Money Conversations with Personal Finance Expert Jean Chatzky.

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vanderkam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. 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. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode one hundred and eleven. We're going to be talking with Jeane Chatsky. We're very excited about this today. She is the author of Women with Money, The judgment free guide to creating the joyful, less stressed, purposeful, and yes, rich life you deserve. She's also the author of several other books, including Money Rules, Pay It Down. She hosts a wonderful podcast called Her Money. So we hope you'll be checking that out. I think you're really going to like the advice. This is not about you know, saving five cents on serial. This is about taking your money seriously. As a professional woman who has big goals in life, Sarah, You've been thinking more about your financial goals of late, right, Yes, and it's funny. I do comment later in the episode that I am obsessed with the fire movement, but I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea we are. We're not fire people. I just think financial independence retire early. Yes, I just think the ideas are really intriguing. And you know, I just sort of I'm thirty nine years old and I've been in the I've had a real job for only six years, so that's you know, As I'm listening to our guest, I'm realizing, like positions do have kind of a different experience, because it's not like I had this big margin to save since I was a college graduate at age twenty two. Like it's a much different scenario. But I still feel like had I read some of this stuff earlier, I might have made some different choices maybe six years ago. Well, like what though, I mean, I'm sure what are the different No, we're still trying to sell our house. I'm not sure we would have purchased that house. I love that house, and you know what, maybe by the time this airs it will have sold. But we chose a neighborhood that's beautiful, but we were probably one of the more poor members of that community, which then, you know, leads you to certain choices. I don't know. I guess you're right. There's not a lot of things I don't regret, vacations we've taken. I maybe, well, no, it's hard, it's not necessarily U stuff that I would put on the podcast interesting, But yeah, I just I just sort of wish I had come into some of that before. So if you are early in your career, you might want to check out some of these resources, not to necessarily become a fire person, but just to kind of get the ideas percolating and think more about longer term investments and longer term planning and that sort of thing. Yeah, I mean, so I did not go to about school into a residency. So I've been working since I was twenty two or so, and of course earning less then than I am now. But I was always into saving, especially as somebody who worked for herself, it was very important to me to build up assets so that I had a lot more control over the situation. Which is sort of an interesting thing because a lot of jobs aren't secure either. Yeah, people have a different mindset if they know they'll get a paycheck every two weeks or every month, and you don't have that luxury necessarily as a freelancer, and so I made sure to have money put away. I was probably doing something that our guest talks about later of like not investing it for certain chunks of time. But the good news here is that I met my husband quite young, and he's very good about investing and sort of not going for crazy stuff, but the long term safe investments to you know, optimize kind of the responsible growth. And so he was able to share that with me, and so by about you know, age twenty five, I was definitely investing and that's been helpful, and now now I'm getting more creative with its. Talk a little bit about in another episode that I've been getting into angel investing, which has been fun. You know that that's when money starts becoming a source of excitement as you get involved in companies in early stages. But certainly, you know, goals like making sure you're on track for retirement and all that should should come first. The one thing I have to say, because we've gone back and forth and the fire movement and the retire early sort of stuff. I there's there's sort of a negative aspect about work and some of this literature, right, I mean, do you agree pick that up? Agree? Oh? Absolutely? And there's this weird So there's this sort of physician fire movement, which is very interesting, and I think a lot of that speaks to the fact that a lot of there is a high degree of burnout in a lot of professions related to just access loads and documentation and less autonomy and all this kind of stuff. So I mean, yes, there's a negativity, I think the way I see it, and I have noticed that many people who are quote FI are continuing to work or they're doing a side project. But it's about not being reliant on a sort of corporate paycheck, not being tied to a specific earning level or specific thing. And I mean it's kind of a sad testament to the way some industries have evolved. And I think that hopefully it will you know, if people do leave, that's going to change the market a little bit, right, I mean, maybe hospitals will put more energy into making people not want to make those choices. If more people do, I think it's a reality, though, I mean, I don't think we can deny it. Some people are and some companies don't treat their employees well, or you just feel like you don't have enough autonomy your day to day life, and that can be hard. And I'm not speaking as I mean. I really love my job. I feel lucky to have been able to craft it in the way that has worked for me, and I work at a wonderful place. But I hear stories of other people where it's not like that, and then I can see why you would want to be able to say, well, I'm here now, but I know that my end date is in three years, and at that point I can stay if I want or leave if I want. