NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast - Invest or Pay Down Debt? Plus How to Save Big This Holiday Season

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

Learn how to handle holiday shopping in an increasingly expensive spending environment. Plus, lightning round insights around debt, investing, and savings goals.  How should you prepare for holiday shopping when tariffs and inflation are leading to higher prices? When should you prioritize paying off your mortgage versus investing in the market? Hosts Sean Pyles and Elizabeth Ayoola welcome back senior news writer Anna Helhoski  and data writer Erin El Issa to dig into holiday shopping trends, including ways you can save on gifts and travel while reducing stress.  Then, Sean and Elizabeth jump into a lightning round to answer a number of listener questions. They share insights on how to weigh the opportunity cost of paying off a mortgage versus investing in the market. They also look into how to better understand what your robo advisor may be investing in. And they talk about some of the smartest places to stash cash — like high-yield savings accounts or CDs — if you are planning for a short term goal.   NerdWallet Holiday shopping report: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/studies/holiday-spending-report  Best CD rates: https://www.nerdwallet.com/best/banking/cd-rates  Best High-Yield Savings Accounts: https://www.nerdwallet.com/best/banking/high-yield-online-savings-accounts  Want us to review your budget? Fill out this form — completely anonymously if you want — and we might feature your budget in a future segment! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScK53yAufsc4v5UpghhVfxtk2MoyooHzlSIRBnRxUPl3hKBig/viewform?usp=header In their conversation, the Nerds discuss: holiday budgeting, holiday spending tips, how to budget for the holidays, holiday shopping debt, how to avoid holiday debt, NerdWallet holiday spending report, tariffs and inflation 2025, saving for holiday gifts, managing holiday travel costs, holiday money stress, how to save for holiday travel, pay off mortgage or invest, paying off mortgage vs investing, opportunity cost investing, ETFs explained, SPY ETF, XLK ETF, Vanguard Digital Advisor, collective investment trust, CIT vs ETF, Vanguard institutional trust, best high-yield savings accounts, CD ladder strategy, best CD rates, how to save for a house down payment, short-term investing options, budgeting app, NerdWallet app, personal finance podcast, Smart Money podcast, holiday money advice, how to manage debt during the holidays. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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and continuous monitoring for our personal info on the dark web? Uh, I'm looking into it. Stress less about security. Choose security solutions from TELUS for peace of mind at home and online. Visit tellus.com slash total security to learn more. Conditions apply. We talk a lot about budgeting on smart money, and if there's one time of year you really want to budget for, it's the holiday season. Do you have your Santa savings lined up yet?

Welcome to Nerd Wallet'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. Later this episode, we'll have a lightning round of your questions, and those questions include whether to pay off. mortgage or use that money to invest and an explanation of ETFs. But first of all, our weekly money news roundup, where we break down the latest in the world of finance to help you be smarter with your money. Our news colleague, Anna Hill Hoski, is back, back to talk holiday spending. Yeah, I don't really know how to happen, but I guess holiday shopping season is upon us

once again. While that's pretty horrifying to me, there's a much scarier thing happening right now. This year's coming with a big challenge that shoppers weren't facing last year, and that's tariffs pushing up prices on top of some persistent inflation that we've been seeing for a while now. Now, there was a new report from the St. Louis Bed that showed the prices for things like furniture, musical instruments, jewelry, household goods, and all kinds of vehicles have already increased due to pass-through effects of tariffs. And that all means that shoppers may see higher prices across a variety of products this holiday season. Now, NerdWallet's 2025 holiday spending report shows that people are already feeling the squeeze, and it's also changing their shopping choices.

