This week on the show, host Reema Khrais and producer Alice Wilder respond to your emails and calls about questionable investments, wedding expenses and doomspending.
A few takeaways from the episode:
Fads that didn’t pay off. Listener Sophia Hooper wrote in asking about what she called alternative inheritances: “Beanie Babies, Hummel figurines, Oneida flatware, and other worthless ephemera that boomers spent decades collecting in the belief that they would appreciate in value, only to leave their millennial kids with a bunch of clutter.” This question reminded us of a favorite episode, “The things we leave behind,” about Ross Petteruti’s coin collection, which ended up being more of a headache than an investment.
One fix for doomspending? Listener Mari Osmundson enjoyed our episode “Everything's on fire, might as well get my nails done?” and wrote in to share her own tip: try a low-buy month. Osmundson started the month with a list of pre-approved purchases and stuck to it.
For more insight on no-buy and low-buy challenges, Khrais reached out to Abigail Sussman, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Business School. “It forces you to move away from impulse purchases and to really pause and consider whether we want the things that we’re buying,” Sussman explained. “It may also help you understand that you don’t need as many of the things as you typically buy in a month.” But she warned against setting too strict of a goal, which could cause you to overspend the next month.
Affordable wedding tips: After hearing our recent episode, “Would you go broke for a bachelorette?” listener Meghana from Oakland, California, called our hotline to share some of the ways she made her wedding more affordable for her friends from out of state: “My husband and I decided to make our wedding hotel a budget hotel, so that everyone coming to the wedding could afford to come and stay.” On top of that, she made the wedding gift-optional and opted for a local bachelorette party: “I just asked the friends who already lived in the Bay Area to go out dancing with me.” Sounds like our kind of party!
Lost & found for your money: Listener Elisa Walker responded to our episode on retirement rollovers by recommending we check out the Department of Labor’s lost and found database, at lostandfound.dol.gov. “It’s designed to help people track down retirement plans from old employers, just like Reema was trying to do,” Walker told us. “There’s potentially a lot of money on the table in old accounts, and this is a way to try to help people be able to find them.”
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