Fear + Finance with Farnoosh Torabi

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hi.

00:00:03
Speaker 2: This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.

00:00:08
Speaker 1: And this is Sarah hart Unger.

00:00:10
Speaker 3: I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families.

00:00:17
Speaker 1: Welcome to best of both worlds.

00:00:19
Speaker 2: Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life.

00:00:32
Speaker 1: Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.

00:00:35
Speaker 2: In this episode, I am going to be interviewing Farnush Torabi, who is a personal finance expert and is also the author of the brand new book Healthy.

00:00:43
Speaker 1: State of Panic.

00:00:45
Speaker 2: She's broadening her subject matter with this book, looking at how our fears and the things that we are feeling trepidation about can be a clue to how we should live our lives. That this is something we can look into and get to know more about ourselves. And rather than this like no fear whatsoever, kind of ridiculousness, you know, actually there's a good place for this, and it's a healthy state of panic. I guess is how she would put it. So we're looking forward to that interview. But Sarah, do you follow any personal finance type people, and you know we could share some of our favorites on this episode.

00:01:23
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:01:24
Speaker 3: Podcast wise, I have a fair number of slightly financial themed I love How the Money, which we've had those guys on our podcast before. I especially love their Friday episodes where they just go through like news in the financial sphere and just kind of talk about it. They have a really nice rapport. And I love Planet Money and The Indicator, which is kind of like a subset of Planet Money. And it's funny because like, I wouldn't have thought those would be interesting topics, and yet almost every episode is like fascinating in some way, shape or form. So those are like my biggest financial podcasts, I would say. And then I think we both really enjoy the Frugal Girls blog, who we've also had on the podcast.

00:02:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, she has an awesome blog, anyone who hasn't checked that out yet, thefrugalgirl dot com documenting her adventures cheerfully living on Less. And she's recently started nursing school, which is very exciting that she went back to do a lot of college classes and get her nursing degree in her mid forties as her children have grown up and moved out. And I think that's really fun to hear about how people do start careers at different parts of their lives. And so she's very inspiring with that and also got really cool recipes, so all good stuff.

00:02:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, we like how to money.

00:02:41
Speaker 2: The thing is, I don't really you know, I often listen to these things, not for like, here's how you you know, here's what an index fund is, or here's you know what you should be putting in your four to one K or something like that. I mean, I feel like I've got that down. But I like thinking about the philosophy of money because so much about it that relates to time. I mean they're both limited resources and how you can optimize them in different ways and what they can enable when you use them in certain ways. So you know, although they're obviously trade offs, that sometimes too that you can spend time or spend money. And you know, on this podcast, we're often telling people consider spending money because people often spend their time in ways that you know, you can't get the time back.

00:03:27
Speaker 3: I was just thinking about, like I used to be really really into the fire scene. Like I went through a big fire phase fire being financial independence, retire early, and have gradually gotten less excited about the concept. I've also noted that I think a lot of the fire types, as the market cooled and inflation went up.

00:03:46
Speaker 1: Got a little quieter.

00:03:48
Speaker 3: And then I also feel like a lot of them are really big into hardcore real estate investing, which I'm like, that can turn into your whole job, and like, honestly the kind of job I would hate, So it's.

00:04:02
Speaker 1: Rather practice medicine, right, Yeah, exactly.

00:04:05
Speaker 3: It's gotten a little bit murky for me, but I still find the concept interesting.

00:04:10
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean that was always the funny thing for me with reading the fire people, because many of them are like, Yay, I've achieved financial independence. I don't have to work anymore, And then they work in a way that is very much like you and I work. Right, When people have podcasts or they write books, or they hold courses or they have a newsletter or whatever about their life where they're not working, I'm like, but that's work. It's like, yeah, we're activities that are generating income are work. Work is not defined as stuff you don't like doing. Right, that is not the definition of work. I mean, that's not retirement. That's you know, you switch careers, which is awesome, But I think that could be a goal for many people, like have enough of a financial cushion that you can switch careers to something you enjoy.

00:04:51
Speaker 1: Like, I think that's excellent advice. But that's a.

00:04:54
Speaker 3: Little bit different than total digression. But I tell people I work full time, but I work part time. It's a bit and part time as a podcaster and writer, and like then they're like, oh, like, because I think some people would be tempted to say, oh, I went part time to like work on my podcast.

00:05:09
Speaker 1: But I know what my calendar looks like, and.

00:05:12
Speaker 3: I do not work part time.

00:05:14
Speaker 2: No, no, not at all. This is in fact work. We have a business, as does Furnish. So she's gonna talk to us about a healthy state of panic and her life and her work in general.

00:05:26
Speaker 1: So we are looking forward to that.