So we have Erin Elisa, a data writer here at NerdWallet, to talk more about the findings of that study. Erin, welcome back to Smart Money. Thanks for having me back. Every year we talk about holiday spending stress, but this year's data feels a little bit different. What surprised you the most? Americans are very consistent when it comes to the holidays. We do this report every year, and we rarely see much change in the percentage of Americans. that planned to buy gifts and the percentage that plan to travel. That said, this year we're seeing

holiday shoppers plan to spend $182 more on gifts this year compared to last year, and that's about a 20% jump. What's behind that increase? So the data doesn't tell us specifically how holiday shoppers arrived at their estimated gift cost numbers, but it does tell us that about two-thirds are concerned about tariffs impacting their holiday shopping. So it's likely they're baking some extra cash into that budget to cover potential price hikes. So nearly one in five holiday shoppers say they don't even know how much to budget for gifts this year because of those price increases. And how does that uncertainty around tariffs and their impact on prices affecting people's spending decisions? So most holiday shoppers expect tariffs to impact their shopping.

So for some, it's going to impact when they shop. Twenty-eight percent of holiday shopers this year say they'd shop earlier than usual to avoid potential product shortages caused by those tariffs. For others, it could impact who they buy for and how much they spend. So 24% of holiday shoppers say they'd buy fewer gifts this year, and one in five say they'd buy for fewer people this year due to the price increases. Now, let's talk about what happens after the shopping, and that's debt. Now, the report found that a third of shoppers still haven't paid off their 2024 holiday debt.

And then the study also found that 15% of shoppers plan to spend more than they can comfortably afford. It does seem like shoppers can get into a bad cycle that's really hard to stop. One in 10 holiday shoppers this year actually say they're in debt from multiple years of buying holiday gifts. So, you know, gift giving is a want, not a need, but depending on your traditions with your loved ones, it may feel compulsory. Or you may just love giving gifts, but you're digging yourself into a hole in the meantime. That causes a lot of stress and more than half of shoppers according to the reports, say that holiday spending does stress them out. What's your advice for minimizing that kind of stress?

So I don't know about you, but for me, the holiday season is fun. It's supposed to be fun. Yeah. You get time with loved ones, good food, and gifts if that's part of your tradition. So if it's not fun, it's probably time to change things up. According to the survey, nearly two-thirds of Americans say they'd like their family's holiday traditions to be less focused around gifts than they are. But just one in five of these shoppers say that they've discussed or planned to discuss limiting holiday gift spending this year with their loved ones.

So if you're feeling stressed about holiday spending, you probably aren't alone even in your circle of friends and family. So being the brave one and saying something, it could be a great step in the right direction. There's no reason to continue on with holiday traditions if it's hurting you or your loved ones financially. Right. You can't change your family necessarily, but you could change your gift-giving dynamics. So between tariffs, buy now, pay later, debt, and rising costs, are we seeing any signs that shoppers are changing their approach about holiday spending? So in addition to the changes and approach we discussed earlier with tariffs, like buying fewer gifts or gifts for fewer people, some holiday shoppers are opting to buy more experience gifts to avoid the tariff-related price hikes on products. And some say they'll give smaller holiday tips and bonuses. to service and care workers this holiday season to save money. And what are shoppers planning to do to keep their costs down? What trends are emerging?

Sales days are always a big one. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday, we always see those on the list. But new to our survey this year is using AI to plan holiday gift shopping. So 14% of 2025 holiday shoppers plan to use tools like chat GPT to do that planning. I guess for your hard to shop for people, that might be a little bit more helpful than just using your own brain, but we should always remember to use our own brains. Now, shopping for gifts aren't the only cost stresses around the holidays. The study is also looking at travel and found that Americans are planning to spend over $300 billion on flights and hotels. Now, similar to

holiday shopping debt, the report found that nearly a third of holiday travelers are still paying off that 2024 travel debt. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? For the purposes of this report, we count flights and hotel stays during the holiday season as holiday travel. So those Americans are still paying off transportation and lodging, but they could also be shouldering other holiday costs from last year, travel-related or otherwise. And like with the 10% of holiday shoppers that have debt for multiple years, 17% of holiday travelers say they have holiday travel debt for multiple years. What are some of the ways that people can save?

