If you’re over 35 and constantly feeling like you’re behind financially, you’re not alone.
In today’s episode, I’m joined by Jean Chatzky––longtime financial journalist, bestselling author, and founder of HerMoney––whose work has shaped generations of women’s financial literacy, including my own. Jean opens up about starting over at 40 after divorce, job loss, and losing a parent. She shares exactly what she learned about saving, investing, and rebuilding confidence when time feels limited. We talk about why so many women feel behind no matter their age, the biggest money mistakes women 35+ make, how to course-correct without panic, and how to use tools like retirement accounts, HSAs, and investing strategies to build a future that still works, even if you didn’t start early.
Key takeaways:
Feeling financially behind after 35 is normal.
Jean emphasizes that nearly everyone, regardless of age or income, feels behind with money. The problem isn’t that you started “too late”—it’s believing that starting now doesn’t matter. Even midlife course corrections can dramatically change long-term outcomes, especially when you focus on savings rate, investing consistency, and realistic expectations rather than perfection.
Cash feels safe, but investing is what actually closes the gap.
One of the biggest mistakes women 35+ make is holding too much money in cash and not enough in the market. While savings accounts offer emotional security, they won’t outpace inflation or support a decades-long retirement. Investing, even later in life, is essential because retirement can easily last 25–30 years.
You don’t need to know everything, you need to ask better questions.
Jean reframes financial confidence as the willingness to ask questions, not having all the answers. Whether it’s divorce, mortgages, investing, or healthcare decisions, the ability to say “I don’t understand, explain it again” is a critical financial skill. If a professional can’t explain it clearly, they’re the problem—not you.
Your savings rate matters more than timing or market perfection.
Jean highlights that consistently saving around 15% of your income, and adjusting upward when needed, can still get you where you need to go, even if you didn’t start early. Savings rate is one of the few financial levers fully within your control, and increasing it even slightly can have an outsized impact over time.
Midlife requires re-evaluating lifestyle, not just income.
As earnings rise in your 30s and 40s, expenses often creep up without intention. Jean recommends doing periodic “expense audits” to plug leaks, reassess recurring costs, and redirect money toward goals that actually matter—like retirement, flexibility, and peace of mind.
It’s not too late, but you may need different strategies.
From working a few extra years to delaying Social Security, maximizing survivor benefits, or using HSAs strategically, Jean explains how small, thoughtful decisions later in life can make up for lost time. Progress doesn’t require a full financial overhaul, just smarter, more intentional moves.
Notable quotes
“Don’t quit what you’re doing until you know where you want to go.”
“Time is your biggest asset when it comes to growing your money.”
“You can’t get a full do-over, but you can make up a lot of ground with little things.”
Episode at-a-glance
00:00 Intro: Never too late to save
00:42 What “owning your money” means
02:00 Jean’s story: Starting over at 40
03:49 What to prepare for & do differently
06:36 Biggest mistake: Too much cash, not enough invested
10:56 Why Gen X women feel behind
16:32 Financial boundaries with aging parents & adult children
21:06 HSAs as investing vehicles
27:15 Why “feeling behind” is universal
34:20 Quick-fire Q&A
42:29 Advice for women feeling paralyzed
45:51 Where to find Jean
Jeans’s Links:
Investing Club
Website
HerMoney Podcast
How She Does It Podcast
Visit herfirst100k.com/ffpod to stay up to date and find any resources mentioned on our show!
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Meet Jean
Jean Chatzky, CEO and co-founder of HerMoney is the former financial editor of NBC’s “Today” show, a coach on the PBS show Opportunity Knocks, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling author, the financial ambassador for AARP, and the host of the HerMoney podcast. Through decades of reporting on personal finance, she learned that a) the jargon-filled speak of the financial industry was created (largely by men) to sell you stuff you don’t need, and b) if you eliminate the jargon, there is absolutely no rocket science to money. She knows that a full, successful financial life is within every woman’s grasp — and with the HerMoney team, she’s on a mission to help you get it. Find her @JeanChatzky on all social media platforms.
Transcript:
Tori Dunlap:
If you’ve had the feeling in your 40s and 50s that it’s too late for you to save money, too late to prioritize your retirement, this episode is for you. Because the truth, almost every woman, no matter her age, feels behind. I’m joined by the legendary Jean Chatzky, longtime financial journalist, bestselling author, founder of HerMoney, and a woman whose work has shaped an entire generation of women’s financial literacy, including my own. Jean has helped millions understand money more clearly. In today’s episode, she opens up about her own story, starting over at 40 after a divorce, job loss, and the death of a parent, all in the same year. And she talks candidly about what she wishes she’d known earlier, what she’s glad she prepared for, and why every woman needs to feel empowered to ask questions even when the answers feel overwhelming. But first, a word from our sponsors.
