So Money with Farnoosh Torabi

Feeling financially stretched? When you’re trying to save, pay off debt, prepare for a possible layoff and help family, figuring out what to prioritize can become its own source of stress.

Following my appearance on Live with Kelly and Mark, I’m expanding on the questions we prepared for the segment, including everything we didn’t have time to discuss on television.

We explore:
Savings versus debt: Where should your next dollar go, and how does the answer change if your job feels uncertain?
Emergency funds: Is six months of expenses really a rule? How to set a starting goal you can actually reach.
Job insecurity: What to find out now about severance, health insurance and your household expenses.
Retirement contributions: When a temporary reduction may make sense and how to plan for restarting.
Investing and borrowing: The risks of relying too heavily on employer stock and what to consider before taking on another loan.
Helping family: How to support adult children or aging parents without jeopardizing your own stability.

Plus, a look at the midterm elections through a personal finance lens and an update on the So Money reboot. I’ve recorded my first conversation in the new studio, and we went straight into breadwinner fatigue. Yes, the woman who wrote When She Makes More has additional thoughts.
How's midlife going? Fill out Farnoosh's survey and help shape the podcast in 2027.

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Is the “safe” choice still serving you, or just keeping you somewhere familiar?

In midlife, taking a risk can feel like volunteering for another problem. You have bills, responsibilities, and a future you’ve worked hard to protect. But staying in a job, a place, or a plan you’ve outgrown comes with its own costs.

Economist Allison Schrager joins Farnoosh to explore how to take thoughtful chances when you have more to lose. Allison is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and the author of Worth the Risk: The Seven Myths That Keep Us from Taking the Chances We Need to Take.

Farnoosh shares why her advice for midlife is to “be mobile,” inspired by her immigrant parents’ willingness to move toward opportunity. Together, they examine what that advice means when changing direction involves a paycheck, health insurance, caregiving, or retirement savings.

Topics include:
Why you haven’t aged out of taking risks, and how experience can become an advantage.
How to distinguish a familiar choice from a secure one.
What to consider before changing careers or starting a business.
The difference between feeling uncomfortable and being unable to afford a risk.
How to test an idea before making a major commitment.
Why the reward worth pursuing might be more time, flexibility, or freedom.
Learn more about Allison and her book at allisonschrager.com.
How's midlife going? Fill out Farnoosh's survey and help shape the podcast in 2027.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What would change if we paid as much attention to how we spend our time as how we spend our money?

Fran Hauser joins me to explore that question. A former media executive, owner of Bedford Books and author of Twenty Minutes Is the New Hour, Fran challenges us to ask how much time something deserves before deciding how much time to give it.

In midlife, that question gets especially personal. We’ve spent years becoming capable, dependable and very good at getting things done. The reward? More things to do. Fran’s approach offers a way to reconsider those commitments and make room for the work, relationships and experiences we actually want.

Our conversation explores:
The four habits that quietly consume our time: padding, perfectionism, people-pleasing and procrastination.
Why some tasks deserve your A game, while others can survive a perfectly respectable B or C.
What opening a bookstore in eight weeks can teach us about deadlines, clarity and starting something new.
The cost of always being the reliable one, including the resentment that follows an unwanted yes.
How to decide when to spend less time, pay for help or stop doing something altogether.
Where AI can help, and how to avoid filling every saved minute with more work

Learn more about Fran and her book at franhauser.com.
How's midlife going? Fill out Farnoosh's survey and help shape the podcast in 2027.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Ask Farnoosh, we're tackling one of the biggest money questions of all: When can I retire?

Inspired by a viral Instagram reel about repeatedly refreshing a retirement calculator in hopes of finding financial freedom, Farnoosh breaks down how to determine your retirement readiness—and why retirement may not be the right goal at all. Instead, what if the goal is optionality?

In this episode:

Why so many Gen Xers are obsessed with retirement calculators
How to calculate your "freedom number"
The 4% rule explained simply
Why Social Security may be worth more than you think
How home equity changes the retirement equation
Four retirement personality types
Practical ways to move your retirement date closer
Why burnout—not retirement—may be the real issue

Plus:
Farnoosh weighs in on the controversy surrounding Belle Burden's bestselling memoir Strangers following a recent New Yorker investigation.
An update on the new Trump Accounts program, including why Farnoosh believes it could become one of the most powerful wealth-building tools for children.

Related Listening:

Retiring on Social Security Alone
How's midlife going? Fill out Farnoosh's survey and help shape the podcast in 2027.

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Today's episode is sponsored by Bank of America. To learn more about BofA Rewards and see where you land, head to bofa.com/bofarewards

Welcome to So Money, everyone. You know the loyalty economy when you see it. Airlines have status tiers. Your grocery store has a rewards app. Hotels want you to hit the next level of points before your trip. But did you know your bank could be another place to unlock exclusive benefits? I didn’t until now, and here's the part that got my attention: Access is changing. More banking customers than ever now have access to real rewards, and the kinds of benefits available to them are expanding, too. If you haven't looked at what's available to you lately, it's worth a review.

My guest today has spent her career inside that shift. Shikha Narula is Managing Director and Head of Consumer Deposit Products and Rewards at Bank of America. Before this, she led US consumer lending products at American Express, and spent 16 years at Citi in cards and marketing. So she's watched this industry rethink, again and again, what it actually means to reward a customer for sticking around.

In our conversation, we're going to talk about

The forces actually reshaping banking right now
What that means for how we should evaluate our own banking relationship and
Shikha will walk us through BofA Rewards, which launched this year and represents a pretty different approach to who gets rewarded and for what.

By the end of this episode, we’re going to walk through a bank check in that takes less time than waiting for your coffee, and it could be worth real money that you don't even know you have access to.
How's midlife going? Fill out Farnoosh's survey and help shape the podcast in 2027.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.