Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - Messy Women and Money with Jean Chatzky

00:00:00.000 Hello, hello, hello. So good to be here with you today.

00:00:12.800 Today's guest is someone who I have been following for a very long time,

00:00:17.440 since before the Instagrams were around. Jean Chatzky is what I would call an OG influencer,

00:00:25.000 which means that, you know, she used to be a reporter, a personal finance reporter. 0.99

00:00:30.000 and then a personal finance expert and guru. She was the Today Show money correspondent. That is

00:00:36.660 where I first saw Jean, and I've been following her advice since I started making my own money.

00:00:41.640 I have. I have. It's invaluable. Jean has committed her life to helping women manage

00:00:47.760 their money and manage their wealth. And today we're going to talk about everything from saving

00:00:53.260 for college, ignoring financial influencers, to investing in yourself and taking control of your

00:01:01.340 finances, even if you're not the one making the money in your household. Hello, how are you doing

00:01:09.200 today? I'm good. I'm having a good day. It is spectacular outside, which always puts me in a

00:01:15.220 good mood. Oh my gosh, it really is. It really is. So I want to jump right into things. When we were

00:01:21.300 talking a little bit before, you had this great monologue about how the world sees women in

00:01:29.020 relation to money. Yeah, the world sees us as a mess. Actually, the world sees us as a 0.87

00:01:39.920 half of the population who is doing money all wrong. We're under earning, we're under saving,

00:01:46.540 we're not taking control, we're not investing until it's too late, we're not taking enough

00:01:51.280 risk. And these things are often untrue, right? If you look at studies, women are better investors

00:02:00.440 than men. Women save a greater percentage of our disposable income than men. But that picture

00:02:07.520 never seems to get across. And it's that that continues to drive generations of

00:02:15.580 bag lady fears that just won't go away. Absolutely. Absolutely. I have been listening

00:02:23.060 to your money advice since I started making money, you know, and you have been my financial guru for

00:02:31.920 so long. And because I, you know, I grew up with a lot of financial uncertainty. My parents spent

00:02:38.800 more than they made. They were always in debt. My mom had no control over her own finances. And

00:02:43.560 I do think that we bring some of that generational trauma along with us as adults. My reaction was

00:02:51.340 to go the exact opposite direction and, you know, be very strict with my spending, never have debt,

00:02:58.820 save a lot. And you really helped me do that with all of your advice over the years. And

00:03:04.820 I love your whole ethos about how every single one of us has a superpower and yours is taking

00:03:12.800 the complicated world of money and then explaining it so that we can understand it. And, you know,

00:03:19.460 we've been doing a lot of episodes lately, a little bit outside the box of influence,

00:03:25.120 where we try to have experts on to tell us a little bit about how they organize their own

00:03:31.660 lives and, you know, how can we bring tangible benefit into everyone's lives? And you say that

00:03:38.500 there's certain things that we do, five things to do, you know, to grow wealth and to manage

00:03:44.800 money successfully. Can you just talk a little bit about those? Absolutely. But before I tell

00:03:51.020 you about them. I just want everybody to know that I didn't do these things off the bat. I was an

00:03:57.720 English major in college. I came out of school. I racked up a lot of debt. I dug myself out because

00:04:04.080 I became a personal finance reporter and I learned about the right things to do from the most

00:04:10.680 brilliant people on the planet. And so it was down the road that I sort of synthesized it into these

00:04:18.560 five things, but they've held up really well for a couple of decades now. So first thing, you have

00:04:24.600 to make a decent living. Got to earn money, right? Somebody, you or someone else in your family has

00:04:30.200 to earn money. And it doesn't have to be an absurd amount of money, but it does have to be enough to

00:04:38.500 sustain a comfortable life, to pay your rent, pay your mortgage, your car payment if you have a car,

00:04:47.320 go on vacation every once in a while, put food on the table, more money than comfort doesn't

