I had a story published on Yahoo last week, all about DINKs (dual income, no kids) and their budgets. Be warned: You may be as jealous as I am of some of these salaries. Yahoo published this fun Instagram carousel tied to the story, too!

In today’s issue:
1. The “most underrated” account in personal finance
2. On my radar

The “most underrated” account in personal finance

My favorite series over on The Purse is 30-something, where I basically write about figuring out money stuff in my 30s. Today’s 30-something is about leveling up your finances once you have the basics down, meaning no debt (aside from a mortgage or car loan and arguably student loans), your budget mostly works, and you’re already saving/investing for retirement.

In it, I talk about brokerage accounts, and I wanted to get into them a little more here—I’ve noticed more interest in them lately, and seven different certified financial planners recommended them for that article, with one calling it the “most underrated account in personal finance.” While I’ve had one for years I never paid it much attention (or, frankly, much money) before. (One reason: I wasn’t allowed to invest in anything outside of index funds at the financial publications I worked for because ethics, so it wasn’t a priority!)

Before we begin: If you haven’t started investing for retirement yet, you don’t really need a brokerage. Do that first—preferably via a Roth—and then you can come back to this newsletter.

A taxable brokerage account is an investment account that is not specifically tied to retirement. That makes it different from a 401(k) or IRA, which everyone here is probably familiar with.

The biggest difference between all of these investment accounts is taxes: The government wants to incentivize you to save for retirement, so contributions to 401(k)s and traditional IRAs generally lower your taxable income when you make them, and grow tax-deferred (there’s some technical stuff here we don’t really need to get into, but just know that these accounts are tax efficient/advantaged). When you withdraw money in retirement, you pay income taxes then at your ordinary rate. Roth-style accounts, on the other hand, grow tax-free because you contribute money you’ve already paid taxes on.

Brokerages don’t have those tax benefits. You make contributions with money you’ve already paid taxes on, and you pay taxes on any gains when you make a withdrawal. That said, you don’t pay income taxes—you pay capital gains taxes. And those rates are much lower than income tax rates.

Currently, a capital gains rate of 0% (yes, nada) applies to taxable income less than or equal to:

• $48,350 for single filers and married filing separately

• $96,700 for married filing jointly and qualifying surviving spouse

• $64,750 for head of household

And a capital gains rate of 15% applies to taxable income that is:

• $48,351 to $533,400 for single filers

• $48,350 to $300,000 for married filing separately

• $96,701 to $600,050 for married filing jointly and qualifying surviving spouse

• $64,751 to $566,700 for head of household

A tax rate of 20% applies to any income over those higher thresholds. So if you are single and somehow pull out over $533,400 in investment gains in one year, you pay 20% on the portion of it over $533,400. That’s still lower than the federal income tax rate for someone earning $48,476 in wages.1 Pretty crazy!

(This is one of the reasons why rich people get paid in stock rather than wages.) (You have to hold the investments for at least one year to get that long-term capital gains rate, otherwise you pay your ordinary income tax rate.) (You’ll also pay taxes on dividends but that’s not super relevant here.)

Another difference between brokerages and retirement-specific accounts: There are no contribution limits and, because the money is yours and has already been taxed, you can make withdrawals at any time for any reason with no penalty.

So you can see how this can be beneficial once you’ve got your financial foundation in place. You can (hopefully) grow your contributions, and take distributions whenever needed at the much lower capital gains tax rate. Of course, growth isn’t guaranteed with investments, which is why financial experts say not to contribute any funds you will need in the next three to five years.

While you can use the funds for whatever you want—as a backup emergency fund, to save for a house, for early retirement, just for fun—financial planners advise using the accounts as another retirement income stream. This gives you flexibility with what account you are taking disbursements from and when.

Ideally, you’ll be able to pull income from: Pre-tax retirement accounts, post-tax retirement accounts, taxable accounts, Social Security, and cash.23 One financial planner put it like this: Having all of these different income sources allows you to effectively choose your tax rate in retirement.

For example, let’s say you stop working at 64 but want to hold off claiming Social Security for a few more years so that the payments are a little bit bigger. Withdrawing funds from a brokerage in this year can make more sense than from a retirement account, because you’ll pay very little in taxes while allowing your tax efficient retirement accounts to keep on compounding longer.

This is admittedly a lot to consider, especially if you already have one or two other accounts for retirement and you are still decades away from accessing them.

The hard thing about personal finance is that it’s personal. I have 0 insight into your finances or goals, so there’s no real advice I can give on if you should contribute to a brokerage or not (also I’m not a certified financial professional so you shouldn’t take advice from me anyway). Many of you are likely already doing it.

But here’s how I’m looking at it:

• I don’t have any debt, and while I could be investing more for retirement, throwing a little bit of money into a brokerage each month isn’t likely to break my bank account.

• I have a pool of pre-tax money (my rollover IRA) and post-tax money (my Roth), so adding a chunk of taxable money makes sense.

• Contributing to a brokerage isn’t my top priority right now, but it’s a nice-to-have.

• I’ve never regretted setting a little bit extra money aside.

Plenty of people invest via a brokerage without checking off all of these other boxes—ultimately it comes down to personal preference. That said, if you aren’t contributing in any significant way to a retirement account yet, that should be your number one priority.

On my radar

• Headstands: I recently did my first unassisted headstand in yoga and I just wanted everyone to know that. Gratifying to improve at something and gain new skills as an adult! Up next: A forearm stand…

• Reading slump update: My friend Kristen recommended the Dungeon Crawler Carl series and while I really did not like it at first I am currently in the middle of the third book after starting the series about a week ago. I still don’t know if I “like” it but I’m invested!

• Recipe: I used my friend’s instant pot to make black beans (I had some of the Rancho Gordo midnight black beans) and I was pleasantly surprised with how they turned out. I’d probably add some more spices next time.

• Song: Lucy Dacus on one of my favorite Madi Diaz songs—lovely.

That’s it for now. See ya soon,
A

P.S. Thanks Christopher Skinner for the illustrations!

Today’s newsletter is about reading. I know we have quite a few bookworms in the Money Moves community, so hopefully you will indulge this summer books supplement.

In today’s issue:
1. The summer of the reading slump?
2. Shoutout Ann Patchett
3. On my (bookish) radar

The summer of the reading slump?

I will read anything about being in a reading slump, an irony that is not lost on me. It is similar to reading about other writers’ writing practices. I could just go do the thing, instead of reading about other people doing it, but where’s the fun in that? Instead, I need to spend the majority of my time ruminating and self-flagellating and, most importantly, not doing the thing.

Anyway, John Paul Brammer had a great essay a few weeks ago about learning to become a reader after many years of not reading. “My thoughts feel cleaner. Thinking itself is more pleasurable. Pain is less mysterious. My brain is just better,” Brammer writes of the many benefits of reading. “Books are a privileged medium. We’re grammatical beings. We talk to ourselves in sentences.”

While I am coming to this from a different angle—of being a lifelong reader who has pretty regular slumps (and has been in one basically this whole year)—reading his essay made me yearn to get lost in a book again. The author Jade Chang is experiencing something similar, as she revealed to fellow author/journalist Ann Friedman. They in turn linked to author Elif Batuman’s similar missive, published this past week.

Side note: I chuckled when Chang noted “three’s a trend” about Brammer’s, Batuman’s, and her own reading slumps, as I had the same exact thought while reading her newsletter. Here I am, a fourth!

“As someone who is really into reading, one experience I am surprised not to read about more frequently is ‘reading slumps’: those periods when you can’t get into any book, and every book is somehow annoying, yet you feel bereft to not have anything to read,” Batuman begins her essay.

These are feelings I know well. But I am in particularly dire straits right now. I have finished just six books this year (plus a couple for work), a far cry from my normal cadence. Less on my mind is accomplishing some specific reading goal (though usually it is 24 non-work books per year), and more what Batuman is getting at—feeling uninspired and even unmoored, of nothing breaking through or taking hold, of nothing encouraging further reflection.

More worryingly still, I wonder if my attention span is, simply, broken. I bemoan short-form content and everyone else’s inability to read an entire article, and then I myself read very little.

So I have asked friends for recommendations, scoured mid-year best-of lists from mainstream publications and personal newsletters alike, and reviewed (and re-reviewed) my own TBR pile. Nothing calls.

I just finished an award-winning book that is certainly good, but not one I would say had me glued to the page. The desire to be completely swept up in a book, to underline sentences and then copy them into my journal, to be inspired to write terrible sentences of my own, remains.

***

The writer Austin Kleon promotes a practice I love about establishing your own artistic genealogy. Basically, if you love an artist, look to their inspirations for more inspiration—or simply enjoyment—of your own. In this way, you can grow your own creative family tree. Kleon cites fellow writer Alan Jacobs, who encourages “swimming upstream”:

We can turn our temporal attention upstream rather than downstream—toward what preceded Tolkien or Austen or whomever rather than what succeeded them. After all, Austen became the Austen we know largely through her reading—something that is true of almost all writers… If you imitate them in that sense—not by trying to write what they wrote but to read what they read—you’ll find your horizons expanding, your mind stretching, your resources of knowledge coming near their limits…

This is a practice that has served me well in the past. I will follow one author or inspiration to the next; it is how I have found some of the most influential books, writers, and music in my life.

So I was kind of delighted to see musician Jensen McRae comment on Batuman’s reading slump essay. I had just been listening to her song “My Ego Dies At the End” maybe 30 minutes prior thanks to the Spotify radio playlist for a different artist, and it all felt sort of like kismet.

When a coincidence like that pop ups—if a theme or topic or musical artist, for example, keeps recurring in my life in a particular timeframe—I take that as a sign from the universe to pay attention. And so that is my cue to read some of the other books mentioned in Batuman’s piece as well as the comments. Clearly there is some sort of invisible string between two creatives I would not have otherwise connected, and it makes sense, to me, that the art they in turn reference might be what I’m missing.

Of the other books mentioned, I have already read Lena Dunham’s Famesick (one of the few books I gobbled up this year), but I am now interested in Joan Silber’s In the City and Colm Tóibín’s The Magician. Reading these books would also allow me to check off two other distinct reading goals for the year: 1) I read multiple Tóibíns last year and enjoyed them, so this also gets me closer to finishing an author’s entire oeuvre; and 2) Silber’s accomplishes my desire to read older books.

I don’t always need to be inspired by what I read (give me a competently written twisty mystery any day), but I do think that is what has been missing of late. When I look through my book log, I see a lot of trendy novels that fell flat in my reading and popular genre books that I can barely remember a single plot point of. There is nothing wrong with those books. But there is clearly something wrong when I feel no desire to return to them, or to seek out others like them.

Unlike Brammer and Batuman, I’m not out of the woods yet. I’m still slumping, hopeful that engaging in this artistic lineage is the cure.

Perhaps you have your own tried and true methods for breaking out of a reading rut?

Shoutout Ann Patchett

Speaking of inspirations, I was delighted to see this week that Ann Patchett is receiving the 2026 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, even if I was unaware that this prize existed until I saw the news.

“The award seeks to recognize strong, unique, enduring voices that, throughout long and consistently accomplished careers, have told us something about the American experience,” the Library of Congress’s release says. It is given to an American literary writer “whose body of work is distinguished by its mastery of the art, as well as its originality of thought and imagination.”

Patchett is the best-selling author of 10 novels as well as nonfiction, essay collections, and children’s books. She has won like every literary award out there, and for good reason.

I have read six of her works:

• The Dutch House

• Commonwealth

• Bel Canto

• Tom Lake

• Truth & Beauty: A Friendship

• This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage

One of the things I am most amazed by with Patchett is how different all of the plots of her books are (except maybe Commonwealth and The Dutch House, in some ways) but they are still very much Patchett.

I also just generally dig her vibe. She owns a bookstore in Nashville and is always promoting new books and authors. In other words, living the dream!

As noted above, one of my general reading goals is to finish an author’s entire body of work, and Ann is a decent contender (it has to be author with a fairly lengthy catalog). Her new book sounds right up my alley.

Did you know TED is still a thing? Here is Patchett’s recent TED talk about…reading!

On my (bookish) radar

• Ann Friedman on beach reads: “It can be surprisingly difficult, once you've aged out of your youthful voracious-reader phase and into the stresses and time constraints of adulthood, to figure out your personal beach read. To know what sort of book is almost certain to delight you and sweep you away.”

• An interesting bookish activity for all of those unread books on your shelf, courtesy of Ann Friedman’s newsletter.

• On reading with a newborn: “Reading this way—without pretense or purpose beyond entertainment and company—feels restorative, like sipping ginger tea or cocooning under a blanket. It’s also a treat to have the time to, yes, binge on sentences.”

• Pandora Sykes on how to read more. Also from her newsletter, a bunch of peoples’ favorite books of 2026 so far.

• John Paul Brammer, again, on performative reading: “What lends books their modern moral valence is that literature stands in opposition to the Goliath of our age. As low-effort distractions monopolize our attention, literature challenges us in the right way. Where social media makes us incurious, reactionary, and cynical, literature requires nuance, patience, and critical thinking.”

• I refuse to read The Atlantic article about how no one is reading anymore because I think it would make me too upset.

That’s it for now. See ya soon,
A

P.S. Thanks Christopher Skinner for the illustrations!

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Hope you enjoyed the (hopefully) long weekend! I desperately need some lake time.

In today’s issue:
1. PlayStation and the demise of physical media
2. Trump accounts have launched
3. On my radar

PlayStation and the demise of physical media

Last week, Sony’s PlayStation announced it will end physical game disc production starting in January 2028, meaning new games will only be available in digital formats.

This change is a “natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs,” the announcement post reads.

And there’s no doubt that more gamers buy digital versions of games than physical: about 80% of its full game unit sales are digital, according to Sony’s financial disclosures.

It’s also much better for Sony’s bottom line, as it greatly reduces the cost of producing, storing, and shipping the physical media.

But discontinuing physical discs marks a seemingly unwelcome change not just for gamers, but for the larger gaming economy.

I don’t game—aside from the Sims—but my husband does, and while he buys plenty of digital versions of games, he also collects some physicals. You likely know some of the perks: Not only can he buy the physical games used at a discount, but he can also trade them with other people, or let a friend borrow one. When you only have the digital version, you legally cannot do that.

The announced change also affects local, independent retailers. My husband loves to go to Videogamesnewyork, an old school video game store where part of the fun is perusing all of the old games they have stocked to see if there are any unicorns in there. Of course they sell hardware and other goods, but reselling used games is a big part of the ecosystem.

It brings people like my husband to the store; he can resell his old games or trade them in for something else. It’s much harder to build that irl community around digital goods (though possible, more on that below), especially because you cannot resell or trade e-games.

And there is also the potential that gamers may not be able to play the games they already own on new consoles like the PS6 going forward. Instead, you may have to buy them again digitally for the updated console.

Physical and digital media do not have the same consumer protections

Sony’s move is part of a much bigger shift we have been experiencing for years—even decades, given Spotify just turned 20—of moving away from physical media to digital. And that is a move with real consequences for consumers, even though many of us may not realize it.

It turns all of us into lessees, rather than owners. And that means we have fewer consumer rights while still paying ownership prices.

Blame copyright law. When you buy physical media, you literally buy the physical copy of it. And under the Copyright Act’s first sale doctrine, you are free to sell your physical media, lend it out, and give it away. It is why we can sell old DVDs on eBay and donate old books to the library.

But with digital goods, you are basically buying a license to use the book, movie, or whatever it is. There is no digital first sale doctrine, and licensing agreements impose use restrictions on digital content. You cannot resell it, and sometimes you are even limited to how many times you can download it. You see that a lot with music.

In fact, if you want to sell your digital media files, you would need to sell the entire device that the media is dowloaded onto, due to a 2013 court ruling.

This creates consumer lock-in and decreases competition among media companies: If you get tired of your PlayStation and want to try out XBox, you can sell your console and games and not be out all of your money. But with digital-only games, the potential financial cost is greater, locking you into the PlayStation ecosystem.

You may wonder why libraries limit the number of copies of ebooks or audiobooks they lend at a time. It’s because not only do book publishers charge libraries more for digital copies, but also because unlike with physical books—which theoretically can be kept in circulation indefinitely after they are purchased—the ebook and audiobook licenses need to be regularly renewed, often annually or every few years.

There have also been plenty of instances of services removing the digital goods people have purchased, whether books from your e-library, or movies or TV shows. Companies have also edited or retracted digital content that consumers “own.”

