Most of us pictured our lives as a straight line: high school, college, a job, marriage, a house, kids…one milestone after another. Then life happened. A divorce. A layoff. A move. A pandemic. 

This week, Jean Chatzky goes solo to make the case that a messy, non-linear life isn't a failure; it's just what a normal life actually looks like. 

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The "5 Ws and an H": six questions to ask before you retire
• How to apply design thinking to your own retirement plan
• Why the real risk in retirement isn't running out of money, but never spending the money you worked so hard to save

Want a signed copy of The Forever Paycheck? Leave HerMoney a review on Apple Podcasts, screenshot it, and email it to ⁠[email protected]⁠ to enter.

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FinTok is full of people giving confident financial advice… and a lot of it is dead wrong.

This week, Jean sits down with CBS News Business Analyst Jill Schlesinger, and host of the new podcast Money Moves, to call out the worst financial trends going viral right now, answer real questions from HerMoney listeners, and share how to tell good financial advice from the bad.

In this episode:

• Jean and Jill’s list of “5 things that are always worth the money” 
• Jill's top 3 worst pieces of financial advice circulating on TikTok right now, and what to do instead
• Jill's simple test for vetting any piece of financial advice before you act on it

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You've heard of FIRE, Financial Independence, Retire Early. And maybe your first reaction is: those people are a little extreme. But what if you stripped away the extreme version? What if early retirement just meant leaving the workforce in your late 50s, or stepping back a few years before 65… on your own terms?

That's exactly what we're digging into in this special mailbag episode with the co-hosts of the Catching Up To FI podcast. 

Together, Bill and Jackie answer your real questions, including:

• How do you plan for health insurance before Medicare kicks in?
• How much cash do you really need on hand when you retire early?
• I've been financially independent for three months. How do I reallocate my portfolio now that I'm in drawdown mode?
• How do you plan for FIRE when you're also caring for an aging parent?

📩 Send your questions to [email protected]

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When's the last time you looked at your portfolio and felt genuinely confident it could weather a bad year? For most of us, the answer is some version of "I'm diversified — stocks for growth, bonds for safety — so I should be fine." But in 2022, stocks and bonds both posted double-digit losses at the same time, and the "safe" part of the plan turned out not to be so safe after all.

That gut-check sent researchers looking for a third option, one that doesn't make you choose between growth and protection, but blends the two. This episode, sponsored by LIMRA, digs into that research with Dr. Wade Pfau, a fellow with LIMRA's Retirement Income Institute and a leading voice in retirement research, and Brad Pistole, President and CEO of the Ozarks Retirement Group and host of Safe Money Radio.

We cover:

• Why 2022 was the wake-up call that made people question the classic stock/bond mix
• What "protection" actually means as its own asset class, and how fixed index annuities fit in
• The tax advantages that can help protected assets outperform bonds on an after-tax basis
• Why there's no universal "right" ratio for stocks vs. protected income, and how to find your own number

Ready to take the next step? Get up to speed on annuity solutions that can help you build a more secure retirement by using this guide from LIMRA.

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You know that feeling when you should ask for the raise, have the hard money conversation with your partner, or push back on a bad deal… and you just don't? 

On today’s episode, Jean Chatzky sits down with Jia Jiang, the guy behind the viral "100 Days of Rejection" experiment, and author of the new book, Easy Discipline: An Unconventional Way to Achieve Ambitious Things. 

Jia argues that lasting discipline comes from making hard things feel genuinely enjoyable, a lesson he learned firsthand while navigating undiagnosed ADHD.

In this episode, Jean and Jia cover:

• Whether rejection therapy is actually a healthy way to build resilience
• What it means to love the process instead of just chasing the result
• The four principles of Easy Discipline — Enjoyment, Artistry, Systems, and Yourself — and how to apply them to your financial life

Jean’s new book, The Forever Paycheck, is now available for pre-order.

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What if the secret to never worrying about money again isn't earning more or spending less?

Jesse Mecham, founder of the beloved budgeting app YNAB (You Need A Budget) and author of the new book Never Worry About Money Again By Answering One Question, is joins us to dig into why so many of us carry a constant low-grade hum of money anxiety — even when the numbers are fine — and how asking three simple words, "What's it for?", can change everything. 

Then, Lacy Garcia, founder and CEO of Willow, joins Jean to discuss Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden, the book that has taken over book clubs, group chats, and DMs everywhere this year.

Willow is also hosting a follow-up webinar, Empowering Her Finances, August 25th at 12 ET: Register Here! You can find Lacy and the team at Willow at hermoney.com/findaadvisor.