00:04:54.600 necessarily make people more happy. So that's step one. I love that being step one, because

00:05:00.900 one of the things that we're seeing a lot of on social media these days is women leaning out of 0.96

00:05:08.320 the workforce or falling completely out of the workforce and saying, I don't want to work. I want 0.99

00:05:13.780 to be a, they call it hashtag soft girl. I just want to relax and lounge and enjoy my life in a

00:05:20.780 field of flowers. And while that may look pretty, pretty on Instagram, you cannot do that without

00:05:27.640 money because we live in a world where you have to pay rent, where you have to pay for health

00:05:31.640 insurance. Right. And those women on Instagram are making money on Instagram, which they're not,

00:05:38.480 they're not telling us, but I hear stories like that and it makes my stomach hurt because

00:05:43.540 15 years into my first marriage, I got divorced, which I never expected to do. But had I left the

00:05:51.620 workforce and there were expectations from my first husband's family that I would leave the 0.94

00:05:57.840 workforce because all the women had left the workforce. It just wasn't something that I

00:06:02.940 wanted to do personally. But had I left the workforce, I would have been stuck. And

00:06:10.120 And I don't like to see women giving up their power in that way.

00:06:17.820 And so I'm an advocate for, yes, I believe if you want to have one parent at home raising

00:06:28.140 kids, I think that, and you can afford to do that, I think that's an amazing gift to

00:06:34.900 them, an amazing choice in many families. But you have to figure out some way to protect your

00:06:42.300 earning power, whether you're the man or the woman, while you're doing it.

00:06:46.900 Yeah. Yeah. And I think that a lot, too, when I'm reporting on Trad Wives, which is very different

00:06:53.320 from a stay-at-home woman. I hate the word stay-at-home. Every time I say it, I'm like,

00:06:59.400 I want a better word because no one is just staying. No one's just staying in the home when

00:07:05.020 they're doing all of the work that is involved in being a mother. But these child wives say they 1.00

00:07:11.460 give up their autonomy. They give up their agency with regards to money. And, you know, if you are 0.99

00:07:16.760 a woman who chooses to take a career pause or completely stop working, there are still ways to 1.00

00:07:23.240 have financial autonomy. There are still ways to manage your money, to invest your money, to tell 1.00

00:07:27.560 your husband to create your own retirement account that is not both of your retirement

00:07:32.260 accounts. There are ways to do this. And I think we need to talk a lot more about that.

00:07:38.140 Yes, it's called a spousal IRA. You have the ability to make an IRA contribution or a Roth

00:07:44.020 IRA contribution equal to that of a person in the workforce if you have a working spouse,

00:07:49.920 which means you get double the tax benefits. So why not just do it?

00:07:53.660 why not just do it? I love that. And I don't think enough people know about that. When I do

00:07:59.780 talk to women who have taken a career break or pause and stepped back, you know, they tell me

00:08:06.900 they're like, I didn't know what my options were financially, what I could tell my husband I wanted

00:08:12.300 in terms of money. And there are so many options out there. Yeah. Yeah. There are so many. And when

00:08:19.540 we give up our power, that's where things start to go off the rails, which is sort of in step

00:08:29.600 with number two on my list of five things. If I go back there for a second, if you can't nail

00:08:35.560 number two, you can't nail three, four, and five. So number two is really important, and it's that

00:08:41.080 you have to spend less than you make. And I know that that sounds simple, but it is really, really

00:08:49.500 hard in this world where money flows without us seeing it anymore. Money is just invisible. It's

00:08:58.660 a series of clicks and taps and dips and swipes. And so we lose track of it and then we get out

00:09:07.260 over our skis and we get into trouble. We run a coaching program at Her Money called Finance Fix

00:09:14.160 And Finance Fix is centered on just regaining control, right?

00:09:18.480 We help people look at where their money is going so they can make choices about where

00:09:22.780 they want their money to go.

00:09:24.940 And it's pretty life-changing if you've never actually looked at your spending.