In fact, Sony just announced that U.K. customers wouldn’t be able to view hundreds of movies, even if they “bought” them. And the company is also discontinuing its digital stores for some older consoles completely, a good reminder that it can do that to any console it wants going forward.

“Starting in 2028, every PlayStation game comes with an expiry date; as soon as the PS5’s digital store shuts down, a huge swath of games will simply become inaccessible,” Andrew Webster writes for The Verge.

One of the recognized justifications for physical media’s first sale doctrine is actually media preservation. When the copyright owner no longer sells the works, people who bought a copy of it can keep it alive. But with digital-only content, that is much harder (we might say the internet is forever…but it’s not).1

Full Steam ahead

It’s not a surprise that games are moving this way. In some ways, the fact that many of them can still be physically purchased is anachronistic—most retailers long ago stopped selling physical movies, music, and TV shows; if you are lucky, you can buy the most popular of each locally.

The popularity of Steam, an online storefront and gaming platform, shows the benefits of a digital-first marketplace. Developers can upload their games easily and inexpensively, and anyone on the platform can find it and play it. Millions of people use Steam, and they have created a flourishing online community.

Digital-only is convenient, and there is no question that that is most consumers’ preference for seemingly all of their media, when they have the choice.

But choice is the key word. With much of the rest of our media, we at least have the option to buy physical copies if we want. I have an e-reader and frequent the library, but I still prefer owning physical copies of books. And there’s been a big vinyl resurgence in recent years, as consumers have desired building physical collections of the music they love. Sony appears to be taking away that option completely.

530A—AKA Trump—accounts are live

Good news for everyone waiting with bated breath: Trump accounts are now live, and if it makes sense for your financial situation, you can start funding them.

The accounts—officially named 530A accounts—are federally sponsored investment accounts for American children under 18. Parents/guardians, family members, and employers can contribute to them and the funds are invested in U.S. index funds, much like a 401(k) or other retirement account you are already familiar with.

Your investments are tax deferred, so you don’t pay taxes on any growth each year. But your kid will pay taxes when they withdraw the funds, like a tax-deferred retirement account (though there are slightly different rules depending on the source of the contribution).

Speaking of which, when your kid turns 18, the account works much like a traditional IRA. If you pull money out for a non-qualified reason before age 59½, you will pay income taxes plus a 10% penalty.

Qualified reasons for using the funds—meaning you do not pay a 10% penalty—include higher education expenses, a first-time home purchase up to $10,000, or the birth or adoption of a child. And of course, the rest can be used as a jumpstart on retirement savings.

If you’re like, wait, can’t you also take a penalty-free disbursement from your retirement account for those same reasons? You are basically correct. But the difference between funding a Trump account and a custodial traditional or Roth IRA for your kid is that the latter can only be funded with earned income. So assuming your newborn doesn’t have a job, you cannot contribute to a retirement account for them until they do.

The thinking with the Trump account is that your kid could have, say, 15 or 16 more years of investment growth and compounding if you open a 530A account for them when they are born. If you’re making regular contributions, then they will have more socked away for those specific non-retirement reasons.

There are other account options, too. A 529 account is a state-run, tax-advantaged investment account for educational expenses. There’s no contribution limit, and your funds grow tax free; you pay no federal income tax on withdrawals that are used to pay for qualified education expenses like tuition and books. If you make a non-qualified withdrawal, you pay taxes and a 10% penalty.

And a custodial brokerage account—often known as UGMA or UTMA account—has no contribution limit or earned income requirement, plus no early withdrawal penalties. You can invest in whatever your broker offers, rather than the pre-set options for Trump accounts and 529s. But contributions are not tax-deductible and earnings are subject to federal and potentially state and local taxes. These accounts may also impact what financial aid your kid qualifies for if they go to college.

Other Trump account details

American citizens born during Trump’s second presidential term (start of 2025 to end of 2028) will receive $1,000 from tax payers if/when they open account, and there are some other children who qualify for seed money from other benefactors. But parents can open a 530A account for any child under 18.

Parents can contribute up to $5,000 per year (the $1,000 from the government doesn’t count), and employers can contribute up to $2,500 of that.

The default investment option for Trump accounts at launch is the State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 ETF, a low-cost exchange-traded fund (it has an expense ratio of 0.02%, in line with what these should cost) that tracks the S&P 500.

For now, all funds will be invested in the default fund. In the weeks to come, “Treasury expects to make available functionality that will allow parents or guardians to choose how to allocate funds across the additional investment options,” the Treasury Department announced. That includes:

• iShares Core S&P 500 ETF

• Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF

• State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 1500 Composite Stock Market ETF

• iShares Core S&P total U.S. Stock Market ETF

Once available, families will have to manually change their asset allocation if they want to.

and I have been working with Babylist on a library of content about Trump accounts, 529s, and other financial tools for kids and families for the past six months. We’ve spoken with quite a few financial advisors, tax experts, and other professionals about the accounts and their best use cases, and we’ve gone deep in the weeds reading Treasury and IRS guidance for them.

The advice that we’ve been given over and over and over again is that if you qualify for the $1,000, then great, open an account and collect it. If your employer offers a matching contribution, that’s another good reason to open an account. But otherwise, the equation isn’t as straight forward.

You can think of all of the accounts as different tools in your toolbox. What makes the most sense for your family? Do you have the extra funds to contribute, or could family members?

On my radar

• Books: I started Audition by Kate Kitamura this weekend and the beginning really hooked me!

• Ticks: They’re scary!

• TikTok: Here’s me talking about the job market.

@aliciatalksmoney7/2/2026: The US job market is stuck. #economy #jobs #career

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That’s it for now. See ya soon,
A

P.S. Thanks Christopher Skinner for the illustrations!

I have one more story for you before the holiday weekend. I am trying to take a “strike while the iron is hot”/act-on-inspiration-as-it-happens approach to this newsletter going forward instead of being precious about every send, because the latter results in 0 newsletters.

In today’s issue:
1. What is in Taylor Swift’s prenup?
2. A housing interlude
3. On my radar

What is in Taylor Swift’s prenup?

If news reports are to be believed, Taylor Swift is getting married this weekend at Madison Square Garden in NYC. As a fan since the Debut era, I’m obviously curious about what her dress will look like, who’s invited, and what the food situation will be. As a financial journalist, I’m also curious about what’s going on with all that money.

It should go without saying that I have absolutely 0 insight into TS’s actual prenup or anything about her personal/financial life. But back when I was covering wealth management, I interviewed a few lawyers and wealth managers who deal in ultra-high net worth prenups and divorces. It’s interesting stuff, in my opinion, even if it applies to less than 1% of us.

I’m assuming TS has a prenup because her known assets are worth hundreds of millions of dollars (or more) and she runs an organization that employs who knows how many people. Travis Kelce also has significant assets, if not Swift-level.

That said, so many celebrities and other wealthy people who should theoretically know better end up not signing a prenup (Bill Gates comes to mind). So who knows!

Here is what a prenup at this level might look like. No, I will not be weaving punny lyrical references throughout. It’s overdone!

The reported assets at stake

Much has been made over the past few years about how much Taylor Swift is worth, and you can find a limitless number of other videos/articles/threads/podcasts elsewhere dissecting whether or not her wealth makes her a Bad Person. For the purposes of this newsletter, I’m interested in how she and Travis might protect or combine the sizable estates they are each bringing to their marriage.

Taylor’s reported $2 billion1 net worth includes:

• Royalties and touring: $800 million, primarily from The Eras Tour

• Her song catalogue: $600 million

• Real estate: $110 to $120 million, including homes in Los Angeles, Nashville, New York, and Rhode Island

• Private jet: $23 million

• Other more typical investments: Presumably she has other more standard investments held in brokerage accounts (and retirement accounts?)

Here is where I add the caveat that unlike a billionaire whose net worth is made up primarily of stock in a public company (like Bezos or Elon Musk) that is easy to check the price of on any given day, all of the numbers above aside from real estate and the jet reflect estimates that news outlets/consultants/financial firms are making on Swift’s behalf. While we know exactly how Musk’s shares break down thanks to public disclosures, we don’t have that for her.

Travis’s reported $70 million net worth includes:

• NFL earnings: $111 million over the course of his NFL career, before taxes and agents’ fees, Forbes reports.

• Non-NFL earnings: $80 million, before taxes and agents’ fees, Forbes reports. This includes his podcast New Heights (he and his brother Jason signed a three-year, $100 million deal with Wondery in 2024); Garage Beer Company, which he also owns with Jason; investments in Alpine Formula One and a restaurant in Kansas City; and various TV and film appearances.

• Real estate: $7 million for two homes in Kansas/Kansas City.

• Car: $400,000 for a Rolls-Royce Phantom.

The prenup process can take months

Taylor got engaged last August, and it’s possible negotiations or preparations for their marriage started even before that.

“These agreements are detailed and complex, often requiring input beyond the parties,” says Ali Fishbein, partner in the matrimonial and family law practice at Blank Rome.

The ultra wealthy (generally defined as those who have $30 million-plus in investable assets) tend to employ a small army of professionals to manage everything: estate lawyers, tax attorneys, business counsel, trust advisors, forensic accountants, wealth advisers, public relations reps, and more.

When a prenup is drafted, both parties by law are required to be completely forthcoming and transparent about all of their assets and liabilities—meaning, no hidden overseas bank accounts or Kalshi debts.

You might think the ultra-wealthy will still hide a few things. This surely happens, but Marilyn Chinitz, matrimonial attorney to several billionaires and celebrities like Tom Cruise and Michael Douglas, previously told me that extremely wealthy and public people tend to disclose everything—because when the forensic accountants are brought in during a divorce and a secret trust is discovered, that can invalidate the entire prenup.

“You never want to be in a position as a spouse-turned-litigant where the other side is moving to set aside the agreement on the basis that you withheld information and that you did not disclose your assets,” Chinitz told me.

Pre-marriage assets kept separate

Just like with the prenups for those of us with more average levels of wealth, a title-based agreement is typical in negotiations for the ultra-wealthy. That means anything currently in TS’s name belongs to her, and anything in Travis’s name belongs to him. Marital assets are generally held in both names going forward.

That said, there are always exceptions, as the memoir Strangers made clear. In that case—in which the wife had generational wealth but the husband was a high-earning hedge funder—the couple agreed that the husband’s earnings would be strictly his going forward, while both of them were on the titles to the homes they bought with the wife’s inheritance. That turned out to be a not-so-great idea, at least for her!

Back to TS and TK, there is another consideration that can be complex: They may decide to hold their pre-marital assets separate, but have a different agreement for how the appreciation of those assets during the marriage is treated. Maybe she wants to keep all of her music royalties kept separate going forward, or earmarked for children, if they have them. There are a lot of options!

Sunset clauses

When one spouse significantly out-earns the other, as is the case here, property settlement agreements are also common. With one of these, the less wealthy spouse would waive future claims in exchange for a fixed amount of money. This can help in situations like this one where much of the assets are illiquid (in the form of royalties tied to her artistic output), and would be extremely difficult to actually divide up.

Sunset clauses stipulate that certain clauses in the prenup or whole contracts expire after a specified amount of time or when a milestone is reached, like the birth of a child.

So TS could agree to pay Travis $5 million for the first five years they are together, and then $10 million if they make it to 10, or some similar arrangement.

Similarly, the prenup might have a sunset clause that dissolves the agreement completely after 10 years of marriage or when they reach a certain age. This is often done when couples marry young and one partner (generally the woman) leaves the workforce. It ensures she has some financial safety in the years ahead of her.

Portability

TS and Travis often travel between their homes in various states. As such, the prenup needs to be portable—meaning, no matter where they eventually live or potentially divorce, the agreement follows a specific jurisdiction’s rules.

Upon death

The prenup would also be concerned with what happens to each of their assets upon their death if they are still married.

It is likely both have a complex web of trusts set up to hold their assets. As spouses, any marital assets would simply pass to the other.

But they could also arrange it so that a certain amount of money is distributed to the other spouse annually while the rest remains in trust, or keep a separate chunk of change set aside for any children they may have, or distribute some to other family members/organizations/philanthropic goals, etc.

Non-financial components

Prenups at this scale also tend to contain many non-financial provisions, that, imo, are a bit juicier than the money stuff:

• Non-disclosure agreements and non-disparagement clauses related to media activity, confidential business information, the scope of the prenup negotiations, etc. Some very wealthy people may act to limit their spouse/potential ex-spouse’s future media activity, public interviews, and social media use. “A confidentiality clause may be particularly important when the parties are public figures,” says Fishbein. “But such a provision would be unlikely in this case, where one spouse is known for relying on public disclosure of personal details as part of her livelihood.”

• A provision to discourage contesting the prenup in the event of a divorce. Doing so could mean the litigant ends up with nothing.

• Behavioral or lifestyle clauses—like payment for infidelity or strict appearance standards—exist but are not necessarily enforceable…anymore.

• A clause can be included that dictates how the spouses need to pack up their belongings in case of divorce, or even include a requirement that a spouse needs to move out within X days of the end of the marriage.

So there you go. There are probably a million other things included, especially related to her intellectual property and future royalties, and protections for him since his football career, at least, has limited longevity. But those are some basics.

Housing interlude

I made this graph with Claude (!) based on a new report from Pew Research Center that shows how much harder buying a home has gotten for young people in most US metros.

Between 2019 and 2024 alone, the inflation-adjusted median home value rose 30%, while the median household income for those under 40 rose just 9%. But we all knew that!

On my radar

• Audiobooks: I’m listening to Bone Valley: A True Story of Injustice and Redemption in the Heart of Florida by Gilbert King, based on his podcast Bone Valley. It’s pretty depressing!

• Family Money: was interviewed for this article in The Cut about parents giving their adult children money (Lindsey is pro). It’s not a simple conversation (are there two more emotionally-laden topics than family and money?), but I also appreciated this thread about the article on Reddit that gets into some related feelings about money, family, and “fairness,” whatever that means.

• TV Shows: “I Will Find You” on Netflix is probably one of the worst shows I’ve ever watched.

That’s it for now. See ya soon,
A

P.S. Thanks Christopher Skinner for the illustrations!

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I have been trying to drink less caffeine and it is literally one of the hardest things I have ever done. I now fall asleep at like 9 p.m. and wake up ready for my first cup. Awful!

In today’s issue:
1. SpaceX may soon be in your 401(k)
2. A 4% rule update
3. On my radar

SpaceX may soon be in your 401(k)

In a couple of days, your 401(k) could be invested in SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space rocket/satellite internet/social media(?)/artificial intelligence company that had the world’s largest IPO just two weeks ago.

That’s because Nasdaq waived its usual index inclusion rules for SpaceX, allowing it to bypass the index’s standard multi-month trading requirements. On July 7, SpaceX will join the ranks of the Nasdaq 100, the popular stock index that tracks 100 of the largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. (Nasdaq is the name of a larger financial services company, a stock exchange, and an index fund.1)

As such, index funds and ETFs that track the Nasdaq 100 will be required to purchase shares of SpaceX to reflect the index’s new composition. That will trigger $4.3 billion in non-discretionary buying from passive funds, according to JP Morgan.

How does that affect your 401(k)? Well, most companies offer passively managed index funds like the Nasdaq 100 as investment options for their 401(k)s because they are considered safer investments than, say, picking random individual stocks. The company that manages your 401(k) has a fiduciary duty to act in your best interests when selecting investments—this is generally understood to mean low-cost, diversified, and not overly risky—and index funds are a way to fulfill this duty.

Index companies usually take that seriously, too. Nasdaq required a longer waiting period for stocks to be considered for inclusion in the Nasdaq 100, in part, to allow them to ride out some of the insane post-IPO volatility SpaceX has seen in recent days: the share price surged more than 60% after it debuted before correcting back down.

Notably, fellow index giant S&P resisted the pressure to change its rules, meaning SpaceX will not be fast-tracked into funds that track the S&P 500. Instead, S&P says it will be eligible after the standard one-year waiting period, pending SpaceX meets profitability requirements. As in, SpaceX will need to be profitable, which it is not.

Americans have more money invested for retirement in S&P 500 index funds than any other investment—well over $3 trillion. Meanwhile, prior research has found only around 1% of 401(k) assets are held in indexes tracking the Nasdaq 100.

The Russell 1000—another popular index—also changed its rules to include SpaceX more quickly.