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$100,000 used to mean you'd made it. Today, in some cities, it barely covers groceries — and there's a real reason that gap feels so wide. This week, Jean sits down with Mark Hamrick, Chief Economic Analyst and writer of The Hamrick Brief, to unpack why the official numbers so often miss how people actually feel about their money.

Mark recently built his own economic measure, HAPI (the Hamrick American Prosperity Index), designed to answer one question: are people actually getting ahead, or just running in place? Plus, Mark shares the one economic "skill" he believes matters most in this moment of nonstop change — and how to build it, even if it doesn't come naturally.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What HAPI measures, and why Mark built it as the mirror image of the Misery Index
• Why real wage growth — not just unemployment — is the number that actually predicts how "ahead" people feel
• The real odds of a recession in the next 12 months, according to economists

Want to make sure you never run out of money, no matter what’s happening in the economy? Pre-order Jean's new book, The Forever Paycheck. 

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You saved. You invested. You did everything right. So why does spending your own money in retirement feel so terrifying?

This week, Jean sits down with Terri Fiedler, President of Retirement Services at Corebridge Financial, to dig into why the spending side of retirement is so much harder than saving, and what you can do about it right now.

They cover:

• The "retirement paradox": why 60% of retirees whose assets have grown still can't bring themselves to spend
• Why guaranteed lifetime income is the single biggest confidence booster for retirees
• The three questions everyone should be asking five to ten years before they retire

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Corebridge Financial's decumulation research: corebridgefinancial.com/decumulation
• Jean's new book: The Forever Paycheck
• HerMoney's conversation with Dana Anspach: The Retirement Phase Nobody Talks About
  

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You know that feeling when you're staring at two versions of the same appliance and have absolutely no idea which one is actually worth it? Today we're getting some answers.

Jean Chatzky sits down with Tanya Christian, Senior Home and Appliance Writer at Consumer Reports, for a special mailbag episode answering your real questions about the stuff you actually want to buy,  or are wondering if you should.

In this episode:

• Is a Vitamix actually worth $600? (And when to buy one if you want it)
• Should you ever buy an extended warranty?
• What actually matters when choosing a mattress
• The truth about "cooling" pillows and sheets

Links mentioned:

Subscribe to Bread and Butter by Consumer Reports.

Send your mailbag questions to: [email protected]

Pre-order Jean's new book, The Forever Paycheck

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Every few weeks, another tech titan promises to hand us our time back. Jamie Dimon says a shorter workweek is coming. Elon Musk says AI will make work optional. Bill Gates is predicting two-day workweeks. Sounds amazing, except we don't actually need AI to get there. The research proving a shorter workweek works has been sitting in front of us for over a decade.

This week, bestselling author and veteran journalist Joanne Lipman joins Jean Chatzky to unpack the gap between what these executives are promising in public and what they're actually demanding from their employees in private.

In this episode, Jean and Joanne cover:

• Why the same executives predicting an AI-powered leisure future are also the most insistent on five-day, in-office weeks
• What over a decade of four-day workweek research shows about productivity, revenue, and burnout
• Why new technology almost never reduces our workload 

Preorder Jean's new book: The Forever Paycheck is your guide to building a secure, steady income stream in retirement.

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Do you have enough? And how do you even know?

In the third and final episode of HerMoney's series with AARP, From First Paycheck to Forever Paycheck, Jean Chatzky and her roundtable tackle the biggest question in personal finance — what does financial security actually feel like, and how do you build something that doesn't just sustain you, but actually gives you peace?

• Hannah Williams sold her business and walked away with a life-changing payout, and has never been more stressed. 
• Viviana Vazquez recently hit $100,000 in investments and says she already feels like she has enough. 
• Ashley Parker thinks about what would happen if she suddenly had to make it on her own, and making sure she always could. 
• And Carly Roszkowski shares the AARP data that keeps her up at night: 65% of women 50 and older don't feel confident about retirement, and nearly half of those still working have less than $50,000 saved.
• Jean also introduces a concept that changes everything: decumulation. 

This is the third and final episode of From First Paycheck to Forever Paycheck, a three-part series in collaboration with AARP exploring women's financial lives across generations, from your first job to retirement and the legacy you leave behind. If you haven't listened to episodes one and two yet, go back and start there; this conversation builds on everything we've covered.

Jean Chatzky's new book, The Forever Paycheck: The New Retirement Strategy to Spend More, Worry Less, and Never Run Out of Money, is available for pre-order now and publishes September 8, 2026.

Whether you're looking to save money, manage debt, or prepare for retirement, AARP has resources and tools to help you prepare for your financial future to reach your goals. Get started at www.aarp.org/retirementreadiness.

Want to calculate your FIRE number? We recommend this calculator from our friends at NerdWallet. 

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