Did your life turn out exactly the way you planned it? Nobody says yes. Not one person.

In the second episode of HerMoney's three-part series with AARP, From First Paycheck to Forever Paycheck, 

• Jean Chatzky gets personal, sharing that at 40, she was fired, got divorced, and lost her father all in the same year. And the women around the table don't hold back either.
• Ashley Parker reveals she was in the bottom 5% of earners on The New York Times politics team, and nearly doubled her salary the moment she left. 
• Hannah Williams shares the terrifying moment her veteran husband had a dental emergency with no insurance and no options.
• Viviana Vazquez opens up about being the financial safety net for her entire family, including a $10,000 out-of-pocket dental bill for her mom. 
• And Carly Roszkowski talks about her husband's mid-life career pivot, and what it really means to become the breadwinner.

Together, they tackle the financial trade-offs that millions of women face every day — stepping back from work, carrying the mental load, navigating the sandwich generation, and trying to build a safety net when life keeps pulling the floor out from under you.

This is episode two 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. Go back and listen to episode 1 in the series here!

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 and reach your goals. Get started at aarp.org/planningforchange.   

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What happens when you let AI run your life? In her book, I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything, award-winning journalist Joanna Stern chronicles her yearlong experiment integrating AI into every aspect of her day-to-day, from healthcare and money management to household chores and, yes, even an AI-powered massage therapist.

On this episode of the HerMoney Podcast, sponsored by LIMRA, Stern joins Jean Chatzky to share the most important lessons she learned, and to dig into how AI can genuinely help you with your money, as well as where it can still lead you dangerously astray. 

Listen in to hear them cover:

• The biggest ways AI can help you save both money and time
• Why one of Stern’s biggest money-saving AI experiences started in a dentist chair
• The key things to watch out for when you’re letting AI help with your finances 

For more on how AI can (and can’t) help you with your money – especially when it comes to planning for retirement –  check out this guide from LIMRA.

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In the first episode of our three-part series with AARP, Jean Chatzky brings together four women across four generations- Gen Z creator Hannah Williams, Zillennial entrepreneur Viviana Vazquez, Millennial journalist Ashley Parker, and Gen X financial expert Carly Roszkowski- for an honest, freewheeling roundtable on building wealth across every life stage.

They cover why the old financial playbook (get a job, buy a house, retire comfortably) doesn't work the way it used to, why younger women are investing earlier than any generation before them, the real cost of homeownership today versus a generation ago, and what women of every age get wrong about Social Security.

Topics include: 

• Why Gen Z calls the 9-to-5 a horror movie
• The credit card mistakes nobody warns you about
• Walking away from a stable paycheck to build something of your own
• The truth about Social Security's future
• The financial habits each woman wishes she'd built earlier

This conversation is part of a three-episode series, From First Paycheck to Forever Paycheck, in partnership with AARP, exploring women's financial lives across generations, from your first job to retirement and the legacy you leave behind. Jean's new book, The Forever Paycheck, is your guide to building a secure, steady income stream so you can age on your own terms and actually enjoy the retirement you've worked so hard for. 

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 and reach your goals. Get started at aarp.org/buildwealth.  

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On today’s episode, Jean sits down with Marta Norton, Chief Investment Strategist at Empower, for an honest, clear-eyed mid-year markets check-in. Marta has a point of view that many of you will find refreshing: that politics belongs at the Thanksgiving table, not in your portfolio. And she's here to tell us exactly why.

In this episode, we cover:

• The AI concentration risk hiding inside your index funds, and what it means for your money
• Anthropic, OpenAI, the wave of mega-IPOs coming our way, and what everyday investors need to know
• Marta's best case and worst case scenarios for markets in the second half of 2026

And if you're thinking about how to make your money work harder for you in retirement, be sure to pre-order Jean's new book, The Forever Paycheck, your guide to building a secure, steady income stream that actually lets you enjoy the retirement you've worked so hard for.

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Have you ever looked up and realized you've been living someone else's version of your life? Sari Botton, editor and writer behind Oldster Magazine and author of And You May Find Yourself: Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen X Weirdo, knows that feeling intimately. And she's turned it into a body of work that has resonated with hundreds of thousands of people.

In this episode:

• The financial cost of people-pleasing and deferring to others on money
• How women in the Oldster community have reinvented themselves professionally in their 50s, 60s, and beyond
• Why we put off wills and end-of-life planning, and what it actually costs us
• The "compare and despair" trap around money milestones

Pre-order Jean's new book, The Forever Paycheck. It's the guide to building the retirement income you need, so you can stop lying awake wondering if you'll have enough and actually start living. 

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We all have a list… things we watched our parents do as they got older and swore we'd never do ourselves. We'd stay active. We'd embrace technology. We'd get the hearing aid. And then life happens. Washington Post columnist and author Steven Petrow has been thinking about this for nearly 20 years, and he joins Jean today to talk about the aging and money mistakes we make despite our very best intentions, and how to find your way back to joy even in the darkest chapters.

