1962: Ask Farnoosh: The Money Anxiety Playbook (Taxes, AI and How to Stay Financial Steady)

Summary

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So Money with Farnoosh Torabi – Episode 1962

Ask Farnoosh: The Money Anxiety Playbook (Taxes, AI and How to Stay Financially Steady)

Date: March 27, 2026
Guests: Georgia Lee Hussey (Certified Financial Planner, Founder of Modernist Financial)

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Episode Overview

In this episode of "So Money," host Farnoosh Torabi is joined by guest Georgia Lee Hussey to address pressing listener questions and anxieties surrounding today's uncertain financial and professional climate. Together, they dive into the psychological aspects of market fear, strategies for preparing for financial downturns, navigating tax refunds amid shifting policies, the evolving job landscape impacted by AI, and why grounding oneself in community, values, and humanity is more essential than ever.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Money Anxiety in Uncertain Times

• Recognizing the Emotional Side of Money (04:10)

  • Georgia describes her approach: “The first thing I do when I’m talking to someone who feels anxious is to open up with open-ended questions and understand what they are really feeling… if I make space, they start to counsel themselves through what they’re feeling.” (04:10)
  • Addresses behavioral biases like recency bias—the false belief that current conditions will last forever—and the importance of challenging those narratives.
  • Recommendation: Write down what you want to tell yourself during a market downturn for future reference. (08:54)
    • Memorable: Client's mantra for hard times—“Bleep this noise. We’re going to the beach.” (09:29)

• Advice for Mid-Career Investors (06:37)

  • Georgia encourages “accumulators” (those still saving) to view down markets as opportunities: “I’m saving. So when the markets go down, I’m buying on sale and Farnoosh, I like a sale... but cash is queen.” (06:37)
  • Emphasis on maintaining sufficient cash reserves for emergencies and continuing to contribute during downturns.

• Preparing for Income Loss (10:25)

  • Importance of structured banking, automation, and identifying non-essential spending before a crisis hits.
  • “We have a very structured banking and automation system… helps people look at their overall spending plan… [ask] what is not necessary?” (10:59)
  • Value of crafting a simpler life with fewer obligations to maintain flexibility.

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2. Tax Season & the Hidden Cost of Refunds

• Understanding Bigger Refunds (21:55)

  • Many are receiving larger refunds this year (~$1,000 extra per filer), but “there’s a gap between you getting a $1,000 refund but your neighbor is losing their medical care, food stamps, education funding, library funding…” (21:55)
  • The increased refunds result, in part, from federal cuts to social programs—a hidden cost to vulnerable Americans.
  • Georgia urges listeners: “If you do not need that money, consider supporting heroes in your area… or give to organizations working for policy change.” (22:44)

• Healthcare & Aging Costs (24:50)

  • The overwhelming financial burden of elder care is highlighted with a personal story from Senator Andy Kim: “Just for his room in his medical unit is $14,000 a month out of pocket.” (24:18)
  • Most Americans, including those considered well-off, cannot afford such costs.
  • Georgia counsels: “We work with lawyers to make sure family members qualify for Medicaid long-term care coverage. I don’t care how rich you are, you cannot pay $15,000 a month.” (24:54)

• Financial Planning for Elder Care (26:08)

  • Cautious about hybrid insurance products; often, using Roths and HSAs is more advantageous for long-term care savings.
  • “A lot of our clients, I coach them into—you know, a 20% tax rate is very cheap historically and globally. Let’s just pay the tax now, then it grows faster and… outpaces long-term care inflation.” (26:08)
  • Encourages viewing the family home as a potential long-term care asset rather than an inviolable legacy.

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3. The Impact of AI on Careers and Skills

• AI as a Transformational Force (14:08)

  • Technology is accelerating, similar to the jump from a 10-key calculator to Excel: “That’s the feeling I have about the technological shift as an entrepreneur.” (14:08)
  • Georgia believes her core value as a planner is “human to human behavioral coaching, translation skills… they want support… and accountability to their values.” (14:21)
  • AI as a tool: “I use it as a co-writing partner… helps me rewrite and refine my thinking.” (17:06)

• Value of Humanities & Critical Thinking (18:00; 19:15)

  • Creative writing, empathy, and critical thinking skills will increase in value in an AI-dominated job market.
  • Humanities build agency and broader perspectives: “Reading literature has the capacity to make space for us to live in someone else’s experience and… widen our view of what’s possible in the world.” (19:15)
  • Structured debate and conversation are essential skills—Georgia references her work with Oregon Humanities.