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that I always am bumping up against, and you and I are both in marriages where our husbands are in jobs where this sort of expectation for a lot of people in those jobs is that their spouse would not be working for pay, or would be doing so on a very very limited basis, like it's optional or it's very optional. And that's lovely in the sense of they have good, secure jobs that earn decent money. But because of that, I mean I feel like I have received a lot of messaging over the years of like, why on earth are you doing this? Right? Like why are you bothering to work? To you know, don't you feel so guilty that you're not with your kids one hundred percent at the time when you don't have to. And I of course really hate that messaging because I feel like, you know, yeah, I have great things to offer my kids and have great things to offer the rest of the world as well, and I want to do both of those things, hence the whole best of both worlds. And so you know, I whenever there's this whole negative messaging about work, I think I have a really bad reaction to it. So, you know, sure I don't have to work. I love working and have thrilled to continue to do so. And so that's kind of the message we're trying to give to our children. I actually be both my husband and I will say, you know, it's not about that we have to go to work. It's that we both have things we feel like we can do for the world that we would like to do, and we're also spending a lot of time with family as well, so there isn't a conflict here that we need to justify. So I guess I'm into the whole financial independence in the sense of, yes, I think it's great to build up wealth, and I've made a point of doing so. On the other hand, I don't think that getting out of working is necessarily the a great end goal. A great end goal, it's to be spending your time on meaningful things, and many of those meaningful things can be financially renumertive, right, and that's that's awesome too. No, and I think those are all I think that that those are very fair points, and I too bristle whenever I ever get the implication, although I don't I don't feel like I do. Maybe maybe medicine is just not as you know, but because you have a you have a real job, Sarah, I think that's currently like nobody's gonna know. I see what you're saying. Yeah, yes, No, I mean it's obvious what you are, you know, the contribution you're making the world, that you have a useful skill that you're doing, and so so I think there's some less of that, although there probably still is, Like why are you bothering your husband's a doctor, you know, are you supposed to not work because your husband's a doctor, and maybe there's something to be said for like there's not. There is certainly a salary differential between the two of us, but it's not like a ten x differential or something like that. I think that might raise people's eyebrows a little bit more, but should it. I mean, if I was a teacher and love my job and was like kicking butt in the classroom and enjoying it and finding growth, and you know, maybe doing a fun podcast on the side, like I would hope that I would be encouraged to keep doing that as well as well. Yeah, so you know, we come at this from the perspective that work can be a really awesome thing too, But you know, wealth is awesome too, and these two things are not at odds and fact lead to each other because as you work, you can build up more assets, which you know gives you wonderful options in life. One of the options maybe not to work, but there's also other options, such as doing great travel, having more investment goals, you know, such as funding your kids' educations if you want to do the kid's education, excellent philanthropy. I So all good stuff, all right, Well, let's bring this over to Gene Chatsky and this is going to be a great interview. So excited to bring this to you guys. Well, Sarah and I are very excited to bring in Gene Chatsky to the podcast. I first learned about Gene a great many years ago when she was one of the experts on the Oprah Debt Diet segment. There was a whole series where they did financial makeovers for a handful of families who were in debt and trying to get out of it. Jeane did a wonderful makeover of a family, although there were some rough parts. I think my favorite part of the whole thing was when she was arguing with her that particular lady about getting her hair done in the beauty parlor. That was really some excellent TV, which is stuck with many me all these years. But anyway, Gene, we are so happy to have you here. Could you quickly introduce yourself for our guests. Sure, I'm Gene Chatsky. I think most of your listeners will probably know me either from that series on op or from the Today Show, where I've been their financial editor for many years. On that podcast. As we have some avid podcast listeners. Yeah, a podcast of my own. Laura has been a guest. It's called Her Money and it's a weekly conversation on all things life and money for women of all ages. Yeah. That's wonderful. And Jane, you know, really tries to very successfully tries to make financial information accessible to people and to explain it in a way that we can all understand. And one of the things she talks about in particularly on her website, she has five things that people need to do to manage their money successfully. In the first, no surprise, is to earn a decent living. Can you talk about this why this is particularly important for women to keep in mind as something to do to be successful with money. Absolutely, I think granted, there are women in the workforce and out of the workforce at all home taking care of kids and families, but the household needs to have a decent income. And when I say decent, that's a really intentionally chosen word. It's