The report found that 91% of travelers are trying to take steps to do so. So some are pretty basic. So flying on a non-peak day is a big one. if work and school schedules allow, you could opt to stay with loved ones instead of getting a pricey hotel room with those holiday rates. But a big one we recommend is using your travel points and miles if you have them. Some people want to kind of hoard them and save them up for the perfect trip. But since points and miles can lose their value over time, it's probably best to use them when you can if you don't have another trip coming up really soon. All right, Aaron, we covered a lot

of ground today. What's one takeaway that you hope listeners remember from this year's report? I say it every year. And I will continue to say it until no one has lingering holiday credit card debt. Save year round for your holiday expenses. It happens the same time every year. Use the preceding 11 months to prepare for the costs. Thank you so much, Erin. Thanks, Anna. And thank you, Anna. Also, a friendly reminder that you can set up and manage your budget in the free Nord Wallet app for Android and iOS. You can use it to track your finances and current expenses across key categories in one place, along with a lot of other features to help you take control of your spend. We'll include a link to download it in today's episode description. Up next, we've got a lightning round of your questions. But before we get into that, a reminder to send us more than we want more and more and more questions. Maybe you want to put your holiday spending on a new travel credit card to earn a sign-up bonus,

but you want help finding the right one. Or you need some help wrapping up the financial goals you set at the beginning of the year. 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 nerdwollet.com. In a moment, this episode's money question. Stay with us. We're back and answering your money questions to help you make smarter financial decisions. This episode's question comes from several listeners because guess what?

We're doing a lightning round. Cue the cheers. Come on, Sean. Woo! Is that enough cheering? Yeah, good job. All right. During lightning rounds, we answer several questions from our listeners. This time around, Elizabeth and I are taking them on ourselves. And I'll kick us off with the first question. I'm from a listener's text. Here we go. I'm a 33-year-old single male living in Boulder County, Colorado. I'm a seasonal worker, ski instruction, and work various other jobs in the off-season. I've been trying to get year-round work in my industry, but for now, I'm not sure whether it's going to happen anytime soon. This means my income is pretty spontaneous. It can range from 40,000 to 80,000. $1,000 a year. My question is whether it makes sense to focus on paying my mortgage off at a 5.069% interest rate, or use my extra savings to invest in ETFs like SPY and XLK, or maybe a combination of both. I also want to rent out my condo when I'm away for the winters, and I heard that I could write off my mortgage while I'm renting it out. It seems like there are just so many variables. I'm not sure what is the best move to make. Additionally, my mortgage is for approximately $130,000, whereas my property value is roughly,

$270,000. Thanks. First of all, it sounds like the listener has some equity in the home, about $140,000. They also have a decent interest rate of 5.069%, considering current rates are around 5.9% or higher for 30-year fixed mortgages. Now, the listener is relatively young, but we don't know how many years they have left to pay their mortgage off. We don't know the bigger picture for their financial goals either. We also don't know their investing goals and when they need the money. Now, a common financial principle, however, is to compare the guaranteed return of paying off debt to the potential return of investing. And we can use the concept of opportunity cost to answer the question at a high level. Opportunity cost is the potential benefits or

profit you forfeit by choosing one option over another. In this case, it's looking at what the listener would potentially miss out on if they chose paying off the mortgage over investing and vice versa. So as a rule of thumb, if your mortgage rate is less than the expected long-term return of the market, which is an average of about 10% annually for the S&P 500, the opportunity cost of paying off the mortgage and not investing is high. Now, in this case, the listener's mortgage rate is 5.069%, which is less than the expected market returns and they potentially be missing out if they didn't invest. Let's look at the flip side. If the mortgage rate was above the expected long-term return of the market, then the opportunity cost of investing would be

high. It would be safer and potentially more beneficial to just pay down the mortgage. Also, XLK's average rate of return over the past 10 years was over 22%, which easily beats returns from paying the mortgage off early. That does come with more risk, though. And obviously, we can't tell the listener what to invest in, but this is just some context. And on the other hand, paying off a low-rate mortgage is a nice low-risk strategy. Your reward is guaranteed, but the returns are, of course, more modest. The good thing is that the list is that the list can do both, potentially, depending on how much money they have to spare. They could put some extra toward their mortgage and then also put some into the stock market, too. All right, let's zoom

