HerMoney with Jean Chatzky

What does a real week of spending look like for a busy working mom who also happens to be a landlord? This week on A Week In Her Wallet, we're heading to Annapolis, Maryland, to follow Larisa, a 48-year-old HR Director with a combined household income of $375,000, two kids in competitive sports, a dog, and a rental condo she's owned since her twenties.

We talk through it all: how she keeps a separate checking account just for rental income and expenses, why she almost always orders ahead for pickups at Sam's Club, and how she thinks about the guilt that still creeps in when she spends money on herself. Plus… Bucky's. If you've never stopped at Bucky's on a road trip down I-95, Larisa will make you want to.

In this episode, we cover:

The good, the bad, and the ugly of owning a rental property, and how she budgets for the unpredictable

How she handles big annual bills (like a $1,200 water assessment) without breaking a sweat

How she uses a dependent care spending account to offset summer camp costs

How splitting costs with her sister makes family vacations feel easy and fun

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Pre-order Jean's new book, The Forever Paycheck, out September 9! Every pre-order helps get this book into more readers' hands — thank you for supporting the show and the book.
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You’ve planned for retirement. You’ve built your savings, mapped out your Social Security strategy, and thought through market risks. But what happens if one day, you can’t manage your money at all? It’s an uncomfortable question – and one many people avoid. Yet, research shows that cognitive decline can quietly undermine financial decision-making, often earlier than we expect, and with serious consequences. 

On this special episode of HerMoney, sponsored by LIMRA, Dr. Chris Heye, LIMRA Retirement Income Institute Fellow and CEO of Whealthcare Planning and Wealthcare Solutions, explains why health risks – especially cognitive decline – may be one of the biggest blind spots in retirement planning today. Then, Erin Gilmore Smith, Head of Estate Planning for Edelman Financial Engines, joins us to share practical steps you can take now to protect your finances, your family, and your future self. 

In this episode, they’ll highlight:

Why health risks – and especially cognitive decline – might matter more than the markets

How cognitive decline shows up in our finances, before we realize we have it

Why women are more challenged when it comes to the risk of cognitive decline – and how we can protect ourselves

Protected income can help create greater stability in retirement, especially in the face of potential cognitive decline.

If you’re curious and want to dig deeper, this resource from LIMRA can help:

Protect Your Retirement From Cognitive Decline: The Link Between Cognitive Health and Financial Security
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You saved diligently for your kids' education, and now that chapter is closing. So what happens to the money? Can you protect those tax benefits and roll the funds into something new? We're getting into it.

This week, Jean is joined by Lacy Garcia, founder and CEO of TrustWillow.com, a personalized advisor-matching platform that connects women and their families with vetted, fiduciary financial advisors who are legally required to act in your best interest, and who have been trained specifically in working with women's financial lives.

They dig into your mailbag questions from:

Inge, who opened Coverdell ESAs for her kids 20 years ago, just got a notice that Vanguard is shutting down the program. What are her options for keeping that money tax-protected?

An anonymous listener just paid off her husband's student loans and is officially done with daycare. Where should that newfound money go?

Rebecca, who is recently divorced with a high school senior and a 529 that covers about one year of college. She wants to know: Are there financial planners who specialize in college planning?

🔗 Connect with a vetted fiduciary advisor at hermoney.com/findanadvisor
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Do you actually know where your money went last week? Not roughly...where it actually went. Every coffee, every impulse buy, every bill that hit all at once on a Monday morning when you were least expecting it.

A Week in Her Wallet is a HerMoney limited series where real women from our community track every single dollar they spend for one full week, and then sit down with Jean Chatzky to talk about what they learned. Because the way we spend says so much about what we value, what we're afraid of, and where we might want to make a change.

In this series, you'll hear from women like:


Kortne, a 55-year-old tech director in Texas who meal preps every meal — even on race day at a half-marathon across the country — but didn't think twice about dropping $820 on Bruno Mars tickets for her daughter


Kristen, a single woman in her 40s who travels constantly for work, owns her own home, and used her yard sale earnings to buy festival tickets for a night out with a friend


Larisa, a Maryland mom juggling a rental property, two busy kids, a road trip to Florida, and a Sam's Club run that started with paper towels and ended with a bathing suit

Real women. Real numbers. Real life.

Subscribe to HerMoney on Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode, look for A Week In Her Wallet directly in your HerMoney podcast feed. And if you want to track your own spending with us, apply here to be featured.
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At HerMoney, we're always trying to make money a little less intimidating; breaking down the big, complicated stuff into things you can actually use in your real life. And when it comes to understanding the economy, nobody does that better than today's guest.

Alex Mayyasi is a contributor to Planet Money, the NPR podcast that has spent seventeen years making economics genuinely entertaining, and he and the team have just written a book: Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life. Alex also stuck around for a Mailbag, answering listener questions about tariffs, tax-loss harvesting, and why everything you buy seems to be getting more expensive but less high quality at the same time.

In this episode, you'll learn:

Why the economy feels so broken right now, even when GDP is growing, inflation is down, and wages are solid

Baumol's Cost Disease: the simple but powerful concept that explains why childcare, healthcare, and college keep getting more expensive

What the history of the ATM tells us about AI and whether it's really going to take your job

Why it's nearly impossible to beat the market, and what a cute animal experiment reveals about how stocks actually work

The one economic principle Alex has found most useful in his own life, and why it applies to way more than just your money

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Planet Money’s new book, Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life

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