First Friday: Jobs Are Up. So Why Does the Economy Feel Worse?
Episode Date: April 3, 2026#703: April’s jobs report comes in much stronger than expected, with 178,000 jobs added and unemployment ticking down to 4.3 percent. That headline de...
You can afford anything, but not everything. We make daily decisions about how to spend money, time, energy, focus and attention – and ultimately, our life. How do we make smarter decisions? How do we think from first principles? On the surface, Afford Anything seems like a podcast about money and investing. But under the hood, this is a show about how to think critically, recognize our behavioral blind spots, and make smarter choices. We’re into the psychology of money, and we love metacognition: thinking about how to think. In some episodes, we interview world-class experts: professors, researchers, scientists, authors. In other episodes, we answer your questions, talking through decision-making frameworks and mental models. Want to learn more? Download our free book, Escape, at http://affordanything.com/escape. Hosted by Paula Pant.
743 episodes transcribed#703: April’s jobs report comes in much stronger than expected, with 178,000 jobs added and unemployment ticking down to 4.3 percent. That headline de...
#702: Olivia is saving for a specific three-year goal and wants to know whether a money market fund is the right place to store that cash, or if a tra...
#701: Forget the idea that you need a magic number to retire. Jamie Hopkins is a certified financial planner, professor of taxation at the American...
#700: Today we’re tackling three different financial questions from our listeners. First, we’ll hear from Melanie, who is deciding whether to pursue...
#699: You've probably heard that mindset matters. But what does that actually mean, and is there science behind it? Nir Eyal, author of Beyond Bel...
#698: We explore financial decision-making at different stages of life: A high-earning federal couple debates whether to pause retirement contributio...
#697: Most people regret the things they never tried. Venture capitalist Bill Gurley says that pattern shows up again and again in research on end-of...
#696: (01:50) Jeremy has been a careful budgeter for years, but a surprise car repair has him tapping his emergency fund. With rates falling, he’s w...
#695: The U.S. lost 92,000 jobs in February, pushing unemployment to 4.4 percent.That result contradicts a different report released two days earlier...
There are about 90 million unique job titles in the U.S. labor market. Ninety million. If you are trying to negotiate a raise, switch companies or l...
#693: AI learns your job in weeks … and you start wondering if you still have one. That question shapes our conversation with Dr. Ben Zweig, CEO of R...
#692: Anonymous (02:01) is excited about early retirement and family time but worried about his brother-in-law, who just returned from a vacation in M...
#691: Your IQ used to be your biggest career asset. Then AI scored in the 99th percentile on the LSAT, the SAT, and the MCAT — and suddenly the cogn...
#690: Blanca (01:28): Blanca, an immigrant mother raising a 14-year-old, wants her son to think critically about college—not just as an experience, bu...
#689: Most people think forgetting a name means their brain is failing. Dr. Majid Fotuhi, a neurologist who taught at Johns Hopkins and Harvard, see...
#688: Anonymous: "Anonymous Sheryl" is 38, mortgage-free and exhausted after 15 years of teaching. She’s torn between pushing a few more years toward...
#687: Your tax refund might be $300 to $1,000 bigger this year, and that's just the beginning of what's changing with your money. The Tax Foundation...
#686: Rachel: Rachel is new to investing and has noticed the stock market being dominated by AI companies. She wants to make sure her portfolio is bal...
#685: You're not an investor. You're a saver. That's the first of 10 principles Cullen Roche shares in this conversation about building what he calls...
#684: Most people search for the perfect portfolio — the one allocation that works in every market, at every age, for every goal. This interview start...