• Blending AI and Human Creativity (17:06–19:15)

  • Using ChatGPT and similar tools to process ideas, not replace original thought.
  • Encourages journaling and writing for personal agency and clarity.
  • “If a little bit of journaling in the morning can… clarify your thoughts, you feel more aligned with your values and the direction you want to take your day.” (18:00)

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4. Reform, Community, and the Future of Aging

• Broken System for Elder Care (29:05)

  • The boomer generation may not afford astronomical care costs and may have to look to their children for help, raising equity concerns.
  • Georgia sees an upcoming wave of innovation: “There’s some really interesting co-housing and multigenerational ideas… finding that it’s not just everybody’s getting their needs met—it’s that there’s intergenerational support and community building.” (30:19)
  • The ideal of single-family homes for every generation is “neither pragmatic nor practical.” (31:24)

• The Power of Local Community (32:10; 34:27)

  • Spring is a time for financial “clean-up”: “Show me your budget and I’ll show you your values.” (32:10)
  • Support local businesses and relationships: "Do I need to buy that from that big box store? Or can I find somebody local I can support?" (32:46)
  • Active civic engagement: Farnoosh underscores, “There’s no AI for pounding the pavement and having a coffee with a teacher or your neighbor to get a story that’s going to change… the town potentially.” (33:53)
  • Memorable quote: “Not believe the story that we are disconnected, but actively remember that we are interconnected. My neighbor is me. If I can help my neighbor, I am helping myself.” (34:00)

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Memorable Quotes

• Georgia Lee Hussey:

  • “As an accumulator, I’m like, that’s fine, just keep shoving the money in. I buy on discount and markets will go up and down. And dollar cost averaging is such a powerful tool…” (06:37)
  • “Cash is queen.” (06:53)
  • "It's not if the markets go down, it's when the markets go down. It is absolutely built into everyone's portfolio that markets will correct." (08:54)
  • “Charitable gifts are not going to fix the problem. Political organizing, policy [are needed]…” (22:44)
  • “The story from your former self who was calm and not worried is a good voice to bring forward.” (09:29)
  • “There’s an opportunity to bring our money home, spend with people who are local to us.” (32:46)
  • “My neighbor is me, and if I can help my neighbor, I am helping myself…” (34:00)

• Farnoosh Torabi:

  • "For those who are studying technology, engineering, stem... is this what we want to be teaching our kids... or should we transition more to something like a humanities...?" (18:00)
  • “There’s no AI for pounding the pavement and having a coffee with a teacher or your neighbor to get a story that’s going to change… the town potentially.” (33:53)

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Timestamps for Notable Segments

• Money Anxiety & Emotional Investing – 04:10–10:25
• Midlife & Market Downturn Strategies – 06:37–10:25
• Practical Steps for Layoffs or Income Loss – 10:25–12:22
• AI’s Impact on Skills and Jobs – 14:08–19:15
• The Role of Humanities Skills in the Future – 19:15–21:14
• Tax Refunds: The Hidden Social Cost – 21:55–26:08
• Aging, Healthcare, and Long-Term Care Planning – 24:50–31:24
• Community, Civic Action & Spring Financial Reset – 32:10–34:27

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Closing Advice & Takeaways

• Recognize and manage financial anxiety by preparing for downturns and revisiting your values.
• Use market volatility as an opportunity, but keep robust cash reserves (“Cash is queen”).
• Rethink large refunds; consider community support and political action alongside personal spending.
• Invest in both STEM and humanities education; critical thinking and empathy will be career game-changers in an AI-driven world.
• Community connection, local engagement, and innovation will power the solutions to challenges in aging, health care, and loneliness.
• “Show me your budget and I’ll show you your values”—use spending as a reflection of personal priorities and social responsibility.