00:05:27
Speaker 2: Well, Sarah and I are delighted to welcome Farnush to Rabi to the program. So, Farnush, can you introduce yourself to our listeners.

00:05:35
Speaker 4: Yes, happy to thank you so much for having me on your show. You and I've known each other for many years. Laura and I have been working in the personal finance advice space for about twenty years. Through that time, I've written books, I host a podcast called so Money, and my latest book is called A Healthy State of Panic, which is part memoir, part guidebook on how fear can be a friend. We've often been told that fear is something we need to fight, and I don't know about you, but I've never really been able to be fearless, like completely fearless, like the world is a scary place. So it's a more honest take on how fear has been helpful to me and so many other people. And you can too, yeah, And you can't.

00:06:19
Speaker 2: Do exactly All books eventually have to have that, and you can too, yeah.

00:06:24
Speaker 1: Yeah. And you have two children, correct, Yes.

00:06:27
Speaker 4: I have a daughter who's six and my son is nine.

00:06:31
Speaker 2: Excellent, excellent, And so you actually you're raising kids yourself now. But one of the things you talk a lot about in your book is your own childhood and growing up in an Iranian immigrant family, and I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about how that experience contributed to how you view the world.

00:06:54
Speaker 4: My parents taught me to be hyper vigilant. We're not the family that sort of felt like we could just take chances. My parents, Just to give them the background, they immigrated here from Iran in the late seventies with the backdrop of the revolution happening in Iran. Their plan was not to stay in America forever. Their plan was just to come so that my dad could get his education and then they would move back. In the middle of all that, I'm born in Worcestern, Massachusetts, and the revolution, and then on top of that, the hostage crisis and so much else going on, they didn't feel like it was an appropriate time to go back. And fortunately they were able to stay. It wasn't like, oh, let's just stay because we can. They needed to find my dad needed to find a work sponsor, basically to sponsor his visa and staying that was really hard, but one person did and the rest is history. We never went back to Iran to live. My parents have visited. I never actually visited, except when I was very, very, very very young. I don't remember. But all this to say that when they were given the opportunity to stay in America, they really took that as a huge luck, a huge opportunity that they did not take for granted, and as a result, they didn't really push the envelope when they were here, Like they weren't like, Okay, let's risk a lot, or let's allow our daughter to just kind of like become one with the Americans. You know, they'd really felt as though they wanted to protect their culture, but also they were scared. You know that as Iranians in America in the eighties, it was not kumbaya, right. It was a lot of rejection and I think, like a lot of immigrants for the first time in America, there is a culture clash, and they didn't really trust the Western ways of child rearing. You know, like, wait, we're going to just drop off our kid at a house and she's going to sleep over all night, like not in her own bed. That was very foreign to them and very uncomfortable. So I wasn't allowed to do a lot of the things that my friends could, talking to boys on the phone, sleep, a lot of socializing stuff I didn't get to participate in that didn't involve you know, parental supervision and things like that. And so they raised me just to be really cautious, and I think I in some ways, well, I would have loved to have gone to a few more sleepovers than I did. I do appreciate that they taught me early on that the world isn't going to be always embracing of all the things that you want to do, and that you should still work hard, you should get an education, you should have self accountability, but at the end of the day, you have to prepare for uncertainty, which they were intimately aware of all that, Like they knew that their all life was so uncertain in the beginning, and so things like loneliness and rejection and uncertainty and fearing those things were very much a part of my upbringing. And I think, as an adult woman trying to navigate a male dominated industry like finance, being the breadwinner in my marriage, which is not you know, as a woman, that's still a foreign role, and all of that, I think becoming much emotionally mature around those fears, I think set me up for success and we can get into it. But I don't look back at my childhood as like, oh, don't feel bad for me. You know, yes, I had sort of a more insulated and guarded childhood, but as a result, I got really intimate, and I had an early relationship with fear, which helped me as I got older. There was a sort of there had to be a reckoning at some point, Like my fears interrupted a lot in my childhood, Like I was the kid that would overreact in her fears with her fears. As adults, we can't do that. So we have to find a way to sort of see that fear eyed eye, understand what the wisdom is potentially in that fear, what it wants to protect or help us protect, and then go do the thing. And that's where the book really arrives for readers. It's like, you're afraid, you still want to go do something really exciting or different or uncertain. Here's how you can use your fears and listen to your fears to go still do that thing, but with more confidence because you have understood the fears. You know what the fears want you to protect, and how to create maybe a different roadmap for yourself so that you're going to go do that scary thing, but while still valuing what your goals are and what's important to you and your risk tolerance.

00:11:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, well let's talk about that, because I mean we hear a lot about conquer your fears or you know, feel the fear whatever, and you talk about making fear your friend. So let's talk a little bit about that metaphor, Like when what does it mean to make fear your friend?