So Jean, you said that to “own your life, you have to own your money”. So for women navigating careers, caregiving, identity shifts in their 40s and 50s, what does owning your money really look like and why is it so important?
Jean Chatzky:
At a very basic level, it means knowing what is coming in, what is going out, and where it’s going. And you know most people have absolutely no idea, but unless you have a handle on that very, very basic information, it’s impossible for you to control using your money to accomplish the things that you want in life. And whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, money’s a limited resource and we’ve got to make choices about how we want to allocate those resources in order to get what we want most. And far too many of us just go through life spending unconsciously, not thinking about it, and then regretting the decisions that we made down the road.
Tori Dunlap:
Why do women in either their late 30s, but especially their 40s and 50s, need to think about money differently than someone in their 20s or someone like me who’s 31? What is the difference?
Jean Chatzky:
It’s just time. It’s the fact that time is your biggest asset when it comes to growing your money. And if you get a late start … And I’m not saying 40 is late, because honestly, I started over at 40. I don’t know that we’ve ever had this conversation, Tori, but I got divorced at 40. I got fired at 40. My father died at 40. 40 was a shitty year. It was terrible, but I started over and built savings and built a portfolio and bought a house and paid it off and was very, very methodical about doing all of those things. But if you are starting at 40 rather than starting at 25 or 31 when it comes to making sure you’ve got some money for emergencies, stuffing 15% a year or as much as you can in that 401k and grabbing some matching dollars, then you have to do more with less time because you’ve got less of it on the other end.
Tori Dunlap:
So Jean, I actually didn’t know that part of your story. Can we stay on that for a bit? Because I think it is something that I hear a lot from our community of women in their 40s and 50s who go through divorce, go through starting over, go through a career identity shift or the loss of a parent. What did you learn about money during those times, even as someone who is good with money, is a financial expert? What were you glad you prepped and prepared for, and what do you wish you had done differently?
Jean Chatzky:
I was glad that I knew how to do what I needed to do. I didn’t feel as if I was missing any information in terms of negotiating for a mortgage, negotiating the price on a house, deciding which assets I was going to fight for in the divorce. I knew all of that. But what I wished I had done earlier was really focus on accumulating more wealth that would’ve been there to split. I was earning a decent amount of money by the time I was 40. I was earning a decent amount of money by the time I was in my mid 30s, but as a journalist, I started out earning $11,000 a year and it is really, really hard to save on that. And so I just didn’t. It was really, really hard to stay out of credit card debt. And so I battled back from that.
I wish I had embraced the saving gene and investing gene a little bit earlier. And gene, G-E-N-E, not J-E-A-N. I learned about myself that I am not as much of a risk-taker as I thought I was. When it came to that period in my life, I started saving like a maniac. I just reigned in all the spending and started shoving money into 529s because I was going to be responsible for half of college for my kids. I didn’t want mortgage debt, even though having mortgage debt probably was fine. I just … I didn’t want it. I was saving a fire-like portion of my salary when I probably should have been putting it to work. And I was literally saving it. I wanted to see that balance in the bank account adding up because it just made me feel better. It made me feel safer to know that cushion was there, that it could not be taken away from me, that I was running on my own steam. And it took me a while to come back from that and to build my asset allocation back up and to regain the confidence that the markets would do what they have always done.
Tori Dunlap:
I’m thinking as a listener that, okay, she learned a lot. That’s really helpful for me to learn. What if I don’t know everything that Jean Chatzky knows? What if I don’t know how to negotiate that mortgage? What if I don’t know what I should be advocating for in the divorce? I don’t want to spend too much time on it, but if you can give me … Is it taking your personal finance education seriously? How do we show up in those moments that feel really stressful knowing, you know what, I do have the necessary information?
Jean Chatzky:
We show up in a way that allows us to ask all the questions that we need to ask. Even when we don’t know the answers, what I’ve learned about women is that we know the questions. We know what the questions are. We don’t always have the confidence to ask them, but you need to put yourself into situations when the waters are rocky, where you feel comfortable asking your questions. Best advice that I got when I was getting divorced was get a good lawyer, get a good therapist, and get a good accountant. You need all three of them and you need them to be a team of people to whom you can ask every question that you want to ask without feeling like they’re stupid questions. And that’s something that I learned as a reporter.
