Life Kit - Dear Life Kit: How much advice is too much advice?

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

In this edition of Dear Life Kit, more wisdom from our vast archives to help you figure out: -Can you bug your friends to do something they're avoiding?-If your partner has a boundary, do you need to go along with it?-Do you need to be on the same page with your partner about junk food?Follow us on Instagram: @nprlifekitSign up for our newsletter here.Have an episode idea or feedback you want to share? Email us at [e-mail] public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening and convenient playlists of popular help topics like personal finance, getting healthy, and more. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

I tell them once. I say my piece once and after that, that's on you. Because when you start nagging them, it's not your job to nag them. You told him. You led the horse to water. Will the horse drink it? I don't even know how the idiom goes, but you know what I'm talking about. Or will the horse die of thirst? Let the horse, let that money go. Let the horse die of thirst. You stop short of saying let the horse die of thirst, I want to say for the record. Did I say that or Andy said that? I'm throwing Andy under the bus. Is that the end of the idiom? That is so dark. Hey, it's Mariel Segarra, and welcome to another edition of Dear Life Kit, where we answer your questions with help from the collective wisdom in our Life Kit archives. Reporter Andy Tagle is here. Hey, Andy.

Hey, Mariel. And we've also got our digital editor, Malicaa Grieve here. Hey, Malika. Hello. So I'm going to get right into it. Our first question is, Dear Life Kit, I work in unclaimed property for the state. I have several friends who have unclaimed funds. How many times am I allowed to remind them of this before it becomes overbearing and instead of being a welcome surprise, it becomes an undue burden? I truly want to help them reclaim the funds over $5,000 for one of them.

But he actually thinks it's a scam. It is not. How can I help my friends get their money back without being annoying? Okay. Have you all heard of unclaimed funds? I have not. Mm-mm. Okay, basically, this is when the state or federal government collects money that you forgot about.

That could be old bank accounts or uncash checks, stock certificates, unused gift cards. And those things are available to you through the government. If you search your name, you can see if you have any money there. I'm sorry, I have to do this right now. I'm looking it up. You guys keep talking and I'll let you know if I have free money. And is it like every state, like everywhere you've lived? So you'd have to look up California and, like, D.C. and I think there are websites where you can check across the country.

You can check all the states. I have no money. Well, that's the Tennessee one, but you might have unclaimed money in another state. All right. All right. Stand by. Stand by. So, yeah, I mean, I get how frustrated this question asker is because they know all about this.

And they're like, hey, I want you to get your $5,000 back. But this person is like, I think it's a scam. And the thing is you can't really convince people otherwise. And it's not your job to. You know, we know this at Life Kit. We've done a lot of reporting, especially on money and how people can optimize their spending, their savings, their investments. But you can only tell someone so many times to, like, you should really invest for retirement

and get your employer a match or get a high-yield savings account. Like, you can't literally make them do it. Oh, yeah. I feel that's so deeply. How much? I have $50. What is it from? Does it say?

Wait, first of all, it says owner named Garib H. That's not you. That's not you. Oh, dang. It's sad, though, but I could see how this would work. I would be instantly claiming it. I don't know what this person is thinking. They need to go right now and look up their information. So this is how our letter writer feels. Yeah. Seeing your friend's name and being like you have $5,000, what are you doing? This is my rule with adults. This is my rule with adults. You cannot tell another adult what to do. You told them once that's on them. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like working for Life Kit, I feel this person so deeply. I feel like I'm brimming with information so often. We'll be talking about whatever. I don't know. For me, it's parenting stuff. I feel like I'm like the actually person.

Like, actually, you know, or like I was working on this episode. You know, like I get a lot of eye rolls. Yeah. Yeah. There's not a good way to give unsolicited advice to people. Yeah. There's never a good way. Yeah.

Here's what I would do. I would get everybody else in the group to do their claims and everyone's getting money. And I'm just like, oh my God, I got $50 in the mail. What about you, Hal. Oh, hell. Oh, hell. I thought you had $5,000. You didn't apply for it.