not necessarily important to have a lavish income. There's a lot of research on money and happiness, and what we know is that once you have, once you have enough to live comfortably, more money doesn't really buy you more happiness. And comfortably is you can pay your rent or your mortgage, you can drive a safe car back and forth to work, you can go out to dinner, you can take a vacation once in a while. Beyond that, more money is not always additive to people's happiness. So that's just something to keep in mind. And yeah, as you were saying, these five things are up on her money website for people who are looking to refer back to them. Yeah, and the book of our list listeners are in sort of professional jobs. But what we found is interesting. Many have this narrative going through the back of their brains somewhere that their paid work is possibly a detriment to their family. Right. That men kind of grow up with this narrative that, well, my job is a main way I contribute to my family, Right, this is what I am expected to do. And I think a lot of women still have this sense that, you know, the job with the decent income is more optional. I mean, are there ways to kind of counter this money narrative that many women grow up with. Yeah, I really think it's changing over time. I think as we have more and more women who are the primary breadwinners for their families and that number is boy, it's growing every single year. I think it's about forty percent of women are now the primary breadwinner and their families. And if you add to those the number of women who are are the only wage earner who are running single parent households, you get to well into the sixty percent range. It's just a fact of life that most families these days need two incomes. And what I've found, and I think it's been a really positive development, is that for many women, once we are earning money, we feel better able to say this is mine to manage. And that's a really important thing to do, just because so many of us will be alone at some point and forced to manage our money by ourselves, and it's really nice to know how to do that before you're under tremendous pressure and tremendous strain. We notice sometimes that there's a temptation to subtract childcare costs out of the female earner's salary and sort of do this calculation, Well, my nanny is this much money, and I only earn this much, And you know, on our podcast we make an effort to remember that that really comes out of the entire family budget. Yeah, And not only does it come out of the entire family budget, but the one thing that gets missed in that calculation is the value of those years spent in the workforce. So we when we see parents, men or women, when we see people taking a step back from the workforce to stay home and care for kids, often when or older parents, which is happening more and more and more often, when they get back into the workforce, they find they're not able to re enter at the same level of salary and the same level of seniority where they left. And for that reason, you know, if you're doing that calculus where you're saying, well, I'm not earning so much more than the cost of a caregiver, so why even bother staying in the workforce. Or it's costing me as much as I'm earning to care for my older parents, so why should I not stop and do it myself. The answer is that when you give up those years of experience, that's a loss that you can't get back. It's a long game. Hey, listeners, every parent wants their child to get better grades and higher test scores, but that's not always easy. My solution is varsity tutors before Varsity Tutors. You only had a few options, like selecting a tutor based on random recommendations or spending a small fortune at a local tutoring center hoping for the best. The truth is that if you really want to ensure the confidence and educational success of your child, Varsity tutors is the best option around. 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Give your child the confidence and keys to success today at varsity tutors dot com slash best of and listeners. We also want to tell you about Better Help. We know you're busy, but is there something that's interfering with your happiness or is preventing you from achieving your goals. If so, Better Help Online Counseling is there for you. You can connect with your professional counselor and a safe and private online environment. It's so convenient for people who are working and raising families but want to prioritize their mental health. You can get help on your own time and at your own pace. You can schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist. They have licensed professional counselors who specialize in anything you might want to talk about, depression, stress, anxiety, sleeping, anger, family conflicts. 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What are the goals that we should have who are in this demographic and feel free to use numbers? I feel like people shy away from numbers. You know, I'm happy to go to numbers, but let me before I get to numbers, sort of get to the most important things to pay attention to. Yeah, when I was writing my last book, which is called Women with Money, and it is really aimed exactly at your listenership. It's for women who are past the point of struggling, who are really you know, we have money, we're trying to figure out how to use it to create the lives that we want. I asked hundreds of women the question what do you want from your money? Because we should be thinking about this in a conscious way rather than just going through life and spending and letting it happen to us. And what I heard off the top almost every single time was I want safety, I want security, I want stability. I want savings as in cash in the bank. And the problem with this is that that need and I don't think it's a want, I really do think it's a need for safety and security actually gets