NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast - Egg Prices, Greenwashing, and Smarter Ways to Invest

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

Learn what’s causing egg prices to rise so dramatically, then explore ethical investing and how to manage savings wisely. Are ESG investments really as ethical as they claim to be? What’s the smartest way to put extra savings to work? Hosts Sean Pyles and Elizabeth Ayoola discuss ethical investing and savings strategies to help you make informed financial decisions. They begin with a discussion of the rising cost of eggs with NerdWallet senior news writer Anna Helhoski, who explores the surprising reasons behind skyrocketing prices. They break down how the ongoing avian flu crisis, supply chain disruptions, and shifting farming regulations are affecting egg availability and pricing, as well as why some cage-free eggs are now cheaper than conventional ones and what consumers can do to save on groceries. Then, Smart Money listener Maddie joins Sean and Elizabeth to discuss how to balance savings and investments. They cover how much to keep in a high-yield savings account, whether investing is a good alternative to paying off student loans, and how to plan for future financial goals like college savings. User NerdWallet’s free calculator to understand how much life insurance you need: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/insurance/how-much-life-insurance-do-i-need  In their conversation, the Nerds discuss: ethical investing, ESG investing, socially responsible investing, greenwashing in investing, best ESG funds, how to invest ethically, socially conscious investing, investment funds for social good, sustainable investing, high-yield savings, savings vs investing, financial security, best high-yield savings accounts, student loans vs investing, public service loan forgiveness, financial literacy, emergency fund, how much to keep in savings, Roth IRA vs 529, college savings plans, best 529 accounts, investing for the future, financial independence, socially responsible funds, investment strategies, passive investing, long-term investing, financial planning, personal finance tips, how to manage savings, how to start investing. To send the Nerds your money questions, call or text the Nerd hotline at 901-730-6373 or email [e-mail]. Like what you hear? Please leave us a review and tell a friend.

Elizabeth, do you know where your money is invested? I do, Sean. I pay attention to where my money is going and how it's being used. And I try to make sure it aligns with my personal values. Well, as you know, that's called ethical investing. And today we're going to explain to a listener how it works and how to know that your money isn't going toward companies and activities that you don't want to support. Welcome to NerdWallet's Smart Money podcast, where you send us your money questions and we answer them with the help of our

genius nerds. I'm Sean Piles. And I'm Elizabeth Ayola. This episode, we're talking about ethical investing and what to do with excess savings. But but first our weekly money news roundup where we break down the latest in the world of finance to help you be smarter with your money. Try not to be shell shocked, Elizabeth, but egg prices have cracked past records and now stand at the all-time highest average ever, $4.95 for a dozen large grade A eggs. Ouch. That hurts almost as bad as these exasperating puns, Sean. And yes, I'm egging you and these puns on

because that's what a supportive co-host does. Thank you so much. Here's another wild stat. The cost of a dozen increased 15% from December to January. It's up for the year too. In January 2024, eggs were $2.52 on average, which means the price of a dozen has nearly doubled since then.

I know all too well. Eggs are a staple in my refrigerator, so I've been experiencing the hike in real time. For those wondering the why of it all, there are a few factors at play, but the key driver is the ongoing H5N1 or avian flu crisis. Now in the last three months of 2024, more than 20 million egg-laying chickens in the U.S. died due to bird flu, including cold birds. To find out how we got here and what's being done to battle the avian flu and the prices you pay at the store, we have our news colleague, Anna Hojkowski,

here to talk us through it. Hey, Anna. Glad to be here, although I don't have great news to share because if you think eggs are spendy now, just wait. The Department of Agriculture expects prices to increase another 20% in 2025. No, that's not the news any of us is hoping to hear. Yeah, I heard that Waffle House added a 50 cents per egg surcharge to customers' bills.