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The pros of SpaceX’s inclusion

One of the reasons given for the fast track inclusion is that the company is going to do so well that retail investors should be given a chance to get in immediately and ride the stock price up and up and up—even a few months’ delay is too much.

Not including SpaceX (and other companies planning potentially seismic IPOs like Anthropic and OpenAI) would actually mean the indexes don’t reflect the reality of the stock market like they should, some investors argue. If SpaceX is one of the biggest companies in the U.S. right now by market cap—and it’s currently #6, sandwiched between Amazon and Broadcom—then it should be included in index funds of the largest companies.2

There has been a big public outcry about the rule changes; that’s partly why S&P didn’t end up giving in and changing its requirements. But plenty of other people want in: retail investors reportedly bought $100 billion in shares at the IPO believing it’s literally and metaphorically the rocket they ride to the moon/Mars.

This isn’t the first time indexes have made special exceptions. When Saudi Aramco, the previous record holder for largest IPO, went public, it was also fast tracked into indexes, according to CNBC. Again, the thought is that these are the biggest companies in the world—they should be reflected in large cap indexes.

So the question now becomes: If you’re invested in funds that track the S&P 500, how do you feel about missing out on SpaceX for at least a year?

As long-time readers will know, Money Moves does not advocate for making big changes to your investments based on emotion. Especially with your 401(k) investments, you are thinking long term. So even if SpaceX stumbles in the next few years, theoretically that could be okay if it makes up for it later on. (Unless you’re on the verge of retirement, in which case you should be rebalancing your asset allocation anyway.)

I do have a hesitation here about the insane IPO price and subsequent share price that is still quite high, given SpaceX actually doesn’t make any money yet (many, many people think the company is overpriced to an absurd degree, given it has negative revenue). Passively-managed funds are going to be forced to buy at that inflated price; if it settles at something lower/more reflective of its actual revenues in the years to come, that’s not great for your retirement.

Speaking of revenue: SpaceX made $18.7 billion in 2025. Musk says the company “might be able to reach approximately” $1 trillion revenue in 2030. That’s four and a half years away. Does anyone actually believe that will happen? And does anyone actually believe this company is currently worth more than Meta, Walmart, and JP Morgan, all of which rank below it right now in terms of market cap? SpaceX is like Tesla in that the stock price is not based on what the company is actually producing, but rather is a bet on what investors think Musk will be able to do in the future. It’s very possible that the stock price falls down to earth if it turns out the emperor has no clothes.

Regardless, the optics now aren’t great in a time when people are increasingly angry about the rich running everything: it looks rather like the financial big boys gave preferential treatment to the richest man in the world, with only the nation’s retirement savings on the line. He’ll be fine if things don’t pan out; you and I, less so.

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SpaceX’s bond troubles

Less relevant to our 401(k) discussion but interesting nonetheless3: Right after the IPO, Musk also led a $25 billion bond sale. That’s turning into a bit of a mess, with SpaceX bond prices dropping in recent days while yields rose 6%.

One obvious joke to make about the situation is that bond investors actually expect to see results/make money on their investments whereas equity investors…well that’s more complicated. This quote from The Financial Times sums it up:

“In investment-grade credit, what we focus on is whether a company can service its debt,” said Michael Campion, a portfolio manager at PGIM. “We’re used to lending based on actual cash flows rather than expectations.”

On the cash flow front: SpaceX posted a net loss of $4.9 billion on the $18.7 billion in revenues in 2025. Equity investors might be okay waiting for those data centers on Mars or whatever Musk is promising—according to the S1, passenger and cargo transport to the moon and Mars, asteroid mining, and extending “the light of consciousness to the stars”—decades from now, but bond investors are looking at the company’s actual performance today. SpaceX has a lot going for it, particularly Starlink, but nothing that screams “sixth largest company in the U.S.”

Bonds are admittedly a bit outside my normal coverage comfort zone, so I’m open to learning more about this. Drop me a line if you want to chat!

A 4% rule update

The 4% rule is a popular shorthand for retirement decumulation, or spending down your assets: Withdraw 4% of your portfolio the first year of retirement, then adjust that amount for inflation every year after that. Do this, and you’ll (likely) be fine, with your investment gains hopefully outweighing your spending and inflation’s sting.

As with everything else in life, exactly what works for you and your individual circumstances will not always work for me and my individual circumstances; tweaks to the rule have always been encouraged. But generally speaking, retirees have been advised to follow the 4% rule to avoid running out of savings when they left the workforce for the past couple decades.

The Wall Street Journal reports: No more! We all need more sophisticated guidelines in this day and age.

I’ll be honest, I probably wouldn’t have brought this up now at all had I not seen the Journal’s article—this discussion has been happening for years in retirement circles.

I for one am not a fan of rigidity in any aspect of personal finance—everything is so variable and dependent on personal circumstances that there’s always a million caveats that need to be added to every “rule.”

But I think sometimes my tendency to take a squishier approach to these personal finance axioms has negative consequences. As I’ve written about these topics for more and more years and spoken to ever more people about their finances, I have started to come around to the belief that some of us just do need strict rules to follow. It’s easier for our brains, it gives us a specific goal to hit, and it eliminates complexity that can be overwhelming. Rules like this are useful as a starting point, an accessible entry way that we can all modify to our own needs and circumstances.

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But I don’t disagree with the Journal that the 4% rule doesn’t work for everyone. If you have spent decades building up your assets, trying to limit taxes, learning about stocks and bonds and alts, then you owe it to yourself to put in some additional time thinking seriously about your decumulation strategy. Because what’s the point of all the money if you don’t know how to spend it?

I do think this is the next big frontier in personal finance coverage. We’ve spent a long time publishing advice and insight into accumulating—now it’s time to focus on different strategies for spending it down.

On my radar

• Books: I finished Belle Burden’s Strangers last week. There were many times I wanted to stop reading it because it was making me so mad, but I soldiered on. The discourse has mostly moved on but…I have many thoughts if anyone wants to discuss.

• JP Morgan succession woes: Back when I worked on the Most Powerful Women in Business list/newsletter at Fortune, the succession race at JPM was a big deal: Two women were always, supposedly, at the top of the list, each vying to replace Jamie Dimon whenever he decides to step aside. Well, not anymore! Dimon’s successor is definitely going to be a dude. Not exactly surprising: To this day, Jane Fraser at Citi is the only woman to climb the ranks at a Wall Street firm. Does any of this actually matter? Idk.

• Music: I am but a simple girl and am enjoying Olivia Rodrigo’s new album, particularly the run of “purple” → “the cure” → “begged” → “what’s wrong with me.”

• Recipes: This creamy cashew chicken salad was one of NYT Cooking’s most popular recipes last week, and since I happened to have cashew butter and a head of cabbage from our CSA on hand, I decided to make it. Really good! Perfect for the heat we’ve been having—and a perfect vehicle to eat a lot of my favorite herb, dill. Also a perfect way to use up the cabbage!

• TikTok: Here’s me talking about estate planning and beneficiary designations.

  

  @aliciatalksmoney6/28/26: Are you prepared to…die? #personalfinance #inheritance #money

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That’s it for now. See ya soon,
A

P.S. Thanks Christopher Skinner for the illustrations!

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Over at The Purse, we are hard at work on a series of first-person inheritance stories and estate planning/settlement guides. Check it out!

In today’s issue:
1. The problem with high-yield ‘savings’ accounts
2. The one estate planning task you should do this week
3. On my radar

The problem with high-yield ‘savings’ accounts

If you don’t already, you absolutely should have a high-yield savings account, which can offer 20 times as much interest on your savings than the typical savings account. You can find these at traditional banks like Capital One, at online only banks like Ally, and, increasingly, at fintechs.

Or at least that’s what the fintechs advertise. But these days you also need to make sure that the account you’re opening is actually a savings account. Otherwise, you risk losing the entirety of your savings if something goes wrong.

Fintech companies have become increasingly popular among younger generations for their ease of use and digital-first ethos. Many of them are also able to offer higher interest rates on customers’ deposits and savings than traditional banks. For example, the national average savings account interest rate is 0.38%, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, while you can find high-yield accounts from digital providers that currently offer as much as 4%.

What many people do not know is that fintechs are usually not technically banks. You might not think that matters when they offer what appears to be the same financial products, but it does in some pretty profound ways.

One is that they cannot have FDIC insurance, which was created after the Great Depression to protect your deposits and savings from bank failure. Instead, fintechs often partner with actual banks that are FDIC insured, and the cash you think is held at the app you signed up for is is actually held at these partner institutions.

Fintechs tout the insurance on their websites, but if you look closely, you will see that the fintech’s “savings” account is actually labeled a “cash account” or some such similar moniker.

This is why some fintechs say they they are FDIC insured up to $1 million or more, which is well over the $250,000 FDIC limit. (Wealthfront touts up to $8 million in FDIC insurance.) If you have that much cash, it will be spread out at multiple partner banks, and you may not even know. The partner banks could change at any time, meaning your cash could be moved from one to another at any moment.

Okay, you’re thinking, what’s the big deal? There have been a few high-profile incidents recently that show how this can put your money in danger.

Take the recent collapse of Synapse, a financial technology service provider backed by investors like Andreessen Horowitz. Synapse acted as a middleman between chartered banks and nonbank financial firms like Yotta, a prize-linked savings app, and Juno, a crypto-friendly banking platform. Basically, it would help move deposits from fintechs to the banks that actually held the funds, managing the ledger that tracked the funds and collecting a fee for its trouble. It also helped non-banks do other bank-like things, such as offer debit cards and early direct deposits. Because Synapse was not technically a licensed bank, it was not subject to regulatory standards that banks must follow.

Then Synapse collapsed in April 2024 due to a number of its clients and banking partners pulling their accounts. After its bankruptcy, more than 100,000 people lost access to over $265 million held across various fintech apps and platforms. Many still cannot access their funds to this day, according to the Yale Journal of International Affairs.

The reasons why are convoluted. Synapse couldn’t technically be overseen by the Federal Reserve (which oversees banks), and there was seemingly no other supervisory board/organization overseeing what it was doing, either. The customer funds it held itself weren’t actually covered by FDIC insurance, despite being marketed that way. And it moved customer funds around a lot, including to its own brokerage arm, meaning there was a lot of complexity to unravel.

Plenty of Yotta customers had no idea that the firm wasn’t actually holding their deposits, as this recently-published More Perfect Union report highlights. (I find some of More Perfect Union’s reporting to be sensationalized and there are some takeaways in this report that I think are actually incorrect, but it is spotlighting really important issues and actually talking to the affected savers, so I wanted to link to it anyway.)

“When these systems function as intended, consumers are rarely aware of the intermediaries involved,” reads Yale’s report. “However, at the point of failure, the underlying complexity erupts disorderly, leaving customers trapped in bureaucratic limbo. Caught between technology platforms and partner banks, neither party assumes full responsibility.”

This type of arrangement applies to bigger name fintechs, too, and is the reason why I, personally, do not bank with them despite their competitive interest rates. I am simply too risk averse to trust my savings to them—and have read too many horror stories. Plus, there are plenty of licensed banks and credit unions that offer high-yield accounts. (My account at one of the biggest banks out there currently offers 3%.)

That’s not financial advice. You should bank wherever you want as long as you understand the risks and how each company is different, and if you haven’t opened a high-yield savings account, you should do that ASAP. But know that there are plenty of options available at actual FDIC-insured banks or, better yet, NCUSIF-insured credit unions.

As for the Synapse nonsense, it looks like customers are still, understandably, trying to get their funds back, and the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation recently announced that Yotta has to pay a $1 million penalty for engaging in deceptive practices. But if you want to avoid the hassle and stress, read the fine print of your high-yield “savings” account carefully.

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A simple estate planning task

As I mentioned above, The Purse is publishing a bunch of stories on inheritances and estate planning and settlement. I’ve talked to estate planning and divorce lawyers and financial advisors over the past few weeks for the stories, and I’ve been trying to do a few of the tasks we’ve discussed on our calls.

I don’t have a will yet. But I did one thing this week that was super simple and has made me feel a lot better: I updated the beneficiaries on my various financial accounts.

There are a number of reasons to do this. The biggest is that adding beneficiaries to accounts means they won’t be sent to probate, or the legal process that occurs after you die where a judge approves the division of your assets. That can save your loved ones months or even more than a year of bureaucratic headaches and stress.

One thing to note is that your beneficiary designations supersede anyone named in your will, if you have one. That’s why it’s so important to keep them updated, if you haven’t checked in a while. It also means one of the most consequential financial tasks you can do is also one of the easiest to accomplish!

My retirement accounts are with Fidelity, and I only had to navigate to my user profile to find the beneficiaries section. I don’t know how other financial institutions work, but it’s probably similarly easy to find.

Doing this took me about five minutes, and I feel better knowing my assets won’t be stuck in legal limbo.

Per stirpes vs. per capita

When I updated my Fidelity account, it also asked if I wanted my beneficiaries to be designated “per stirpes.” This legal term means assets should be divided along the branches of the family tree. (It comes from Latin, literally meaning “by branch.”) In practice, that means if one of your named beneficiaries predeceases you, their portion of your estate goes to their next living descendants.

So let’s say your spouse is named as your beneficiary, but they die before you and you don’t update your paperwork. Your assets would then be divided between your children. But if one of your children is also dead, her portion would be divided between her children/direct descendants, and so on.

That can end up being a little more complicated than “per capita,” which means “by head” and is a term we’re all much more familiar with. In an estate planning context, per capita means your assets will only go to named beneficiaries. So if you name your three children but one predeceases you, everything will be split between the other two, rather than also divided by the third’s descendants.

The tech of it all

Another thing I’m thinking about is the computer/phone passwords of it all. So much of our financial lives are solely run digitally now, and if our loved ones can’t access our devices it makes it so much harder to get anything done.

The Purse featured a woman whose father died unexpectedly, and she told us how lucky she was that he had message previews on his iPhone. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to login to his accounts and get a handle everything.

Someone commented on the story that all of this stuff that is supposed to make our lives easier/more convenient often does the opposite, and I couldn’t agree more.

“That two-factor authentication thing, as necessary as it may seem, can really trip you up. We’ve been dealing with that with my mom, who has dementia—luckily, my sister and I live near her and can access her phone, which has no password, in person when we need to,” the commenter wrote. “I know my husband’s phone password, and he knows mine. Yet I feel like we’re still behind on sharing all the passwords we might need some day.”

Between all of the various accounts we need to have everywhere, the passwords, the two-factor authentication…I understand the reasons for all of it, but man is it complicated!

On my radar

• JP Morgan Employee Woes: Between the employee who (allegedly?) stole a Knicks trash can and the bizarre sexual harassment saga, JPM is having a lot of…interesting employee problems lately.

• Recipes: It’s CSA season, and we’ve been making a lot of simple salads with the lettuces and arugula that are common at the beginning of summer. I also made a pretty good pesto with the arugula!

• Social Security: Two weeks ago, I wrote about how Social Security isn’t “running out,” and having a doomer mindset about it isn’t helpful (don’t let the bastards win, etc.). This week, Elizabeth Warren published an op-ed calling for lifting the Social Security payroll tax cap, a very popular proposal I wrote about here last July. Read Money Moves and you’ll always be one step ahead!

• TV Update: I liked “Widow’s Bay” like everyone else. I don’t know how I feel yet about “DTF St. Louis.” And “The Real Housewives of Rhode Island” was perfect.

That’s it for now. See ya soon,
A

P.S. Thanks Christopher Skinner for the illustrations!

This is a long newsletter, but a lot’s been going on the past few months. Apologies for the navel gazing, but if any editors would like a more fully-fleshed out story on how journalists today are adapting to the changing industry, I’m happy to write it! :)

Anyway, I still do a lot of actual reporting/interviews, and I realized you all might find some of the “cutting room floor” info interesting, so I’m including some below.

In today’s issue:
1. Is it time for a robot tax?
2. Thoughts on 10 months of freelancing
3. On my radar

Is it time for a robot tax?

One of my gigs is writing the weekly newsletter for The Rest Is Politics:US, a politics podcast featuring the BBC’s Katty Kay and Anthony Scaramucci. Typically I do not listen to explicitly political podcasts because I find them insufferable but I like Katty and Anthony’s dynamic and their conversations are pretty interesting.