00:09:30.840 So that's number two.

00:09:32.080 Number three is that you've got to take the money that you are not spending and invest

00:09:36.840 it so that it is working as hard for you as you're working for yourself.

00:09:41.900 Number four, you got to protect this financial life that you're building with the right insurance and an estate plan.

00:09:52.620 And an estate plan just I know that's a big term, but it just means if you are if you are a parent, you must have a will because the will is the only document that allows you to name guardians for those kids.

00:10:13.320 I mean, yes, we can talk about how you want to make sure that your stuff gets into the right hands, but it's really about your children.

00:10:21.280 um you want to probably have life insurance you want to have health care proxies and those sorts

00:10:27.260 of things it's not that complicated and number five you've got to figure out some way to give

00:10:32.420 back that is meaningful to you because although more money doesn't really buy you more happiness

00:10:39.220 giving back absolutely does absolutely absolutely and i i really love the website

00:10:47.300 her money and everything that you're creating with this brand, because it is financial advice

00:10:55.180 tailored to women. And for so long, we did not see nearly enough of that.

00:11:02.820 We are going to take a very quick break here. And when we get back, I want to hear how you

00:11:08.660 evolved from personal finance reporter to creating this multimedia brand centered on

00:11:15.700 helping women earn money and save money and just take care of themselves financially.

00:11:30.800 Okay, and we are back. So tell me a little bit about your career path. I love asking women 0.99

00:11:38.740 about their career paths because I think there is no ladder anymore. And the career ladder 1.00

00:11:45.320 is broken and gone. Someone has taken it. We don't know where it is. It's lost in the rubble

00:11:50.040 of the garage of the 90s. I know that my own career is just kind of a jungle gym. I'm all

00:11:56.960 over the place. And I'd love to hear how you got where you are today. I grew up in magazines. I

00:12:03.600 grew up in personal finance magazines. I spent a couple of years on Wall Street when I realized I

00:12:11.400 actually needed to learn more about personal finance and about money, but then worked it at

00:12:17.580 Forbes and smart money and money. And I was a writer at smart money magazine when it launched

00:12:27.260 and it was a well-funded startup magazine, which meant that there was money for a PR campaign.

00:12:34.340 And the guy that they hired to do PR got a spot on early morning television for our boss, for our editor-in-chief, the 5 a.m. version of the Today Show in New York.

00:12:47.880 My boss went one time, said he was not going back because it was too early and they didn't have coffee.

00:12:55.020 And so it rotated for a little while until I did it and they just asked me to come back.

00:13:00.780 And I started working in television, got picked up on the national version of the Today Show, and had that job for 25 years.

00:13:13.620 And it opened doors to writing books and giving talks, giving a lot of speeches, did a radio show for Oprah for a while, launched a podcast.

00:13:26.960 and I launched Her Money as a podcast first.

00:13:33.000 It's been a podcast longer than it was a company,

00:13:36.680 longer than it has been a company.

00:13:39.320 And I wanted to do a show about money specifically for women

00:13:44.860 because over the years, and you may have had this experience,

00:13:50.080 when I've gone out and I've given talks to rooms full of women,

00:13:56.000 it is a very comfortable space. Women just feel open and able to ask all of our questions and

00:14:05.560 share our stories. And when I've given talks to rooms full of women and men, that just doesn't 0.95

00:14:12.960 happen. People of both genders are a lot more reticent to get honest. The questions are a lot 1.00

00:14:23.580 more technical and sort of pro forma. And so I just wanted to create a safe space for women to 1.00

00:14:31.100 learn about money. Launched the podcast. It started to do well. Build an audience. And my colleagues 0.98

00:14:39.120 and I thought there's something here. And so we launched her money as a company. Today we publish

00:14:45.880 newsletters. We have a coaching program. We publish free content on the website all the time.

00:14:51.600 And we've built this community of women that continues to support each other in our determination to handle our money a little bit better every day.