Right, prices aren't just high at the grocery store. Restaurants who buy their eggs at wholesale rates are seeing their costs skyrocket too. It's not just the scramble you order at brunch, it's anything that needs to be made with eggs like baked goods, pasta, my protein shakes. Exactly. And meanwhile, consumers are already seeing more than price increases on the shelves. Grocers like Costco, Trader Joe's, and Kroger are even limiting how many cartons of eggs can be purchased at one time. I have a feeling we'll see other purveyors limiting egg sales. And here in New York City, there is one corner store that's selling Lucy eggs

that is a trio of eggs rather than a dozen. That's one way to meet customers where they are. But the avian flu has been going on for a while, right? So why are eggs getting more expensive now? You're right. Bird flu isn't new and it's impacted egg costs since 2022. The previous high for a dozen eggs was 482.82 in January 2023. Prices have dropped since then, before steadily creeping up over the last year. The big spike was, as you mentioned, quite recent. So what's happening now is bird flu is spreading at some of the worst rates we've seen. We've lost more hens in the last five months than

in all of 2022. It's bad out there. All of this means that there are more chickens being depopulated and fewer eggs coming to market. So it's your basic supply and demand issue and we are short in supply of eggs. Exactly. And bird flu is hitting every single state. Data from the Centers for Disease Control in January showed more than 1,500 outbreaks since January 2022. And more than 162 million birds of all kinds have been affected. That's a lot of birds. So, Ana, is it impacting all types of chicken eggs?

Yeah, that's a good question. Without getting too much in the weeds, there are different types of eggs and they're priced differently based on grading, location, and whether or not they're organic. So your conventional white egg comes from caged chickens, and those are commodity eggs. When we talk about average egg prices, those are commodity eggs. And anything that's not a conventional egg is considered? A specialty egg. The next level up are cage-free eggs, and that doesn't mean chickens are running around

outside, they're still inside, but they can stretch their wings and walk around. Then you have free-range eggs, which are laid by hens who are outside and have a bit of a larger space to move. And then pasture-raised eggs are laid by hens who roam even more freely. Those are likely to be your most expensive eggs.

This is a weird thing that I've seen recently. Some cage-free eggs on the shelves are actually cheaper than conventional eggs. This is a weird thing that I've seen recently. Some cage-free eggs on the shelves are actually cheaper than conventional eggs. Yeah, that is happening in some places, and it seems strange, but it actually makes sense. Conventional eggs are factory farmed in massive plants, and that's a far cry from the bucolic hen houses that we'd all like to imagine our eggs coming from. So when a single hen gets sick in one of these plants, it threatens far more chickens than in cage-free or free-range or pasture-range farms. That's not to say specialty egg-laying chickens are insulated from avian flu. In fact, chickens

that produce specialty eggs are actually more susceptible to the disease because they're in direct contact with other birds and potentially outside wildlife. The difference is those farms are much smaller, so fewer birds overall are impacted. Without getting too graphic here, what happens when bird flu is discovered amongst a flock? Well, farms are testing chickens regularly, and when H5N1 is found, those chickens are culled or depopulated within 24 hours, which are nicer sounding ways to say selectively killed. I won't go into what that actually entails because this is a family show. Thank you.

You got it. Sounds so bad for the chickens. But what happens to the farms? That's a lot of loss. Well when birds need to be killed due to disease, poultry producers are compensated by the federal government. The USDA says that policy is critical to incentivize farms to report outbreaks and then reduce spreading. The USDA doesn't pay for the birds that die from the flu itself

though, just the hens that are culled. But culling hasn't fully worked to slow the spread, right? I saw the Trump administration is planning another approach. Yeah, the National Economic Council and the USDA are planning to use, quote, enhanced biosecurity measures and medication, end quote, to control the spread. There's also conditional approval by the USDA for an avian flu vaccine, which is generally backed by the poultry and dairy industry. I'm curious if the Trump administration's federal workforce changes are impacting these efforts.

So, in the midst of shrinking the size of the federal government workforce, the U.S. Department of Agriculture accidentally fired multiple employees who were working on response to the avian flu outbreak. Last week, the USDA said it was able to rehire those workers. And the mass layoffs at the Food and Drug Administration's Food Division also prompted the Food Safety Chief, Jim Jones, to resign and protest. For those who don't know,

the FDA investigates foodborne illness outbreaks as well as other food inspections. That seems concerning for food safety, especially while the bird flu is ongoing. Yeah, it's not an ideal situation. One thing I'm wondering is what happens to the eggs that have already been laid and sent to the market if bird flu is later discovered in a flock?