00:11:35
Speaker 4: It means that you have a relationship as opposed to a combative relationship. You have a relationship where you know, you're understanding that fear potentially has arrived with a purpose, and you're still the adult in the room. You're still in control of this relationship. As adult, I think we undermine our ability to manage our emotions. We think that we are going to be overwhelmed and flooded and sunk and by our emotions, Whereas I think, you know, all it takes sometimes is recognizing what the emotion is and deciding what you're going to do with it. What are you going to allow for this fear to like, You're going to give it space, But you are still in control of this relationship. And that's really the friendship, you know, where even in real friendships, like there's a balance of power sometimes and there's a give and take sometimes, And I think that's important to remember. I'm a journalist, you're a curious person. What I always say is when fear shows up, ask it questions, have a dialogue that's part of the friendship. Have a conversation like where did you come from? What do you want me to protect? Are you real? Because sometimes fears are not you know, their fiction, or maybe they are other people's fears that we've decided to or maybe unconsciously subconsciously kind of inherited and allowed to take up space in our lives. These are important things to recognize, and fear is really, I think, sometimes a reflection of who we are, which sometimes our friends are too. You know, who you choose to have as friends. There's a reason for that. And the reason that maybe you have certain fears is because of the way you were raised, your tendencies, your risk tolerances, all of that. So fear tells a story about who you are sometimes. Again why it's important I think to have patience with our fears, not always. And the book doesn't talk about all the fears all the times in every situation, must honor them. No, we talk about nine different fears that I find typically come up when we are at life's big crossroads pertaining to things like money, relationships with our partners and friends and ourselves and our careers, and when you're afraid of things like loneliness or rejection, or money or failure or uncertainty. And these are some of the chapters in the book, and fear shows up. I think these are the times when we really do want to face them and befriend them. And again, not because we necessarily have to take them along for the journey, but because maybe there's a moment to stop and realize there is some information that this fear wants to relate to me that can be really, really useful to me as I'm about to make a high stakes decision. We don't want our decisions to backfire, and fear can sometimes be a compass to help us navigate life's maze.

00:14:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, and one of those maze aspects and one that's you don't get into until later in the book. But I know, since your personal finance expert, let's talk about fears around money, Like, what are some of the most common fears people have about money, and particularly maybe you can go into some of those that you might have been telling yourself.

00:14:41
Speaker 1: Over the course of your life.

00:14:43
Speaker 4: I like to talk about the fear of not having enough This comes up so much in my conversations with people and on the podcast. Often people write in like do I have enough to retire? Will I have enough to buy a house? Will I ever have enough to support my family? I'm thinking about maybe starting one. And sometimes that question and that fear around that question is real, Like it's because you don't make enough and the world is expensive and childcare is expensive, and so when that fear comes up, I think it's legit, and it's important to sort of understand, well, what are the holes that I may need to possibly fill. You know, there's just some basic math sometimes that has to equate. So if certain things cost certain things and you're not making enough and you want for those things, then it's a matter of either adjusting how much you make or your approach to what you're paying for and maybe changing some of your goals. And that's a personal decision. But when that fear shows up, sometimes it is a real fear, and it's because of just the economics of the world that we live in. But often I find that when we fear this not having enough, it's pointing at something much deeper. The fear really wants you to maybe take a step back and realize that you're focused exclusively on income and the cost of things and not also recognizing the other assets that you may have that in their totality make you rich, or you would maybe think twice about do I have enough? Because I, for example, lost my job in two thousand and nine during the recession, and I definitely had a lot of these fear musings like, oh my gosh, you know, how am I ever going to afford anything anymore? I've lost my income and I was afraid of not having enough to pay my mortgage. I was afraid of not having enough to cover my gap and employment. Who knows when I'm going to find another job? And what I find is that when we have the fear of money, it's often dovetailed with the fear of uncertainty. Money and uncertainty. There's sort of like these two peas in a pod. And one of the exercises in the book about when you're fearing financial uncertainty around sort of challenge in your life is to do this inventory of all these assets that you have that go beyond money, that are rich. And in that moment in two thousand and nin when I lost my job, I can't go back and beg for my job, although I would have, although they wouldn't have given it back to me. I couldn't get back my title, my income, my health insurance. I could not reverse the subprime mortgage debacle, none of that. So when you have the fear of financial uncertainty, the fear wants you to protect your sense of control. So what can you control? What can you leverage in your life that is a tool, is an asset to get you to the next place with more confidence. And for me, it wasn't necessarily money, although I had a little bit of savings, but mostly it was my ability to strategize. I was creative. I had a body of work. I had a book recently that I'd written, which was a platform that I hadn't really given. I haven't really looked at it like that until really I was in this moment of having to restrategize. I had a network of relationships professional and personal that could help me. I had my mental health. I had a support system. These are little things and in there, as you combine them, and as you look at them and you reflect on them, you're like, oh my god, I can actually maybe do some things that previously scared me. But now I know I have a backup, I have a system, and so for me, the next best move financial move wasn't to try to find a full time job. They didn't exist at the time. Actually, sometimes the best decisions are the ones that are made for you. I was like, I'm going to freelance and I'm going to hustle, and I'm going to offer myself up as a consultant and as a contributor, and I'm going to envision ideas for other companies and pitch them. And I didn't score home runs all the time, but I got enough home runs, and those revenue streams ultimately created a business for me. Later that year, I incorporated. And so you know, all this to say that when you're fearing financial uncertainty and what if and what if and will I have enough? I think it's important to take inventory not just your financial hard assets like your savings and your investments, but also these other intangible things that priceless that can be tools for you in stepping into your next opportunity that are certain, Like you can lay me off, but you can't lay me off for my ambitions. You can't lay me off for my all the my rolodex of friends and professional network that will be there for me no matter what when everything is And that's an assignment for all of us listening, Like, imagine you do hit rock bottom. What are the things that endure, the assets, the resources that remain. I mean, I interviewed somebody in the book who was a victim of Bernie Madoff's billion dollar ponzi scheme, and so she was left with zero savings, all her money and her husband's money gone from a phone call that they got, like you're just done, and she's like, I went through. She went through all the grief and all things, but she was like, I'm focused exclusively on what I've lost. I need to focus on what I have still included her home. But also you know, she was a writer and she had written many good books, and she was like, I'm going to write again because I know that's gonna be my way out of this. I got to just start writing. And she actually wrote about her experience being swindled and all of that and eventually recouped some of the money and like, but her work in that fear of like oh my god, doom and gloom was I'm going to have to focus on what I can control, what has endured, and what I can still leverage so that I can get out of this, because nobody wants to stay stuck. That's not what the fear wants you to do. The fear wants you to protect yourself, which means getting out there and doing something else, to move on and find success somewhere else.