The newsletter has evolved quite a bit since I started working on it ~October, and I like what it’s turned into because it features more of my reporting and writing. :) Last week, I wrote robot taxes, which you’re likely to start hearing a lot more about as layoffs nominally related to AI keep occurring.

I cannot figure out how to link to individual issues of the newsletter, so I am copying and pasting my essay below (TRIP:US please forgive me!). You can also subscribe here if you’re so inclined, it comes out on Wednesdays.

*****
Listen to prevailing narratives and there are clear winners and losers in today’s AI infiltration of the economy: workers will see, potentially, tens of millions of jobs eliminated, while companies and shareholders reap the productivity and labor cost-savings gains.

But Gerry Tsoukalas, an information systems professor at Boston University and one of the authors of a new paper called “The AI Layoff Trap,” says over-automation can end up hurting workers and companies, and having vast negative ripple effects throughout the economy.

Tsoukalas relates the situation to ordering an expensive steak at a dinner where everyone’s splitting the tab evenly.

If your companions order less costly meals, you get a great steak at a cheaper price. But if everyone orders the same steak, you will end up paying more than you can afford. AI layoffs, he says, work the same way.

“The company that automates keeps the full cost saving” of the labor it’s no longer paying for, Tsoukalas says. That’s like ordering the fancy steak. But every company then has the same incentive to automate. “And everyone ends up with weaker demand, because the customers they rely on are the workers they just fired.”

In Tsoukalas’s model, firms end up hurting themselves just as much as they hurt workers. If enough people lose their jobs to automation, no one is left to buy any company’s products. Businesses, he says, are acting rationally by automating, but ultimately “competing themselves into a corner”. The problem is not AI itself, but rather every company implementing it at the same time with no guardrails.

To prevent that trap, Tsoukalas and his coauthor, Brett Hemenway Falk, a research professor at the University of Pennsylvania, modeled different solutions, including investing in workforce retraining, increased collective bargaining and implementing universal basic income.

But the method they found to be the most effective at not just being a bandaid but at actually preventing the widespread layoffs in the first place is a Pigouvian automation tax — or as Anthony called it on the podcast this week, a robot tax.

“Real skilled policymakers are talking about wage insurance,” Anthony said. “If you’re going to be using the AI, you have to pay into a pool so that when you fire the worker, the worker can have supplemental income for a period of time until they can get retrained or find another job.

“Like it or not, we have to come up with a robot tax,” he added. “When you’re replacing a worker with the software, you have something in there that helps equalize things, because if you don’t have that you won’t be able to have a layer of cushioning for the economy.”

Essentially, a robot tax would be a levy on a company for every job it takes from a human worker and automates with AI.

The framework for exactly how the tax would be implemented still deserves more study, says Tsoukalas. But at a high level, companies could pay a small fee when they replace a worker with AI, which could be enforced by the IRS.

It would be self-limiting, he says: As laid-off workers find new jobs, the robot tax would shrink, and eventually phase itself out as the economy adjusts. But it would be enough of a deterrence to prevent companies from instituting widespread layoffs all at once.

“No amount of retraining, income support or bargaining will slow the arms race; only a tax on automation itself changes the calculus that drives it,” the paper reads.

Though the so-called robot tax hasn’t received significant attention in public policy debates, Tsoukalas and Falk aren’t the first to propose it.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates floated the idea as far back as 2017, and politicians including Sen. Bernie Sanders and former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio have suggested similar taxes.

And in a recently released list of policy proposals, OpenAI called for a wholesale modernization of the US tax code.

“As AI reshapes work and production, the composition of economic activity may shift — expanding corporate profits and capital gains while potentially reducing reliance on labor income and payroll taxes,” OpenAI’s plan reads. “Policymakers could rebalance the tax base by increasing reliance on capital-based revenues…and by exploring new approaches such as taxes related to automated labor.”

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Tsoukalas is generally pro-AI, he says, and he uses the technology every day. But he has been observing his students’ fear of displacement before they can even enter the workforce. The technology is already being used to replace entry-level roles and he fears that the AI industry as a whole is losing the public’s trust.

“That’s not just a policy risk. It’s an existential risk,” he says. “The companies that get ahead of this will end up in a very different position from the ones that don’t.”

A robot tax could help not only his students and other young workers, but also prevent the public from turning its back on the tech. People would feel less like they’re being left behind if policymakers took a serious approach to stemming job losses.

Rather than focusing on what to do after AI has supplanted workers, his paper argues that the government can act now to stop major displacement before it begins. His paper is one big “if”, he says. Companies and policymakers still have time to influence the ultimate outcome.

“In our model, a fee like this would directly reduce the pressure to over-fire,” he says. “And if we’re right, both workers and firm owners would end up better off, because over-automation in the model is hurting everyone, including the companies doing it.”

The cutting room floor: UBI, innovation, and the wrong takeaways

I shared some general thoughts on this study and my interview on TikTok (more on that below), and naturally everyone got hung up on my throwaway line that the researchers found that universal basic income (UBI) wouldn’t solve the problem they were interested in solving: preventing mass AI layoffs that end up hobbling the entire economy.

What the researchers say is that UBI is good for cushioning the people who get hit with a layoff, which does matter. But on its own, “UBI is a painkiller, not a cure.” But it can work in concert with the automation tax to help the workers (hopefully fewer of them) who do lose work because of AI. When I asked Tsoukalas about it, his response is pretty intuitive:

UBI is a check to households. Which is nice if you’re a household. But it doesn’t change the math a company runs when it’s deciding whether to replace the next worker with AI. They’re comparing what the worker costs to what the AI costs, and that comparison doesn’t change whether or not the government is sending checks to people. So you still get the layoffs. You still get the lost spending. And in our model, there’s even a scenario where UBI can make things worse. If firms can freely enter the market, the extra consumer spending from UBI attracts more firms in, and a more crowded market automates harder. So UBI might end up partially working against itself. That doesn’t cancel out its benefits, but it complicates the picture. Think of it this way. UBI is like putting buckets under a leaky ceiling. It catches the water, which matters, but it doesn’t fix the leak.

I also kind of feel like people are crazy if they think our current political leaders will pass anything close to UBI. They barely want people to get unemployment benefits.

Here is another point from Tsoukalas I thought was interesting. I asked him what his response is to people who say a tax like this on AI will “stifle innovation,” which is the argument against every type of tax on businesses:

It gets the direction backwards. A tax like this doesn’t punish innovation. It just makes companies account for the damage their layoffs impose on the rest of the market. Carbon taxes didn’t stop energy innovation. They helped it. Same idea here. One more thing. In our model, this kind of tax should be self-limiting. As laid-off workers find new jobs, the right tax rate shrinks on its own. So you don’t need it forever. It phases itself out as the economy adjusts.

And here is his response to what he wants readers to take away from his research:

That the real story isn’t AI versus workers. It’s companies competing themselves into a corner. In our model, seeing the problem coming doesn’t stop it. More competition makes it worse. Better AI makes it worse. UBI, retraining, profit-sharing, companies trying to negotiate with each other, none of those seem to touch the underlying problem. The only thing that does, in the model, is making companies pay for the damage their layoffs do to others. Until that happens, the race doesn’t end. Not because anyone’s a villain. Because everyone is rational and they are caught in a trap.

Thoughts on 9-ish months of freelancing

It feels both significantly longer and shorter than 9 months since I was laid off from my full time journalism job. I’ve done quite a bit over that time!

The Purse

The biggest thing is that The Purse has significantly expanded. We launched a stand alone site and publish (almost) every week day, and I launched three series of my own: Work History, Meal Plan, and 30-Something (is that too many?). We are posting more on Instagram, on LinkedIn, and attempting to do so on TikTok. We have brand partnerships (including a big one with Babylist that is the reason I can pay my bills), editorial partnerships, sponsored events, book offers, and more ideas than we know what to do with. We’re making pitch decks, taping podcasts, designing our own featured images and social posts, and hiring freelancers and consultants…it’s all actually pretty crazy!

99.9% of this is happening because of and how much everyone loves her; she’s just bringing me along for the ride and I am very grateful. (I also work really hard and am wearing a lot of new hats, promise!) I have a lot of thoughts on journalists needing to do all of this which I may expand on at some other time.

Also, shoutout to my husband Chris who does so much design work for us. The Purse would not be the same without him—nor would Money Moves!

Events

Aside from The Purse, one of the things I was most excited to do outside the constraints of corporate media was to try out new roles and learn new skills. To that end, I worked with Semafor from October(ish) to last week on Semafor World Economy, their 5-day (!) conference in Washington D.C. Events are a very important piece of the journalism revenue pie right now, so I wanted to get more hands-on experience working on them.

All love to the events team who put together something truly impressive, I sincerely don’t know how you all do it every day—I’m still recovering from that event and all of the work and time it required. Pretty much everything went off without a hitch, and we somehow got ~400 CEOs/government officials on stage on time over the 5-day period.

But this taught me that I really am just an editorial girl at heart. I couldn’t help but be jealous of the journalists doing the actual interviews on stage—that’s where I want to be!

To that end, Lindsey and I want to host a retirement mini-conference/panel discussion/talk, so hmu if you know how to do that. Something else I’ve realized as a freelancer (and editor at The Purse) is that I can simply just do what I want, I don’t need management’s permission. So I am putting this out into the world because writing down what I want has been working out pretty well.

Other writing

As mentioned above, I am working on the TRIP:US newsletter, which sort of helps accomplish another of my freelancing goals: Publish non-money related stories.

Look, I know retirement/taxes/investing/wealth management inside and out, but sometimes you just want to have a little fun. For TRIP, I’ve now written in-depth about the aforementioned robot tax (money related, but also policy), Americans’ changing views on Israel, Trump’s un-presidential rhetoric, and political violence in the US.

So, not exactly fun, although it’s been a really nice change of pace to cover something I don’t know intimately and interview new sources. Learning! That’s why I got into this biz in the first place.

That said, I would like to publish something actually fun, and by that I mean something on culture/food/fashion/writing/books/TV/relationships/family…how do I do this?

And then of course, I have published money-related stories in The Washington Post (rip?), The New York Times, and Kiplinger. Now that I have more time post-Semafor, I plan to get back to pitching editors more regularly, though it is hard to tell if there are any left.

TikTok

Many months ago, I said I wanted to start posting on TikTok. It took me a few months to actually do it, but I have been more or less posting vids consistently for the past two months (minus the past two weeks when Semafor consumed my life/I was trying to catch up with everything else).

It’s been really interesting to see what works there and what maybe doesn’t, and how people react to my verbal words versus written.

Shooting short-form video content is difficult! It’s hard to say exactly what you want to say, especially when talking specifics about financial/economic topics, straight to camera with limited “ums,” mess ups, etc. This has never been a skill I’ve practiced or particularly wanted to hone (I am deathly shy…is that surprising?) but TikTok is where the audience is.

There are many reasons I am posting on TikTok, most to do with the demise of traditional journalism you all probably know about. I could only get annoyed at so many videos with bad financial advice or dumb takes on “the media” without trying to offer a different perspective, you know?

My most liked and watched video is honestly one I did as a lark; isn’t that always the case? But watching it back, I do think it shows my general, deep knowledge on the topic at hand, which I think some audiences desperately want. (Please ignore the thumbnail…I didn’t know how to change that yet.)

@aliciatalksmoneyMore workers are taking emergency hardship withdrawals from their 401(s), according to Vanguard—never a good sign for the economy. Increasing usage of auto-enrollment and recent expansions of the reasons to legally make hardship withdrawals are two factors. #economy #retirement #401k #vanguard

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I hope to see more journos join me there. I actually find it kind of an inspiring place, though many of the comments are quite dumb. After one or two videos, I was bursting with ideas. I like it as a space for a first or second draft—talk about a topic, see what’s sticky.

Also, to be frank, the types of videos I’m making require much less work than writing a fully fleshed out article, so if you want to cover something but don’t quite have the time for the whole editorial process, you could post a few thoughts there.

On a basic level, I’ve literally learned how to film a video (this is something I never had to do on my own though I arguably should have), edit it, add captions, etc. And I still have a lot to learn! Shoutout to my friend Kristen who gave me a handy template I use to ensure my captions/graphs/article excerpts are all showing on the screen and not hidden by the comments/phone UI. These are things a non-visual person like me doesn’t know to think about. There are many more, I’m sure.

Next, I’d like to experiment with longer-form videos about the topics I’m passionate about (e.g. retirement, housing), that require more reporting, script writing, and editing.

The money

Financially, I weirdly feel more in control of my money now than I ever did working full time. Yes I am paying out of pocket for health insurance, I am not getting employer retirement contributions, and I have to set aside money for taxes on my own. But I feel much more in tune with my finances now.

I credit that to there always being the possibility of making more/taking on more work if I really needed to, doing work I want to do, which wasn’t really an option at previous FT employers. (And maybe also because I’m older and wiser.) That said, I really stretched myself the past few months juggling The Purse, Semafor, TRIP:US, and other one-off gigs for companies like Wealthfront. While it paid off financially, I feel pretty burnt out and will try to avoid that in the future.

There is still a lot of stress about the future and a lot of feast or famine, which I am still getting used to. And I’m always thinking about what I might be able to add on, what happens if one client doesn’t re-sign me, and so on.

But I feel pretty good about where I’m at financially. I have no idea what the next 30 years have in store for me but, well, do any of us?

On my radar

• You better believe I loved the 30-minute interview Taylor Swift gave The New York Times about songwriting. This is shady tho.

• Also in popular white millennial woman culture, I am enjoying Lena Dunham’s memoir Famesick. I was never a Girls-head but I was also never a Lena hater. I think she’s just a remarkably interesting and creative person who makes mistakes as we all do but has much more to offer the world. Her newsletter on here is also very good (but did recently lead me to spending an ungodly amount of money on eBay).

• If I can plug one more of my TikToks, people really seemed to like my private credit break down, which makes me feel…hopeful?

• I am speaking on a panel at SABEW next Friday about creator journalists. If you’re there, say hi!

That’s it for now. See ya soon,
A

P.S. Thanks Christopher Skinner for the illustrations!

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Hope everyone’s 2026 is off to as good of a start as possible. I have a story out in the New York Times today and thought I’d offer a little context/additional thoughts on my reporting.

In today’s issue:
1. Meme stock investors grow up
2. A bunch of ways to prep your finances for 2026
3. On my radar

They invested in meme stocks. And then they grew up

I met Mamadou-Hady Sow last year, and was immediately impressed with his financial knowledge (and pop culture insights, but that’s less relevant here). Just 23 years old, he spoke confidently about diversifying and maxing out contributions to his workplace retirement account, no easy feat when last year’s limit was $23,500.

Over the course of our conversation, I learned while he’s long been interested in personal finance, his perspective has changed dramatically over the past five years, when he opened an investment account as soon as he turned 18. Meme stocks, crypto, and Netflix were his first investments (he said since he was always watching Netflix, he figured it had to be a good stock), but now he sticks mostly with index funds.

I’ve written plenty of stories about Gen Z investors: Though the cost of living is certainly a challenge for this generation of young people, they are also coming of age in an era that stresses the importance of getting in the market early—and in which it’s easier than ever to open an investment account and try to build wealth. That’s equated to, broadly speaking, Gen Zers investing greater amounts earlier than their elders did at the same age. Most experts say this is a good thing, because it means they have more years for any returns to compound.

But we also live in a very confusing financial era. There’s index funds, sure, but many people don’t have faith (or the knowledge) that investing in those will be enough in retirement. Meanwhile, crypto, individual stocks, meme stocks, sports betting, buy now pay later, and countless other problematic financial products also exist and are as easily accessible as investment accounts, and young people have to cut through a lot more noise to figure out the best way forward.

That’s in part why meme stocks took off five years ago—newbie investors thought they saw the opportunity to (fairly easily) build wealth they thought they’d been shut out of. (It’s worth noting while some so-called retail investors made some money in the madness, plenty others lost money.)

All that to say, I found Hady’s investing journey really interesting, and had an inkling he wasn’t the only traveler. After speaking with a few more Gen Zers and investment professionals, it turns out that while meme stocks brought some of them into the markets, many have also taken the time to learn more and diversify in the ensuing years.

Or at least, many male Gen Z investors have had that journey. My story sort of gets at this, but, again, broadly speaking, men were much more likely to get in on the GameStop and AMC short squeezes; women, meanwhile, tend to play it a little safer. (I’m really generalizing here; obviously, some women invested in meme stocks, too.)

