2040: Ask Farnoosh: 5 Smart Money Moves in Your 30s (Plus: Iced Coffee to an Interview?)

If you’ve ever thought about starting a business in midlife, you probably know the idea is often the easy part. Finding the money, the support and frankly the confidence to actually do it? That’s where things get complicated.Today we’re talking about what it really takes to launch and grow a business in your 40s, 50s and beyond, especially at a time when borrowing is expensive and traditional funding can be tough to come by.My guest is Trae Bodge, longtime consumer expert, entrepreneur and co-founder of the Threadneedle Alley Foundation, a nonprofit helping midlife entrepreneurs turn their ideas into sustainable businesses through grants and mentorship.Trae and I talk about where entrepreneurs can find funding right now, including grants that many business owners don’t even realize they qualify for, why applying for every grant you see may actually be a terrible strategy, and how even $5,000 can completely change the trajectory of a small business.We also get into something I think is especially important in midlife: building your own board of advisors. The people who can help you think through the things you don’t know, make smarter decisions and keep you from operating in a vacuum.Plus, Trae shares what she learned after reviewing more than 450 grant applications last year, including the surprisingly simple things that can move your application to the top of the pile.How's midlife going? Fill out Farnoosh's survey and help shape the podcast in 2027. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week's Ask Farnoosh includes Farnoosh's best money moves in her 30's that led to more ease and financial flexibility in midlife. Plus: the cost of dinner and the iced coffee internet wars. Is it OK to bring an iced coffee to work? Check out the WSJ article about the hell that is family dinner planning.How's midlife going? Fill out Farnoosh's survey and help shape the podcast in 2027. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the reason your habits never seem to stick isn’t a lack of discipline—but the way you’ve been taught to build them?Today, I welcome back Monica Packer, founder of About Progress and author of the new book Sticky Habits: A Woman’s Guide to Reclaim Happiness, Ditch Perfectionism, and Create Habits That Last. Monica is a certified habits and identity coach who has helped thousands of women move away from all-or-nothing thinking and toward sustainable growth.We explore why so many of our best intentions fall apart the minute life gets busy, how perfectionism can sabotage our routines, and why lasting habits may have less to do with streaks, elaborate trackers, or waking up at 5 a.m. and more to do with identity, flexibility, and choosing progress over perfection.How's midlife going? Fill out Farnoosh's survey and help shape the podcast in 2027. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How much of what you want for your life is actually yours — and how much of it has been negotiated around one very powerful question: What will they say?What will your family say if you make more money? If you become too successful? If you leave the safe job, start the business, move away, ask for more, speak up — or simply decide you want something different?My guest today, Denise Soler Cox, has spent years thinking about this, particularly through the experience of high-achieving Latinas who can find themselves caught between two competing messages: You’re not enough. But also? Don’t become too much.Denise is a filmmaker, speaker and now the author of What Will They Say? Confront Cultural Taboos and Discover Your Inner Power.And this conversation goes places.We talk about the cultural scripts that can make ambition feel almost like betrayal. Why being taught not to ask too many questions can eventually affect everything from your career to your relationship with money. Why so many women are financially self-taught. And Denise gets remarkably candid about her own finances — including what happened when a thriving speaking business tied to corporate diversity initiatives began disappearing, tens of thousands of dollars at a time.We also talk about being a breadwinner, taking up space, reclaiming your name and identity, and perhaps most importantly, learning to trust yourself after years of being taught to look outside yourself for permission..How's midlife going? Fill out Farnoosh's survey and help shape the podcast in 2027. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Big changes are coming to So Money. Farnoosh shares more about the show’s 2027 evolution into a weekly, video-first podcast focused on money in midlife—and why the overwhelming response from listeners has reinforced her decision to go deeper on the financial questions that emerge in our 40s, 50s and beyond.Then, it’s time for the news. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time in three years, and Farnoosh breaks down what the move could mean for your credit cards, HELOCs, mortgages, savings and even the job market. Plus: why higher rates make this an especially important moment to review your debt, credit score and emergency savings.In the mailbag, Farnoosh offers an order of operations for a listener wondering whether to prioritize paying off high-interest debt, building savings or continuing to invest. And a parent asks how to teach teenagers about investing. Farnoosh shares ideas including custodial Roth IRAs, investing tools for kids and some of her favorite resources for raising financially savvy teens.The So Money midlife feedback form: https://www.jotform.com/form/262556781257063How's midlife going? Fill out Farnoosh's survey and help shape the podcast in 2027. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the secret to getting more done isn’t doing more, but getting ruthless about what you stop doing?My guest today, Mike Allen, has a pretty simple test for figuring out what stays and what goes. In fact, you just heard it: “Hell yeah.”If someone asks you to take on the project, go to the thing, have the meeting, make the commitment, and your reaction is anything less than hell yeah? Mike says that might be your answer right there.And listen, as someone who has spent a lot of her career saying yes, building, adding, producing, optimizing, I needed this conversation.Mike Allen is the co-founder of Axios and previously co-founded Politico. He’s also the longtime journalist behind the daily Axios AM and Axios PM newsletters. His new book, Simplify: Do 50 Percent More with 50 Percent Less, co-authored with Axios co-founders Jim VandeHei and Roy Schwartz, is essentially an argument against what they call toxic complexity.Because here’s the irony: AI was supposed to make our lives easier. Instead, we have more content, more choices, more decks, more emails, more things we could be doing. And Mike’s argument is that unless we get intentional about what deserves our attention, technology is just going to help us create more noise, faster.Their framework is three steps: Confront what you’re doing. Delete what doesn’t matter. Amplify what does.We talk about why complexity can actually feel comforting, how to declare “meeting bankruptcy,” what a simplified financial life might look like, and why figuring out what is enough may be one of the most important things you can do with your money and your time.And I end up applying Mike’s advice to my own business in real time, including some changes I’m making to So Money in 2027.How's midlife going? Fill out Farnoosh's survey and help shape the podcast in 2027. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the thing standing between you and more success, more money, even better relationships…isn’t a lack of opportunity?What if it’s your ability to actually believe you’re worthy of what comes your way?My guest today is Dr. Marisa G. Franco, a psychologist, TED speaker, professor at the University of Maryland and New York Times bestselling author who has an incredible gift for taking complicated psychological research and making it feel deeply personal — and useful.You may know her from her bestselling book Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends. Her newest book, Worth, goes even deeper, exploring how our sense of self-worth gets formed, how it shapes our relationships and choices, and how we can begin to change it.We talk about how the way we learned to connect with people as children can follow us into adulthood — showing up not only in our friendships and romantic relationships, but in how we earn, spend, invest and take risks with money.We get into why some people actually feel worse when good things happen to them. Why telling yourself “I am rich, I am loved, I am amazing” might actually backfire. And some fascinating research suggesting that education, wealth and other advantages can only take us so far if we don’t have the self-worth to capitalize on them.And maybe my favorite takeaway: becoming more secure isn’t about eliminating all of your insecurities. It’s about being able to recognize them without letting them run the show.How's midlife going? Fill out Farnoosh's survey and help shape the podcast in 2027. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You’ve been asking for this episode, and today I’m finally pulling back the curtain on my own financial plan.Consider this a very special edition of Ask Farnoosh — except this time, you’re asking the questions about my money.For roughly 15 years, much of my financial life was on cruise control: automate the investing, save for retirement, fund the kids’ accounts, maintain the emergency fund, repeat. But midlife has me asking a different set of questions. Am I still saving the right amount? Could I invest a little less and spend more on my life today? How much do we actually need for retirement? And, gulp…should I consider an annuity?My financial planner Maggie Johndrow of Johndrow Wealth Management joins me to reveal what we discovered after putting my entire financial picture under the microscope — including where I may have been over-saving, why we’re rethinking my SEP IRA strategy, and how we’re balancing retirement security with enjoying life now.Then Maggie’s colleague Colette Ward joins us for an annuities crash course: what they are, why their reputation has changed and when they may—or may not—make sense.It’s my Midlife Money Checkup. And hopefully, it inspires yours.Reach Maggie at [email protected] Colette at [email protected]: Index annuities are insurance contracts that, depending on the contract, may offer a guaranteed annual interest rate and some participation growth, if any, of a stock market index. Such contracts have substantial variation in terms, costs of guarantees and features, and may cap participation or returns in significant ways. Any guarantees offered are backed by the financial strength of the insurance company, not an outside entity. Investors are cautioned to carefully review an index annuity for its features, costs, risks, and how the variables are calculated.How's midlife going? Fill out Farnoosh's survey and help shape the podcast in 2027. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're taught our whole working lives to save. Nobody teaches us how to stop.That's the blind spot my guest today has spent the last several years staring down. Jean Chatzky has been one of the most trusted voices in personal finance for as long as I've been in this business, and she just published what she says is the best of her fourteen books, because it's solving a problem she's actually living through herself.Her new book is called The Forever Paycheck, and it's about the moment nobody plans for: the day the direct deposits stop and you're left staring at a lump sum that has to somehow last the rest of your life. Turns out most of us are terrible at this. Even people who did everything right, who saved diligently for forty years, freeze up when it's time to actually spend the money. Jean found that people with guaranteed income streams spend nearly twice as much as people sitting on identical savings, and that confidence to spend is tied to better health and longer life.We get into why our brains treat a shrinking balance like a loss even when it's working exactly as intended, what she's doing with her own money at 61, and the uncomfortable math behind long-term care that almost nobody wants to run. How's midlife going? Fill out Farnoosh's survey and help shape the podcast in 2027. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

 What does it mean to build wealth when you don't come from money and when getting ahead financially isn't just about you? My guest today is Maria Melchor, founder of FirstGenLiving and author of the new book Always Have Enough: How to Build Wealth When You Don't Come From Money. Maria grew up in a Mexican immigrant family, at one point undocumented in the United States, watching her parents piece together everything from paychecks and government benefits to food bank boxes to make ends meet. As a kid, she saw classmates get cars when they got their driver's licenses while she was waiting for the legal status that would eventually allow her to work, and fully participate in the financial system. Maria would go on to attend Yale, and after graduation found herself earning more at 22 years old than her parents had after decades of incredibly hard work. Which brings to the forefront a complicated question: What do you do when you're the one in the family who suddenly has access to opportunity? ? How much do you owe yourself? How much do you owe the people who helped you get there? And when can you finally say, "I have enough"? How's midlife going? Fill out Farnoosh's survey and help shape the podcast in 2027. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.