I was an English major in college. I didn’t come to personal finance because I went to Wharton and decided, “Oh, I’m going to do this.” No, I came because … A therapist would say, “I came because I knew I had some problems in my financial life and I wanted to fix them.” And that got me interested in this topic. But I remember years sitting in my cubicle at Money Magazine or Smart Money Magazine with a really, really patient and smart series of sources on the phone because when you’re a reporter with a magazine like that, people will answer any question you ask them and saying to people, “Look, I’m sorry I don’t get it. Can you explain it to me again? Can you try to explain it another way? Can you pick it up here because that’s where you lost me?” We have to feel okay about doing that because this stuff is not written in English. It’s written to confuse us. It’s purposefully written to confuse us because when we’re confused and feel unable to ask our questions, we just pay the money and move on.
And so for women in those periods of transition, I want you to understand that you have to get the help you need. And if the help that you get is not answering your questions in a way that you understand it, the problem is not you. The problem is the help and you find different help.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I think it’s also understanding that you might feel a little bit of embarrassment asking those questions, but this is your life and this is your money and we have to go through a bit of embarrassment if it means protecting your entire life and the money that you need in order to retire comfortably or send your children to college or have a house. The embarrassment is the small price to pay to make sure that you are financially okay.
Jean Chatzky:
Yeah. And it’s actually not that embarrassing. Once you do it once or twice and you realize nobody melted, it’s not that hard anymore.
Tori Dunlap:
And that the system is not built for you. You’re so right with all the jargon. The jargon’s there for a reason, everybody.
Jean Chatzky:
Yeah. So ask your question once, you’ll get through it and you’ll realize, okay, all right, I’m going to ask again. I’m going to make sure I have all the information that I need to have because nobody cares about your money as much as you do. Even a financial advisor that you are hiring and paying and who has a fiduciary responsibility to put your needs before their own, they don’t care about your money as much as you do.
Tori Dunlap:
What is the biggest mistake you’re seeing women in their 40s and 50s make and how can they course correct even if they feel behind?
Jean Chatzky:
The biggest mistake is too much in cash and not enough invested. And it bears out. You see in the stats, right? The women just have a higher percentage of our money in cash. And it’s a mistake I made. So I had to course correct, I had to do it myself. The money in cash, even when you’re earning high yield savings accounts rates, which today are better than they have been in a while, they’re not market returns. They’re not going to get you past taxes and inflation and to retirement. They’re not doing the work that you need it to do. And so if you know that you are not investing the way that you should be, if you know that your money’s not working the way that it should be, then you got to find out how to get yourself over that hurdle because you’ve still got a lot of time, right? We forget that retirement is a really long time, that we’re retiring at 60, 65. We have a very good chance of living until 90, 95. That’s a lot of years for your money to continue to grow, but you have to put it to work.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and I think what you just said is so important because I think everybody believes I need the amount that I’m going to retire on at retirement age. And it’s like you’re not pulling all of your money out the moment you quit your job and say, “Okay, I’m retiring.” You’re pulling out hopefully a couple of years before a little bit of money to live off of. You’re putting it in a high yield savings account or a certificate of deposit or you’re giving yourself some leeway there. This is what my parents are doing right now who are about to be … They’re early 60s. And then you have some money that is continuing to grow hopefully in the market through those couple decades of retirement. You’re not pulling out all of your money at 65. It’s not over for you at 65. So I think that’s really important.
Jean Chatzky:
And neither is your earning.
Tori Dunlap:
Right. Right.
Jean Chatzky:
I saw some study last week about the number of people who are “retired”. If you ask them, “What do you do?” They’ll say, “Oh, I’m retired,” but who are still working for pay. And it’s in the 30 to 40% range. It’s very, very big. And the reasons that they’re doing it are not all financial. They’re doing it because it keeps them engaged and social and because work can be fun and interesting. I don’t like the thought of a retirement where I don’t have my day scheduled. I like knowing what I’m going to do. That factors in as well.
Tori Dunlap:
So when we think about Gen X women, they’re often high earners, but they still feel like they’re treading water. So where should they be focusing their financial energy? Is it paying off debt, investing? It sounds like investing definitely. Retirement generally. Is it something else?
Jean Chatzky:
First, you got to look at your lifestyle. It’s very, very easy to go through your 30s and 40s … Look, I’m 60 and I am the last of the boomers and the first of the Xers, born in 1964, right on that cusp. And so I think I have a little bit of DNA from each generation in me. But as we became more successful and as we became better earners, many of us piled on additional expenses that we never went back and took a look at and said, “Why do I do this every week? Why do I pay for this every month? Do I really need this or is this money better spent elsewhere?” So I think an audit of your expenses, you don’t have to track every single day or every single week or month or year. But if you haven’t audited for a while, then tracking to figure out where the money is going and plugging the leaks is the very, very first step.