So I really enjoyed my conversation with Ilana Goldberg, who explained that the meme stock craze actually put her off investing at first, because it looked so much like gambling. The chaos turned her off to the entire endeavor. Eventually, though, she was swayed by friends and social media posts that came across her feed to open an investment account and put a few bucks in. Her first stock was Nvidia, but she’s also diversified over the past few years as she gets more comfortable.

“I just assumed that it belonged to a different world, like a man in finance, something like that,” she told me about investing in stocks. “I never considered it as something for myself.”

The social media of it all is really important. Young people are inundated with investing content online, and much of it is misleading: Random people hawking get-rich-quick schemes and unsubstantiated claims abound. But there’s also a lot of genuinely helpful content out there; as Hady explained, he quickly learned how to discern the quality information from the obvious exaggerations and outright fabrications.

Still, Hady is certainly more sophisticated than the average investor (and had an internship at a financial firm, which also helped him learn); it is likely that plenty of people are making poor financial decisions based on the videos that cross their FYPs.

Anyway, I could go on and on, but I also wanted to highlight that I think this is a positive trend! A lot of financial news is depressing, but all of the people I spoke to for this story (shoutout Danny and Austin, too!) are so smart and inspiring. Even if they make a few mistakes here and there (don’t we all?), it’s lovely to see them learning and growing.

A bunch of ways to prep your finances for 2026

If you’ve been thinking about ways to get your finances in order this year, here are some ideas:

1. Audit credit card/bank statements: Nothing revelatory here but this is the best way to actually understand what you’re spending money.

2. Audit subscriptions: Did you do this back during the summer? No? Then now’s the perfect time. One of my goals for 2026 is to actually pay for more writing/news subscriptions, but cutting out other ones can free up the cash to do so. I’m also going to track these throughout the year to get a more holistic view of my total spend.

3. Assess student loan payments: A lot of borrowers are in not so great of spots, unfortunately.

4. Check credit score and reports: This is a good thing to do at least annually to make sure there are no mistakes and also have a better view of where you stand. Do it for free at annualcreditreport.com. Also, consider freezing your credit at the three big credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, Transunion) if you have no big financial plans any time soon—like buying a house, getting a new credit card, etc.—this can save you from scammers.

5. Start thinking about taxes: Sorry! It’s just about that time! Tax forms are going to start rolling in at the end of January, so you may as well start thinking about everything you’ll need to file and what shape you’re in. Mine are going to be a mess this year!

6. Check new retirement account limits: The limit for 401(k)s/403(b)s in 2026 is $24,500 (+$8,000 for those 50-59 and 64 or older) (+$11,250 for those 60-63). The limit for IRAs is $7,500 (+$1,100 for those 50 or older). Remember you can contribute to your 2025 IRA through tax day. Could be worth doing the math on how much you need to contribute each month to max them out with any employer contributions factored in. For the self-employed, the SEP IRA limit is the lesser of $72,000 in 2026, or up to 25% of compensation or net self-employment earnings, with a $360,000 limit on compensation.

7. Review all credit card benefits: Many credit cards come with added perks like travel credits, cash back, free credit monitoring, etc. Now is a good time to check your card’s fine print to ensure you’re making the most of everything it offers, particularly if you pay an annual fee. For example, did you know some AmEx’s come with quarterly Lululemon credits?? Write out a list and keep it handy somewhere so you can refer to it throughout the year.

8. Review health and other workplace benefits: Similar to your credit card, your employer might offer some interesting health/other benefits. As I wrote here, that could be access to a financial advisor (or at least budgeting app), free massages, and more.

9. Make a game plan for your bigger goals: Self explanatory.

On my radar

• Oliver Farshi took the amazing photos for the NYT story.

• I got vulnerable again over on The Purse and wrote about lessons from the most expensive year of my life. This story has it all: A new apartment! A wedding! A job loss! A few vet visits! Marketplace health insurance! Ireland! Inspiration? You decide!

• Everything is gambling now.

• I’m catching up on “Industry” ahead of season 4, should we do weekly recaps?

• My first bake of the year is a familiar one, but it was a hit!

• Getting published in the NYT was a dream of mine, so I guess I need a new one now! :)

That’s it for now. See ya soon,
A

P.S. Thanks Christopher Skinner for the illustrations!

Happy dead week! (The actual most wonderful time of the year?)

Well I caught the plague that everyone else in New York has/had this holiday season (thankfully, made it through the Christmas dinner I hosted before it laid me out flat for four days and counting). The good news is that gave me plenty of time to finish today’s newsletter. I’ve been reading everyone else’s “best of” lists for the year so I thought I’d make my own.

In today’s issue:
1. My favorite books of 2025
2. My favorite articles of 2025
3. My favorite recipes of 2025
4. My favorite year-end lists of 2025

My favorite books of 2025

Between prepping for my wedding and getting laid off, I didn’t read as much this year as I normally do (you’d think you’d have more time to read when you don’t have a full time job but…turns out you don’t), so this is a bit of an abbreviated list. Because my job is non-fiction writing, I tend to read fiction ~for pleasure~, which is reflected below.

1. The Bee Sting by Paul Murray: I’ve been on a bit of an Irish lit kick, and I was fully immersed in this 600+ page novel about an Irish family’s journey in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. I loved the ending, though I guess that’s controversial (and I don’t mean loved as in liked what happened, but rather thought it fit the book and brought it full circle). This book has been on every “Best of” list, and for good reason.

2. Biography of X by Catherine Lacey: A fictional biography of an enigmatic artist named X, set in an alternate history in which the American South seceded. Some people might not like the gimmick, but it mostly worked for me.

3. Commonwealth by Ann Patchett: I love everything my girl Ann writes (I also read her friendship memoir Truth & Beauty this year which is fantastic) and this book had me enthralled in the decades-spanning saga of two intertwined families. She just knows how to tell a story. I mean, look at the first sentence: “The christening party took a turn when Albert Cousins arrived with gin.” So good.

4. Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera: Each New Year’s Day I attempt to read a book cover to cover, and this year I picked this slim volume. Despite clocking in at just over 100 pages, there is so much packed into this book, which is an almost mythological take on a Mexican woman crossing into America to try to find her brother. Worthy of a deep reading.

5. Brooklyn and Long Island by Colm Tóibín: Told you I was on an Irish lit kick. I read these books (the first, a modern classic) back to back, which I don’t recommend unless you’re in the mood to get your heart broken. But the writing is wonderful. These are slower, more introspective books rather than page-turners, which is my preference.

Honorable mention: Audiobooks

This is the first year I’ve really listened to audiobooks, and I made it through seven of them while cooking dinner/cleaning/working out. I especially enjoyed Big Swiss by Jen Beagin, Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe, and The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett.

My favorite articles of 2025

These are my favorite things I wrote this year!

Newsletters:

• Making sense of the middling career for Money Moves.

• Friendship in my 30s looks so different than it did in my 20s for The Purse.

• De-algorithmize your money for Money Moves: Exploring something that’s been on my mind for a while. More to come on this.

• Everyone is talking about the casino economy for The Purse.

Fortune:

• A federal government brain drain could be ‘devastating’ for the U.S. economy.

• Los Angeles residents determined to rebuild after devastating wildfires: ‘I’m not ready to give up’.

• Family offices are booming: Inside the secretive finance centers that cater to billionaires like Jeff Bezos and the Walton family (from February 😉).

• Plus: A peek into billionaire pre-nups and Detroit billionaire Dan Gilbert’s family office.

• And interviews with Kate Spade co-founder Elyce Arons, Tom Cruise’s agent Maha Dakhil, Charli XCX’s agent Jenna Adler, and the creative team behind The Sims.

Freelance:

• Young people want financial wellness tools as employee benefits, for the Washington Post.

• And my story on gift giving for Kiplinger, in print!

S/o to my dad, who got me the physical magazine.

My favorite recipes of 2025

• No other food publication is doing it like New York Times Cooking right now (RIP to the many good food pubs that have folded in recent years). I recently saw someone joke that the NYT is obsessed with turkey/chicken meatballs, and that’s okay with me because I love them all, especially these lemon dill meatballs (perhaps my ideal meal) and these Thai-inspired chicken meatballs.

• Also: Beans. I love the rosemary beans, a lemony white bean soup, and the classic creamy braised white beans.

• Dessert-wise, this Persian love cake is a crowd pleaser.

• But I’ve also loved every recipe I’ve made by my beloved Hailee Catalano. I’m slowly making my way through her cookbook and there are no misses yet, but the smoky caramelized onion dip is the recipe I’ve come back to most. I’m midwestern, I love a dip! (Speaking of, s/o to the NYT’s smoky spiced eggplant dip…I’m sensing a theme.) Also amazing: Her mustardy-herb buttered potatoes, halibut fines herbes, and Tina’s meatballs (turkey and chicken are great and all but every now and then you gotta have beef/pork).

• Outside of her cookbook, my friends loved her orange olive oil ricotta cookies and Cuccidati thumbprints.

• And I’ve been pleasantly surprised by many a Google result for recipes for specific dishes I’m in the mood for. That’s where I found this delicious kale salad recipe, this aces beef barley stew, and this recipe for “the best” gluten-free brownies that were, in fact, the best.

My favorite year-end lists of 2025

• Lindsey and I published a list of 10 things we learned while writing/editing The Purse this year. I love our little corner of the internet!

• Each year, artist Austin Kleon publishes a list of his 100 favorite things of the year, and I always discover new artists, music, and inspiration through them. I also vow to make my own list every year and always fail. 2025 isn’t out yet, but here’s his 2024 list, which features everything from riding his bike to getting into snails to the Anni Albers show at the Blanton Museum.

• British journalist and writer surveyed a bunch of cool women about their favorite books of the year. I have a bunch of new additions to my must-read list. And of course, NPR’s Best Books of 2025 is a must read itself!

• Max Read has a fun/eccentric list of Top 10 lists from various writers/editors/media personality types. Feels like a Gawker reunion, in the best way.

That’s it for now. See ya in 2026,
A

P.S. Thanks Christopher Skinner for the illustrations!

Today’s essay is a reader request, but I hope it will resonate with many of you.

In today’s issue:
1. When to quit your dream job
2. On my radar

When to quit your dream job

Over the past few years, I’ve had countless conversations with journalist friends and coworkers about our potential longevity in the field. As we watch the traditional news industry seemingly implode, with countless rounds of layoffs, outlet closures, and declining cultural relevancy, we’re all grieving the death of our dream jobs, even as we more or less continue working in the field. (Or, you know, try to work in it.)

Even without those external forces hammering our industry, most of my friends are now in their 30s, at what feels like a natural point to wonder if it isn’t time to try something a little less stressful and, perhaps, a little better paying. I hear a similar sentiment from acquaintances in other creative or vocational fields.

“Vocational crisis is very of the moment,” writes the journalist Ann Friedman. “If you know anyone who pays their bills by conducting research, teaching, community organizing, making art, fostering diversity, or providing care to an underserved population, you know this already. It usually afflicts people who are somewhat established, though still financially precarious and already burned out, with many working years left ahead of them.”

Whether you’re a journalist, actor, or teacher—anyone whose profession is inherent to their identity—how do you know when it’s time to go? At the same time, how do you give up on something you can’t imagine your life, your being, without?

It’s a tricky topic to write about because quitting is mired in negative connotations. No one wants to be viewed as a quitter, and popular culture loves the stories of people perceived to be fighters, the scrappy upstarts who never give up. I certainly don’t want to be responsible for telling anyone not to pursue their dreams, and I don’t plan on pivoting from mine just yet, despite the many reasons I should.

But the difficult truth is that staying laser focused on one goal or way of being can mean neglecting other opportunities. Rather than thinking about quitting as an ending to your one and only dream, it can be helpful to reframe it as providing an opening to untold possibilities.

Moving past the discomfort

At 9 years old, Maya Shankar was such a prodigious talent she was accepted into a precollege violin program at the Juilliard School, the prestigious performing arts conservatory in New York. Shankar staked her identity on music, studying under virtuoso Itzhak Perlman and spending untold hours practicing.

But her dream of being a professional violinist ended abruptly at 15, when she tore a tendon while playing the notoriously difficult Paganini Caprices. A subsequent juvenile rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis solidified that she’d have to give up the violin for good.

These days, Shankar isn’t known as a violin prodigy. But her story is no tragedy. She’s a cognitive neuroscientist, the wunderkind who founded and chaired the White House’s first Social and Behavioral Sciences Team under the Obama administration before advising the United Nations and Google. She hosts a podcast about how to deal with life’s many changes.

Shankar’s story is certainly exceptional. Few people can claim to be a musical prodigy…or Rhodes Scholar…or 20-something White House director, never mind all three. But it resonated deeply as I’ve considered when you can tell it’s time to give up on a dream and move on to something else.

While Shankar’s hand was forced because of her injury, quitting violin allowed her to discover new interests and talents. It underlines the reality that very few people do one thing successfully forever. Most will change professions or move on from childhood goals. Sometimes your new venture will be bigger and better, other times, it won’t.

There are countless reasons to quit. Depending on your vocation, you may find the money just doesn’t work when the cost of living is constantly increasing. Others may find the realities of working within imperfect systems mean they will never be able to accomplish what they’d like. Still others may realize they simply don’t have it, whatever it is. Or, like Shankar, their decision may be made for them, through injury or layoffs or some other external force. Just because you dream of something doesn’t always mean you can do it. All of that is okay, part of life.

But for many, the first hints of doubt or indication that you might not be cut out for your aspirations result in a doubling down on your dream, known as escalation of commitment, writes Annie Duke in Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. This psychological phenomenon occurs when individuals or organizations continue to commit resources to a failing course of action, especially those made public. (See: anything done by any politician ever.) Rather than miraculously getting you to the outcome you always wanted, though, this doubling down when all of the evidence is telling you to change course usually compounds your losses. (See also: The sunk-cost fallacy.)

Duke is a former professional poker player who argues that one of the keys to excelling at the game is knowing when to fold your hand, before the stakes are too high. In fact, the best players fold far more hands than they play. Experienced players know that one jackpot isn’t the end all be all, while novices bet too frequently that they can win, even when they’ve been dealt what they know to be crappy cards.

“The particular hand they’re playing is not the last hand they’ll ever play, [and that] particular day that they’re playing is not the last day they’ll ever play,” Duke writes of the experienced players’ mentality. “A poker player will play thousands upon thousands of hands over their lifetime, so in the grand scheme of things whether or not they lose one single hand of poker matters very little.”

Similarly, you will likely have many dreams throughout your life. Getting hung up on one that isn’t working on could delay discovering what the next, potentially better one is.

Throughout her book, Duke posits that many people stick with things for far too long, often to disastrous, or at least unfortunate, results. Quitting at the right time will feel like you quit too early, she writes, because you haven’t given the time for losses to actually accumulate. That’s a good thing, but since you’ll never know what you lost, you may think only of what you didn’t gain.

When I think of leaving corporate media, for example, I often focus on the loss of authority or resources that come with working for a large, established outlet, how people will take me less seriously if I don’t have a Big Name backing my work. I don’t think about how after a decade-plus I wasn’t exactly a household name or being given any of those resources to do big investigations, anyway. Was that likely to change? Yet opting to move on means I’ll always wonder what if.

In Shankar’s case, sticking with the violin could have meant proving her doctors wrong and becoming a virtuoso on par with her mentor Perlman. Or it could have meant many years enduring pain for a career that never panned out, and missing out on what her life became. She’ll never know, because she decided to cut her losses and try something new.

While popular culture is filled with those inspiring stories about people who kept going at all costs, there are far more real life instances of people who gave up at one thing to find success in something else. But quitting at the appropriate time isn’t exactly headline-grabbing.

“We are reluctant to walk away when we should because we have the feeling that doing so will slow our progress or stop it all together. But it is the reverse that is actually true,” writes Duke. “If you stick to a path that is no longer worth pursuing…that is when you lose ground. Any time you stay mired in a losing endeavor, that is when you are slowing your progress.”

Stepping stones

There’s a lot more that can be said about how individuals tie their identities to work, particularly in the U.S., and how that makes quitting even more difficult (indeed, Duke wrote a whole book about it). But I want to get into some of the actionable advice I received over the course of writing this essay that I think will be useful for those considering a change.

A few years ago, I wrote a series of stories on ambition and work. During the reporting, I spoke with the psychotherapist Satya Doyle Byock, author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood, and she asked me a question I still think about (paraphrased below).