Resources from the episode:
Visit Modernist Financial for free financial tools and advice.

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Transcript

[A]

So Money Episode 1962 Ask Farnoosh the Money Anxiety Playbook, Taxes, AI and How to stay financially steady. 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. Welcome to so Money, everybody. This is AskFarnoosh Friday. I'm Farnooche. It's March 27th and bringing back today, a favorite on the show, Georgia Lee Hussey, certified financial planner, founder of Modernist Financial, and one of the most thoughtful voices I know when it comes to navigating both the numbers and the feelings behind our money. And right now there are a lot of feelings. Feelings. We talked about it last Friday and we're going to talk about it again. You know, there is a lot of uncertainty in the world, financial, emotional, even professional. So we're going to get into it. I wanted to bring in someone that I trust very much to help us make sense of all of it. And in this conversation, we're going to go where the anxiety lies and try to capture as many of the questions we know, we know are out in the audience about the market, what's really driving this wave of market fear and how to respond without sabotaging your long term plan. We're gonna get into tax season, which is right around the corner, including why that refund that a lot of us are receiving this year. And it's a bit of a robust refund more than last year. Typically, it may not be the win that it appears to be and what Georgia wants us to think about before we spend it. We're also going to zoom out to the big picture, the rapid rise of artificial intelligence and what it is meaning for our careers. Not just the jobs that are probably going to disappear, but the opportunities that are being created and why skills rooted in things like humanities, writing, critical thinking and empathy may become even more valuable in this next chapter of our work. Before we get to all of that, just a quick reminder in case you missed any of our episodes this week. First, on Monday, we heard from Senator Andy Kim, who shared a very deep personal look at aging in America. His father battling with Alzheimer's and the staggering cost of elder care, something so many of us are quietly navigating right now. And then there was my conversation with author Brooke Taylor. On Wednesday we explored the psychology of never enough, those success wounds that can follow us no matter how much we achieve. And I found myself very much in this conversation. But let's get right to it. We got Georgia Lee Hussey with us on the other side, armed with advice to help us stay grounded, make thoughtful decisions right now, and remember that at this moment, no matter how noisy things get, nothing is permanent. Georgia Lee Hussey, welcome back to the pod. Thanks.

[B]

It's always so good to be here.

[A]

We are going to cover a bunch of bases today. AI and work money anxiety. Of course. Last week I did a whole kind of not to scare people but just I like to I go where the mood is and the mood is recessionary. People are worried increasingly about not just jobs, but just an overall market correction slash recession. And then of course, it's almost tax season or it is tax season, it's almost the tax deadline. So. So we want to talk about taxes, policy and your thoughts on what to do with the refund.

[B]

Yes, indeed, I have thoughts.

[A]

You have always good thoughts. I think we should start with the money anxiety piece and just get it out of the way. Not to undermine it, but let's talk about the emotional side of money right now. Are you seeing more anxiety amongst your clientele given everything that's happening politically, economically?

[B]

Yeah, I would say that when I the first thing I do when I'm talking to somebody who feels like they're anxious or worried is to really try and dig in and try and just open up with open ended questions and understand what they're really feeling. Because I find if I make space for them to just talk, they start to counsel themselves through what they're feeling. And part of what is problematic or troublesome in emotions and investing is when we are can have a subconscious story that we know what's gonna happen. And there's a lot of behavioral bias saying that recency bias, which is the unspoken belief that what is happening right now is gonna happen forever and we take action from that belief and that story. Most people, if I can just ask a bunch of open ended questions, will start to tell themselves that things change, that the present moment won't last forever, that they don't know any better than anybody else does. And that is an important first step to just hear the story you're telling yourself.

[A]

I was talking to a financial blogger of older days, Mr. Money Mustache. You remember him?

[B]

Oh yes, I do.

[A]

He's going to be on the POD soon and he was talking about how if you've Been investing for, let's say, the last 30 years, 20 years even. And you want to retire this year. It's a good year to retire.

[B]

That's an interesting. I would agree.