to the second half of the question about renting out their condo while they're away for the winter and riding off their mortgage. You want to answer this, Sean, since you're a landlord? Yes, I can do that. So the listener is partially correct in what they're writing to us about. You can write off mortgage interest as well as property tax and other expenses, but you cannot deduct the principal part of your mortgage payments. Additionally, making your home a rental property isn't just as simple as, like, saying it's a rental property. Our listener would have to check their mortgage terms and see if they are allowed to do this. They would also need a landlord insurance policy and have a properly drafted lease agreement or potentially

hire a property management company. And there's just a lot of work. I think people think they can just flip a switch and become landlords overnight. I say this not to discourage our listener, but also because I want them to be prepared for all that goes into renting out a property. And I'd advise them, too, to speak with a tax professional before moving ahead of this plan because it can get pretty complicated. That does sound complicated. So the listener could benefit from renting out their property and put that extra income towards the mortgage or investing or both. And they could also get tax deductions, but as Sean has outlined, might have to jump through a lot of hoops. Exactly. And I'll add that keeping detailed records of all of your expenses related to your rental property.

can be really, really crucial here, especially because you're probably going to want to hire a CPA to do your taxes for you if you begin to go this route. Okay, well, let's get on to the second question which comes from a listener named Liz who sent us a text. Here it is. When using the Vanguard Digital Advisor, I see it investing in various ETFs,

which I expected, but I also see it investing in things like Vanguard Institutional Total Stock Market Index Trust Unit C. What a mouthful. Yeah. And Vanguard Developed Market Index Trust Unit D. What are those? Thanks, Liz. Liz, high namesake, is using Vanguard Digital Advisor, which is a Robo Advisor to invest.

Now, they're doing their due diligence by checking what the Robo Advisor is putting their money in, and they identified ETS, but have also come across some unfamiliar word salad Vanguard trusts. So let's start by quickly recapping what an ETF is. An exchange traded fund, or ETF, is a basket of stocks or securities that trade on a stock exchange throughout the day, much like an individual stock. The Vanguard Institutional Total Stock Market Index Trust Unit C is a collective trust that aims to track what's called the CRSPUS Total Market Index. That covers nearly 100% of the investable U.S. stock market, large, mid, small, and microcap companies. A CIT is an investment vehicle that pools money from investors to put into a single portfolio. The trust that Susan mentioned is similar to both ETFs and mutual funds as all three can track the investment performance of an index.

It's also similar to a mutual fund because it reports net asset value at the end of the trading day and combines assets from investors into a single fund. Where this Vanguard trust differs from a mutual fund and an ETF is that it's for institutional investors like 401K plans, banks, or trust companies. A benefit of these types of trust is that they sometimes have lower costs, which is pretty nice. Well, Sean, as a CFP, so I want to put your CFP hat on now, do you think this is a good investment choice? My CFP hat is glued to my head, but that doesn't mean that I'm providing this listener or anyone else listening with individual investment advice. Again, I'm not your CFP unless you hire me to be yours. Okay, so the answer is going to be a classic

it depends. The trust, Liz mentioned, is similar to both ETFs and mutual funds as all three can track the investment performance of an index. And so they should give you pretty solid diversification, which is always a plus when investing. As ever, when considering different funds to invest in, you need to think about your overall investment goals, the fees associated with the fund, and whether there are better options out there. But with this fund in particular, like, I'm not mad at it. It seems fine. And honestly, pretty similar to things that I'm invested in in my retirement account. So pretty solid. It got me at the lower fees. So I hope that answers your question, Susan. Yes. All right. We have one more question in the lightning round.

So last but not least, we have question number three, which comes from a listener via email. Hello, I love the pod and realized I started listening way too late in life. Here's my question. I have about 100K that I'm hoping to use as a down payment in about three years. I want to invest it in order to help grow the balance as much as possible. I was thinking about a high-yield savings account, but maybe there's a better option. Not sure this information matters, but in case it does, I'm a post-divorce 55-year-old and hoping to retire in 10 years.