So that leads to recalls. And when a recall happens, then you've got bare shelves. And higher prices, which is why we always recommend comparison shopping types of eggs as well as where you're buying them from. Well, Ana, thank you for that excellent rundown. No problem, Sean. Up next, we answer a listener's question about ethical investing. that excellent rundown. way to fund a home renovation. Whatever your money question, leave us a voicemail or text us on the nerd hotline at 901-730-6373. That's 901-730-NERD or email us at podcast at nerdwallet.com.

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Hi, I'm happy to be here. So before we get into the substance of our conversation, I want to remind you that everything we're going to talk about is just for educational and entertainment purposes. And while I may be a certified financial planner professional, I am not your CFP. Got it? Understood. Perfect. Let's start by hearing a little bit about your finances. Can you describe how you manage your household finances?

Like what's been good, what has been challenging? I would say the last 10 years of my life have definitely been marked by some pretty severe financial anxiety. I think I've always had financial anxiety and felt sort of financially insecure. I think my strategy was avoidance. Last semester I taught a financial literacy course for the first time in a while. And now that I am a little older and have a family, I was sort of able to engage more with the material

and learn alongside my students and realize that I really could be doing better. So basically, I have a decent amount in student loans and I also have money in savings. And so my question is, do I try to invest that money or do I try to hold it just in case? I mean, student loans, as we know, are currently sort of in limbo.

So you said that you feel like you can be doing better. In what areas specifically do you feel like you have room for improvement? I would love to save for my son's college. I don't know if that means a 529 or a Roth or just setting some money aside. And my husband and I do not currently have life insurance, so I think I'm interested in that as well. Definitely doing some investing, but I'm not really sure what that looks like, especially because I try to live out my values in every way that I can.

While recognizing that there is no ethical consumption, I do try to shop at thrift stores and buy local when I can. I have some kind of nitty-gritty questions for you. So first off, how much do you and your husband earn? What's your annual household salary, if you could ballpark it? I would say just under 100,000. Okay, between both of you.

Yes. And you said you have a decent amount in savings. How much do you have? We have about 60K in savings. My husband and I were definitely savers, and we are very cautious with how we spend our money, and we approach money the same way, which is really lucky. While we have had that mindset,

neither of us really came from money, and so we didn't have a lot of savings to begin with, but we got very lucky, and you might not think that this is lucky, but we bought three houses in three years. Wow. That is lucky. It sounds a little chaotic too.

It was chaotic, and there were capital gains tax involved because we did like buy and sell and then buy and sell and buy and sell or it would no we just bought the third one. Basically it was in Durham, North Carolina and the market was crazy and we were just extremely lucky to be in that place in that time and profit off of these investments so quickly. So we honestly thought of that as winning the lottery. And because I have the student loan debt, we just held onto it in a savings account. I just barely switched it over

to a high yield savings account so that money can grow a little bit while we wait to make these decisions. However, now that I am teaching this class, I do want to start taking some action and not just have a lump of money sitting in savings. Well, sometimes having a lump of money and savings is a great thing to have just sitting there, not being, you know, put to use, just being there as savings. So that's good that you have that and congratulations on what you've been able to do with the money you got from your housing situations.

But I want to focus a little more on your debt. So you mentioned that you only have student loan debt, is that correct? Yes, and we have a mortgage from our current house, but we are really good about paying off our credit cards every month. So it's just the student loans and our mortgage right now. And do you know what the current balance is of your all of your loans? My student loans are now at $78,000. They were at $67,000 under Biden's SAVE Act, but

because that got held up in federal courts, interest has no longer been paused. So I have $67,000 principal and the rest in interest. So 11,000 in interest then the mortgage is about 160,000 left So you mentioned that you are in public service loan forgiveness and that's a program we can get into that in a little bit But you generally have to be in it for 10 years before your student loans are forgiven How many years do you have under your belt? I do have 10 years in education, but three were working as a substitute, and those years would count towards my public service loan forgiveness, but I was in graduate school at the time, so my loans were in forbearance.