00:15:03.620 Yeah, the content on the site is very helpful. It is things that I find myself often Googling

00:15:10.500 to no avail, where I find a lot of spam content because the internet is poorly organized. Things

00:15:17.540 like, you know, how to know if your 401k is doing what you want it to be doing, or should you use

00:15:26.440 chat GBT to make a resume. Things that, you know, I think about all the time, the six types of IRAs

00:15:35.540 that every woman needs to know about, which is the rabbit hole that I went down this morning. 0.65

00:15:40.160 So thank you for that, Her Money team. You know, what are some things that a lot of women 1.00

00:15:46.380 do not know? What are the biggest questions that you get when you are speaking to these rooms of 1.00

00:15:52.020 women about money? I get a lot of questions about how to find somebody to help you that you can 0.96

00:16:00.440 trust. A lot of us will at some point in our lives want to hire a financial advisor. And it's not

00:16:10.520 necessarily because we don't know how to do it ourselves. I have a financial advisor because I

00:16:16.300 know that I'm not going to devote enough time to managing my money because I've got a very busy,

00:16:22.280 busy plate. Hiring a financial advisor is a complicated decision because they get paid

00:16:31.680 in a lot of different ways. They come from different walks of life. Some are from the

00:16:38.020 world of insurance. Some are from the world of investment. Some are from the world of accounting.

00:16:42.320 You want to make sure, in my thinking, that you hire somebody who is going to look at your whole financial life, not just your investments or your insurance.

00:16:53.640 But typically, it's a fee-only financial advisor who is going to take a holistic view of you and help you create a plan to get where you want to go.

00:17:06.080 And there are a number of ways to do that.

00:17:09.260 There's some good associations out there.

00:17:12.360 The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors is a good association to begin with.

00:17:20.000 The XY Planning Network for Millennials and Gen Z is a good place to start as well.

00:17:29.260 So that's a question that I get asked.

00:17:31.440 And then I get asked a lot of questions about investing. 1.00

00:17:34.820 Um, women are great investors because we do our homework and we tend to be buy and hold 1.00

00:17:42.680 investors. 1.00

00:17:43.200 We tend to, to pick a strategy and stick with it.

00:17:46.640 And that helps us over time.

00:17:48.600 Frequent trading tends to, um, cause a dip in, in returns, but we're a little slow to

00:17:56.300 sometimes get to the party.

00:17:58.700 Um, we want to have all the information.

00:18:01.600 we want to know that we're doing it right. And so sometimes we don't do it at all because there's

00:18:10.000 no perfect answer when it comes to investing. If you ask me a lot of money questions, if you ask

00:18:17.180 me what's the best mileage credit card, I can do the research and I can give you an answer and I

00:18:22.800 can note that it's right. If you ask me what's the best stock, I can't tell you because there

00:18:31.580 are no correct answers. And so we have to get comfortable with the good enough. We have to

00:18:37.160 get comfortable knowing that historically, if you invest your money in a diversified portfolio,

00:18:41.680 you are going to do just fine. It's wash, rinse, repeat. Just make sure that you're investing

00:18:49.160 every single time you get paid.

00:18:51.380 And if you're interested in investing

00:18:53.700 with a group of women, 1.00

00:18:55.060 that's one of the things that we've got at Her Money. 1.00

00:18:57.120 We have an investing club with hundreds of women 1.00

00:18:59.380 where we are building portfolios together.

00:19:02.460 It's really fun.

00:19:03.520 Oh my gosh, can I join?

00:19:04.960 I want to do it.

00:19:06.100 Yes, you can come.

00:19:07.460 Yes, absolutely.

00:19:08.780 You'll be my guest.

00:19:09.940 Okay, great. 1.00

00:19:10.740 I am coming because I am one of those women.

00:19:13.640 I am one of those women who, you know,

00:19:16.260 I joke and this is a bad joke

00:19:18.520 that I'm like an old Sicilian grandmother 0.68

00:19:20.220 that socks money away under a mattress.