00:20:42
Speaker 1: Absolutely.

00:20:43
Speaker 2: All right, Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and then we're going to be back with Farnws sharing a little bit more about women and money in particular. All right, Well, I am back with Farnush Tabi, who was the author of the brand new book A Healthy State of Panic, which is about leveraging your fears to achieve success. But before Farnush wrote that book many years ago, she also wrote a book called When She Makes More, which is about women breadwinners.

00:21:23
Speaker 1: So this is a fear as well.

00:21:25
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people are still very uncomfortable with the idea of women being breadwinners in relationships, and I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that, like why people have that fear, because I know it's something that a lot of listeners of this show have been dealing with.

00:21:41
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, And I include some of those stories in the new book, A Healthy State of Panic. Those were coming up a lot for me as I was writing, and it's true. We fear what we don't understand. We fear what we don't know. And even in twenty twenty three, as we've evolved and relationships of all shapes and sizes, you know, there's still a lot of resistance to this idea of a woman making more than a man in their relationship. And a Georgetown study recently even concluded that across all gender, race identity, men, women, everyone's uncomfortable. But like most people are like, wait a minute, huh, how does this work? And again, because we haven't been exercising this much, you know, this is a new phenomenon. The traditional model, the economic model in a male female relationship is such that he makes more. And that's what we have become. That's what we have trusted for so long, that's what sort of our society has built around for so long, and so it is a new thing. And I think that for men and women who are in this dynamic, they may have arrived with this without that expectation. In my book, I talk often to women and men who For those that were extremely challenged by it is because maybe they arrived in their marriage expecting the other formula, expecting him to make more, and so there is a lot of fear, and the fear is rooted in can this even work? A lot of fear of rejection, as I also experienced as the breadwinner initially my mother my culture as an Iranian American, like this was not culturally normal, as it isn't even in America, but especially in the Middle East, and so there was a lot of sort of doubt as far as like would this even work out for her? And what does this say about my husband and me? And I just thought that it was unfair, but I thought, Okay, I got to write about this. But yeah, there's a lot of fear around women breadwinners. And I think it's again because we're just not used to it. We haven't seen a lot of evidence either as to how this can actually be a thriving relationship, which is partly why I wrote the book. I wanted to identify these successful couples and talk about how they were working through and thriving with this sort of new economic shift in paradigm.

00:24:02
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and so I mean, what do the healthy relationships do? I mean that, you know, because I know people have a lot of fears about it. I mean between women still going to have to do all the household work or that men will feel emasculated. I mean, I know there's a lot of fears of things like infidelity and stuff like that. O way, it just yeah, I mean, it not happens, and of course it happens, but it happens in other couples too.

00:24:27
Speaker 1: But it's like, I mean, how does that wind up being healthy?