Well first of all, Maddie, I want to say that you're very brave, and you're doing a great job. Oh, thanks. And you're on the right track. I think being cognizant of what your blocks are when it comes to money and being aware of where you need to improve are like great steps. So with that said, my question for you right now is what is your relationship with money? I am really enjoying learning more. That's how I found your podcast. I love teaching this class, financial literacy, because it feels like I'm giving kids secrets

and I get to tell them all of the mistakes I made and hope that they don't make the same ones. So I know I'm really annoying my husband because I'm insisting that we start taking some action. And all of the anxiety and the guilt are sort of now being buried under my excitement to just do better and take action and move forward. I'm interpreting your desire to take action

and improve your finances as a way to work through that guilt and anxiety that you have. For sure, yes. And that's awesome. And on that note, we are going to answer some of your questions, Maddie, through that guilt and anxiety that you have. We are going to answer some of your questions, Maddie, to hopefully help you get on the right path and make your own decisions that's best for you and your family. Please tell us what is your first question.

I want to start with asking about ethical investing. As I'm thinking about growing my wealth and making decisions with this lump of money I have in the bank, I really do want to make decisions that align with my values. When I was teaching financial literacy last semester, I did an activity. It's called a Socratic Smackdown. You take a topic and you divide the class into four groups, and they debate from different perspectives on that topic. The topic this time was socially responsible investing. I did not know a lot about socially responsible investing when I started this smackdown with the kids, but through their research and through their arguments,

I learned a ton. And I think my question is, number one, is it worthwhile? Is it just greenwashing? Number two, is there such a thing as ethical investing? And number three, in late stage capitalism, is there a point investing ethically or should I just be looking out for myself? Oh, those are some heavy questions. Elizabeth, I know you wrote about investing for many

years. Do you want to take on ESG generally, which stands for environmental, social, and government investing, sometimes also called socially responsible investing? They're basically synonymous. Yeah. So for listeners who are maybe unaware of what it is, essentially it's just about investing in companies that align with your personal and your ethical beliefs. So for example, maybe you don't want to invest in companies that contribute to the military industrial complex, or you don't want to contribute to companies that have a history of polluting the environment. Those are examples of ESG that you might be pulled to. So probably the easiest way to invest when it comes to ESG

is to open a robo advisor account and then invest in an ESG fund. But before we go into that, to your point, Maddie, I think it really depends on your values to say whether it's worthwhile to do ESG investing. Yes, you're right. Some companies do greenwash and nothing is 100%. It kind of makes me think you guys can throw tomatoes at me if you think this is a bad analogy. But it's just like people who are like, oh, there's no point of trying to save the planet because what's my little contribution going to do? Right. And while it does require a lot of people to contribute to make a huge impact, it doesn't mean that your contribution is zero. Or that any kind of investing is a negative thing to do to the planet or the world.

You just have to do your due diligence and there is a certain amount of greenwashing that can happen in ESG funds. For example, some companies in ESG funds have been found to invest in bonds from fossil fuel companies, but you can just look at different funds to invest in. You would probably invest in an exchange traded fund,

most likely if you're doing ESG investing. And you can look at what companies make up that fund. If you see, oh, here's a company that I don't agree with ethically, I don't wanna invest in this fund, you can search elsewhere and find a different fund that aligns more closely with your values. So I think my follow-up question is,

is this more of a DIY endeavor? Am I the one that's going to have to be managing these funds as well as teaching freshmen and potty training my toddler? I would say no, not necessarily. Elizabeth mentioned a robo advisor fund, which automates investing for you. So you can set up one of these accounts. It's very easy to do so. You can automate monthly deposits into this account and you can have the fund that you selected before having done your due diligence that one time and made sure, okay I agree with companies that are in this fund and then your investments are just going in the background. So it might take a bit of homework on the front end like you would

do if you're shopping around for a new credit card or buying a new car. You wanna make sure you're doing it right at the beginning so that things can be fine as you're using them on a day-to-day basis. Now that's a good analogy. Yeah, and I will not be throwing tomatoes for your answer either, Elizabeth.