00:19:23.900 And I actually, I don't put it under a mattress,

00:19:26.200 but I do have too much money

00:19:28.220 in a high-yield savings account right now.

00:19:30.780 And I should be investing that.

00:19:34.620 But, you know, I think that perfection

00:19:36.340 is often the enemy of the good.

00:19:37.880 And as women and as a Virgo, 1.00

00:19:40.320 which makes it so much worse, 0.98

00:19:42.800 you know, I want to find the perfect thing

00:19:45.880 and there is no perfect.

00:19:46.780 So I'm joining your investment club.

00:19:48.140 I'm so excited.

00:19:49.440 Great. Yes.

00:19:50.140 Every other Monday night on Zoom, I will send you the info.

00:19:54.500 Perfect. Perfect. This is so exciting. I love it.

00:19:58.300 So what other things are women just dying to ask you when they get in a room together and they get to pick your brain? 1.00

00:20:06.800 They want to know how to raise kids who are good with money. 1.00

00:20:11.440 Yeah. Yes. I think about this all the time.

00:20:13.880 It's hard. I mean, it is really, really difficult for all of those reasons of invisibility that I was talking about a little bit earlier. I think an allowance is a really good teaching tool. I just think most parents don't do it right.

00:20:31.600 The key with an allowance is to not just give your kids money that then they have to manage,

00:20:38.340 but to come up with a list of things that you know they want that you're no longer going

00:20:42.840 to pay for so that they are, as they age, managing an increasing amount of money over

00:20:50.960 time.

00:20:51.440 And when they finally go to college, the hope is they can manage a month's worth of money

00:20:56.340 or a semester's worth of money and not just a day's worth of money.

00:21:02.100 And the other important thing with kids is that they have to work as teenagers.

00:21:08.380 I know we tend to think, oh my God, they're so busy.

00:21:11.080 They have all their classes.

00:21:13.300 Only when they earn money from somebody other than you do they understand the value of their

00:21:19.980 time.

00:21:21.120 And as somebody who grew up, you know, babysitting, working at summer camps, I'm sure you were

00:21:26.320 exactly the same way it is like earning your own money is is a really powerful thing to know that

00:21:36.440 you are able to do yes yes and yes it is and i see so many teenagers now who are not doing that

00:21:45.960 but when i grew up i feel like everyone had a job you know we worked at we worked at sesame place

00:21:51.540 water parks. As lifeguards, we worked at the grocery store, the pizza shop, you know,

00:21:59.320 a camp counselor every summer. I started as, you know, a CIT, a counselor in training,

00:22:04.540 and then worked my way up to being a counselor. And I do see, because my kids are so little,

00:22:11.200 but I have friends with teenage kids, you know, they don't work as much or they take unpaid

00:22:16.280 internships, which can be beneficial for other things. But, you know, when you're, it's a very

00:22:21.400 different than earning money. And so I'm on the same page with you. I want these kids to work. I

00:22:27.780 want them to feel that sense of accomplishment and to know the importance of money. We only

00:22:34.020 just started it with our six-year-old because he loves cold, hard cash, which, you know, in the age

00:22:41.560 of invisible money, I think is a value to see money. My biggest fear is that our kids will not

00:22:48.760 see enough cash. And therefore, I don't think you value things when you can't see them

00:22:53.400 as much. Totally, totally agree. I started my kids with a cash allowance and then I discovered I was

00:23:02.140 really bad at giving a cash allowance. I never seem to like have the cash in my wallet. So

00:23:06.840 never. And sometimes I borrow from it. It's terrible because the other day he kicks it in

00:23:11.900 a Ziploc bag in the junk drawer. And the other day I had to pay the mother's helper 20 bucks

00:23:16.620 that i took it and didn't tell him he's so pissed uh but i gave it i gave it back with interest and

00:23:21.660 then i explained interest to him there you go that was that was a wonderful uh wonderful lesson to be

00:23:28.140 able to to teach him but eventually when my kids were teens i transitioned them to a debit card

00:23:35.480 allowance by opening linked uh checking accounts to my checking account and at that point they were

00:23:43.340 able to start to use the cards, which was good. Which is good, which is good. All right, we're

00:23:49.260 going to take one more quick break. And when we get back, we are going to talk about the world

00:23:52.920 of influence, influence and money.