00:24:34
Speaker 3: Then?

00:24:34
Speaker 1: What are the habits of those healthy relationships?

00:24:37
Speaker 4: Well, foundationally, I think couples who are successful in this economic paradigm realize that they cannot attach their contributions in the relationship to their gender expectations, like we have general expectations in our society. To adopt them in your relationship is very dangerous to say that, well, because you're the man, you exclusively have to be the one who makes most of the money, and as the woman, you exclusively are the one who's going to be in charge of all the housework. That's very dangerous for all couples. And I think when you're in a relationship where now she makes more and now she's also expected to do all the housework as well, which happens. You know. We looked at a study that saw that when she makes more, she actually does more housework than a woman who makes less because she's trying to overcompensate in that department. Making more almost makes her feel less feminine sometimes, and it's very psychological. This is a lot of just over the years, generations, eons of like social conditioning. It's really hard to unwire and unwind from that. But recognizing this is really important if you're finding yourself even subconsciously consciously falling into these gender roles in your marriage and you're like, but I don't even like to cook, or I'm not even I don't have the time, you know, you have to get really honest about that. And the couples that were most successful just did what they were each best at, what they each wanted to do, and if there was leftover that neither wanted them wanted to do, they outsourced it, which sounds like a rich couple's problem. But you can outsource a lot for not a lot. These days, there's a lot that you can outsource things to automations and technology. You can barter with your neighbors and your you know, if you want to, you can barter childcare like women would say, and men would say, we would swap babysitting nights with our neighbors, and so that gave us like free nights in some ways and didn't cost anything. But you got to get creative. But the bottom line is that foundational. You cannot assign contribution roles in your relationship based on the gender. And there's a lot we can learn from same sex couples actually around this, because this is not an issue for them. Maybe they have other issues in their relationships, but this is not something that comes up right because how could it. And they literally, like I interviewed some same sex couples, you know, how they devise their to dos in their relationship comes down to just who wants to do it, who's best at it, who has a time. The other thing I think is really important to be conscious of is that when you make more, whoever you are in the relationship, that doesn't mean that your time is more important than the other person. And I find this to be a conflict, not just in same couples that make disparate income, where she makes more, he makes more. It's just, you know, we tend to think that, well, if I make more than I have, maybe more of a say in the relationship, or my time is more important. Not I mean so many times, even just earlier this year, I was in conversation with a mom and she's a teacher and her husband, it works in sales, and so she makes less than he, but she was conflating that with his time is more valuable than mine. And so when we were trying to get together for a mom's night out, she bailed at the last minute because she said, oh, I didn't realize my husband a meeting tonight, and you know, I only make a teacher salaries, so I can't really like interfere with his work schedule. And I was like, ooh, yeah, let's I'm sorry, but you're a teacher. You have an incredibly important job, and I would argue more important than someone in corporate sales. Like I don't know, I just think that that's that's an ongoing debate and it's not worth the time to decide, like both of your times are important, and I think together you need to come up with a better way of managing your hour.

00:28:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, like figuring out ahead of time who is not available on any giff competition.

00:28:39
Speaker 4: And so I think that you know so all that's really important, I think to recognizing that just because you make less in the relationship or no money, it doesn't mean you cannot be a significant contributor to a relationship, because there's so much else that makes the world go around when you're a family unit, things like food management and taking care of the house, and taking care of your social calendar, and providing emotional support and like the also like logistical support, and so thinking about when there are these changes in your relationship in terms of who's making what and you as the person maybe making less or feeling less than, you need to have a conscious conversation and a real plan, a new plan for how each of you is going to contribute in a way where you both feel equally important to the overall well being of the family. And that is going to evolve over time, maybe even within your financial life. If you're making less, it doesn't mean that your financial contributions are less because we earning is just one piece of the pie. There's also the managing of the money. There's the conscious spending of the money, there's the investing of the money. And so what I found too in couples that were successful, if like let's say she's making more of the income, he might be the one who is working with the accountant and looking at the monthly budget and they're doing it together, but he's more involved. I think in every household there is sort of naturally one person who gravitates more to the money stuff. That doesn't mean the other person's baring their head in the sand, but that person's maybe more of the day to day money manager or month to month money manager. And that's an important role. In my own marriage. I make more, but my husband's more of the saver. So I use more of my income to pay for our overhead and costs, and I of course save and invest. But for my husband, you know, he contributes exclusively to the kids' college funds. He provides the vacation money. And so looking back, like this is stuff that has a couple, you want to decide on what would make you feel what contributions do you want to make financial in the relationship. You could be more of the saver and then you can look back and go, I helped send our kids to college. It's not a small thing. Even as you were the one maybe making less income. So these are the things that I talk about in the book, These sorts of negotiations and plans that you can make within the relationship so that each person feels like an equal contributor, financial contributor, household contributor, emotional contributor, all of it, even though there is this disparate income within the relationship.