Then you take a look at where you want to allocate those resources. And I have a whole hierarchy. You grab the match first because the 401k match is the best return that you’re ever going to get on your money. If you’ve got high interest rate debt, you move to that second, then you come back and you max out the rest of those retirement accounts. Then you look at any other tax advantage savings opportunities that you have. So that’s your HSAs, although they could go higher if you have some incentive dollars in the mix. Your 529s. And finally, you wrap it up. If there’s additional money and you don’t have a goal that you want to use it for at that point, It goes in a discretionary brokerage account to use for later because there will be a point at your life where you want to use it.
Tori Dunlap:
So I think with Gen X and some of the younger boomers, they have this unique thing where they are sometimes taking care of their ailing parents, but also life is hard for us millennials and Gen Z. And so they’re sometimes living at home or taking care of adult children. So how do you set financial boundaries that protect your retirement without feeling like you’re also failing your family?
Jean Chatzky:
It’s the hardest question. It’s really, really the hardest question. And I think the parent side of it is harder than the kids side of it because those adult children, even if they’re living at home, many of them have the ability to contribute in some way, to not be a drain on resources, maybe just level set with the resources. You’re giving them a place to live, but they’re saving some money so that they can eventually move out on their own and everybody benefits in that way. It’s the parent side of things that is the big problem because adults who are caring for their parents are coming out of pocket and average $7,000 a year in unreimbursed expenses. And that is a Roth IRA contribution for many, many people. The best defense is actually a good offense. If you can get ahead of this and figure out what’s coming your way in the future, which means having the conversation with your parents about how they’re situated for their own retirement, then you can start to do some planning about if and when you’re going to be asked to start contributing to their care and feeding.
Without that information, it comes a surprise and it throws a monkey wrench into the works right when you’re exactly in the situation you described, right? You’ve got your own kids either at college or coming back home, you’ve got your own retirement that you are desperately trying to fully fund, and now you’ve got this third leg that you have to start paying for. So try to figure out how that’s going to play out in advance, if you can.
It also tends to … And I know this because of my family structure, I’m the only girl and I’m the oldest, and it tends to fall on us. I have amazing brothers. I have three amazing stepbrothers. When our parents who didn’t need financial help, but needed help, help around because they were not well, it was on me. I was the one who got the phone call. I was the one who had to strategize and do the blocking and tackling.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Emotional labor. The logistics.
Jean Chatzky:
Look, and it was a pleasure. My husband and I moved during COVID to be closer to my mom. We left our house in Westchester County, New York. We moved to Philadelphia across the street from my mom. I am so grateful that we were there for the last few years of her life. So, so grateful. But this is not something that you take on yourself. This is something where if you have siblings, you gather everybody or you gather them individually. My mom really did not like the concept of family meetings. She felt like one sibling always felt ganged up upon. So she was like, “No, I will talk to everybody individually.” So okay, no family meeting. But you talk to everybody and you figure out how people can contribute and how people can come into town and whether people can kick in money if money is needed to be kicked in it doesn’t have to fall on one child alone.
Tori Dunlap:
Unless you’re an only child like me, but it’s fine. I’ll sleep at night figuring that out. No, I think it’s all great advice. It’s actually something that’s a deep fear of mine because yeah, I am an only child and my parents again are financially okay, but oh, it’s something that keeps me awake at night and I hope they keep their health as long as possible. Okay. So you mentioned tax advantage accounts. So again, for the listener, these are government incentivized accounts that you can start investing in for retirement, for your kids’ college, but we get questions about HSAs a lot, which are health savings accounts, which can either be just normal savings accounts or the best case scenario, they’re souped up and they’re investing accounts. So can you talk more about HSAs as an investing vehicle and why they’re so powerful?
Jean Chatzky:
I love HSAs.
Tori Dunlap:
Me too.
Jean Chatzky:
I don’t know how HSAs ever made it through the tax code, but they’re evidently thinking of even expanding them further, which is amazing. So an HSA, a health savings account is what they call triple tax-free, which means the money goes into the account and you get a tax deduction for putting it there like a traditional IRA. While the money is in the account, if you invest it it can grow tax-free. And when you pull the money out, as long as you use it for qualified medical expenses, you will pay no taxes on those withdrawals. So the hack, the souped up way to use it is to invest the money. Most HSAs have an investment feature. A lot of people don’t realize it. You have to actually turn it on and sometimes you need a minimum balance in order to be able to invest that money, but you can typically invest it in a portfolio of mutual funds. They probably won’t be as many as in your 401k, but there will be enough. You’ll find something that looks like an index fund and you can invest the money.