00:23:59.840 Chew on this bold question from Dentine Gum. Is it ever okay to compliment a millennial

00:24:06.220 on their skinny jeans in 2026. Dentine, too bold.

00:24:18.740 Okay, and we are back. Now, I would consider you a financial influencer because you have influenced

00:24:29.420 me and my finances, right? So you were the OG influencer. You were doing this before

00:24:36.740 quote unquote influencer was a thing. And you've transformed your platforms in so many ways. And

00:24:44.640 you're also, you know, you're advising women about money, but also a group of women that I think

00:24:51.500 often gets ignored in the world, women over 50. You know, talking to women over 50, which there

00:24:59.660 are so many of them right now about money. How are you reaching this demographic of women

00:25:06.880 on and off social media? So I've been the financial ambassador for AARP since right before I turned

00:25:16.240 50 and I am about to turn 60. I have a picture of me with a very, very large AARP card that they

00:25:25.600 gave me when I turned 50. I love that picture. So I'm fortunate that I am a columnist for that

00:25:32.440 magazine. I reach a lot of women through that platform. But I spent so much time on the Today

00:25:39.160 show that my audience from there has essentially, I think, grown up with me and have followed

00:25:51.640 along as I've gone through the different milestones in my life, starting to save for

00:25:59.660 college for my kids, to put them through college, to save for retirement for myself.

00:26:04.800 Now I'm starting to look at, okay, what's the flip side of that?

00:26:10.680 How am I going to take the money that I've accumulated for retirement and make it last?

00:26:18.320 And how am I going to help other women do the same thing?

00:26:22.060 That's the book that I'm working on right now, on finding yourself, I mean, the technical

00:26:29.900 word for it as a decumulation strategy, but I like to think of it as a lifetime paycheck.

00:26:36.300 So I've reached women on and off social media through my newsletters, through places like

00:26:46.220 Instagram and TikTok, which I had to be dragged to, but I'm there. And I just sort of try to show

00:26:55.480 up and give honest, authentic answers when asked about all of these things. I don't believe it's

00:27:06.720 rocket science. I just believe that there are too many people who think that by clouding the message

00:27:15.900 with a lot of unnecessary lingo, they're going to be able to sell more people more things. And

00:27:24.400 that just rubs me the wrong way. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's a lot of

00:27:30.160 bad information about finances on social media and cutting through all of that noise is very,

00:27:37.040 very, very difficult. What have you seen in the sphere of influence on social that might not be

00:27:44.260 helpful for people and, you know, at the extreme of that, actually quite toxic for people?

00:27:48.960 So I think unrealistic expectations are incredibly toxic. Dave Ramsey was out with a thread

00:28:00.980 recently where he suggested that people should be able to earn returns of upwards of 8-9%

00:28:11.860 in their investments going forward each and every year. And that's really dangerous because if you

00:28:21.900 run a retirement calculator and you plug an unrealistic return into that calculator,

00:28:30.600 you're going to under-save because you're not going to understand how much money you're going

00:28:35.120 to need going forward, you're thinking that you get a much greater rate of growth. So there's some

00:28:43.780 of those things that I think you have to watch out for where the messenger is trying to make

00:28:50.360 themselves sound so good that they're just not telling you the truth. Yeah. Yeah. No, and I mean,

00:29:00.400 And that's the the continuing problem of the expectation gap that we talk about on this show all the time that, you know, they want to make themselves seem seem great.