[A]

Yeah, I want to get your thoughts on that because speaking now to the audience member who is maybe in my cohort, like midlife, not retiring next year or even the next, maybe even 10 years, but if we were to go into a deep recession starting this year, would I look back and go, I probably should have, I don't know, held more in cash that year because it takes a long time for things to recover. Of course, we had the Great Recession in 2008, 2009, following that, an 1112 year period of gains. And even you could even say it was longer than that.

[B]

For sure.

[A]

For sure. History likes to rhyme, not repeat. What would you say right now to the midlifer who's nervous because they have done the good work of investing for the better part of their careers, but they still haven't another maybe like 30% left in their careers, 20% left.

[B]

I'm in that situation and I am actually looking forward to a down market because I'm putting, I'm saving. So when the markets go down, I'm buying on sale and farnooche. I like a sale.

[A]

Yeah, I like.

[B]

As an accumulator, I'm like, that's fine, just keep shoving the money in. I buy on discount and markets will go up and down. And dollar cost averaging is such a powerful tool for those of us who are building for our retirement and making sure that I also remember that cash is queen. I love a sale, but cash is queen. Let's make sure we have, to your point, enough cash so that I don't have to stop my retirement investing or dig into my retirement if something changes. So as a business owner, I've basically been hoarding cash since last spring or last winter, really, because this current administration is so volatile, doesn't seem to have a plan on the economy. And as a business owner, I'm like, I don't know what y' all are gonna do next. So I am hoarding cash for my company and I've also been hoarding cash in basically a continuous upmarket. That's what I'm doing and that's what the few clients we have that are still in accumulation phase. We are just making sure that their business is sufficiently funded so that they can keep contributing to their portfolio as the markets go down. And also I would say so that they have the ability to step to any opportunities in A down market. Because as an investor, a down market is a positive thing. We don't want to buy in the up market, we want to buy in the down market. So a lot of business owners, career changers, people who are really into real estate investing, which I make them think long and hard and actually look at the numbers before they make any moves. There's been anything to buy for ages. And so again, cash is queen. And I love a sale.

[A]

All right. And when, if and when the market does hit a very low point or points for a period of time, just remember that the markets are cyclical. This is a snapshot of what is going to be. It's going to be a blip on the radar, essentially.

[B]

Yeah. And I would just add to that. It's not if the markets go down, it's when the markets go down. It is absolutely built into everyone's portfolio that markets will correct. And so one of the things we're doing with all of our clients is saying, okay, when markets do correct, we are expecting your portfolio will go down by 25, 30%. Depends on how much risk they're taking. That's normal. Nothing is wrong. Prepare yourself for that. And now that we've covered that and I talk a little bit about the math of how you figure that out, what do you want to say to yourself when the inevitable chatter happens in the media and I write that down so that when the market does correct, I call and I'm being like, hey, remember when markets were up and we were having this conversation and you said, here's what you want to say to yourself. And I literally had a client yesterday be like, bleep this noise. We're going to the beach. That's what I'm supposed to tell them in the down market. And we are accumulators. And that's a better. The story from your former self who was calm and not worried is a good voice to bring forward. And then I ask, so what do you want to tell your friends? What do you want to tell the financial and media that you're listening to? What do you want to tell your co worker? What do you want to tell that random person at a party? Because having that those messages pre scripted means that we're prepared for that moment of worry at the macro level.

[A]

Yeah, people are worried about their job security and people are already, they've been out of the workforce for a long time. And I was reading recently about how people have just given up on look, on finding jobs. And so when there is a precipitous drop in your income or then there's no income. What do you recommend your clients do first? Is it to obviously like pare down their expenses? But when it comes to things like investing and saving and debt and all that, like, where do you want the priority to shift for most?

[B]

So one of the things that makes us unusual in wealth management is we do a lot of cash flow planning. So we have a very structured structured banking account system and automation system that we use with our clients and that helps people look at their overall spending plan and see what is not necessary. So that's the first thing we do is say, okay, let's preplan. Let's think about what you would not do in the down market. What would you put on hold? What would you consider saying? We could do a scaled down version of that. And I would say farnish that we actually have a fair amount of practice in this because five or six years ago we were dealing with a lot of change and we said, oh, we're not going on that vacation, but we are gonna rent a camper van and go with our family around the country. Like, I actually have been talking with people about a simpler life with fewer obligations. I know as a queer person living in a political moment that feels aggressively scary or as any, basically any kind of marginalized person at this point, I just think there's a lot of power in feeling like you have choices and feeling like we can, we can shift and we. There's not a huge level of obligation. So I wouldn't commit to anything new that you don't feel like you can absolutely 100% afford even if you had to cut your spending.

