Practical money clarity for real-life tradeoffs.
HerMoney with Jean Chatzky is a personal finance show built around real-life tradeoffs, from college savings and retirement accounts to caregiving and inheritance. It keeps the focus on what decisions mean for a household, not just what the market did this week.
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HerMoney with Jean Chatzky is a money show that keeps returning to the same useful question: what does this mean in practice? It covers investing, retirement, work, family, health, and the economy without treating them as separate lives. A listener asking about unused college savings does not just get a vague answer about college savings plans. The conversation moves through penalties, profits, beneficiaries, advisor guidance, and the size of a decision that can be easy to mishandle. That practical instinct shapes the broader interviews too. Retirement is not only a target date or account balance; it becomes a discussion about guaranteed income, Social Security, pensions, annuities, and whether a safer floor can make the rest of a portfolio more flexible. Work is not only income; it is time, burnout, caregiving, school schedules, and the value of breathing room. The show is especially attentive to the messy middle of financial life, where technically correct answers still have to survive marriage, kids, aging parents, health setbacks, and family expectations. Episodes on inheritance and family money make room for resentment, secrecy, boundaries, and the limits of what parents can control. Episodes on health and retirement planning bring in long-term care, dementia risk, estate documents, and advance directives. Market conversations stretch from recession signals and oil prices to AI infrastructure, international stocks, crypto, utilities, and future career paths. The style is measured. It can be warm without becoming soft, and it is comfortable repeating the core point when the stakes are high. Sponsor reads and show updates appear often, but the editorial center is clear enough: money is a tool for choices, security, and time. The best episodes work like a careful reset. They name the anxiety, define the moving parts, and leave the listener with a more concrete question to ask next.
Made for: Best suited for listeners who want grounded financial guidance around retirement, investing, family money, career choices, and household planning. It will especially fit people who like expert interviews and listener questions translated into concrete next steps.
What sets it apart: The show stands out by connecting technical finance topics to lived decisions: daycare ending, a retirement account question, a health crisis, an inheritance conflict, or a market shift. It is less about hot takes and more about making the next choice less foggy.
Anyone who tells you women don’t need financial advice specifically for them is wrong. Women, whether they’re the caretakers, the breadwinners, or both, face a unique set of financial challenges. That’s where HerMoney comes in. In her frank, often funny, but always compassionate way, Jean Chatzky takes every audience of women through the steps they need to take today to live comfortably (and worry-free) tomorrow, offering the latest research, expert tips and personal advice. Want more money news when you need it? Get the latest and greatest updates on all things investing, budgeting, and making money. Subscribe to the HerMoney newsletter at HerMoney.com/subscribe!
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Jean Chatzky connects economic ideas to the financial decisions that shape work, investing, health planning, and retirement.
HerMoney turns financial education into a series of pointed conversations about decisions with real consequences. Jean Chatzky keeps returning to the junction between large economic forces and household choices, asking guests to translate inflation, recession risk, market…
Jean Chatzky makes retirement math feel less like prophecy and more like a decision you can inspect.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A practical review of leftover 529 money, Roth rollover options, beneficiary changes, and how the penalty applies to profits.
Leftover 529 money makes a common college-savings question feel less like housekeeping and more like a real tax call. The episode walks through unused education funds, from changing beneficiaries to the possible Roth rollover route, while keeping the stakes grounded in one…
Retirement numbers are given real human weight.
Alex Mayassi and the host make the economy feel immediate by tying retirement to concrete figures and the uncertainty people live with. The episode is strongest when it places nearly $46 trillion in retirement accounts next to a median $185,000 balance for workers ages 55 to 65,…
A roundtable that argues guaranteed income can create room to take smarter risk.
Jean Chatzky shapes this Her Money roundtable around a familiar but still useful question: what happens when the old money playbook stops matching real life?
A plain-English look at why the economy can feel shakier than it looks.
HerMoney opens with a bad-week analogy and moves briskly into tariffs, federal worker firings, deportations, and oil prices, using those flash points to sketch the current economic mood.
A practical market piece that ties AI growth to power, labor, and investment opportunities.
It makes a grounded case for looking past AI hype and toward the infrastructure that has to keep pace with it: data centers, utilities, the grid, and the work that supports them.
A practical look at how care decisions, advance directives, and long-term care costs can reshape retirement planning.
Retirement planning feels more concrete here because health is treated as the variable that can change everything: the length of later life, the cost of care, and the decisions a family has to make under pressure.
A 529 withdrawal question is clearest when the penalty is tied to earnings, not the full withdrawal.
College savings are most revealing when a family has to decide how carefully to handle money inside a 529 plan. This Mailbag episode follows a question about the same beneficiary and a sizable balance, then lands on the useful math: the 10 percent penalty applies to earnings,…
A case for taking more risk when future income is already doing the safety work.
HerMoney uses the example of a 10 percent brokerage hit to make a larger point about how much risk a household can truly carry. The discussion stays anchored in retirement planning by linking that idea to human capital and to future sources of guaranteed income, including Social…
Real-estate freedom, taught in plain numbers.
Jean Chatzky hosts a mailbag episode on HerMoney, focusing on financial dilemmas parents face with education savings and retirement.
Yale professor James Choi discusses his research on asset allocation, arguing that traditional rules like 60/40 stocks-to-bonds ignore 'human capital'—the value of future labor income and Social Security.
This episode explores how to intentionally invest in yourself through self-reliance, time management, and personal branding as you navigate goals and challenges in the new year.
This episode discusses the complexities of inheritance, exploring what parents owe their children and the emotional and legal dilemmas involved in passing on wealth.
HerMoney's AMA episode features Anne, a 57-year-old South African-born retiree who pays roughly $45,000-$50,000 a year (60 basis points) to an AUM advisor.
Jill Biden traces her advice about women's financial independence to her first divorce and her mother's repeated instruction to have her own money.
Jean Chatzky and Lacey Garcia open with a warning about the fiduciary rule, explaining that a CFP must act as a fiduciary at all times while a one-time IRA rollover conversation may not be covered the same way.
The host talks with Alex Mayassi, author of the new book Planet Money, about money and retirement.
Jean Chatzky sits down with four women from Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers for an intergenerational conversation about money.
Jean Chatzky opens with a quick preview.
This episode explores whether fully funding a 401(k) is the right financial strategy for creating immediate time freedom and balancing work, caregiving, and burnout during peak earning years.
Jean and the guest walk through a market outlook shaped by the AI-driven surge in demand.
Physician-turned-financial-planner Dr.
This episode features an interview with Quentin Fitzgerald of The Moneyist column, discussing messy inheritance issues and financial dilemmas that arise when money collides with family relationships.
This episode explores how to intentionally invest in yourself through self-reliance strategies, featuring an interview with personal branding expert Maha Abu El-Enayn about her book on building confidence and taking action.
This episode explores common financial mistakes freelancers make and offers practical solutions for managing money, taxes, and stability in freelance work.