00:29:09.620 And so they're saying, of course, I can earn eight, nine, 10 percent every single year on my investments.

00:29:16.000 And so everyone thinks that that is normal.

00:29:19.380 Right. And because it's not normal and anyone that has worked in finance or invested money knows that that is not always going to be the case.

00:29:29.180 when you're not doing that then the anxiety comes then you feel shame then you feel guilt you feel

00:29:34.560 like you're doing it wrong and then you will won't be able to properly save as as you said um that

00:29:42.520 expectation gap happens with everything everything on social media you know frankly from how much to

00:29:48.740 how much to save uh how much people earn too i think that people you know often pretend that

00:29:56.420 they are making a lot more money than they are on social media, or they hide the fact that they have

00:30:03.860 a lot of money, a lot of generational wealth. You know, we see a lot of influencers who are almost

00:30:10.580 cosplaying poverty as homesetting influencers, and yet, you know, they come from multi-million

00:30:17.960 dollar family businesses. So yeah, there's not a lot of truth-telling online, and I think it's

00:30:25.340 so important to talk about that yeah yeah absolutely and by sharing the by sharing the

00:30:34.540 mistakes that you've made along the way with money because we all make mistakes with money i think

00:30:40.580 that people understand that not only is it okay to make them but it's okay to recover from them

00:30:46.980 and to move beyond them and not make them again you know that you can that you can get through

00:30:51.320 this, it's not always going to be perfect. But there are some some good habits. And if you can

00:30:58.660 repeat them frequently, you can you can actually do this. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's so important

00:31:04.560 for us as women, I mean, for everyone, but let's be honest, I mostly care about women on this show 0.98

00:31:10.080 to have judgment free spaces to talk about money. And this is why over the years, I've become very

00:31:18.960 transparent about what I make and how I make it with the other women in my life. I talk to

00:31:26.400 young authors all the time about exactly how much I make on my book deals and how those payments

00:31:32.760 are structured, you know, that you get the four payments over the course of two to three years,

00:31:38.120 that your agent takes 15%, that so much has to go to taxes. And so this is what you're actually

00:31:42.820 earning from a book advance. Because I think for a long time, we didn't talk about those things

00:31:49.140 openly and honestly. And it's the only way to help the women that are coming after you.

00:31:55.980 I feel the same way. I've done the same over the years with a lot of the younger women on

00:32:00.560 the personal finance speaking circuit, right? Because unless you know that you should be asking 0.90

00:32:06.480 for X number of thousand dollars, you're going to underprice yourself. And that is not good for

00:32:12.620 anybody. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think it's the same with investing,

00:32:19.220 right? You know, I think for a long time, we were very nervous to talk about how we were saving our

00:32:24.400 money, what we were doing with it, because, you know, worried we would be judged. And so, yeah,

00:32:29.460 like things like your investment club, which I cannot wait. I will see you next Monday.

00:32:33.340 you're gonna have so much fun i got i got thoughts i have questions all the things

00:32:37.720 all the things um what he i mean we talked a little bit about you know your advice for

00:32:45.280 women over the age of 50 what kind of questions and then advice do you give to mothers we have

00:32:51.760 so many mothers who are listening to this show who want to save for college uh who want to model

00:32:59.400 good finance for their kids. And we talked a little bit about that. But the college question

00:33:03.500 is one that I get so much of. Yeah. I mean, first of all, I think the modeling

00:33:08.900 is really important. If you're telling your kids to save their allowance and you're constantly

00:33:15.780 coming in the door with shopping bags, they are going to believe their eyes. They're not going

00:33:21.440 to believe their ears. So I think that's key. But on college, look, college is outrageous.

00:33:29.400 Insane, right?

00:33:30.300 It is insane.

00:33:32.200 And the simultaneous pressure to save some money for college while we're trying to fund our own retirements, which previous generations did not have to do, right?

00:33:45.380 If you think of prior generations with pensions.

00:33:48.180 Yes.