in the way of financial stability. And we can see this in research. Women tend to keep a greater percentage of our money in cash than men do. Fidelity did a study where they found that above and beyond emergency cushions, women were keeping twenty thousand dollars or more just in cash in the bank. And when you look at how much money we're earning on that cash right now, you know, on average, right one tenth of one percent. Basically nothing. It's nothing, Yeah, it's nothing. And so one money goal is to start getting more involved with and paying attention to your investments, start getting more comfortable with your investments. It's not an area that a lot of people identify with that a lot of women identify with. Often when I when I go and I am giving a talk to a large group of women, I'll ask for a show of hands, how many of you are investors? And I'll see maybe a quarter to a third of the hands go up, and they all go up very tentatively. And then I'll ask, and how many of you have four oh one ks? And every hand shoots up. And that's the disconnect. You know, when you have a four to oh one K, you have an IRA, you have a retirement account that you're actively contributing to. You are an investor. You just don't feel like one, because in our minds, investors look like Jim Kramer. They're they're right, they're screaming at the television set too. Yeah, no, absolutely right, they're there. But those are traders, and it's a very different thing. You don't have to be a trader to be a successful investor. In fact, one of the reasons that women statistically are better investors than men is because we don't trade, because we're not meddling every single day. We're actually buying things, letting the markets do their work. And and and yeah, yeah, which is good, which is really really good, by the way, I mean, it's good to be boring. Yeah, soose the passwords for your account for a while. I let it go. Let it go, So I would say, you know, pay a little more attention to your investments. You asked for metrics, so I'll give you the metrics that I actually use. Although I've gotten flamed on Twitter occasionally for putting these out there. But when we are thinking about how we're charting for retirement, which is the biggest goal that most of us have. By age thirty, you want to aim to have one times your annual income put away for your own retirement, by forty three times, by fifty six times, by sixty eight times, and by the time you actually retire ten times. Now, if you have a traditional pension, and about I don't know, fifteen percent of people in this country still have a pension, you can take those numbers down by the amount that the pension will cover. But yeah, no, those are Those are some some goals that we should work on hitting. And if you're saving about fifteen percent of whatever it is you're earning every year, and that can include matching dollars from an employer, you'll get there. Yeah. I'm curious why you think you got flamed for that. I mean, what were people? People were? I mean it was the first time I put them out there. The Washington Post wrote about it. I got so many comments. People thought they were ridiculous, you know, because it was too high or too high? Can you say that many times your income, so not that many times your expenses because those are two different numbers. Okay, so when you're talking expenses, yeah, two different numbers. And you can use expenses to calculate and benchmark as well. The I don't know if you guys have done a show on the Fire movement, but I'm obsessed. Yeah. So the Fire movement stands for financial independence, retire early, and people who are in the Fire movement actually do calculate based on expenses, and their math says as when once you have accumulated twenty five times your annual expenses, then you are financially free and you don't have to work in the job that you don't want to work in anymore. A lot of people, you know, interestingly, a lot of fire proponents still work. They just don't work in the day, don't have to work exactly. And twenty five is because people are working that on a pulling four percent out of your assets exactly annually, and that's sort of what people assume you could replace in terms of annual growth then or that so you won't run out of money exactly. Yeah, and that four percent is a decent benchmarket. It works. Sometimes you have to be willing to let it be a sliding four percent. You can't if the markets are down and your portfolio is down. You have to pull four percent of a smaller bucket. But I guess I am surprised that your calculations are based on income and not how you're actually living, because I would think that part of the equations very important. I mean, I'm speaking as someone who's a physician, and like my newest thing is like I'm like, I want to live more like a resident, you know what I mean, because then you can retire a lot sooner. I think I think they're I think they're both really important. Income is the number that a lot of the more people have a handle on, especially at looking out into the future, that makes it. I mean, Gene, honestly, I would have I'm not a flamer, but I would have flamed these numbers as being low. So yeah, there you go. So we're we're all, uh, we all have different perspectives on this. So so you guys all heard those numbers from Gene. You know, one one time salary at thirty, you know, three time salary at forty. That's probably pretty reasonable for most people to aim for. If you said, you know, fifteen percent that you're you're saving roughly. But of course the key is you can't just put the fifteen percent in a piggybanker a zero interest bearing, say or point one percent bearing savings account. You need to make it grow. What do you like when you see somebody who's good at investing like you? What is what is she doing? What what is that mean to you? It is not rocket science. It means that she is contributing regularly to a accounts