And then you pay for your healthcare expenses out of your current cash flow. So the trick is if you don’t need the money inside the HSA to pay for going to the doctor, buying your prescriptions, you just pay for it out of your checking account, but you save your receipts forever. And when you get to the point where you want to start pulling money out of that HSA, you can pull it out tax-free against those receipts that you have just kept for years. So even if you don’t have in the here and now of the future enough medical expenses to justify those withdrawals, you can still make them because you had a doctor’s bill in 2026. And so that’s how it works. If you get to the end of the road and you don’t have enough medical expenses to justify the withdrawals, then the withdrawals are just treated like 401k withdrawals and you will be taxed as ordinary income. But by that point, you should be able to have accumulated a lot of bills over time. And you can use the money coming out of your HSA to pay for Medicare premiums, which is amazing.
Tori Dunlap:
Again, everybody, these are fantastic tools. We haven’t spent enough time talking about them. We just haven’t had the bandwidth. But I think the thing about saving receipts is so great. Now, you could be the person that saves the $2 Walgreens or Dwayne Reed, like I bought a bandaid, a pack of Band-Aids. You could be that person, but I think we’re talking more about like, I got my wisdom teeth removed and it was a lot out of pocket. We’re talking about the things that actually feel probably more significant, but you can go the like, again, I bought something for $5. I believe … And I’d have to fact check myself on this. I believe HSAs … I know FSAs, but period and menstrual products are also covered. Do you know this, Jean, if HSA covers them?
Jean Chatzky:
I think that they are now covered, but there’s a site online called HSA Store. There’s also one called FSA Store and they carry all the products.
Tori Dunlap:
That are covered, smart.
Jean Chatzky:
That are covered. So you can double check yourself.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay. So my follow-up question with HSAs before we move on is HSAs are usually given to you because you have a very high deductible health plan. Your deductible’s a couple of thousand plus dollars. The only reason I have an HSA is that was my health insurance when I first went out on my own to run HFK full-time as I’m like, I’m relatively young and healthy and I don’t know how much income that I’m going to be bringing in, so I’m going to choose this high deductible health plan. So how do you determine whether the HSA benefits outweigh a potentially really high deductible?
Jean Chatzky:
If you’ve got some kind of a chronic health condition and predictable health expenses that you know that you’re going to have, it’s generally not going to be the right thing for you. It’s for healthier people. We used to say it’s for younger, healthier people, but in fact, health span has increased so much that you’ve got people in their 40s, 50s, early 60s who are quite healthy, who rarely go to the doctor and would be just fine with an HSA. But if you know that over the course of a year, you are the kind of person who gets tests and sees doctors regularly and has things pop up, this is just not the account for you.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. So the thing I hear over and over and over again from women in their 40s, in their 50s, but honestly, every generation is, “I feel so behind and it’s too late for me.” I remember on my book tour, this was a couple of years ago, this came up in every city, I think. There was a Q&A at the end and somebody would stand up and it was usually somebody who was like 20s, 30s and they would go, “I feel so behind. What do I do?” And I would ask the room, I was like, “Hey, a vulnerability moment. If you feel like you’re behind, will you raise your hand?” And I’m not kidding, every single person in that room … Didn’t matter if they were 19, didn’t matter if they were 75, they raised their hands. So I feel like this is generally a feeling that every single person has about money, is that we feel like we’re not doing enough. But I think uniquely with people, especially women in their 40s and 50s, it feels like it’s too late to start, so why would I. Debunk that for me?
Jean Chatzky:
Well, first of all, as we already talked about, I started late. And there are a lot of rules of thumb and I’m sure you like some of them and you don’t like others of them. I like some of them and I don’t like others of them. But one I do like is that if you can get yourself to the point where you’re saving 15% on a pretty consistent basis, you’re investing that money over a period of decades, you will generally have enough at retirement and you can benchmark your way there. Years ago, Fidelity Investments released this series of benchmarks that a lot of people find absurd and daunting. I’ve published them on my socials at times and I get a lot of hate for these. But in fact, if you save 15% regularly, you get there. So the benchmarks are that by age 30, you want to have about one times your current income put away for retirement at 43 times, at 56 times, at 68 times. And by the time you retire, you want to have 10 times your current income put away for retirement. And if you look at those numbers and you think, “Oh my God, never going to get there,” then you have to get over the 15% mark if you want to be able to achieve those benchmarks.
And those benchmarks are basically that you can replace your pre-retirement income, 85% of it for a 30-year retirement. So if you get to the end of the road and those benchmarks are not coming up pretty fast, then you know that you need to adjust your savings rate. Our savings rate is something that is really in our control. If we look at all the stuff … Can’t control the markets, can’t control interest rates, can’t control inflation, can control how much we save and how much we spend, at least to some degree. If you’re living paycheck to paycheck to paycheck, it’s harder.