00:33:48.520 I mean, we are, we, it's all on us.

00:33:52.200 the thought that parents could reasonably save enough to fund college at the same time is insane

00:34:02.420 it's so it's it's a much much much too high bar so at the same time though you want to do something

00:34:08.640 and i tend to think if you can save a third of what you think the cost of college might be

00:34:19.440 acknowledge that you'll fund another third out of current cash flow because you're going to be at

00:34:26.460 your highest earning years at the time and that you'll probably hope and that you'll borrow or

00:34:33.720 your children will borrow the final third that is is math that seems to work open a 529 for your

00:34:42.360 kids as soon as they're born and tell everybody so that the grandparents and the aunts and

00:34:51.440 the uncles who want to give your kids something for their birthday will maybe give them a

00:34:55.620 small present, but put some money in the college savings account because they know it's there

00:35:00.420 and they know that that's something that they can do.

00:35:02.580 And then if you can make a small contribution to that account every month over time, that's

00:35:10.640 a great way to go about it.

00:35:12.360 Yeah, we have the 529s for the three kids. I will say, though, sometimes it feels like

00:35:19.840 throwing an acorn in the ocean when you look at how much college costs. And what I'm hoping is

00:35:24.980 that the system just has to break and change at some point. College is five times more expensive

00:35:30.200 than when I went. Many times more expensive than when I went. And I do think it's going to break.

00:35:37.680 I think I think something something will definitely change. But when you get to the point, if it has not changed, when you get to the point that your kids are applying to school, don't get suckered in by the dream school.

00:35:53.740 make sure that they make sure they cast a very wide net so that they find that college that

00:36:01.360 is willing to pay them to go there because there is a lot of financial aid out there

00:36:05.560 that goes untapped year after year after year yeah um you know and in the messaging that i've

00:36:11.880 been using which is colleges for suckers guys learn to code um it's a it's a it is a problem

00:36:17.700 though because we live as you know because you are my neighbor five minutes from penn and i went

00:36:22.480 to Penn. And we spend a lot of time on Penn's. I didn't know that either. That's crazy. I don't

00:36:27.840 know. We spend a lot of time on Penn's campus because it's right over the bridge and we go to

00:36:32.160 basketball games and stuff. So, you know, when Charlie hears college, he's like, oh, he's like,

00:36:35.300 this is where I'll go and I'll live at home. And I was like, there's a lot of schools out there,

00:36:39.020 kid. Yeah. I know. I know. And we can we can talk about how bad our basketball team was this year.

00:36:45.460 So bad. So bad. So bad. So bad. But the games are so wonderfully low stakes for very small kids

00:36:51.680 because it's $5. They get to sit right on the court. And when they're bored, they just go up

00:36:56.560 to the top row of the bleachers and circumnavigate the stadium. So I love it. Love it. That is all

00:37:05.960 that I have for today. But I loved talking to you. We'd tell everyone where they can find you

00:37:09.520 these days. Absolutely. You can find me at hermoney.com. Sign up for our newsletter,

00:37:15.360 listen to the podcast. We would love to have you as part of our community.

00:37:19.280 Wonderful. Thanks so much for being on, Jean.

00:37:21.680 Thanks for having me.

00:37:23.920 Guys, I just love me some Chatsky.

00:37:26.040 I do.

00:37:26.680 And during our talk today, I found out she lives around the corner from me.

00:37:30.780 And we're going to have lunch.

00:37:32.220 That is the beauty of this podcast.

00:37:33.880 We're making connections we didn't even know existed.

00:37:37.680 And it is also proof that Philadelphia is the greatest city in America.

00:37:41.960 Thanks for being here today.

00:37:43.720 Go tell another mom that she's doing a great job, and then go do something nice for yourself.

00:37:48.760 You deserve it.

00:37:51.680 Thank you.

00:38:21.680 Thank you.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - May 02, 2024

Messy Women and Money with Jean Chatzky

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