“Imagine it’s a year from now and you’re at the same job doing the same work every day. How would you feel?”

This question helped put into perspective the work that I was doing day-to-day and the reasonable potential that work would have for my advancement. It inspired me to make a few changes that did improve my outlook, though in retrospect I wish I had been bolder and made even bigger ones.

That probably should have included looking for a new job altogether. Because as Catherine Fisher, a career expert and vice president of communications at LinkedIn, told me, when you’re considering whether to quit or stay the course, consider what gives you energy and what zaps your energy. While understanding that drudgery is part of every job, ideally you are feeling energized by the majority of your tasks or output. If you find that most of the time your energy is drained, that you are dreading work every single day, that is a good time to figure out Plan B.

“When people think of the dream job, they think, ‘I’m going to be happy every day.’ And I guarantee you that even if you’re a well-paid actor, you’ve got really terrible days,” says Fisher. But if “the majority of your time you’re inspired by the work, then you’re in a good place.”

It can also help to think about your career (and life) in different stages. Your current role might not be your ideal, but it could be an important stepping stone in your career by teaching you necessary skills or connecting you with the right people. Knowing that what you are doing now is temporary can give you the energy you need to get through it and on to better things.

“Not everything is time bound. You’re not going to be in this for the rest of your life,” says Fisher. “Your career is a collection of jobs and skills.”

In corporate settings, Fisher says you might think a manager or boss is spending time mapping out your career path for you. But that just isn’t the case. Instead, it’s up to you to think through what you want and how you might get there.

“You and only you are responsible for your career path,” says Fisher. “You have to figure it out. And then you have to ask for it.”

That’s life

A big part of my conversation with Fisher revolved around AI and how it’s contributing to the vocational crisis that Friedman identified. You can see the effects in the upended entry-level job market and the near-total pause on corporate hiring we’re currently experiencing. Sure, not all of that can be blamed on AI, but it’s obvious that external economic forces are making it difficult for people to find any job right now, never mind a dream role.

I don’t have an answer for you on how to think about the AI of it all. But what all of this underscores is how important flexibility is in our careers as in life.

“Just because you’ve thought you wanted to do something doesn’t mean that you’re stuck with that for the rest of your life,” says Fisher.

That doesn’t mean you give up completely on your dream tomorrow. But if you’re unhappy for whatever reason in what you’re currently pursuing, and you have been for a while, it’s worth considering what else is out there. That could be a completely new job, new industry, or simply a new company.

Think about what parts of your job are non-negotiable, Fisher advises. At the same time, be open to learning about new skills, roles, and opportunities that could spark a new dream, a la Shankar. This makes any eventual transition—whether by choice or forced by things outside of your control—easier to handle.

“We shouldn’t wait to be forced to find a Plan B, we should always be doing some exploration,” writes Duke. “Especially because sometimes Plan B can turn out to be better than the thing you’re already pursuing.”

More of my careers coverage:

On my radar

• AI Predictions: Talks of an AI bubble have me going back to read what all of the Hype Men have been predicting about the tech over the past few years. “My guess is that we’ll have AI that is smarter than any one human probably around the end of next year,” Elon Musk said in April 2024. Hm!

• Increasingly: I enjoy reading about other peoples’ editing quirks, and this one resonated. It’s good for any journalist to doublecheck whether what they’re saying is “increasingly” happening is, in actuality, increasing.

• Neighboring: I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much I contribute to my city, whether I’m a giver or a taker, and how I can be a better citizen. So I loved this essay from on being a good neighbor.

• Paying for art: I always enjoy Ann Friedman’s reflections on ~the business~ and her series on buying and selling creative work is giving me lots of food for thought. (And she shouted out The Purse, thank you Ann!)

• Recipes: This kale sausage soup was great on a cold night, and I loved this lentil soup as well. Cranberries caught my eye at the grocery store so I made these muffins, which were not too sweet (complimentary). Hailee Catalano’s vanilla bean and brown butter cookie bars from her new cookbook were a hit at Thanksgiving.

That’s it for now. See ya soon,
A

P.S. Thanks Christopher Skinner for the illustrations!

Welcome to Money Today for Monday, November 24, 2025. I’m spotlighting the biggest money news, trends, and topics of the day. The goal is less stock market updates and more crucial information on retirement, student loans, consumer protections, and more. And also just things I find interesting. :)

You can send news, ideas, and press releases to aliciaadamczyk781@gmail.com.

1. Everyone’s talking about an AI bubble

Alicia, you might be thinking, your disclaimer says you don’t talk about the daily gyrations of the stock market in these updates. And while that’s mostly true, this isn’t a “stocks were down today” update; rather, it’s about the growing fears of an AI bubble and how that’s played out over the past few weeks.

If you haven’t really paid attention to what the stock market is doing, you may not know that, for months now, observers have wondered if the extraordinary highs it’s been hitting reflect reality. The past week or so, it seemed like these concerns were finally having an effect: stock indexes tumbled as investors started to question how much AI is actually worth.

“The turbulence that hit stocks tied to artificial intelligence last week highlights a broader risk to the economy,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “Growth has become so dependent on AI-related investment and wealth that if the boom turns to bust, it could take the broader economy with it.”

Some prominent voices are adding to worries. Michael Burry of “Big Short” fame (AKA the guy who called the housing crash in 2008) went so far as to deregister his hedge fund and double down on a coming bubble he’s comparing to late-1990s dot com fiasco. He launched a newsletter here on Substack to detail his opinions, with an annual subscription fee of $379 (feels like we’re also on the precipice of a Substack bubble, eh?).

But things looked better today, with Google announcing good financial results. Still, if the thought of an AI bubble makes you nervous about your investments, it’s worth considering whether you wouldn’t feel better with a different portfolio mix. The time to do that is before the bubble pops.

And it might be time to keep an eye on crypto: Some investors are worried that Bitcoin’s recent slide is a harbinger of things to come for the broader stock market.

2. New 401(k) and IRA limits for 2026

The IRS recently announced the new limits for 401(k) and IRA contributions (traditional and Roth) for 2026.

Starting in January, individuals can contribute $24,500 to their 401(k), 403(b), 457 plan, or Thrift Savings Plan, up from $23,500 for 2025.

And the new annual IRA max is $7,500, up from $7,000. Meanwhile, the IRA catch‑up contribution limit for individuals aged 50 and over is $1,100, up from $1,000 this year.

That means if you’re under 50 and you’re trying to max out your Roth/IRA next year, you should aim to contribute around $145 a week, or $625 a month. Totally doable 😅

3. Trump admin tosses flight delay compensation policy

It’s official: The Trump administration has withdrawn the Biden-era Airline Passenger Rights policy that would have compensated airline passengers for significant delays.

The new proposal would have reimbursed passengers based on the duration of their delays, anywhere from $200 to $775. It would have applied to delays within the airlines’ control, so not weather.

In its federal filing, the Department of Transportation said members of the airline industry “unanimously opposed” the regulation, SF Gate reported.

4. Consumers aren’t upgrading their cell phones

The average American is keeping their smartphone for 29 months, according to a recent survey by Reviews.org and reported by CNBC. That’s up from around 22 months in 2016.

“I love Samsung phones, but can not afford a new one right now. A new phone would be a luxury,” 69-year-old Heather Mitchell told CNBC.

CNBC’s story goes on about how this could be bad for business/the economy, which, sure, but the point stands that all of these gadgets are sooo pricey, most people simply cannot afford to update them more than is absolutely necessary.

5. Boycotting Black Friday?

For The Purse, I wrote about loving the holidays but not loving all the consumerism that abounds this time of year.

See you later,
Alicia

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the Money Moves Coffee Fund, it means a lot.

Over at The Purse, this article on why child care isn’t tax deductible is generating a lot of interesting conversation. Check it out!

In today’s issue:
1. ‘Forever layoffs’ and what companies owe us
2. A look at direct primary care subscriptions
3. On my radar

The era of ‘forever layoffs’

A funny thing has been happening lately in corporate America. Profits are booming at some of the largest firms, sending stock prices soaring in tandem. And yet, many of those same companies—from Amazon to Meta to the big banks—are simultaneously cutting staff while boasting about their ability to do so.

What used to be the mark of bad management, rarely verbalized lest it cause a media firestorm and consumer backlash, is now celebrated on Wall Street.

Two such examples:

“We had over 275,000 people when I joined, and we have a little over 210,000 today,” said Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf last week. “It’s likely we’ll have less headcount as we look forward ... we’d like to do much of it through attrition as possible.” Wells Fargo beat Wall Street estimates for third-quarter profit, and its stock is up over 21% year-to-date.

“Over the last 15 years or so, we went from 300,000 people to 212,000 people,” Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan told investors recently, adding, “We just got to keep working that down.” BofA beat profit estimates last quarter, and its stock is up almost 19% year-to-date.

The white collar job slashing is becoming normalized as companies point to AI efficiencies and the need to be nimble. In a new report, employment website Glassdoor terms this “forever layoffs:” Smaller, regular waves of job cuts have become more common in recent years (relative to large infrequent cuts), fostering cultures of “anxiety, insecurity, and resentment” at companies. In fact, layoffs of less than 50 workers have made up more than 50% of layoffs this year, compared to 38% in 2015, according to WARN Act notices.

“The connection between employees and leaders feel more tense than ever,” the report reads.

That last bit is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Though of course layoffs are nothing new, what feels new is the near constancy, even as companies bring in ever more revenue and investors celebrate record high after record high. As the Wall Street Journal’s Chip Cutter wrote, executives used to be far more careful about how they described staff cuts. Slashing head count might have helped the bottom line, but we all generally considered it a reflection of bad management. Now, layoffs are positioned as a positive step forward for firms, an accomplishment to be rewarded.

“Gone are the days when trimming head count signaled retrenchment or trouble,” Cutter wrote. “Bosses are showing off to Wall Street that they are embracing artificial intelligence and serious about becoming lean.”

At the risk of sounding naive, our collective response also feels like it’s changed for the worse. For all the people losing their jobs, the message is more or less to suck it up, that you’re silly for expecting any sort of basic job security. Not great!

A precarious workforce

What these forever layoffs leave us with is a workforce perpetually anxious about when it will be their turn to lose a job, and with it their income, health insurance, retirement contributions, and, in some cases, sense of purpose. That’s doubly so in the current “low hire” job market, when the long-term unemployment rate is creeping up as even employers not actively firing employees institute hiring freezes.

Conflicting messages abound. In the same breath that executives and tech bigwigs promise artificial intelligence will replace countless employees, rendering large swaths of the workforce obsolete, they urge workers to double down, to devote themselves to their work. Yes, you’re replaceable, the messaging seems to be, but we also need you in the office working for 12 hours each day.

All of this has left many people convinced the only way to have true stability—and a decent life—is to hobble together a variety of independent income sources, rather than relying on a single W2. Call it side hustles, call it polywork, call it a portfolio career, call it independent contracting—as certain professionals feel the sting of job loss, they turn to these alternate income streams in hopes they won’t be stuck depending on an unreliable employer in the future.

Though no worker should have to live with this constant uncertainty, that even white collar workers with college degrees can’t count on their next paycheck could mean an even further hollowing out of what is left of our country’s middle class. Presumably, it’s also not good for the economy as a whole.

Can direct primary care subscriptions help lower health care costs?

You’ve no doubt seen news stories about—or are personally experiencing—the substantial increase in health insurance costs slated to take place next year. Untold numbers of Americans are facing double digit premium hikes, never mind all of the other costs, and many are planning to go without insurance at all.

In the absence of any sort of help from our elected officials, doctors have started taking matters into their own hands by implementing direct primary care, or DPC, subscription models. For a fee ranging from $25 to $125 a month (or sometimes more, it all depends), patients get access to primary care services and a 24/7 line to their doctors. Insurance isn’t billed, and the government isn’t involved.

From Oregon to Missouri to Michigan to to Virginia to Maine, this subscription model is taking off across the country. As this article highlights, patients may use the subscription for basic health care needs, and supplement with something like a catastrophic plan. But even those with employer-sponsored health insurance are finding value in the DPC plans.

Aside from absurd health insurance costs, another reason it’s gaining in popularity: Starting in 2026, new federal rules will allow taxpayers to use HSA funds to pay for this type of direct coverage.

And though still small, the share of employers offering direct primary care subscriptions grew 800% between 2017 and 2022, according to a report from direct care software platform Hint Health.

For doctors, it not only helps their patients pay for care, but it cuts down all of the red tape they have to deal with when it comes to insurers.

@drelisabethpotterI got a call from insurance asking me to justify why my patient—who had a bilateral mastectomy and DIEP flap reconstruction—needed to stay in the hospital for two days. For context: ✅ She had bilateral mastectomies. ✅ She had complex microsurgery (DIEP flaps). ✅ She required continuous blood-flow monitoring with specialized ViOptix. ✅ Written approval from UnitedHealthcare dated July 17. And yet, AFTER surgery, during clinic, I was told I had to do a same-day “peer-to-peer.” I did not request this call. I was exhausted after seeing 65 patients in two days and heading to the hospital to care for the patient I posted about last week (the MRI/expander case). The physician on the line was polite but said the state of Texas required her to call, and she either (1) didn’t know authorization had already been granted or (2) didn’t have access to the medical records that would have answered the question. This was approved because my staff is incredible. As soon as Ebonie heard I was being pulled into a last-minute review, she printed the approval letter and put it in my hand while I was still in clinic. That’s what it takes to practice medicine right now. This is what we mean by insurance interrupting care. Instead of focusing on healing, teams are pulled off the floor to re-prove the obvious and re-justify decisions already authorized. I would like you to ask yourself: — Is this system helping us care for patients or wearing us down? — Why am I forced to ask permission to do the right thing, repeatedly, and then defend it after the fact? Patients deserve monitoring and support after a surgery of this magnitude. They deserve our full attention not red tape.

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There are, of course, other costs outside of the monthly fee—but patients are taking the bet that private out-of-pocket payments will be much less than whatever their insurer comes up with.

“The question is, when you add together the premium, the co-pay, the co-insurance and the deductible, is that more than or less than the monthly subscription fee for a private practice model, plus the private out-of-pocket payments you pay for every lab test and chest X-ray and generic medicine,” Zirui Song, a health care policy expert at Harvard Medical School, told Minnesota Public Radio.

So, does anyone use this type of subscription coverage?

On my radar

• Audiobook: I listened to The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett and really enjoyed it!

• Buffett news: Warren Buffett’s final letter as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (he’s stepping down at the end of the year) led me down a rabbit hole to this story about how one of his sons has basically purchased all of Kingston, New York. Crazy stuff!

• Money Today: The pros & cons of a 50-year mortgage, the Trump admin killed the new free tax filing program, American consumers are “trading down” ahead of the holidays.

• Recipes: I made this lentil soup, which was pretty tasty, but these rosemary white beans were the week’s standout dish. Only one week left in our CSA 😢

• TV Shows: We are really into “Pluribus,” and “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” is on another level this season.

That’s it for now. See ya soon,
A

P.S. Thanks Christopher Skinner for the illustration!

Welcome to Money Today for Friday, November 14, 2025. I’m spotlighting the biggest money news, trends, and topics of the day. The goal is less stock market updates and more crucial information on retirement, student loans, consumer protections, and more. And also just things I find interesting. :)

You can send news, ideas, and press releases to aliciaadamczyk781@gmail.com.

1. Trump admin rolling back tariffs because no one can afford groceries

The Trump administration is reportedly preparing to rollback certain tariffs to help ease elevated food prices, according to the New York Times.

The exemptions may include beef and citrus. Tariffs on beef from Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, and Uruguay, as well as levies on feed, farm equipment, and machinery, have caused beef prices to sky-rocket. According to the most recent data report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the month of September, uncooked beef products have increased between 12% and 18% in the past year.

Meanwhile, coffee prices were up nearly 19 % YOY in September. Consumer confidence hit near-record lows this month, as people continue to struggle with the cost-of-living crisis.

Obviously my headline above is hyperbolic, we all gotta eat, but you get the point. Despite what DoorDash reports say, grocery prices haven’t come down (aside from eggs, thanks to the avian flu outbreak abating across the country).

2. Verizon planning 15,000 job cuts

Verizon is planning cut around 15,000 jobs, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

That would be the largest-ever job cuts for the company. Most of those will be layoffs, and they’re supposed to happen next week.

