So Money with Farnoosh Torabi

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.
Learn more about Farnoosh's upcoming literary workshop Book to Brand. Early bird registration is now open!

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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.

Learn more about Farnoosh's upcoming literary workshop Book to Brand. Early bird registration is now open!

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 maggie@johndrowwealth.com
Reach Colette at colette@johndrowwealth.com
Learn more about Farnoosh's upcoming literary workshop Book to Brand. Early bird registration is now open!

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.
Learn more about Farnoosh's upcoming literary workshop Book to Brand. Early bird registration is now open!

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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"?
Learn more about Farnoosh's upcoming literary workshop Book to Brand. Early bird registration is now open!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.