[A]

Great advice. All right, let's talk about opportunities in the AI changing world. I just did a big interview with Chae Wong, who is a co founder of a company that is helping workers, as he calls it, reskill to be more just viable in this ever changing world that AI is influencing. Some jobs will go away completely. But he's like, not enough people are thinking about the job creation that's going to happen because of AI. And 10 years ago, 20 years ago, we would never imagine some of the jobs that we have today. We would never think of like a podcasting as a thing. Right? So AI is going to do that, but like to an even greater level. And there are existing jobs, existing career paths that may have traditionally been undervalued, that I think are going to be overvalued and in a good way in an AI driven world. And one of those areas is the humanities we started this whole year on sew money talking about the importance of creative writing and how this is actually a very important career skill. Whether you're an attorney, a teacher, you run a business, like writing is important. And yes, ChatGPT can write you emails and help you think up things. But how do we use ChatGPT in a way that doesn't lose our creative writing and our voice? There's ways to marry the technology but still make it your own and have it still be coming from you. And so that feels like this conversation that we're about to have feels very akin to that. But tell me kind of your thoughts on AI and its impact on the workforce. First of all, what are you hearing and seeing?

[B]

Yeah, I can speak to it from my own lived experience as an entrepreneur. My, my entire value is my human to human behavioral coaching, translation skills. That is what people pay us for is to help. Our clients are very wealthy. They could go to Claude to figure out their financial plan but they're not going to. That's not what they're, that's not what they want. Right. They want support and care and handholding and accountability to be honest. They're not looking for somebody to serve them. They're looking for somebody to help them stay accountable to their values in relationship to their wealth. And so I will also say that Word and Excel were the fanciest tools that we had. Dictation came in a few years ago and I was like oh my gosh, this is amazing. I can dictate my emails and what I'm feeling like what is happening right now is I'm going from the 10 key calculator that my mother used as an accountant to Excel. That's the feeling that I have about the technological shift as an entrepreneur. And we have an AI policy internally obviously because we need to be very protective of our clients information. So we don't use AI at this point for any client facing work that is specific to any clients. But I do use it as a co writing partner. My background, my undergraduate education is in creative writing and installation sculpture from basically one of the fanciest liberal arts colleges in the country and on a huge scholarship by the way. And I am getting to use my creative thinking and creative writing skills more in my day to day work life than I have my entire career because I have a short circuit where I can download ideas and it just creates a 40% their rough draft and then I can take it just really short circuits the process a bit for me and is really good at organizing My thoughts. I'm a processor, so it's like it becomes the partner in that conversation, and that's really interesting to me. As an entrepreneur, I get to do more of the fun stuff. Yeah.

[A]

I was watching a video the day about agents and how this is, like, gonna. It's like the next level of AI where we've. We've interfaced mostly with bots or. But to actually have an agent who you assign to your computer and all of your, like, folders and your drives, and you're like, can you go find me that thing?

[B]

Or.

[A]

I want to write a new. I want to make a new website, and I want you to use all my personal finance advice that I've given over the years in this document. And just. And I don't even know I haven't experimented with that, but that's where we're at right now. Like, there's so much that I haven't even dipped my toe in.

[B]

You have so much content. It's fascinating to think about how to utilize the things. I just drop in transcripts from the podcast that I'm on, and it helps me rewrite and refine my thinking. Yeah, I have a. There'll be a substack series coming out later in the year that's all about mackenzie Scott and how her giving style is such an incredibly supportive structure and frame to think about how we give as individuals. And it was a variety of different podcasts and notes I've made over time that I dropped in, and I'm working that now. And it's really fun to just be able to whittle out a couple hours of very productive creative work. It launches me faster into the creative process, which, as a writer, you may also feel like, oh, sometimes getting started is the hard part.