for various goals. Right, could be college, could be retirement, could be other things. She has selected portfolio of investments, you know, which can be as simple as one target date fund that's set up to set up on a glide path to mature about the time that she wants to retire, and she's watching what she's doing. I mean, that's it, right. He's thought about having a million complex schemes going on at once now, which I feel like there's pressure towards that. Yeah, no, not at all. And I think if you've got if you haven't done any of this sort of planning, and you're thinking, well, I know I'm making money, but I don't know if I'm putting it away in the right places and the right accounts. I don't know what I should be doing with my next dollar. Sometimes sometimes that's the question that I get asked sitting down with a financial advisor and making a plan, just saying these are my goals. In other words, this is what I think I want five years from now, ten years from now, twenty years from now in my life. The planning process, people think it's all about the numbers, and it has to start with the numbers. It doesn't start with the numbers at all. It starts with this is how I want to live. This is my vision for how I want to live. And then you back on it on finding a financial advisor and the difference between fee for service and those that take a cut of profits. There's so many different ways that advisors get paid these days. So when you're looking for my preference is for a holistic financial advisor, somebody who will not just look at your investments, but who will look at your taxes and your real estate and your estate goals and just look at your whole life and say this is these are the steps that you need to take to get this overall life into shape. You can find financial advisors like this in a number of ways. I like to start by just asking for recommendations. Sometimes if you know people, particularly if you have colleagues who are in similar lines of work, they can be a good source of advisors because that advisor will already be familiar with your company's retirement plan, and that sometimes takes a little getting up to speed on and that can be helpful. But there tend to be financial advisors who specialize in working with physicians, or who specialize in working with lawyers, or and you're right, they get paid in a lot of different ways these days. There are advisors who will charge you a fee by the hour. There's some who will charge you a fee for the plan. There's some who charge a monthly fee. These days, there's a whole network for millennials called gen Xy Planning, and they generally charge a monthly fee. There are a lot of wealth managers quote unquote who charge a percentage of assets under management, generally around one percent, although it tends to be a sliding scale and it goes down as you have more assets with that manager. And then there's still some people who work under the old brokerage commission model where they earn money for selling you particular investments. And the easiest thing to try to do is to get a grip on what this relationship is going to cost you in dollar terms over the course of the year, so that you can compare apples to apples. There are a lot of experts who say you should only have a fee only advisor. I don't really go for that because I don't think I don't think they are enough that you know, if you want one in your area, you should. You should figure out who's the best advisor overall, and then figure out are they being paid fairly and what else beyond checking beyond checking references, beyond doing a check with FINRA's broker check tool, which will give you a bit of a background check. You want to know are they a fiduciary, which means are they acting with your best interest in mind at all times? That's a very very important question, and you want to know how you feel having a conversation with them. My litmus test when I first talked to a planner is to pay very careful attention to who's talking and who's listening, because if they are doing all the talking, then there's no way for them to know who you are or what you want from your life, and that's not a good way to That's not a good way for them to service your needs. Yeah, and I'd also add that investing has gotten a lot more user friendly in the past few decades. I mean certainly the rise of index funds. I mean that you were mentioning you could just have a target fund as well, or index funds are very easy, very low cost, so then you don't have to think about, oh, what's the hot stock, which you shouldn't be thinking about anyway. So it's you know, in all of the discount brokerages, you know the fidelities, the vanguards of the world. We'll, you know, sell you index funds for a very low amount and you can check in on it every year or two and you're on autopilot, but you're growing instead of losing money to inflation. So yeah, that's been a really cool development. I wonder if pivot to your advice for talking with our kids about money, because people listening to this podcast tend to have children still at home, and many of us would like to have them be good stewards of money as well. So you know, what are the things we should be teaching and what are some practical things we can do with that. I just finished working on a piece about talking to your kids about paying for college, so maybe that's reverse order, but let's start there. Parents, I think need to be a lot more upfront, especially if your kids are going to be expected to borrow for college, about who's paying for college, how much is there for college. What we're starting to hear from kids who are coming out is that they really wish they had understood a lot more about their student loans ahead of time, that they would have made different choices about where to go to college, that they would have paid picked a school that maybe offered them more aid or just cost less in general, because