Tori Dunlap:
And I think one of the things I tell people as well is it’s like, do I wish you started when you were 20? Yeah, I do. There was probably a lot of reasons you didn’t. Life was expensive. You didn’t know how to navigate money. You had children to take care of. You had ailing family members to take care of. There’s a lot of reasons you probably didn’t start sooner. So do I wish you had started at 20? Yeah. Is it too late for you? Absolutely not. And you might not have millions and millions of dollars. That’s probably not the reality for the most people listening, but you might have 200K or you might have enough where the market can support you and growing your money. And again, it’s not just a 65, you’re hoping to have those market returns after that too. So I just hate the all or nothing mindset.
And I think women especially get caught up in that. We have to do it perfectly or not at all. We just talked about that when I was on your show. It’s like the perfectionism mindset or the like, I’m either going to do it 100% correctly or I’m not going to do it at all is so nihilistic and it’s also just, it’s not helpful. Do we wish you had more money? Yeah, but that’s not the reality. So you have to do what you can. And I promise $100,000 is better than $0.
Jean Chatzky:
It is. And one of my favorite … And I really like data, so I’m sorry if I’m throwing to much at you.
Tori Dunlap:
No. I love it. No, you’re not. Not at all.
Jean Chatzky:
But one of my very favorite statistics is that if you can get yourself to work just an extra three to six months at the end of your career, it’s like adding 1% to your savings, your retirement savings for 30 years. And the math works because your income at that point in your life is at a higher point. So you can’t get a full do-over, but you can make up a lot of ground with little things. And there are other levers that you are going to want to pull. If you are feeling like you don’t have enough savings of your own, it makes it even more important to delay claiming social security. You want to get to that point where you are just maxing out those benefits. That’s something that I think most people want to do anyway. But if you’re feeling … And particularly for women because of our longer lifespans, you want to make sure you’re going to get as much as you possibly can. And if you’ve got a spouse in the workforce, you’re going to want to make sure that you’re not only maxing out your benefits, but that you’re focusing on survivor benefits because you’re going to outlive him.
Tori Dunlap:
Statistically, yeah.
Jean Chatzky:
So focus on those survivor benefits when you decide when to claim.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. The last thing I’ll say as well is that if you have not taken a look at a retirement calculator because you’re too afraid to look, it is potentially daunting, yes, just like this Fidelity study. It has the potential of making you go, “Oh, shit I’m so far behind.” But it is information that you can use. One of my favorite things that I would do, especially in my early 20s, is I would sit at work when I was like, “I hate my job. I hate my life. Do I have to do this for the next 30 years?” And I would go on retirement calculators and I would say, “Okay. If I just contributed $50 more a month or even $20 more a month, how does that change how long I have to work?” And you would be shocked how many months, if not years, it shaves off by just you saying, “Okay. I’m going to contribute 1% more to my 401k, or I’m going to attribute $50 more a month to my Roth IRA.” It’s crazy. So if you haven’t done that, especially if you’re like 40s or even 50s, start taking a look at that because that’s another small thing that you can do to immediately save yourself some time.
Jean Chatzky:
Yeah. And the other thing to look at is what do you expect life in retirement to look like?
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, totally.
Jean Chatzky:
If you haven’t thought about that … And get really concrete, like where is it going to be? When is it going to be? Who are you going to be with? What are you going to do? Are you going to work? Are you going to work for pay? Are you going to work not for pay? How much is it going to cost? You’re driving to an estimate of how much it’s going to cost because lacking that information, you never know what your number really is.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Okay. I have some questions from our audience and these are going to be a little more rapid fiery. Are you ready?
Jean Chatzky:
I’m ready.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay, cool. For 20 something’s listening someone asked, “What can I do now in my late 20s to prepare for my 30s and 40s?”
Jean Chatzky:
You can make sure that you are getting to the point where you are maxing out on retirement. A lot of people in their late 20s are still struggling with high rents where they’re living, with paying down college debt, which is unfortunately going to drag on longer than we hoped. You want to get to the point where you are maxing out because then you’re going to hit that 15% that we talked about and it’s going to be smooth sailing from there.
Tori Dunlap:
How do I know when I’m investing too much?
Jean Chatzky:
It’s so funny that this is one of the questions because-
Tori Dunlap:
Isn’t it funny?
Jean Chatzky:
I had this discussion with my son and daughter-in-law. So I have two kids and two step kids. My husband’s son and his wife both were maxing out their 401ks, additionally making contributions into IRAs. And I looked at their numbers and they were saving to such a degree that I wondered if they were having enough fun.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jean Chatzky:
Look, I love saving. I’m a big believer in saving, but I also think life can be really short and unpredictable. And we work in order to enjoy ourselves. And if you feel as if you’re meeting your goals, you’re savings goals for emergencies, for retirement, and then you’re going above and beyond, and you’re not having enough fun, that’s out of whack.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s not sustainable.