That’s been added to the October/November layoff tracker, joining the likes of Amazon, Meta, Target, and UPS. So far in 2025, there have been over 1.1 million job cuts announced.

The cooling job market has companies saying next year will be even worse than this year for entry-level workers, as they compete with all the people who lost their jobs this year for ever fewer opportunities.

3. Consumers are ‘trading down’

People all over the income spectrum in the U.S. are trading down across consumer categories, meaning they’re purchasing less expensive substitutes for things they used to buy, CNBC reports.

What this looks like is that more higher income earners are eating at places like McDonald’s—the company says traffic from high-income diners increased almost 10% in Q3—while lower income earners stop eating there all together. High-income shoppers are also frequenting thrift stores more, and Walmart and Dollar General are seeing a lot of growth in shoppers earning over $100,000, the companies announced on recent earnings calls.

“They’re going to pull back spending in a variety of ways. They may do that by buying fewer things, they may switch to less expensive brands, or they may switch to lower cost retailers overall, or it could be a combination of any of those things,” said one analyst.

Going into the holiday season, that’s not great news for more “premium” brands, like Target or Best Buy.

4. Robinhood wants to deliver cash to your door

Robinhood announced it will allow customers to withdraw cash from their Robinhood bank accounts and have it delivered to their door, a la Seamless orders. It’s doing so via a partnership with food-and-drink delivery app Gopuff, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Everything gets delivered to their house from burritos to medicine,” said Deepak Rao, Robinhood Money vice president and general manager. “Why not cash? Now imagine any reason you could ever think of for going to the bank.”

IDK y’all.

5. Stocks are falling

I don’t like to cover daily stock movements, but they’ve been falling the past few days, which is notable in a time where it seems like they only go up. As always, my take is to wait it out. It’s all temporary.

I do think it’s notable that StubHub decided to withhold financial guidance for the current quarter on an investor call.

See you later,
Alicia

Welcome to Money Today for Wednesday, November 12, 2025. I’m spotlighting the biggest money news, trends, and topics of the day. The goal is less stock market updates and more crucial information on retirement, student loans, consumer protections, and more. And also just things I find interesting. :)

You can send news, ideas, and press releases to aliciaadamczyk781@gmail.com.

1. Trump proposes 50-year mortgage

Housing affordability is one of the biggest financial issues in the country, and to help alleviate it President Donald Trump has proposed backing a 50-year mortgage—20 years longer than the traditional 30-year loan most U.S. homeowners take (a 15-year mortgage is another option in the U.S.).

The White House’s reasoning is the longer loan term will lower the monthly payment, increasing affordability. And the longer loan term could mean paying about $250 less per month on the average home, assuming a selling price of $415,200, a standard 10% down payment, and an average interest rate of 6.17%. (That’s a lot of assumptions—the bank could charge higher interest on a 50-year loan, given it’s a riskier bet for financial institutions.)

My knee-jerk reaction to this was, cool, 20 more years added onto a loan, plus A LOT more paid in interest: the Associated Press ran the numbers, and in the example above, a borrower would pay around $389,000 more in interest over the life of a 50-year mortgage compared to a 30-year mortgage. That’s been the general take I’ve seen everywhere. People really don’t seem to like this proposal.

But has a more measured reaction: He says to remember the “the time value of money.” A dollar saved today is worth more than a dollar saved 20 or 50 years from now.

“If you can save a dollar on your mortgage payment today by getting a longer-term mortgage and you invest it safely at 4.7 percent (which is what 30-year Treasuries are yielding now), after 50 years your one dollar will turn into nearly $10, ignoring taxes,” he writes.

He also notes that a smaller monthly payment means people will be less likely to be unable to pay it, making them less likely to lose their homes.

Still, I don’t think most people will be investing the difference in their monthly mortgage payment between a 30- and 50-year loan; the issue is that no one can afford a home on top of all of their other current monthly expenses. We should build more housing rather than saddling people with 20 more years of indebtedness. But it’s interesting to think of the time value of money: Money in the future is worth less than money today.

The AP made another interesting point, which is that this would be another loan term that has gotten longer and longer in recent years. While a 60 month, or 5-year, auto loan is recommended, more and more people are taking on 7-year terms. Federal student loans were initially meant to be repaid in 10 years, and now some repayment plans extend to 20 and 25. Ever-increasing prices leading to ever-increasing years of indebtedness doesn’t seem like a great deal.

2. U.S. can’t really afford $2,000 tariff rebates

Trump said he wants to send every person except high earners a $2,000 tariff dividend check, with no other specifics mentioned, making it hard to figure out what it would actually look like or cost, except that it’d be pretty expensive. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent already kind of walked back the idea, saying it could take the form of something like the tax cut that was signed into law earlier this year.

But most people probably wouldn’t consider that the same thing—we all remember the Covid stimulus checks. To that end, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) calculates that, if structured like the stimmies, one round of tariff dividends would cost about $600 billion. Thus far, the president’s tariffs have raised around $100 billion, and should raise about $300 billion per year.

That is, unless the Supreme Court overturns them, which it very well could.

Anyway, CRFB’s position is we can’t really afford the tariff dividend checks.

“We estimate that $2,000 dividends would increase deficits by $6 trillion over ten years, assuming dividends are paid annually,” CRFB writes. “This is roughly twice as much as President Trump’s tariffs are estimated to raise over the same time period.”

3. Talk of an AI bubble grows

Everyone’s talking about an AI bubble, which would, of course, be very bad considering it seems like our entire economy and the stock market are dependent on the technology paying off.

This week, JP Morgan analysts wrote their biggest fear is that we could end up in a bust similar to that of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s. Then, companies were spending a lot of money to build out vast fiber-optic networks. Kind of like how all the big tech companies now are tripping over themselves to build data centers, with little return on investment to show for it yet. BI’s Jennifer Sor has a good run down here.

The data center story has been interesting to watch because it seems to be taking a turn. Meta announced last Friday that it will invest $600 billion in U.S. ​infrastructure and jobs over the next three years, ‌but that didn’t do much for its stock, which has consistently fallen over the past two weeks.

“Regardless, even if everything works, there will be (continued) spectacular winners, and probably some equally spectacular losers as well given the amount of capital involved and winner takes all portions of the AI ecosystem,” the JPM analysts wrote.

4. Streaming costs more than cable

Paramount+ announced that its ad-supported Essential plan will increase to $9 per month in January, while the ad-free Premium plan will rise to $14 monthly. Meanwhile, annual subscriptions for Essential will increase to $90 per year while Premium will cost $140.

The streamer is also getting rid of its free trial, which is becoming more common across the industry. Should we all go back to cable?

5. The Brick is FSA/HSA eligible

I’ve been getting a lot of ads lately for the Brick, which is a physical device that can block your phone so you aren’t as distracted. (Presumably to do with the essay I published on Sunday about logging off.)

Anyway, it’s come to my attention that you can use pre-tax funds from your flexible spending accounts (FSAs) or health savings accounts (HSAs) to pay for them, which seems kind of crazy to me? Usually that’s reserved for medical costs, like deductibles, copays, prescriptions, menstrual products, or even sunscreen.

See you later,
Alicia

Welcome to Money Today for Monday, November 10, 2025. I’m spotlighting the biggest money news, trends, and topics of the day. The goal is less stock market updates and more crucial information on retirement, student loans, consumer protections, and more. And also just things I find interesting. :)

You can send news, ideas, and press releases to aliciaadamczyk781@gmail.com.

1. Government shutdown deal?

The big news of the day is that the federal government may finally reopen, after a 40-day closure that is the longest in history.

It seems pretty clear that shutting down airspace and inconveniencing a lot of travelers played a role in getting politicians to make a deal, as did the reality of pay-deprived federal workers like air traffic controllers.

Democrats appear to be caving, with no deal on the health care subsidies, which is ostensibly why we’ve been doing this for the past 5+ weeks but I guess not? So if you’re staring down a thousand-dollar monthly increase on your premiums next year, there’s no solution for you yet. I’m sure they’ll come up with one any day now.

2. Trump admin kills free tax filing program

The Trump administration confirmed that IRS Direct File, the electronic system for filing tax returns for free just created under the Biden administration, will not be offered next year.

This was predictable, of course, but it’s a shame. It was a rare win for taxpayers that was, by all accounts, making filing easier and cheaper for those who used it. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is also currently leading the IRS, told reporters the Trump administration thinks “the private sector can do a better job.” Of course, most Americans have been filing via private sector companies, and paying an average of $140 a year to do so.

There has been a ton of great reporting over the past years about the millions upon millions of dollars tax prep software companies like TurboTax and H&R Block spend lobbying politicians to not make it easier (or cheaper) for us to file our taxes. Those companies, obviously, did not like Direct File. The IRS does also offer Free File for some taxpayers, which is a partnership with tax prep companies, but no one really uses it.

3. October job losses soar

I’ll be the first to admit it’s hard to make sense of the job market right now. As far as official statistics show, unemployment is still low.

At the same time, companies are not hiring workers or replacing those who leave. This has been termed “low hire, low fire,” and it’s left those with jobs “hugging” them, scared that any layoff could mean long-term unemployment in such an uncertain economy. Personally, I know people who have been out of work for a year or more, with no signs of that changing anytime soon.

And a bunch of marquee names did have much-publicized layoffs over the past few weeks, including GM, IBM, Meta, Target, UPS, and more (I’ve been tracking them here). Over 150,000 job cuts were announced last month, the most for any October in more than two decades.

Side note: I have seen people misconstruing this to say it’s the most jobs cuts in any year for the past 20, but that’s not true—early Covid was a lot worse than this, as was 2008 and 2009, so let’s be precise. As Bloomberg reports, year-to-date job cuts have exceeded 1 million, the most since the pandemic. The pandemic was still a lot worse.

4. No one has any will

Just 32% of Americans have created a will dictating what to do with their assets and belongings after they die, according to new research from Pew. A similar percentage have created a living will or advance health care directive in case they are unable to make their own medical decisions.

This, understandably, varies greatly by age, with older Americans significantly more likely to have these documents in order.

Still, even you youngsters should consider having basic estate planning mechanisms in place. For example, one of the simplest estate planning tasks is simply naming beneficiaries on your financial accounts.

That includes things like a checking or savings account, 401(k), brokerage account, a life insurance policy, or similar assets. Naming beneficiaries on those accounts circumvents probate, which helps inheritors receive the assets more quickly and with fewer potential headaches. Go do it now!

5. Trump floats $2,000 tariff dividend

The president posts a lot of stuff on his social media site, not all of which comes to fruition. His latest idea is a $2,000 tariff rebate to everyone but the highest earners.

“People that are against tariffs are fools! We are now the richest, most respected country in the world, with almost no inflation, and a record stock market price,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”

It’s worth noting that the legality of the president’s tariffs is currently under consideration by the Supreme Court. If the justices say the tariffs are a no-go, it’s possible the government will have to refund the money it’s already collected to businesses (not that consumers who were charged more to make up for it will see any of that back). So maybe Treasury shouldn’t cut the checks just yet?

Hey, remember when we were all going to get DOGE dividend checks, too?

See you later,
Alicia

It’s been a while since I sent the flagship newsletter, but I’ve been having fun experimenting with a (week)daily edition highlighting the biggest money stories of the day.

Will I keep doing it? Who knows! But it’s good to keep on top of the news and I’ve found that writing it has given me a lot of ideas and even more questions about the current state of Money in America. More to come.

Over at The Purse, I recently wrote about SNAP, student loans, and why the lipstick index may not hold up anymore.

In today’s issue:
1. De-algorithmize your money
2. The many seasons of a layoff
3. On my radar

De-algorithmize your money

I’ve always hated Yelp. Not through any fault of the platform’s own, it’s a smart and, for many people, useful service. More so, I’ve always hated being beholden to it. I’d much rather walk into a random café or restaurant and take my chances than pull up Yelp and look for whatever it tells me is “good” nearby.

Call me a luddite or simply a curmudgeon, but I think too many aspects of our lives are mediated by algorithms. How many of us have purchased something that had 1,000 5-star reviews or read something because an influencer recommended it, only to be deeply disappointed?

The more that everything becomes algorithm-ized, the more pressing it seems to me to decouple my attention—and by extension, my money—from the internet generally and social media sites more specifically. I hate the phrase “now more than ever” but…now more than ever we all really need to log off.

There are the very obvious effects social media or retailer algorithms have on our finances. We might be inclined to shop more or take uninformed investment advice that pops up on our FYP. Being continuously shown the same product you briefly viewed once a few weeks ago can’t be good for many wallets; nor are all the scams that abound on these sites. Companies are using AI to turbocharge dynamic pricing—an algorithm by a different name—on everything from flights to groceries, costing us more and more.

But there are other less obvious effects, as well, that influence our finances. The constant drumbeats by influencers we follow, consciously or not, have us buying more and more than we could possibly need. Dark patterns manipulate us by design. It’s worthwhile to think about what data these companies are collecting on you and how they’re using it to sway behavior (usually to get you to buy something, but sometimes in other more nefarious ways) and if you’re comfortable with it. Then consider what value you get in exchange.

Personally, I’ve been reflecting on what an impediment being online can be to what I would consider much more important aspects of my life, whether reading the stack of books beside my bed or writing this newsletter—things that, given my interests and aspirations, I need to be doing. I’d really rather my attention not be devoted to what’s being pushed on me, I hope to have a little more agency than that.

Our attention is extremely valuable, and, increasingly, just a handful of companies control much of what we’re seeing, hearing, and reading. If you aren’t on these sites, good for you, I’ll mail you your cookie, but billions of us are. When so much of our media environment is privatized in the hands of a few extremely rich men who only want to get richer, you begin to wonder what it is you’re doing spending your one precious life on their apps.

Brief aside: Of course, there is an inherent tension with the work I’ve done for the past decade-plus. Being a journalist requires you to be clued in, all the time, to what is happening in the world. You also need to track trends, pay attention to where audiences are congregating, and take stock of how they’re getting their information. Every year, social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok play a bigger and bigger role. That means increasingly working within the companies’ frameworks to try to get a bite of the apple. This hasn’t gone well for traditional nonpartisan outlets or journalism as a whole.

Ask any journalist, and I doubt a single one got into this field in order to “capture attention” or even be what we’ve come to think of as an influencer (okay, I’m less sure about that second bit). Yes, you need to have a nose for a story or angle that will resonate, but that is a very different skillset from what is required in our current media environment to attract a reader- or, more likely, viewership. That’s even the case here on Substack, which seems to be becoming more social media-ified by the day. (Sincerely: Notes sucks.)

For me, the hardest times to decouple my brain from the algorithm are when it’s already tired. I’ve been making an effort to have other things to do during those times (often when the work day is done or the time between dinner and bed), things other than watching another screen.

Cooking has become a balm. I’m taking on bigger projects and planning out meals in a way that’s only possible because I am no longer strictly working 9-5. I’ve started listening to audiobooks only while I cook or clean, and I find myself looking forward to that time more and more each day.

I’m also keeping a stack of crossword puzzle and Sudoku books next to the couch to do while my husband plays video games, and I always have a paper book on hand, though I haven’t read as much as I would like over the past few weeks. Long walks outside and yoga are other tools in the arsenal. Volunteering in my community is next on my list.

There’s no real tidy ending here except that I believe controlling our inputs is one of the most valuable and important things we can do for ourselves in today’s attention economy. I would encourage folks to read, watch, or listen on alternative platforms; better yet, go somewhere IRL and just take things in, whether the library, a local museum, art gallery, a park, or whatever it is. It’s okay if the book you’re reading didn’t make a “best of” list; it’s likely even better if it was never for sale in TikTok shop.

The many seasons of a layoff

Despite losing my job just three-ish months ago, I am already finding myself in the position of Job Loss Advice Giver to friends who have experienced even more fresh cuts.

It’s not a good feeling. I was really struck recently when a friend said, “no one quite tells you what the morning after getting laid off feels like.” I’ve memory-holed a bit of that, but I do remember how unmoored I felt, how even worse than the immediate loss of income, benefits, coworkers, and responsibilities was the realization that I would have to rebuild everything from scratch and hope the career I had painstakingly constructed over a decade-plus didn’t stall out in the process. It led to some not-so-kind thoughts about the work I’ve done so far, and then a surge of energy to reclaim my efforts and start doing more work I was proud of.