00:31:24
Speaker 3: Got it?

00:31:25
Speaker 2: So I wanted to pivot more to Farnusha's life here. I mean, we now know that your husband's the safer, you're more of a you know, you're the breadwinner in your household. But let's talk about what a day to day life looks like in your your household these days, so too school age kids.

00:31:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I can just give you the hour by hour hour.

00:31:47
Speaker 1: Sure, let's hear it.

00:31:48
Speaker 4: Well, we usually wake up around seven am. We are not super early risers in our house, but seven am. I'm not a morning person. Seven am is even hard enough for me. We get our kids up and we do the whole hour to hour and a half routine of like breakfast, brushing teeth, getting dressed, maybe catching up on some homework, and then we hit the bus and then from like eight thirty to nine. I do a little bit of emailing my own I work from home. My husband also works from home. That's basically always been true, even before the pandemic, maybe not so much as it is now. And plus we also move to the suburbs during the pandemic, so we're pretty home bound. I go into the New York City area once or twice a month for some meetings, but primarily at home, and I run a podcast. I do a lot of zoom calls with clients and gosh, running errands, loading the dishwasher. Like the whole day is just sort of this like a lot of personal and professional in a work day. But basically I like to get a workout in usually between the hours of nine and ten in the morning, and then from ten till about four four thirty. It's a lot of work and calls and podcasting mixed in with like maybe I'll take a shower, maybe I'll go pick up some dry cleaning, maybe i'll you know. I do a lot of my grocery shopping online. I rarely hit the grocery store anymore unless it's for last minute things. And our kids are at school until about five. We they do an after school program. So we used to have full time childcare, which for parents who have young kids who are paying for childcare right now, I'm going to tell you, there's a there's a whole world where they go to school and then maybe the school has an after school program and it's public, so that cost goes away. And so that's been hugely helpful for us, which means that I don't have to work like a crazy person anymore to make money to pay for all the things to have my kids be taken care of. And I don't regret, you know, I don't regret like having work so much when they were littles littles, but I think it has afforded me now the ability to kind of take a little bit of a step back and not have to do all the things and be there for my kids when they come home and make dinner, which I like to do. And so when they get home around five five point thirty, by then they've already done their homework at school, so now we can really just like have dinner and play and they can read or whatever, watch a little TV. That's kind of our evenings, and then I go to bed around eleven because usually between their bedtimes at eleven, I'm catching up on some extra emails and things like that, but that's basically it. And now I've launched a book, so it's been a little bit more hectic, throwing in like book events into all the mix and some travel. So that's not going to happen every week, but it's been an especially busy fall.

00:34:41
Speaker 1: Absolutely, so quick question. Were you ever scared of or had fears of?

00:34:46
Speaker 2: I don't know if we like to scared of public speaking and flying start to that they're but you have to do them, you know, and all the time.

00:34:58
Speaker 4: I mean, I have a big talk I'm doing at the end of the month and it's a new keynote, so I'm going to be giving it for the first time, and I'm always nervous, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I think I was actually just talking about this on my own podcast, that having this fear of public speaking, it's not the fear of having the confidence to speak on stage. It's more of the all the things that I have to be kind of aware of while I'm on stage, my slides, my movement, my delivery, you know, and so to that extent, if I'm afraid of those things. The fear is telling me to prepare as best I can, you know, get there an hour early, scope out the room. I just reached out to the event holder and I say, can you send me a picture of the room, because I'm like, want to No, am I going to be on a stage? Am I just going to be? Like?

00:35:46
Speaker 2: What?

00:35:46
Speaker 4: I just? More information is more information. It's never not enough to prepare yourself for that stuff, because it just makes you're setting yourself up more for success. Not to say things could still go or wrong, but at least you've done everything you can to prepare. And that's really what fear. That's the gift, you know. That's it's not like listen to your fear so everything can work out all the time. It's so that you can go and do the thing with more certainty, knowing that the world could still upend things, but that you did everything you can. You're on the other side of that experience, knowing that you respected your goals, your values. You you did it with integrity, and you did it prepared, and you did it maybe even a little bit still scared, but you still did the thing.

00:36:37
Speaker 1: You still did the thing. You felt the fear and did it anyway exactly as they say. Yeah, all right, well.

00:36:42
Speaker 2: Furnish this is great. We always end with a love of the week. I can go first to give you a sec to think about it. I am actually wearing some warm, fuzzy socks and now I realize I really needed to write down the name of what they were. But it always comes back to like Amazon. I swear that, you know, because I go online. I'm like, I'm out of socks. All my socks have holes in them, and I'm like, I would like some warm wool socks. And I go on and I search, and then you know, thanks to the beauty of online reviews, I can tell that there's some pair, some set that's like not very expensive but has like thousands of five star reviews, and I'm like, I'm on it. I'm on it, and you know they're there the next day and they're great.