Jean Chatzky:
Yeah. And you should allow yourself thoughtfully to think about what do you want your money to actually do for you? Why? Why do you work? What are you doing this for? Because it’s not just to see a growing balance in an account. I guess that’s fun for … It’s fun.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s fun, but it’s not everything.
Jean Chatzky:
It’s a particular kind of fun, but it’s not being in the Canadian Alps fun. It’s not being on a paddleboard, fun. It’s not riding a horse fun or whatever … Fly-fishing fun. It’s not that. I don’t know. Lately, I have a thing. I really want to try fly-fishing. I don’t know why. But you’ve got to figure out what lights you up and make some space for that.
Tori Dunlap:
When I did one-on-one coaching with people way back at the beginning of Her First 100K, I remember meeting one of my clients and she was like … This was at the beginning. So we sat down and we went through, “Where are you saving? What are you saving?” And she was like, “I’m saving 90% of my income and I don’t feel like it’s enough.” And literally, I was like, “Girl …” I had to tell her to spend money. I was like, “You don’t think this is enough?” Yeah. But This is the classic thing where money is emotional. So we had to unpack, why are you doing that? And it turns out, hadn’t grown up with a lot of money, felt a lot of scarcity around it, was worried the other shoe was going to drop, was like, “Okay. I’m going to save all of my money.” And again, not sustainable.
Jean Chatzky:
Yeah. Yeah. And if you feel like really there’s nothing that you want, give some away because that feels really good.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. It does. Okay. Quote, “I’m getting divorced and losing money from my 401k. Am I screwed?”
Jean Chatzky:
It feels like you’re screwed. I know that it feels like you’re screwed because you’ve read all of these horror stories that say, don’t take the house, take the retirement. And that is really good advice because the retirement continues to grow. The house is a liability in many cases. You’re not screwed. You just have to course correct and figure out where you are in terms of your retirement trajectory and what you need to do to get yourself back on track. But chances are there was a decent enough balance in that 401k for your soon to be X to fight you for it. So figure out where you are, where you want to go and just start step by stepping your way there.
Tori Dunlap:
Is a career change worth it if I have to go back to school for two years, but I’ll make more ultimately? And maybe we can talk about if they don’t have to take on debt to do that versus if they have to take on debt to go back to school.
Jean Chatzky:
Before you go back to school, I would look at what are the other ways to get this knowledge without going back to school? Is this a field like finance in some cases where you got to have an MBA? I think it’s not as true as it used to be, but there used to be a hurdle where you needed that MBA in order to get promoted, in order to climb the corporate ladder. When I was a reporter fresh out of school, I wanted to go to a business magazine because in my first job, I got the opportunity to report about business and I liked it. I thought it was fun. I wanted to pursue it. I had a colleague who had come out of the fact checking pool at Forbes and she just said it was the best job ever. So I wanted to be a fact-checker at Forbes. So I went in and I interviewed to be a fact-checker at Forbes. And the chief of reporters there very quickly figured out that I knew nothing about business and told me that I needed to go get an MBA and I didn’t want to go back to school. It would have been a lot of debt, but also I wasn’t in the moods.
So I went and worked on Wall Street for two years and figured out that he didn’t really need me to have an MBA. He needed me to know how to read a balance sheet and I could get that knowledge and get paid for getting that knowledge. So maybe there’s a workaround. So I would try to find that first. If you do have to go back to school, I would look at whether you can work and go back to school at the same time. And then if you have to take on debt, I would be very, very careful that you know that that career path with the step-up in income is going to be there when you get out.
Tori Dunlap:
My final quick fire question for you. What accounts can I open for my kids?
Jean Chatzky:
You can open a variety of accounts for your kids. You can open UGMA accounts for your kids and UTMA accounts for your kids. These are uniform gift to minors accounts or uniform trust to minors accounts. These are brokerage accounts where the money is invested for them. Sometimes there’s a tax reason for using these kind of accounts. You can open 529 accounts in order to save for their college educations. But I actually think the most important account to open for them is a linked checking or savings account to yours because that’s the only way that they’re ever going to learn about money.
When my kids were teenagers, I opened linked accounts, I got them debit cards. We started giving allowance electronically. If they wanted cash, they had to sit down with me and watch me transfer the money out of their account and into my account so that I would be the ATM and give them the cash until they could drive and then they could go get their own cash. But they knew how to handle these tools before they went off to college and that turned out to be really important.
Tori Dunlap:
So you’ve reinvented yourself many times throughout your career. What would you say to a woman in midlife who’s trying to start over and just feeling financially paralyzed?