[A]

It is. And our guest, Terry Trespicio, who was on in January, who is a creative writer and teaches creative writing, she said, what writing does, one of the gifts is when you write down your thoughts. It gives you agency. And that is something you bring to your meetings. That is something that you bring to your leadership, that is something that you can bring. Raising your kids like, it's a necessary thing that we need all day. And if a little bit of journaling in the morning can, like you said, help you digest your thoughts, get your thoughts straight, clarify your thoughts, you feel more aligned with your values and the direction you want to take your day, man, that just. It's. It's such a gift. So for those who are studying technology, engineering, stem, I live in Montclair. We have a magnet school that's all about stem, and when it opened, we thought we were so ahead of it. And I think it's great. It's a very special school. But we're thinking now, like, how do we. Is this what we want to be teaching our kids so intimately over the next five, six years, or should we transition more to something like a humanities, really double down on literature and critical thinking and comparative literature and all the things?

[B]

Yes, I would argue they're both important. And any good education has an underlayment of the humanities because of the critical thinking skills that it teaches us and the ability to also empathize, because reading literature has the capacity to make space for us to live in somebody else's experience and therefore widen our view of what's possible in the world. There's tons of studies on the value of empathy building in literature. Literature, but then the ability to talk about the thing you read. And so what I think is interesting about the humanities in this moment, I'm also on the board of Oregon Humanities, which Doge has tried to absolutely eviscerate, or did eviscerate, and then we sued them out of them and won. But a lot of what the work of the humanities councils does is not only funding little rural libraries so that they can have conversations, but so that there's a frame for how do we talk about across difference. And when you disagree about what a poem means or what a piece of news means or there's so many aspects of the humanities, it helps us, again, build agency to be able to say, I, with respect, disagree with your perspective. And also I'm interested in your perspective because it will make my perspective broader and more resilient. If I can integrate your thinking into my thinking, though, I think conversation, debate, poetry, philosophy, history, writing, drawing, like the physicalizing of our thoughts into our hands, I think is incredibly important. So I think in some ways, it's going back to some really basic education. Like, I just went. Started reading Dante's Divine Comedy for the. Really the first time, not just because it's a guide to midlife crises, which everybody I know is in the middle of.

[A]

I'm running that down. Dante.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Inferno.

[B]

Or it's just really. It's so interesting to go back and read something written so long ago and feel its freshness. That's an important lesson for us.

[A]

Yeah. All right, let's shift gears to taxes. So last you were on. I don't remember if it was the last time you were on or before that. I feel like every time you're on. We touch on obba. One big beautiful bill. You've talked often about the cost of that refund. The average tax refund this year is going to be an extra thousand dollars per filer. So what do you want us to think about that and the significance of that? What are we not seeing when we get that tax refund?

[B]

Yeah, it's been interesting to listen to the media coverage of the tax refunds because there's a big gap between you're getting a thousand dollar refund but your neighbor is losing their medical care, their food stamps, their education funding, library funding. There's so much, there's so many cuts at the federal level that are rolling down to our. And we haven't really seen. We're going to start to see the impact really over the next year or two. And I don't know what's happening where you are, but in Oregon there's a lot of talk about the huge gap in the state budget because of the federal tax changes. So that's the first thing I would say. If you do not need that money, I would strongly recommend considering supporting some of the heroes in your area that are funding and or working for policy change to shore up the needs of those of us who. A thousand dollars is an insane amount of money too. And I would also acknowledge that you might be getting $1,000 but my clients are getting 40 and $50,000 and they don't need it. So this is a incredibly unfair. And my clients don't want it. So we're just like basically moving it straight back out to community. But that's not going to fix the problem, right? Charitable gifts are not going to fix the problem. Political organizing policy. The other thing I would say is if you don't need the cash and you do have a larger refund than you expected, consider giving to a 501C4 that does policy and political action work in order to try and change the things that have been put in place because we've really decimated the social safety net of our country. And I don't know, my dad lives on food stamps and Medicaid and I am scared that he's gonna end up homeless. Yeah, I mean that's just real.