I really love that. And as someone who cares about the climate and our planet, I preach that all the time. So you're totally right. Just because the world is how it is doesn't mean I can't still try. Exactly. There you go. Yeah. Maddie, you also talked about your savings and having all of your money in a high-yield savings account.

How are you managing the amount that you have just in that high-yield savings account? Is that something that you're drawing on or is it strictly savings that you're not touching? Are you feeling okay about having all of that money in the high-yield savings account? I do keep all of our money in our savings account to try to get the best return because our current high-yield savings account is at 3.8% and the checking account is at 0.5%, which is still better than we were getting at our other bank. Now we pay most of our bills with our credit card.

We have one for hotel points and one for airline points because my husband travels a lot and my family lives out of state. So I direct deposit all of our bills go on our credit cards to maximize our points or I just bill pay them out of the savings account where I can so I can keep a minimum amount in our checking and keep the majority in savings. Are you able to withdraw cash from that emergency fund in your Highland Savings account if needed? Yes, I am. I actually, it's through SoFi, so I don't know if you know anything about them, but

I think I can just go to an ATM. Yeah, they're a popular online bank, essentially. So I'm glad to hear that you have access to cash in the High Load Savings account because some accounts will not just send you a debit card. And what I worry about with some people is if they have all of their money or the vast majority of it in a High Load Savings account, and they are in some cash crunch where they need hard cash, they might have a hard time getting it or they might need to wait for a transfer to go through before they can withdraw cash, and that is just not a fun situation to be

in. But it seems like you aren't dealing with that, so good to hear. Right. And if we did ever, we have a high allowance, is that what it is? Or a high credit limit on our cards. So if we had something like that, we could probably charge on our credit card and eventually pay it off Something else I want to talk with you about is how you think about the purpose of that amount that you have in savings It seems like it's somewhere between an emergency fund and a daily spending fund

It definitely is I mean we did have more in savings and then I Was a stay-at-home mom for a year because we moved when I was seven months pregnant. I gave birth at an awkward time in the school year. It just made sense to stay home for a year and move into our house and raise our kid. And because of that we spent a lot of our money in savings. It was almost like we won the lottery in selling this house in Durham. We bought a much more affordable home in Cleveland, and we used our savings to allow me to stay home with our kid. So I think I'm very protective of the amount that we currently have in savings because

I watched it sort of whittle down. For our emergency fund, our expenses every month are between $7,000 and $9,000, depending on the month, depending on things in our house breaking. So our emergency fund, we've calculated that we'd be comfortable with having like $24,000. What do you guys think about that? I heard Elizabeth sigh. No, that wasn't like, okay, yeah, good job. Okay, good.

There are various rules of thumb around emergency funds. For households where you're both working, you're a two income household, a lot of financial advisors will say that you can get away with having a three month emergency fund. So that would be around $27,000 going on the high end. I think that's a conservative way to approach it. But if you were to maybe step away from the workforce to have a second kid, I think it

might be a good idea to beef that up to closer to six months. Obviously, that would take time to do, but that's the more conservative, safest way to do it. But for where you are right now, you are doing great. And that means that you have plenty of extra cash in that fund that may not need to be earmarked for emergency savings. And the reason I bring this up is because I find it personally really helpful to have different savings buckets

where I have a number of different savings accounts at my bank where I have my high-level savings account and my emergency fund for different purposes. So I do have that emergency fund. I have one that is for home improvements. I have a fund that is for fun money. That way you know exactly how much you have for each purpose and you're not being too worried about,

oh, am I draining too much from the emergency fund? You know that amount of cash is sitting there with its purpose. You're not touching it just to pay your bills. But you do have another account that's maybe for groceries or regular monthly expenses that you can pull from when you're paying off your credit card. Yeah, I really love that approach. My bank does offer that option. They call them vaults. So I like the idea of moving what we need for emergencies and moving what