What a dummy. Negative peer pressure. Yeah, that's what I'm in too. I like it. I think what this comes down to is that this person is trying to show love to the people in their lives. That's the most charitable way of seeing this. You could see it as they're trying to control other people's lives, but I want to see the charitable way that they're trying to show love to other people. And that doesn't always mean fixing something for someone, and it doesn't always mean optimizing their life.

I mean, it came up in our cancer support episode, how to support someone who's going through cancer. Like, the answer isn't usually to try to fix it for them. How could you fix it for them? It's too big, you know? But it's to say, how are you doing today? Where are you with this today? And you can show that kind of love to people day after day, like check in on them. But you don't have to get involved in their finances. You can tell them about the five grand, the one time, maybe twice if it's your sibling. But after that, Love them in a different way. Let go of the rains. Let the crumbs fall where they may. You have done your part. Yeah. We'll have more Dear Life Kit after the break. All right. Next question. Dear Life Kit, after a series of clashes with his parents,

my husband has made the difficult decision to stop contacting them. While he doesn't get his parents' texts and voicemails, I still do. The messages are often affectionate or loving, usually from his mother. should I advise him to listen to these messages or should I keep listening to the messages and ignore how sad it makes me that his parents are trying in vain to reach out? I have one big thing to say to this letter writer. This is not about you. This is literally this boundary that your husband is holding with his parents is not about you. And I think it's so sweet that you are in there and listening to all of it.

But like, I think that you just need to step back for a second. And I wanted to share a really great piece of advice from author and therapist Andrea Bonnier from an interview we did back in 2021 about estrangement. And she says that the challenge of creating a boundary like this is having other people understand it. We can have the best laid plan for why our boundaries are meaningful to us and why we need to assert them for our own mental health. But sometimes the people in our lives don't respond as well as we would hope. or they can't really even understand where we're coming from. What it sounds like to me is that the letter writer is having trouble understanding what the boundaries are that their partner has with their parents.

Where does that leave the spouse? This is a hard one. I think that if your spouse has drawn that line in the sand, then it is your job to hold that line. So if you're deciding to listen to those voicemails, to read those texts, that's still crossing that line. Because they block this person, right? Right. They block them for a reason. They don't want it. Here's my question. Should that person go back to their spouse and try to re-understand and have their spouse re-explain the boundary? Yeah. Or like if you want to challenge that boundary, if you want to talk to them about it or say like I think maybe it's time to revisit this,

I think, you know, and that's something else. I think also if you were going to challenge that boundary, like you should have a really good reason. There are also scenarios where people basically just go their family and they don't ever tell them why. And so if it's one of those scenarios and you think your partner really hasn't communicated with the family or it's something that's like, for lack of a better way of saying this, not that serious, you know, like there's a spectrum of reasons that people can be estranged. If you as their partner really think like this is not the kind of thing that you get estranged over or like I don't think your family even understands or this is important enough because we have kids and I think they would really like

know their grandparents. If you feel like you have enough of a stake in it, then you could revisit it with this person. But otherwise, you know, it's not really your choice to make. I think that some of the best marriage advice that I've ever gotten was from my brother-in-law who got it from someone else, I don't know, just say something or let it go. Like, if you're upset, either it's important enough to talk about or just let it roll off your shoulders. Yeah. It's one or the other. I actually have never heard of that marriage advice before, work. But I love it. Yeah. It's really helpful, I think. All right, next question. Dear Life Kit, I need help addressing the difference between how my wife and I view food and how this relates to my

kids. My wife is a great woman who grew up without restrictions on sweets. She brings donuts and candy into the house and there's too much of it. When I try to tell her that it's too much that the kids don't have self-control, she refuses to alter how much she brings in the home. I am a broken record player with the eat a piece of fruit or a vegetable response to I'm hungry. Other than bringing in more fruit and vegetables, how do I get my wife to cut back on sweets? There are a lot of questions in this question. I have a lot of questions in this question too. Well, it's complicated because they have kids.

