So Money with Farnoosh Torabi

What happens when you've checked all the boxes? The career, the family, the financial success, the home. You've done everything you were supposed to do, and yet something still feels...off.Maybe you're exhausted. Maybe you've become so good at achieving that you don't actually know how to stop. Or maybe, as you move through midlife, you're starting to wonder: Is this really what I want? And who am I when I'm not busy getting things done?My guest today knows this reckoning intimately.Unni Turrettini is an author, speaker and former Wall Street professional whose latest book, Soulware, explores how we can reconnect with ourselves in a world that increasingly rewards productivity, performance and external validation.Unni spent years in high-pressure legal and financial roles, pushing herself so hard that she once physically collapsed at a professional event. But even after building what looked like a picture-perfect life, she found herself questioning why she still felt unfulfilled.Today, we're exploring the difference between healthy ambition and what Unni calls fear-driven overachieving. We'll talk about why midlife can trigger a crisis of identity, how to stop operating in constant survival mode, and why giving yourself permission to work less might actually make you more creative, productive and even profitable.And in a very timely twist, we'll explore how Unni uses AI, including ChatGPT, to help reconnect with herself rather than become even more dependent on technology.

If you’ve ever thought about starting a business in midlife, you probably know the idea is often the easy part. Finding the money, the support and frankly the confidence to actually do it? That’s where things get complicated.Today we’re talking about what it really takes to launch and grow a business in your 40s, 50s and beyond, especially at a time when borrowing is expensive and traditional funding can be tough to come by.My guest is Trae Bodge, longtime consumer expert, entrepreneur and co-founder of the Threadneedle Alley Foundation, a nonprofit helping midlife entrepreneurs turn their ideas into sustainable businesses through grants and mentorship.Trae and I talk about where entrepreneurs can find funding right now, including grants that many business owners don’t even realize they qualify for, why applying for every grant you see may actually be a terrible strategy, and how even $5,000 can completely change the trajectory of a small business.We also get into something I think is especially important in midlife: building your own board of advisors. The people who can help you think through the things you don’t know, make smarter decisions and keep you from operating in a vacuum.Plus, Trae shares what she learned after reviewing more than 450 grant applications last year, including the surprisingly simple things that can move your application to the top of the pile.

This week's Ask Farnoosh includes Farnoosh's best money moves in her 30's that led to more ease and financial flexibility in midlife. Plus: the cost of dinner and the iced coffee internet wars. Is it OK to bring an iced coffee to work? Check out the WSJ article about the hell that is family dinner planning.

What if the reason your habits never seem to stick isn’t a lack of discipline—but the way you’ve been taught to build them?Today, I welcome back Monica Packer, founder of About Progress and author of the new book Sticky Habits: A Woman’s Guide to Reclaim Happiness, Ditch Perfectionism, and Create Habits That Last. Monica is a certified habits and identity coach who has helped thousands of women move away from all-or-nothing thinking and toward sustainable growth.We explore why so many of our best intentions fall apart the minute life gets busy, how perfectionism can sabotage our routines, and why lasting habits may have less to do with streaks, elaborate trackers, or waking up at 5 a.m. and more to do with identity, flexibility, and choosing progress over perfection.

How much of what you want for your life is actually yours — and how much of it has been negotiated around one very powerful question: What will they say?What will your family say if you make more money? If you become too successful? If you leave the safe job, start the business, move away, ask for more, speak up — or simply decide you want something different?My guest today, Denise Soler Cox, has spent years thinking about this, particularly through the experience of high-achieving Latinas who can find themselves caught between two competing messages: You’re not enough. But also? Don’t become too much.Denise is a filmmaker, speaker and now the author of What Will They Say? Confront Cultural Taboos and Discover Your Inner Power.And this conversation goes places.We talk about the cultural scripts that can make ambition feel almost like betrayal. Why being taught not to ask too many questions can eventually affect everything from your career to your relationship with money. Why so many women are financially self-taught. And Denise gets remarkably candid about her own finances — including what happened when a thriving speaking business tied to corporate diversity initiatives began disappearing, tens of thousands of dollars at a time.We also talk about being a breadwinner, taking up space, reclaiming your name and identity, and perhaps most importantly, learning to trust yourself after years of being taught to look outside yourself for permission..

Big changes are coming to So Money. Farnoosh shares more about the show’s 2027 evolution into a weekly, video-first podcast focused on money in midlife—and why the overwhelming response from listeners has reinforced her decision to go deeper on the financial questions that emerge in our 40s, 50s and beyond.Then, it’s time for the news. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time in three years, and Farnoosh breaks down what the move could mean for your credit cards, HELOCs, mortgages, savings and even the job market. Plus: why higher rates make this an especially important moment to review your debt, credit score and emergency savings.In the mailbag, Farnoosh offers an order of operations for a listener wondering whether to prioritize paying off high-interest debt, building savings or continuing to invest. And a parent asks how to teach teenagers about investing. Farnoosh shares ideas including custodial Roth IRAs, investing tools for kids and some of her favorite resources for raising financially savvy teens.The So Money midlife feedback form: https://www.jotform.com/form/262556781257063

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.

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.