Jean Chatzky:
Have I actually reinvented myself?
Tori Dunlap:
I don’t know. Have you?
Jean Chatzky:
I don’t really feel that way. Honestly, I feel like I’ve been doing the same thing.
Tori Dunlap:
I think career-wise, definitely that.
Jean Chatzky:
I mean in a variety of places right?
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jean Chatzky:
Yeah. I started a business, but it’s all been personal finance-y, I guess.
Tori Dunlap:
But you went through a lot of transition when you were 40 though between-
Jean Chatzky:
I did. I did.
Tori Dunlap:
And I think that that is the identities we carry. I think your career identity probably hasn’t shifted, but your divorce-
Jean Chatzky:
Personal-
Tori Dunlap:
The death of a parent, that’s a lot to take on, especially in one year. So let’s talk about that as reinvention. Yeah.
Jean Chatzky:
Okay. Okay. So to a woman who is-
Tori Dunlap:
Financially paralyzed.
Jean Chatzky:
Don’t quit what you’re doing until you know where you want to go. I think we can shift while we’re in motion and having that consistent income is what you need to prevent a greater degree of paralysis that could potentially undo you. So if you have a job, but you’re still feeling a little bit stuck, keep the job and then use your free time to explore and figure out the other things you want to do. And only once you sort of know where you want to jump to, where’s the next lily pad, then allow yourself to jump. But don’t cut everything else off and then try to transition because it’s very, very possible to just get mired in a place where your resources are depleted and you feel like you made a mistake. Move slowly, is I think what I’m trying to say.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and I think don’t get bangs and get divorced on the same day. Don’t completely overhaul your life until … Because there’s one place that’s already chaos, so you don’t want to add more chaos until you know that it’s 100% the thing you want. I think that’s great advice.
Jean Chatzky:
The Today Show made me grow out my bangs for years. I had bangs when I started there and the talent director said, “We can’t see your eyes. You got to grow the bangs out.” And I never said this to her, but when I turned 50, I was like, “Fuck you. I’m getting my bangs back.” And I went and I got my bangs and I just went to work the next day and never said another word about it.
Tori Dunlap:
That makes me so happy. Jean, I think I’ve told you this both on and offline, but I don’t think I would have a job if you didn’t exist. And so I grew up watching you. My parents are always like, “Oh, what is Jean saying?” So thank you for your work. Thank you for everything that you’ve done, both in this space and outside. I’m going to try to not get more teary than I already am, but thank you for your work. Thank you for your contribution. Where can people find out more about you?
Jean Chatzky:
Thank you for carrying it forward. No-
Tori Dunlap:
Going to make made me cry.
Jean Chatzky:
I’m going to cry. I am friends with all the other women in our space.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, me too.
Jean Chatzky:
And you are as well. And this is because we know that there’s room for a lot of voices. We need a lot of voices and it’s really … So thank you. You can find me at hermoney.com and the HerMoney podcast where soon you’ll see Tori once again. And if you are interested in investing, I teach investing every other Monday night on Zoom with Karen Finerman. She’s a CNBC person, professional investor. We’re picking stocks. So this is a supplement to your 401k and your indexed portfolio and your ETFs. But if you’re curious to learn about how companies work, it’s really fun.
Tori Dunlap:
I love it. Thank you.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminists, produced by Her First $100K. If you love the show and want to keep supporting feminist media, please subscribe or follow us on your preferred podcasting platform or on YouTube. Your support helps us continue to bring this content to you for free. If you’re looking for resources, tools, and education, including all of the resources mentioned in this episode, head to http://herfirst100k.com/ffpod.
Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap. Produced by Kristen Fields and Tamisha Grant. Research by Sarah Sciortino. Audio and video engineering by Alyssa Midcalf. Marketing and Operations by Karina Patel and Amanda Leffew. Special thanks to our team at Her First 100K, Kailyn Sprinkle, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Sasha Bonar, Rae Wong, Elizabeth McCumber, Daryl Ann Ingman, Shelby Duclos, Meghan Walker, and Jess Hawks. Promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolfe, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First 100K community for supporting our show.
Tori Dunlap
Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over five million women negotiate salaries, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.
Tori’s work has been featured on Good Morning America, the New York Times, BBC, TIME, PEOPLE, CNN, New York Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, BuzzFeed, and more.
With a dedicated following of over 2.1 million on Instagram and 2.4 million on TikTok —and multiple instances of her story going viral—Tori’s unique take on financial advice has made her the go-to voice for ambitious millennial women. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women.”
An honors graduate of the University of Portland, Tori currently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys eating fried chicken, going to barre classes, and attempting to naturally work John Mulaney bits into conversation.