Steven is the author of Stupid Things I Won't Do When I Get Old and his latest book, The Joy You Make, and he brings his signature honesty and humor to conversations about aging, money, loss, and starting over.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why we all turn into our parents in the end, and why that's not entirely a bad thing
• How Steven found joy after losing both parents, going through a divorce, and watching his sister Julie battle Stage 4 ovarian cancer, all in the same year
• Why joy isn't the fireworks, and the small, everyday moments that actually sustain us

Jean's new book, The Forever Paycheck, is your guide to building a secure, steady income stream so you can age on your own terms and actually enjoy the retirement you've worked so hard for.

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Nobody wants to think about the possibility of losing their spouse to Alzheimer's. But what if planning ahead meant considering something as unexpected as divorce? That's exactly the question Susan is grappling with today.

Susan is 62, still working, and earning around $100K a year. Her husband is 65 and already retired. Together they've built a solid financial foundation — over $778K in investments, $181K in savings, and more than $762K in assets, all with no debt. By most measures, they're in great shape. But the potential cost of memory care and assisted living has them worried that everything they've worked for could be wiped out.

In this episode, Jean and Susan cover:

• What a "Medicaid divorce" actually is, and whether it's a legitimate financial strategy
• How Medicaid spend-down rules work and what they mean for married couples
• What asset protection strategies exist beyond divorce

How to think through the emotional and financial costs of planning for a spouse's cognitive decline

If today's conversation made you think about how to protect your retirement, Jean's new book, The Forever Paycheck, is the perfect next step.

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What if the most important phase of retirement is the one nobody talks about? This week, Jean sits down with Dana Anspach, CFP, to walk through the four phases of retirement outlined in her new book, Living Off Your Acorns: Your Guide to the Four Phases of Retirement, including the phase she argues matters most of all: the Pre-Go years.

Dana breaks down what to expect at every stage — from building your foundation before you retire, to navigating the emotional and financial shifts that come after — and shares the real stories of clients who had to course-correct, pivot, and reimagine what retirement could look like for them.

In this episode, Jean and Dana cover:

• What the Pre-Go phase is, why it matters, and when it typically begins
• Why so many high achievers struggle to envision retirement
• What a $1 million retirement savings goal actually buys you in 2026
• How to course-correct if you're behind on savings in your 50s and 60s

If today's conversation made you think about saving enough for your retirement, Jean's new book, The Forever Paycheck, is the perfect next step.

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The economy added 172,000 jobs in May, nearly double what economists expected. So why did consumer sentiment just hit a record low? Why does everything still feel so hard?

In this episode, Jean sits down with Sarah Foster, Personal Finance Reporter at Bloomberg, to break down what's really going on beneath the surface of those headline numbers, and what it means for your job, your home, and your retirement savings.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why keeping your money in a traditional savings account right now means you're slowly losing ground
• What the lock-in effect really means for women who want to downsize before retirement
• How to think about home equity as a retirement tool
• The one financial move Sarah says everyone should make right now

Jean's new book, The Forever Paycheck, is available for pre-order now. It's your guide to building a secure, steady income stream that actually lets you enjoy the retirement you've worked so hard for.

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Annuities might be one of the most misunderstood financial products out there – and they come with plenty of opinions…as well as questions. Are the fees really that high? Do advisors just push them for the commission? Could an annuity actually be the missing piece of your retirement plan? 

On this episode of the HerMoney Podcast, we’re cutting through the noise with two leading experts: Michael Finke and Tamiko Toland of LIMRA’s Retirement Income Institute. They’re busting the biggest annuity myths, answering questions straight from our HerMoney Community and helping you figure out whether this type of protected income deserves a spot in your financial future. 

Listen in to hear them cover:

• A jargon-free explanation of annuity types and terms to be aware of
• What to know if you’re buying an annuity – including how fees work
• Whether there’s a “right” age to purchase an annuity
• The next steps to take if an annuity sounds right for you

Learn more: Most people want protected income for life. Few realize that’s what annuities provide. This resource from LIMRA covers everything you need to know.

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For white-collar workers, the recent headlines about AI are more than a little bit fear-inducing. AI could automate millions of white-collar jobs within 18 months. College graduates are booing commencement speakers who bring it up. And women — whose jobs are three times more likely to be automated — are falling behind on AI adoption. So what do you actually do?

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Jodi Kantor has answers. Her new book, How to Start: Discovering Your Life's Work, grew out of a question her Columbia University students asked her that she couldn't shake: how, in this environment, are we supposed to find our life's work? The answer, it turns out, applies just as much to a woman reinventing herself at 52 as it does to a 22-year-old just starting out.

In this episode, Jean and Jodi get into:

• The two things every successful, happy person has: craft and need
• Why your messy, nonlinear résumé might be your biggest asset right now
• How to get a real human being to respond to your job outreach in the age of AI screening
• Jodi's three tips for cold outreach that actually work

And if you're thinking about what your financial future looks like through all of this change, pre-order Jean's new book, The Forever Paycheck — your guide to building income that lasts as long as you do.

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