00:37:27
Speaker 4: Well, the power of the Amazon review. This is what I'm trying to get everyone to do, is like, please leave a review for my book, because once I hit a thousand reviews, the book will just sell in perpetuity and I'll never have to do another podcast or reel again. Although I would always come back.

00:37:40
Speaker 1: To your podcast.

00:37:40
Speaker 4: But of course, my favorite thing this week is and I encourage everybody to do this. I've been going through some old boxes and I have come across a lot of old photos of myself, of my kids. I just found the sonogram of my babies when they were in my tummy. I showed them this morning. They were like, Mom, your tummy is so ugly. I was like, okay, looks like autogram. What is going on in your stomach? It's so weird. But I think that that for me has been really special this week. I've framed some of these photos and now they're in front of me, and so, you know, just go through some old boxes. You know you might enjoy the process and seeing a photo of yourself when you were a little kid. This is an important thing to have at the forefront all the time, because why else are you doing the things that you're doing. If you're ever doubting anything, remember who you were as a kid. Don't let that kid down. If you're worried about public speaking, if you're worried about doing the next thing and taking a chance, like you know, I always think about myself as a kid and how scared I was, and how scared of ever actually realizing my potential. I was so do it for her, you know, and sometimes having that actual visual reminder is so helpful. And we'll keep you going.

00:38:59
Speaker 1: Absolutely the Fieldo's photos are pretty cute too, right, thank cute? Yeah, exactly?

00:39:04
Speaker 2: All right, Well, thank you so much for coming on Furnished. Let our listeners know again the title of the book and where they can find you.

00:39:11
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, Laura. The book it's called a Healthy State of Panic, and you can find it at a healthystateopanic dot com. I love being on Instagram too. If you want to follow me there at Farnish Sharabi, I slide into my DMS. Lots of fun happening behind this.

00:39:25
Speaker 2: Lots of fun. All right, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks well, that was awesome. I am a big Farnish fan. So Sarah, this question came in, she said, this listener, maybe we recognize that we might have different opinions on this, says, I'm curious how both of you approached decorating your houses for any new listener. Sarah and I both moved in twenty twenty two, so we've both been dealing with new house stuff for the past two years or so, She says, did you ever consider professional help or using a decorator? I know you are typically fans of outside, but decorating can end up being a very significant investment but might also lead to a greater enjoyment of a space. This person just moved, and she feels like she is wasting time on thinking about how she might decorate when she doesn't particularly enjoy it, nor does she think she is very good at it, and so she finds it quite stressful.

00:40:18
Speaker 1: And part of the stress.

00:40:19
Speaker 2: Of feeling like her house isn't finished makes her feel like she can't have people over, which is then an opportunity cost in and of itself.

00:40:26
Speaker 1: So would love your advice. So, Sarah, what do you have for her?

00:40:29
Speaker 4: Yeah?

00:40:30
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying my perspective is correct.

00:40:32
Speaker 3: I just want her to think outside of the box of like what might be normal and what might be possible or acceptable. But I have zero interest in this particular category. We do not have a fancily decorated house. Most of our furniture is IKEA. We replace it when it looks so bad that it's like we did take a look at the like fifteen year old brown Futan and we're like, okay, fine, it's fine. We should get other sofa from Ikia to replace it for the next decade or something.

00:41:04
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's just like not a priority for us.

00:41:07
Speaker 3: We want to save, we want to spend money on our kids, we want to travel, and to some extent, you can't spend out in every single category, at least not at our income level, and so we are completely happy in surroundings that have enough space and are very comfortable. I don't live in a particularly tiny home. It's like thirty five hundred square feet or something like that, but it is not decorated in any way, shape or form. However, I have people over all the time, and I've never once had someone be like, ugh, your house is like not decorated, so I don't want to come or something like that.

00:41:44
Speaker 1: Hang out with you.

00:41:45
Speaker 3: Sarah like, yeah, we had book club yesterday. I mean we have plenty of space. I have a folding table that I can put a tablecloth if I need a big table. We've had many a party here. In fact, I would say I host more than I get invited to things. Maybe I don't get invited because they're so offended by our house that. But I would just push back on the idea that you need like a fancy house because if your friends are going to judge you by like what your home looks like, I mean, and then they're not people I would particularly want to hang out with.

00:42:16
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:42:16
Speaker 3: And by the way, I have high standards when it comes to being like clean, so like I want the house to be organized and not cluttered, and like people actually commented yesterday because it had happened to be the day we had our house cleaned. Anyway, wow, your house is so clean, but nobody said, like, but the furniture is not stylish.

