I get to see the behind the scenes that for me is and an experience that I really like. So for others, it's like investing in a horse, investing in stamps, whatever. Pick your investment flavor but only do it after you can really afford to lose, right? Can you afford to lose this $10,000 ally? That's the question. And that's our show, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in. On Monday we start a brand new month and our guest is Bola Sakunbi, who's the founder of Clever Girl Finance, one of my favorite financial minds. You won't want to miss that show. Have a great weekend, everybody. Security and compliance done wrong is a giant headache. Security and compliance done right, that's Vanta. Vanta helps you earn trust and speed up growth. No spreadsheets required. For startups low on time and resources, Vanta becomes your first security hire. Using AI and automation to get you compliant fast and unblock big deals for enterprises. 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So Money with Farnoosh Torabi
Episode 1950: Ask Farnoosh – HSAs Explained, Scam Alerts & Financial Resilience in Your 30s and 40s
February 27, 2026
In this special “Ask Farnoosh” episode, award-winning finance expert Farnoosh Torabi reflects on career journeys, shares financial headlines (with a cautionary tale about scams), and answers listener questions on Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), building resilience in your 30s and 40s, lease vs. buy decisions for cars, and how to handle a $10,000 work bonus. Torabi brings her characteristic empathy, humor, and real-world perspective, offering both practical guidance and encouragement.
[02:03–08:00]
[12:00–17:14]
[17:45–23:30]
[23:31–32:55]
General principle: Financial planning isn’t “one-and-done”—life happens, and your plan must adapt.
30s: The “Expansion Era with Guardrails”:
40s: The “Oxygen Mask Decade”:
[32:56–38:40]
[38:41–42:30]
Guest: Bola Sakunbi, founder of Clever Girl Finance—an episode not to miss.
End of Summary