[A]

Listen, I just interviewed a US Senator who Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey. And he was talking about how, look, I'm a senator, my father just has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Not just, it's been a couple of years now and his care just for his room in his medical unit is $14,000 a month out of pocket.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And he's had to stop investing in his children's college funds. He and his sister have been scrambling right to figure this out. And here we have a US Senator. So he has been lobbied. He's been advocating for changes to Medicare and Medicaid to at minimum cover the cost of at home care. A lot of people want to age in place. Forget having to go to a nursing care facility or a, a memory care facility. Just can I. Great with dignity. Age at home.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And Medicare should pay for some of

[B]

that at least one would hope. We do a lot of planning with our clients, working with lawyers to make sure their family members qualify for Medicaid long term care coverage. Because I don't care how rich you are, you cannot pay for $15,000 a month. It is it that is such a huge amount of money. I don't even make anywhere near that amount of money as a net income. And how it doesn't make math. The math doesn't math.

[A]

No it doesn't. So I'm curious because I'm now looking into ways to supplement our retirement to have something earmarked specifically for healthcare costs. Where in the past it was like just save as much as you can and then hopefully you'll have some to allocate to your memory care facility. God forbid. Or whether it's me or my parents. I'm looking now at some hybrid products that are like life insurance with a potential you can add on like an annuity, not an annuity. You can add on a long term care feature to that. If you end up using it, it deducts from your life insurance payout. There are also annuities that that specific are specific to long term care. In some cases I would say have

[B]

a fee only financial planner analyze the difference between saving that and a Roth because in my experience the insurance companies make most of that money because the cost to insure against the 5.3% inflation rate on long term care. I would generally when I do the numbers it makes far more sense to focus on HSAs and Roths and don't do the pre tax 401k do the post tax if your effective tax rate is under 20% or 24% that is very antithetical to the anti tax narrative. But like you're building up a post tax bill in the future when you do pre tax savings now. So a lot of our clients, I coach them into, you know a 20% tax rate is very cheap historically and within the global economy. Let's just Pay the tax now, then it grows faster and it has a better chance of keeping outpacing long term care inflation. The other thing I would say is that the middle class and upper middle class in America has gotten very used to their houses and most people in our client base their primary residence is their long term care policy because it is a large unleveraged asset by the time they're in their 80s and 90s and most of our clients just don't want to do to deal with their big houses at that point.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So I think there's a little bit of decoupling from the American dream and this is the place I'll die in. I'm like it may be way more expensive to age in place or be sick in place than it is to sell the asset and liquidate and be able to have choice. I just also worry about the implicit domestic labor of the women in the lives of the people who are aging at home. It's just really mostly what I see is elder daughters becoming the unpaid labor of that.

[A]

Yes, for sure.

[B]

And their health and wellbeing and their retirement savings is impacted. So I think also that's the other thing we have to give up is the idea of aging at home is good and it is not. It's not practicable for many people that I see on a day to day basis. It's just too expensive or too hard or physically too difficult or.

[A]

Yeah, I think it's all, it's all tough people say to getting their aging parents into a like a memory care unit or if it's not always the care there is not even. And the nurses change constantly. You gotta always. You need an advocate. You need someone in your life to at least be there regularly to re. Inform them of all of the things. My, my friend, he moved his dad from one facility to the next even though they had all the trans paperwork and they should have known and they completely messed up his medication the first time. So this is like the risk that you take as well out when you outsource it.

[B]

But.

[A]

And it's not cheap too. This is very expensive stuff. So it's an entirely broken system. And I think the irony as I have been thinking about this more is that you've got this boomer population that's going to be increasingly needing these health care services at these astronomical prices. This is a generation that arguably should be able to afford it more than any other existing generation. Truth you're thinking the millennials are going to have this money with the kind of student Loan pressures they've had and the recessions they've had to work through and totally all that, the lost wages and like meantime the boomers, the joke is that they got the best of everything. They bought low, they sold high, they got, some of them got pensions like and, and they can't even afford it. And they're looking at the, their kids like can you guys sell your house to maybe pay for my memory care unit over? And I mean they. Of course we will do that, but that's just a great.