I want to have as big of a down payment as possible, so I'm not stuck with an oversized mortgage in retirement. Thank you for taking the time to read my email. Well, the first thing that sounds out to me is Susan wants to buy a house in three years, so the stock market might not be the best option, as there likely wouldn't be enough time for their money to compound. The market could experience downturns that impact their down payment negatively as well. And since Susan needs the money soon, I don't know that that will work well.

That's right. So for newer listeners out there, it's generally not advisable to invest money that you need within five years due to swings of the stock market. So, Elizabeth, what do you recommend instead? I actually think they're onto something mentioning a high-yield savings account. That's what I would suggest. It sounds ideal since they have a medium-term goal. Susan's money would be liquid, so they could easily tap into it when the home buying process starts.

Now, if they pop that 100K into a high-yield savings account with, let's say, a 3.5% return, and they didn't add a dollar more, they would have around $11,000 in three years. But that interest is variable, and if it dips, so do their returns. Not a huge increase, but it could pay closing costs or buy some new furniture. That's expensive. If you're looking for some options for high-yield savings accounts, NerdWallet has an article, we keep updated, and of course we're going to link it in the episode description. Susan could also consider splitting that money to achieve two different goals simultaneously. They could put part of the money into a high-old savings account for their home emergency fund or for home buying expenses. And the rest could go into a CD ladder. This is a saving strategy to spread a bulk of cash across multiple certificates of deposit with different timeframes to take advantage of higher interest rates. So some money could go toward the down payment, some could go toward another goal like maybe a vacation fund. This would potentially allow Susan to get a higher guaranteed rate of return on a lot of their money

and not have it tied up long term or at the whims of the market. And what's nice with the ACD ladder is that some portion of this money could become available each year depending on your time frame. So just to put some numbers to this, Susan could take maybe 60K of their 100K and do five certificates of deposit, each with a $12,000 initial deposit. The most important thing to do is shop for the best CD rates, so that's really important. NerdWallit has some great roundups that we can link to in the show notes. So check those out as well.

I want to mention that Susan has valid concerns about not wanting to be stuck with an oversized mortgage in retirement. And that makes sense because there are some risks with that. If they are stuck with higher monthly payments and they can really afford, that could negatively impact their cash flow. And a lot of folks in retirement are on fixed incomes. And so they want to make sure they have enough cash to cover everything, given that they aren't earning money the way they used to. And we can't predict where the housing market's going to be in three years, but right now it's still a moderate seller's market. The good news is inventory is higher than it's been in the past five years and competition is easing up. However,

home prices are still high and they're slowly climbing. Boom. In three years, it could flip and become a buyer's market, which would be good for Susan. The last thing I will say is that if Susan has extra money to put towards mortgage payments during their working years, they may consider doing that to reduce the amount that they pay in interest and pay off the loan faster. Another thing that we don't really know about with Susan's situation is how much they have saved for retirement. They're about 10 years out from retirement, most likely, so they might want to consider putting as much as possible into various retirement accounts like an IRA. Going back to what we discussed at the beginning of this lightning round, that might get them

a better return than putting more into a mortgage depending on what the stock market does, of course. How did you find the lightning round, Sean? Was it lightning enough for you? It was lightning quick. Yeah, I think so. I hope it was helpful for our listeners, too. Hopefully so. 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 your questions at 901-730 6373. That's 901-730 NERD. You can also email us at podcast at nerdwollet.com. And we want you to join us next time to hear about how to read your credit report. Follow smart money on your favorite podcast app, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and IHeart radio so that you can automatically download our new episodes. Here's our brief disclaimer. We are not your financial or investment advisors.

This nerdy info is provided for general educational and entertainment purposes and may not apply to your specific circumstances. This episode is produced by Tess Viglin and Anahil Hoski. Hilary Georgi helps with editing. Nick Carysami mixed our audio. A big, big, big, big thank you to NerdWallet's editors for all their help. And with that said, until next time, turn to the nerds. Thank you.