they didn't understand the burden on their adult life that would be required to service these student loans. And so if you know, if you've got a kid, and these conversations should really begin in middle school, you know, middle school, high school, they should be had on an ongoing basis. Think about what your kids can do to make themselves attractive to various colleges, you know, getting good grades and maintaining certain activities as well as you know, this is how much there is. The rest is going to be coming from you. And let's talk about the best way to put this together so that when you graduate you're not feeling burdened. I mean, even just some simple numbers, For every twenty thousand dollars that you borrow, it's going to cost about two high one hundred and seventy dollars a month to pay that back for ten years. And a lot of kids are borrowing double that, which means five hundred dollars off the top of your paycheck after tax is just going for student loans. What does that mean? Does that mean you can't move out of the house? Does it mean you you know? And what can we do to minimize that going in. Yeah, that's a great conversation to be having. And how about for younger kids, what are some of the things that we can be talking about. I think the big message to get across to younger kids is that money is limited and you have to choose how to use your money, which I know sounds really kind of simplistic, but it's a lesson that doesn't often get transferred. Allowance is a really really good teaching tool for this, but you have to give an allowance with a list of things that you're not going to buy anymore and that kids have to buy for themselves using their limited resources. I also think it's important for teenagers to work and earn their own money. I've got two kids, and I had the experience with both of them of them waking up when they first started babysitting and realizing that the ten dollars an hour that they earned was so much more valuable than the ten dollars that they got as an allowance or in a birthday gift, because all of a sudden they associated it with their time. All of a sudden, it was oh, I you know, I earned this, and maybe I'm not going to spend it so quickly, that's absolutely Do you recommend talking specifics with your Like, my kids have developed a new fascination with oh, what is this cost? And what does this cost? And when I was growing up, we never use numbers, which is actually very interesting because I had a very frugal family and upbringing. But I've just been like, it costs this, your soccer cost it much, so you have to go or you know you're going to owe me this or whatever. Is there any reason not to just come out with it? I mean, I kind of do coach them, but this is not like playground conversation. But yeah, no, I I don't think. I think it's fine if they're curious to know what things know what things cost. I think that that's fine to share. There are some kids who will ask you know how much you make. That's a personal decision about whether or not you want to share it. You certainly don't want that to be playground conversation, but I think it's okay. I think I think much like we teach kids price comparison, you know, they it's helpful for them to understand what things cost as you go through life, and you explain that you're choosing to use your resources in in one way or another. You know, the the argument that the argument that you can't afford it when you can afford it doesn't wash with kids, right They know better. They know if you've got money to go out to dinner, they know if you've got money to go on vacation. They know. But you can explain that when they ask, you know, why their friend's family is going on a vacation at Christmas time and you're not that you are choosing to do something else. You know, we can't do everything, so we choose to do this. We choose to put more money away for college, We choose to we chose to renovate the kitchen so that we'd all have a you know, whatever the choices happen to be, you can explain. You can explain to them that it's it's choice and that as they get older, just as they do with their own money today, they'll have to make bigger choices. Well, this is wonderful, Well, Geene, this has been great advice. We always ask our guests to give us one. We call it a love of the week. So this is just something in your life that is cool at the moment. It can be financial. It can be you know, a financial product or service or app or whatever. It could also be completely different. We hear coffee a lot, so we can go first just to uh, you know, help with that. So, Sarah, what what's your love of the week? Oh, I forgot that. I had to say it in front of her. Well, I was a year's long wine app user and I still really like it. But one of my listeners suggested I try every Dollar because I didn't want to pay for the paid wineap and every dollar is free and does much of what wineap did, and I'm very happy with it. So it's my level of the week. Yeah, you know, I've been really loving It's going to sound like a financial nerd here, but VT, which I think is you know, the total World index fund. But I've been by not a tip, not a tip, but you know, there's there's iv V, which is like the S and P five hundred I think, which is a heavy portfolio component for me. But then you know, you try to get the whole world. So I've been as i've been rebalancing my portfolio the past few weeks, I've been looking more at that one. Okay, and for me, I've got I think this week I'm loving robin Hood snacks and Robinhood is a financial site, financial app, but they have a really wonderful newsletter that comes out every morning, and it is it digs into the earnings on various companies. They do it in a very entertaining way, and I'm you know, for a while I was sort of not opening it every day, but these days I find I am. So there you go, wonderful. Well, listeners, please check out Jean's podcast, Her Money and