[B]

So I think what's really interesting about this moment, Farnoosh, is the required innovation that's going to come out of this because as again, I'll go back to my gayness. It's as a gay person, I talk to all my other friends who also don't have children. We're like, what the hell are we gonna do?

[A]

Yeah, what the hell are we gonna do?

[B]

I was like a. I will not be in a beige ugly place with people who not respect my life choices. And I. There's some really interesting co housing and multi generational ideas that are happening. We have this place out in Oregon called Bridge Meadows that is intergenerational low income housing with care inside of it. And it's basically elders who don't have enough money, single parents who don't have enough money with kids, foster youth who are aging out of the foster system in these multi generational communities. And they're finding that it's not just everybody's getting their needs met, it's that there's intergenerational support and community building. And much of what we're talking about for Anoosh is unpaid domestic labor. So how do we make spaces we live in where we can have multigenerational housing in our own homes? I think the idea that we're all gonna have a single family house and everybody's gonna. In the family's gonna have a single family house.

[A]

That.

[B]

That's, that's neither pragmatic nor practical. Yeah.

[A]

There aren't enough houses at that point. No.

[B]

And there's not enough money. And it's also lonely. There's also a loneliness epidemic. So I'm. I think in 20 years there's going to be some really interesting innovative solutions to this. At least that's what I'm betting on.

[A]

The architects are already working on that. This idea of building homes that can adapt and grow with the family and also invite the elders back home if that's what is decided is makes most sense.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

All right, let's Finish On a On an uplifting note, parting advice as we enter the we're in. We're fully in spring. What quarter is this? We're in the second quarter.

[B]

We are about to enter the second quarter. We're just away. I would say that this is a lovely moment for spring cleaning. We're doing a lot of cash flow planning onboarding for some of our recent new clients, and it's lovely to just take a look at where you're spending and think about, somebody said offhandedly, show me your budget and I'll show you your values. And there's just not only what's happening across in our macro political world, but I think there's an opportunity to bring our money home, spend with the people who are local to us. I know you're very passionate about this and where you live, and I think there's just an opportunity to be like, hey, do I need to buy that from that big box store? Or can I find somebody local that I can support and become friendly with and build a little bit more community engagement and infrastructure just by my relationship with that person?

[A]

Yeah. Oh, that makes me very optimistic too, about the future. Like I was telling somebody the other day just about what we're building with the Montclair pod, and I said what excites me most about this project is that it does require a lot of relationship building. And unlike a podcast that has massive scale and people just your inbox is just full of opportunities and you just click and versus like when you're a little bit scrappier and leaner. But you do have a very important audience that you're serving your your small community. You have to pound the pavement a little bit more or a lot more, but the payoff is there and it's not something that AI can replace. There's no AI for pounding the pavement and having a coffee with a police officer or a teacher or your neighbor to get a story that's going to change. It's going to alter the town potentially. Yeah.

[B]

And that is really the great work of this moment is to not believe the story that we are disconnected, but actively remember that we are interconnected. My neighbor is me, and if I can help my neighbor, I am helping myself and I'm helping my family and the other people I care about and love. And it's such a countercultural thing you're doing, and I love it. It's the local is really where our power sits right now, and it feels good.

[A]

Georgia, we just had a we had a referendum a couple weeks ago regarding our school district funding and the vote, it came down to 13 votes. A 13 vote difference.

[B]

That's amazing.

[A]

It's kind of, I've never been part of an election like that.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Talk about swing voting right here in town. But yeah, your towns are, you're all, we're all living in swing towns. Swing cities. Like every voice matters and we have

[B]

more in common than we realize.

[A]

We really do. Yeah. I find that often like people are arguing and then you realize like their neighbors as soon as they find out their neighbors, the tone changes. Yeah. Yeah, the tone totally changes. Yeah. Georgia Lee Hussey, always so fun, so informative. Thank you so much. Modernist Financial, everybody. You have some great resources, free tools for the people at Modernist Financial and we will link that in our show notes.

[B]

Wonderful. Have a good one. So fun. Thank you.