we need to pay our bills because we direct deposit into that savings account as well. I think that sounds like a great idea. So you said that you, which is great on you for calculating around how much you guys need in your emergency savings fund. So did you have any thoughts about what you wanted to do with the other half? If you did, let's say put aside that 27,000

or six months worth. With the remaining amount, I would like to set money aside for my son's college fund and possibly another kid's college fund. And I do want to start investing. The interest rate on my student loans is around 5%, a little higher than 5%. I'm interested in sort of, okay, if I have to wait out this public service loan forgiveness program, and I don't know what the future of that looks like because it's very political, if I have to

wait that out, I might as well invest at a rate that could cancel out the interest I'm accruing on my loans. What do you guys think about that? Well, returns are never guaranteed. There's always risk when it comes to investing. But over time, history has shown that investing your money is a great way to stay ahead of inflation and you may be able to get a greater return than what your current interest rate is.

But there are a lot of factors that go into that. I wanna talk about something that might have a little bit more certainty to it, which would be how you save for your kids' futures. So do you have a 529 or how are you weighing what to do in terms of that type of savings? We do not yet have a 529. I believe that we have been given money from a couple family members to

start an account for him, but the past few years have been a little chaotic and we haven't gotten around to it. So we would want to take some of the money from our savings and put it into a 529 or a Roth and contribute regularly. So it is just growing reliably. So we have enough money to sort of offset the costs of college with acknowledging that it will probably be more expensive than we're able to save for. At least you'll be able to help in some way. Yeah, in some way.

And that leads into another question that I was having as I was looking into the accounts. I read some articles about how much I should be putting in to an account to save for college. And I just don't know what my goal should be. Yeah, that is really individual. It can depend on where you think your kid or kids might be going to school.

So I would poke around with some calculators. There are five to nine calculators online that you can experiment with and get a feel for, okay, if I want to have X amount of money and X number of years, here's what I have to start saving today and on a regular basis. You mentioned maybe using a Roth or a 529. In general, a 529 is the best, most tax-advantaged way to save for college. Depending on which state you're in or the rules of Ohio where you live, you might be able to make a tax deductible contribution to that account. The earnings in 529s grow tax free when used for qualified expenses, and they also provide

a lot of flexibility because you can use them not just for traditional four-year college. You could use them for even a K through 12 schools in some cases, and you can use them not just for traditional four-year college, you could use them for even a K through 12 schools in some cases, and you can also use them for trade schools. And unused funds can be rolled into Roth IRAs. There are certain requirements for that. In that case, you could partially jumpstart your kids retirement savings with this 529 account. So they just allow people a great way to save. And I think that because they're a little bit more efficient tax wise than Roth's, I encourage a lot of folks to look into them. And I will just give a personal anecdote.

And that is I have a son and I was also in your position. Like, I'm not sure whether to open a 529 or whether I should open a Roth. So I actually started out with a Roth. And then when the Secure Act 2.0 was passed and it was possible to roll unused funds, as Sean said, into a Roth, I leaped at the opportunity to open a 529 as well. So all that to say, it is also possible to have both.

It doesn't have to be either or. That is great. I think I will definitely go the 529 route, especially if I know that it can be rolled over. If, you know, I'm not sure the educational path my kid will decide to take, go the 529 route, especially if I know that it can be rolled over. If, you know, I'm not sure the educational path my kid will decide to take. So it's nice that it could be rolled over and used for stuff outside of education, too. Well, Maddie, thank you so much for coming on the show and talking with us today.

Thank you, nerds. You're the best. And that's all we have for this episode. Remember, listener, that we are here to answer your money questions. So turn to the nerds and call or text us at 901-730-6373. That's 901-730-NERD. You can also email us at podcastatnerdwallet.com. You can follow the show on your favorite podcast app, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and iHeartRadio to automatically download new episodes. This episode was produced by Sean and Tess Vigeland. Hilary Georgie helped with editing. Megan Mauer mixed our audio. And a big thank you to NerdWallet's editors

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