00:42:34
Speaker 2: Just the furniture is for my kiya. I can't be friends with you, Yeah, I think that is. Anyone who said that is not somebody you want to be friends with anyway, So I say you shouldn't. These are separate questions like can you have people over? Absolutely, you should have people over. I remember we had we had some people come stop by to see our house when we had just moved in, and so everything was like full of box I mean literally that day, like the movers were like getting stuff out. I had just like given them the tip, like you know, they were coming over and it's fine. Like if they're your friends, they enjoy your life and they enjoy you, and so I mean as long as you have like a chair for them to sit on. Like so if you literally have no furniture, you might want to at least get some folding chairs, But as long as you have a clean bathroom and somewhere for them to sit, most people are going to be pleasant enough. If they are people you want to have in your life. Now, that is a different question than decorating. I actually think this person is a prime candidate for hiring a designer for precisely what she said. You are spending a lot of money to decorate this house, and you want to spend it well, and you are recognizing that other people have an eye for things and you don't. So this is absolutely the situation where you hire a professional and it's not like you go away and come back and like the whole house is decorated. I mean, it usually doesn't work like that. I mean maybe some people do that, Like if you're decorating like a vacation home you plan to rent out and you don't really care what's in it. But if this is your obviously your primary residence, what it will be is that this person, this designer, will show you like three options based on what he or she has decided is your taste, and then you will choose from those three options. Right, And that makes it so much easier because you are not choosing from the entire universe of sofas. You are choosing between three sofas, all of which would be excellent, right, So you just choose your favorite from those or I mean the entire universe of if you're doing a whole house thing, like, you're gonna be choosing stuff like the pulls on cabinets, like what the faucets look like. I mean, all these things that you have never ever thought to care about. And it does kind of you know, there are choices that could probably look more in the way you'd like them to look, or less or you know, more feel like you want them to look or less.

00:44:50
Speaker 1: And again, this.

00:44:51
Speaker 2: Designer knows all that they know what knobs are good, and they know looking at what your taste is, and they will show you three knobs and then you choose from those three knobs and you find something you are happy with. So I think in your case, this would actually be a great way to make sure that you're not wasting money on a sofa you then hate, or a paint color that isn't what you like, or anything like that. That said, different designers get paid different ways. I would suggest looking into somebody who is willing to be paid by the hour, because then they're more open as opposed to like a percentage of the budget, because some people do a percent of like what you purchase, and usually it comes out about the same because they get discounts, like there's often too the trade discounts for like rugs and furniture and all these for most of the high end furniture stores.

00:45:46
Speaker 1: So if they were.

00:45:47
Speaker 2: Getting like I'm just throwing this out, I don't remember what the standard numbers are, but if they were getting twenty percent of the price, they're often getting between a fifteen and twenty five percent discount to the trade anyway, so it's it's kind of a wash.

00:45:58
Speaker 1: But the incentive then is to choose.

00:46:01
Speaker 2: Slightly more expensive items versus if you were getting paid by the hour, then it's the same to you if it's a relatively inexpensive couch versus a more expensive couch, and so they won't automatically feel like even if they're not consciously doing it, there's always the incentive to have slightly more expensive stuff. So I would just think, you know, it can go either way and you're probably gonna get something great regardless if you ask friends for recommendations whatever, But just throwing that out there as a possibility if you're looking for slightly more budget friendly furniture.

00:46:35
Speaker 1: Pieces totally makes sense.

00:46:37
Speaker 3: And yeah, I think if you care about it, I totally agree with Laura. I just I don't know, like make sure you'd care about it, like I would totally hire a designer for clothing because I care.

00:46:47
Speaker 1: Yeah more, Yeah, exactly.

00:46:49
Speaker 2: We all have different things we care about or even just you know, you may not care about it, but sometimes in tough roll estite markets, if you're trying to sell a house, like staging it can really help, and you know, so.

00:47:00
Speaker 1: You have to.

00:47:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, if you're going to live in a house for ten years and you're like hiring someone to decorate it, I mean most people are not hiring it because they plan on moving out in two years.

00:47:07
Speaker 1: I did see you write that, and I'm like, hmmm, because like, by the but that's not this person.

00:47:11
Speaker 2: I'm just saying like you know, you even somebody who doesn't care about it, might you know, that's a situation where you might look into it, right, if you were trying to sell something relatively.

00:47:20
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, all right, well, this has been best of both worlds.

00:47:23
Speaker 2: I was interviewing Fernush Tarabi that her brand new book A Healthy State of Panic. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.

00:47:34
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.

00:47:35
Speaker 3: You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you.

00:47:42
Speaker 2: Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.