also her new book Women with Money, The judgment free Guide to creating the joyful, less stressed, purposeful, and yes, rich life you deserve for more of her wonderful advice. So Jeane, thank you so much. Thank you well. That was awesome. And this week's listener question is somewhat financially related. She says, how do you prioritize spending money in an ethical way that also works for your family? So pre kids, this listener says, they had more disposable income and more time, and so they'd try to buy what seemed like the right consumer choice with sustainably sourced products were possible with lots more time for researching these things shopping in person if that was necessary. They also donated a certain percentage of their income to charitable causes. Now that they have children, of course, their costs have increased and they seem to have less time, so the charitable donations have become more haphazard, and they are not putting as much time and effort into researching and choosing products that might be whatever ethical standards they have maybe had in the past. Now we justify this, she says, as the time saved enables us to exercise, sleep, spend more time with our children, et cetera. And they're always going to be trade offs with time and money and consumer choices. But I am interested in your perspectives regarding this. You know, what do you think about ethical spending and philanthropy and what that means when you have small children? My answer, and I mean, I think this person, you know, much like we talk about, if you're listening to parenting podcasts and reading parenting books, you're probably already doing better than just sort of the average person. So you should probably give yourself credit for even thinking in this direction. But this, to me is such a shades of gray thing, and we should be very careful not to make it black and white, like you're not. Nobody's going to be able to get every single product from an ethically sourced local merchant, and even if they did, then they'd probably find out that one of them had political views that they were against. You know, it's impossible to be like perfect in this realm. So I guess my thought is to just probably there's not as much of a reason to beat yourself up about your choices, particularly at this stage of life. And it may be that you're right that this is time that's saved that enables you at this time to just keep things more simple. But you also might think about, like, if you are investing those dollars for later, that money is growing, and if the market does poorly, then it's what you're going to retire on. But if the market does well, then while you have like amazing philanthropy options down the road. So I guess I don't think it's necessarily terrible not to be giving a huge set amount right now if things are a little bit tighter and you want to make sure that your future is taken care of and your children are taken care of. So yeah, I also mentioned that you know you might want to think about what you're doing with time, and you might not have very much disposable time now, but that a change. So your philanthropily plan doesn't necessarily always have to be a certain percentage every month. It might be participating in something that's related to your industry. Like I went to a frea clinic last weekend with my residence and it was fantastic And that's something I can see myself doing more of later on when my kids are older. And if you think about your hourly rate you are a professional, which you are, then that may be a fantastic donation. So yeah, yeah, I mean you were doing like free physicals for kids for school, right, I mean, that's that's a wonderful thing for you to do and that you are uniquely positioned to do, and that's that's probably better for the world than Sarah taking the same amount of time to research the exact you know, supply chain of all the things that she is purchasing. Yeah, I mean, I got to say, I'm probably not putting too much thought into this. There's certain things I do. We've talked in the past about my you know, with the Hungry Harvest box, like trying to reduce some food waste in terms of creating a secondary market for food that might go to waste. You know, we certainly are giving some money currently to causes that we think are interesting, and we are trying to figure out long term what this is going to look like. It's fun to do stuff that when it's bigger, that it's more targeted. So, for instance, we gave a scholarship to Texas A and M because that is where my husband went for college and he went on a scholarship and so kind of felt like he owed it to them to pay that back, and so we have and I think that that was a great choice of things to do. We've put some money into My old choir has a commissioning program going on that the commission new Music, and I'm very happy to support that because I like the idea of new choral music coming into the world. And so that's something we're doing. And you know, these are the kind of things I want to think about over time. I think if this is something that is not huge for you right now, if there is some community organization that you are part of that you are spending a lot of time with, that might be a good choice for your dollars just because you're there. I mean, you're seeing what it's doing. You know it's doing good things, so you don't have to do you know, a ton of research on that. So that might be your house of worship, or it might be a local volunteer organization, something related to children in your community that you can see what they're doing, but you can sort of target on that for now and know that over time you might be able to think more about this as you get out of the little kid stage. This has been best of both worlds. We've been talking money, we had gene Chatsky on, and we will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you 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.