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| This Week In Your Wallet |
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There’s a new guilt on the block…productivity guilt. For many workers, AI tools are compressing days of work into minutes, and while that sounds great, a new report flags an odd side effect – the pressure to still look busy. "Leaders are encouraging workers to use AI to speed up menial tasks and to free up time, but simultaneously they’re embodying old business thinking by still rewarding visible busyness and constant output," Inc. reports. "Workers are told that they must be more efficient but are still expected to prove their worth through effort. This creates a whole new pressure dynamic, to add to all the rest in the modern workplace."
Should your boss pay for your next vacay? A small but growing group of employers think so. The perk, named "PPTO" (that’s paid paid time off), goes beyond the standard PTO to actually subsidize the trip. For example, software company FullContact offers vacation stipends of up to $7K, and BambooHR offers an annual reimbursement of $2K (the catch: you have to share photos of your travels when you return to the office). Twist our arms!
Financially supporting adult children has become somewhat of the norm – so what happens when boomer parents don’t? Millennials are talking about it…and for some of them, it stings. Take Chloe, a New Yorker in marketing whose parents saddled her with $80,000 in student loans, then went on to renovate their house, add a pool and sauna, and buy a $6 million yacht. She says she gets it – her parents worked hard. But as she told The Cut, "What the hell? Why did you buy a yacht instead of helping your kids pay off their student loans that you signed them up for?"
❓ Do you help your adult children financially? Hit reply and tell us why – or why not. |
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| Things That Save You Money |
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| The Aging And Money Mistakes We Swear We Won’t Make (And Then Make Anyway) |
We all have a list – habits we watched our parents fall into around money (and everything else) as they aged, and swore we'd never repeat. We'd stay active. We'd embrace new technology. We'd ask for help. And then, somewhere along the way, we catch ourselves doing exactly what we promised we wouldn't.
Washington Post columnist Steven Petrow has spent nearly 20 years thinking about this. He joined Jean on the HerMoney Podcast to talk through the money mistakes we make despite our best intentions – and how to find joy even in the hard chapters.
One of those mistakes? Waiting too long to have important discussions about money. It’s something that doesn’t get easier with age. In fact, the stakes just get higher. Petrow shared how his father, a man who'd always run the family finances solo, once sent his kids an email with the subject line "Mayday" the moment he could no longer manage things on his own. It was rare, vulnerable, and a turning point for their family.
"Getting on the same team is really important," Petrow said. "Often it feels adversarial, even when the kids don't mean it to be that way."
The takeaway? Don't wait for a crisis to start important money conversations with the people you love. The earlier you open that door, the less scary it gets. |
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| Ask Jean |
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| Q: |
Today’s question comes from Valerie. She writes: "The majority of my assets are in an IRA and my daughter will be the sole beneficiary. What type of professional is best to seek tax advice from so that she receives the maximum of my hard-earned money?" |
| A: |
This is exactly the kind of planning that can save your daughter real money – and spare her a lot of unnecessary stress – down the road. The key is to start sooner rather than later, because it will give you more opportunities to reduce the eventual tax bill.
Begin by working with a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) – and ideally one who is willing to meet with both you and your daughter. That way, your advisor can look at your financial picture as a family, rather than in isolation.
Make sure that the planner you choose has helped people through retirement, not just to it. If your IRA is a traditional, pre-tax IRA, converting some of those assets to a Roth IRA over time could significantly reduce the taxes your daughter ultimately pays. As Didi Chen, CFP, CFA and founder of Everleap Financial Planning explains, "One of the most valuable things a CFP can model is whether Roth conversions before you reach required minimum distribution age make sense."
Why does that matter? Under the SECURE Act, most non-spouse beneficiaries (including adult children) must empty an inherited IRA within 10 years. Those withdrawals are generally taxable, and if your daughter is in her peak earning years when she inherits, they could push her into a higher tax bracket.
In contrast, if you're in a lower tax bracket today, paying the tax on strategic Roth conversions during your lifetime could mean those dollars grow tax-free and can be withdrawn tax-free by your daughter. It's not the right move for everyone, but it's one of the biggest opportunities families have to reduce the tax bite on an inherited IRA. A CFP can help you map out a strategy that works best for you and your daughter. |
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