I’m at the point now where I’ve made a few hard decisions about the direction my future is going in, and am juggling a couple different income streams I hope will add up to enough. I’m still anxious about where All This is going, especially with the current political environment in the U.S., which is making everything feel even more unstable.

The good news is three months on, I’m really excited about the work we’re doing at The Purse, and feel lucky to have someone like in my corner. I’m also having fun (like, actual fun) writing about the things I want to here. Still, it’s been hard to recalibrate to less income after steadily building up my salary over the past 11 years, while also reframing what it means to be successful. As I wrote a few months back, I was at the point in my career where I was finally taking a step back from the constant hustle, the constant search for something new and better. Now I’m back to hustling again.

In giving my friend advice I hope was helpful—log off (ah, a theme!), disconnect, go outside, journal, cook some good meals—it made me want to redouble my efforts to put together a resource guide for layoffs.

If you have suggestions/tips on what to include, lmk! Could be cost cutting suggestions, job hunt tips, mental health advice—whatever would be helpful. There’s little doubt all of us will go through job loss at some point (if not multiple points), but we can always be there to provide advice, encouragement, or a group chat to vent to.

On my radar

• Follow: I think I’ve already suggested her once, but I really appreciate ’s content about eating well but cheaply.

• Job market: I’m tracking all of the recent layoffs from large employers including Amazon, GM, Meta, and many more.

• Money Today: A lot happened over the past few weeks! Layoffs! Travel delays! Retailers are running out of pennies! No one can afford health insurance!

• Privacy: I didn’t get into the AI of it all in today’s newsletter, but all those AI chatbots will make surveillance pricing even worse. “I would say where we’re headed is that we’ll see this sort of surveillance pricing accelerate. The amount of data that we’re producing is growing, particularly as we share more and more information with chatbots.”

• Recipes: I made acorn squash soup with veggies from the CSA and this recipe. It was very good (tho a little sweet)! We also got a lot of cabbage, which I’ve never really cooked with before, so I’m experimenting. I made this cabbage sausage pasta which was pretty good (I cut way back on the heavy cream), and these piroshki might be a weekend project.

That’s it for now. See ya soon,
A

I am still looking for some Gen Zers to talk to about how they invest, for a story for a national publication. Please message me if you’re interested in discussing!

Welcome to Money Today for Thursday, November 6, 2025. I’m spotlighting the biggest money news, trends, and topics of the day. The goal is less stock market updates and more crucial information on retirement, student loans, consumer protections, and more. And also just things I find interesting. :)

You can send news, ideas, and press releases to aliciaadamczyk781@gmail.com.

1. Travelers brace for major delays

The now-longest federal government shutdown on record is hitting air travel particularly hard. Already dealing with worker shortages, air traffic controllers are now approaching their second missed paycheck, and many aren’t making it into work as they look for other ways to make money and pay their bills. TSA agents, too, are feeling the sting of the shutdown.

That’s led to snaking security lines and an increasing number of canceled flights at airports across the U.S. The Trump administration also announced that in order to alleviate some of the pressure on air traffic controllers, it would start cutting air traffic at 40 of the nation’s busiest airports starting tomorrow.

NPR reports the U.S. air system was more than 3,000 certified controllers short before the shutdown. That’s only getting worse now. Last week, CBS reported that airlines including American, United, and Delta were donating meals to air traffic controllers who were struggling to pay bills.

Travelers should be ready for bad news: The reductions could cause airlines to cancel or reschedule thousands of flights per day.

2. Taxes were on the ballot

While the mayoral election in New York City and governor races in New Jersey and Virginia captured much of the attention from this week’s nationwide elections, there were a number of tax proposals on ballots in various states.

In Texas, voters approved state constitutional amendments prohibiting inheritance taxes, capital gains taxes, and certain taxes on financial service providers. There were also a number of property tax exemptions that were approved, which the progressive Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy outlines here. Texas already doesn’t have state income tax.

Meanwhile in Colorado, voters approved a couple of measures to boost funding for free school meals. Excess funds will be directed to the state’s SNAP program.

3. USDA says retailers can’t discount food for SNAP recipients

Speaking of SNAP, in the wake of the Trump administration cutting benefits in half this month, many everyday Americans, restaurant owners, and retailers have stepped in to try to fill the government’s gap, donating their time and money and even donating meals or discounting food for those who beneficiaries.

Well, the Trump administration is now saying grocery stores, at least, need to stop doing that.

“You must offer eligible foods at the same prices and on the same terms and conditions to SNAP-EBT customers as other customers, except that sales tax cannot be charged on SNAP purchases,” a notice from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA, reads, as reported by Anna-Louise Jackson at Fast Company. “You cannot treat SNAP-EBT customers differently than any other customers.”

Jackson writes:

The USDA appears to be invoking the ‘equal treatment rule’ in an unprecedented way: The rule was intended to ensure that retailers couldn’t discriminate against SNAP recipients by charging them more for eligible items. Now the USDA wants to ensure that grocery stores don’t charge these customers less for eligible items.

Of course, grocery stores often discount select food items for many reasons; they also regularly offer discounts to certain groups like seniors.

4. The Gen Z and millennial financial outlook

Student loans, auto loans, and credit card debt take up about a quarter of Gen Z and millennials’ income at the median, according to a new report from investment company Vanguard.

I wrote about the scourge of student loans for The Purse yesterday, how for many borrowers, it’s just always there, hanging over their heads.

But while it can be easy to focus on the negative in personal finance, there are some things that are working out for younger generations. A big one: They have more access to better and lower-cost retirement plans (especially employer-sponsored 401(k)s, but also IRAs and Roths), according to Vanguard’s report.

Over the years, these retirement plans have been continually tinkered with to be more efficient, offer better and lower-cost investment options, and have improved features like auto-enrollment and auto-escalation. And young people are now inundated with financial info, meaning they are, on the whole, investing younger than previous gens did, and contributing more of their income. (You could argue this is because they don’t have pensions to rely on, but I’m trying to be positive here).

5. The NFL is hiring a director of global sports betting

Remember that very recent sports gambling scandal that hit the NBA just a few weeks ago? I guess we’re past that! The NFL is currently hiring for a director of global sports betting, who will be tasked with protecting the NFL’s reputation while driving fans to lose all of their money on bets.

From the LinkedIn posting:

That “driving fan engagement globally” is the real red flag to me. Translation: Get fans hooked on losing money. Didn’t sports used to be, like, fun?

See you tomorrow,
Alicia

Note: I need to speak with female Gen Zers about how their thinking about investing has evolved over the past few years for an assignment for a national news outlet. Please message me if you fit the bill and are interested!

Welcome to Money Today for Wednesday, November 5, 2025. I’m spotlighting the biggest money news, trends, and topics of the day. The goal is less stock market updates and more crucial information on retirement, student loans, consumer protections, and more. And also just things I find interesting. :)

You can send news, ideas, and press releases to aliciaadamczyk781@gmail.com.

1. Tariffs in front of the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments on the legality of President Donald Trump’s use of emergency powers to levy import tariffs on virtually every country on the planet without input from Congress.

There are plenty of rundowns of the day’s arguments available at other outlets; it is fascinating to read some of the arguments to see how these things go. The takeaway from beat reporters is that the justices seem skeptical that the president has this power.

One question I’m particularly interested in: If SCOTUS does rule that the policies are illegal, will the government need to refund all of the tariff revenue that’s already come in this year?

2. The longest government shutdown in history

The federal government shutdown is now the longest in history, surpassing the previous record-holder that took place during Trump’s first presidency.

CNN reports it is also the most economically damaging shutdown of all time. While most don’t have much of an effect (because they don’t last that long), this one is different. Millions of Americans are not receiving food stamp benefits, over 1 million federal employees haven’t been paid, and policymakers like the Fed have no idea what’s going on in any already rocky economic environment because there are no official stats being tracked/produced by the government.

3. IBM to cut thousands of jobs

Adding IBM to our Layoff tracker: The company said it will cut thousands of roles after a slowdown in growth in its cloud software segment, Reuters reports. Not all of the people affected are based in the U.S.

4. Just 53% of American millionaires expect to leave an inheritance

That’s according to Northwestern Mutual’s latest data from its 2025 Planning & Progress Study.

While that seems like a low percentage, I kind of get it. If most of your wealth is tied up in a retirement fund or even a house, you’re still going to have a lot of costs in retirement that could eat away at a million or more. Long-term care expenses, for example, are astronomical and not coming down anytime soon.

It’s an interesting datapoint as we continually hear about the Great Wealth Transfer. But the truth of that is that only the wealthiest were ever going to pass on much.

5. Getting offline is all the rage

We’re all desperate to get off our phones and hangout IRL, Business Insider’s Amanda Hoover reports:

“In a world where dating, music discovery, and the flow of information is largely controlled by algorithms, there’s a movement brewing to push people back to in-person hangs, where they can encounter serendipity and make connections the old school way.”

This story is actually depressing to me but also I get it (my screentime notifications tell me I really get it), and it plays into the longer essay I’m hoping to publish this weekend about attention and money. How are you getting offline?

See you tomorrow,
Alicia

Note: I’m looking to speak with Gen Z investors (or general personal finance nerds) for an assignment for another outlet. Please message me if you fit the bill and are interested!

Happy November! Welcome to Money Today for Monday, November 3, 2025. I’m spotlighting the biggest money news, trends, and topics of the day. The goal is less stock market updates and more crucial information on retirement, student loans, consumer protections, and more.

You can send news, ideas, and press releases to aliciaadamczyk781@gmail.com.

1. More people taking out adjustable-rate mortgages

With rates higher than in recent years (and sale prices astronomical), more and more homebuyers are opting to take out adjustable-rate mortgages, or ARMs, the Wall Street Journal’s Nicole Friedman reports.

While initial rates for ARMs can be lower than for a fixed-rate mortgage, ARMs reset every few years. So buyers are basically making the bet that rates will go down in the future (or at least hoping they will).

But as Friedman writes, these types of mortgages were popular in the lead up to the Great Recession in 2008, and, well, we know what happened there. Too many people believed the ARM would stay affordable, but the rate eventually increased and millions went into foreclosure.

According to Friedman, that isn’t likely to happen again. “These loans are less risky today, thanks to tighter lending standards and caps for most ARMs on how much the interest rates can adjust,” she writes. Many people also plan to sell before the rate adjustment takes place. Whether or not they actually do, of course, is a different story.

2. Trump admin paying partial food benefits

A couple days after multiple federal judges said the government had to send out food benefits, the Trump administration said it would send out partial SNAP payments this month during the government shut down.

When, exactly, families will receive the benefits is unclear, the New York Times reports. For ways to help the tens of thousands of Americans who need food assistance, I wrote more over at The Purse.

3. Penny shortage costing businesses

The Trump administration stopped producing pennies earlier this year, and that’s created “a scramble among gas stations, fast-food chains and big-box stores to adjust prices and round cash transactions,” Reuters reports. That could eat into profits.

Retail groups say businesses are being forced “to round down to avoid angering customers and violating laws in some states — potentially costing high-volume businesses significant money.”

Producing a penny costs around 3.69 cents per coin, which is the reason for the production halt. Anyway, this was all predictable when it happened.

4. States and unions sue Trump over student loan rule change

On Friday I noted that the Trump administration was restricting who can participate in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program by making it easier for the federal government to push out employers who engage in activities that it deems to have “a substantial illegal purpose.” Critics immediately pushed back against this rule change, saying “it gives the government broad tools to politicize the program and target groups that do not align with its values.”

Now, more than 20 states and Washington D.C. are suing the Trump administration over the new rule, saying it is “unjust and unlawful” to deny loan forgiveness based on ideology. Additionally, a coalition of U.S. cities, labor unions, and nonprofit organizations also sued the Trump administration over its PSLF rule today, CNBC’s Annie Nova reports.

5. No more ‘labor hoarding’

We’ve been tracking recent job cuts from large employers here over the past few weeks, though it’s been hard to make sense of them in the context of what seems to be business as usual for the broader economy (not that we know, exactly, given the blackout of federal data during th shutdown). Now, though, “some economists worry that the recent spate of cuts is starting to look a little less like individual belt-tightening and more like a warning sign,” Bloomberg’s Michael Sasso and Julia Fanzeres write.

Warning sign of what? The end of the so-called “low hire, low fire” economy, although, of course, no one can say for sure. Still, “excluding that first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. job cuts in the first nine months have already surpassed full-year layoffs for every year since 2009,” Sasso and Fanzeres write.

See you tomorrow,
Alicia

Note: I’m looking to speak with Gen Z investors (or general personal finance nerds) for an assignment for another outlet. Please message me if you fit the bill and are interested!

Happy Halloween! Welcome to Money Today for Friday, October 31, 2025. I’m spotlighting the biggest money news, trends, and topics of the day. The goal is less stock market updates and more crucial information on retirement, student loans, consumer protections, and more.

You can send news, ideas, and press releases to aliciaadamczyk781@gmail.com.

1. Trump admin ‘politicizing’ student loan forgiveness program

Since its creation in 2007, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program has allowed borrowers who have worked in qualified public service jobs to discharge the remainder of their federal student loans after at least 10 years of on-time payments. Qualifying jobs include what you’d normally think of as public service: Public school teachers, cops, some nurses, and the like.

Now, the Trump administration is restricting who can participate in the program. Specifically, it is making it easier for the federal government to push out employers who engage in activities that it deems to have “a substantial illegal purpose,” the New York Times reports.

Hey, you’re thinking, that’s not so bad. Employers shouldn’t be doing illegal stuff. But critics say “it gives the government broad tools to politicize the program and target groups that do not align with its values.” In the Trump admin’s case, that could be organizations that work with undocumented immigrants or are otherwise involved in the hot button issues that have become increasingly politicized.

It is likely that opponents of the rule change will file suit against it. But public service workers should be aware.

2. Food banks need our help

Two federal judges stepped in to order the Trump administration pay out SNAP benefits next month, after the USDA said it wouldn’t disperse the benefits during the federal government shutdown. It’s a relief for the 42 million people who rely on the aid, although it’s unclear if it will make it out now without delays/hiccups.

Regardless of what happens with SNAP amid the shutdown, food banks and pantries are anticipating an influx of need, made all the more difficult because rising food prices have already increased demand dramatically this year. The recently-passed domestic policy bill significantly cut SNAP funding, meaning fewer people will qualify next year.

Food banks and pantries will need our help. No, individual contributions can’t make up for all of the lost federal money, but it can make a difference all the same.

I wrote about ways to help for The Purse. Here’s what workers on the frontlines suggest doing:

• Give cash to food banks

• Volunteer to package and distribute food

• If giving nonperishables, give pop top cans

• Prioritize staples like rice, beans, and pasta, as well as canned protein like tuna, salmon, and chicken

• Consider giving cat and dog food, as well as diapers and hygiene products

• Make recurring donations or volunteer regularly, if possible

3. Time to rethink TINA?

The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Zwieg writes about the TINA market we currently find ourselves in, or “there is no alternative.” In this case, it means to stocks. With valuations sky-high and AI enthusiasm abounding, investors don’t want to miss out on the gains. Some researchers are even arguing that investors shouldn’t own any bonds at all.

Like Jason, I disagree with this view. “Stocks are likely to be the best-performing asset, but even a high likelihood isn’t the same thing as certainty,” he writes. “The odds are in your favor, but you will need luck on your side. We all will.”

Past performance doesn’t guarantee future returns. It’s good to have a little hedge in your portfolio.

4. New I-bond interest rates

Series I bonds will pay 4.03% annual interest from Nov. 1 through April 30, up from the 3.98% yield currently on offer, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced today.

CNBC has a breakdown of how I-bond interest works here. I have some from the halcyon rate days of 2022, when interest hit a record high 9.62%. The rate’s fallen as inflation has, which is probably fine with most people.

5. Michaels raises prices for Halloween

Arts and crafts retailer Michaels is raising prices ahead of Halloween, in what Bloomberg reports is a reaction to increased tariffs. The report reads:

In one example, the price for a Halloween-themed cup was increased to $11.99, with the original price of $4.99 blacked out. The item was then offered “on sale” for $5.99 — a dollar higher than the earlier price. A bag of plastic skulls that had cost $4.99 was increased to $19.99, before being “discounted” at $7.99.

Seasonal items typically come with prices already set, but this is an unusual year for many reasons. The same pricing shenanigans are likely to happen at Christmastime.

Later,
Alicia