So if it was just the couple, then you've got to think about how much control you should really be exerting over what another adult is eating. but because there are the kids, you should be guiding what they're eating and making sure that they're getting enough nutrition and not eating too much sugar. You know what this question is giving for me? It's giving my wife divorced me over a pile of dirty dishes in the sink and I have no idea what's going on. You know what I mean? Like, this is a question about sweets, but to me, it's like really, it's about a lot more.

Like, there's a lot hiding under this pile of donuts and candy in the kitchen. Unearth it. You know? Go. Like, okay, so what catches me here is the phrase she refuses, like she refuses to alter how much candy she brings into the home. Like, that's a pretty strong response, especially if you have children. Also, it sounds a little bit passive aggressive that she continues to bring even though he said. That's exactly what I'm saying.

You know what I mean? Like, I'm assuming this person knows that like donuts and candy at every single meal is a bad idea, right? So like there's- It's like she's doing it to spite him. Exactly. So I'm wondering, like, how are these conversations going? This is like not value neutral. This candy signifies something, is what I'm guessing.

And you need to get underneath the why is what is my advice. Is this more about control? This is the control episode. Yeah. One thing is that like every parent knows that like you can't just tell kids to eat vegetables and fruits, right? You just can't tell them that. It has to be a whole lifestyle.

You have to have it readily available. You have to have it cut and ready for them. And they say no the first time. Then you have to reintroduce it, keep feeding to it. We have a whole episode on this, how to get it, your kids eat veggies, right? And what was the bottom line on that? Do y'all remember? Don't get discouraged. If they don't like it the first time, kids need a lot more introduction than you think they need. It's like at least 10 tries of a food. Flavor conditioning, that's where you pair a new food

with foods that they already like. For example, pairing carrots with a sauce that they already like, grading it into a muffin in the morning, trying a lot of different combinations so that they associate the new food with a food that they already like. Get them when they're hungry. There's a lot of good studies about that. Like when you get them right back. after school or after daycare, they're a lot more likely to reach for those carrots or the cucumber or the, you know, celery. And then getting kids involved in prep, getting your wife involved in prep. Like if you're all making a meal together, they're a lot more likely to be excited about those

tomatoes that they chop themselves, that broccoli that they chop themselves, things like that. Maybe that's something that you can all work on. I love those tips. And actually I was like thinking in my mind of like, oh, yeah, I got to like make that little vegetable tray to have ready for Gus when he comes home from school when he's like super duper hungry and like we'll literally eat anything. So good reminder. The other thing too is like to reassign value to like the sweets. Like maybe maybe your wife really does think of sweets as like a really big treat or a ward. And like with kids, one of the things that I mean, I personally do is

try to like offer other treats instead of actual sweets like a new book or like a trip to the library or you know, literally anything else. Stickers. Exactly. I think I would just remember too as the letter writer, even if you and your wife split up, there would be two separate houses, most likely, and your wife would be given them sweets and you'd be given them vegetables and fruits, right? So you have to figure this out either way. And I think, like, try to find a way to make fruits and vegetables appealing so that your kids consider reaching for that instead of a piece of candy. And I know that that sounds impossible, but show them the best of what the farmer's market or, you know, your fruit and vegetable vendor has to offer. Like, think about what's

in season, taste a bit of it first yourself. Show them how amazing fruits and veggies can be. All right, that's our show. Do you have a tricky question about relationships or social etiquette or work culture or something else, send it to us at npr.org slash dear life kit. This episode of LifeKit was produced by Sylvie Douglas. Our digital editor is Malika Grieb, and our visuals editor is C.J. Rican, Megan Cain is our senior supervising editor, and Lauren Gonzalez is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagle, Claire Marie Schneider, Margaret Serino,

and Lenin Sherburn. Engineering support comes from Tiffany Vedda Castro. I'm Mariel Segarra. Thanks for listening.