NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast - It's Not Too Late: How to Reset Your Money Habits at 50

Episode Date: July 16, 2026

*The show notes were created with the assistance of AI. They have been reviewed by our editorial team for accuracy and quality.  Can you really overhaul 50 years of money habits — and are the drivers paying the highest prices per gallon actually the ones hurting most from rising gas prices? Host Sean Pyles, CFP© and Elizabeth Ayoola are joined by senior news writer Anna Helhoski and joined by data studies Nerd, Kurt Woock, to unpack why the price on the sign at the gas station doesn't tell the whole story about how gas prices hit your budget. They break down why states like Wyoming, Oklahoma, Montana and Utah saw the biggest jumps in weekly gas spending this year — even though they don't have the highest prices at the pump — and why total spending, not the price per gallon, is what really matters when you're budgeting. Then, Sean and Elizabeth answer a question from a 50-year-old listener named David, who's trying to reset a lifetime of impulse spending and build a real retirement plan on a later timeline. They walk through catch-up contributions for IRAs, 401(k)s and HSAs, why automated savings buckets and an emergency fund matter more than ever at this stage, and how to think through the tradeoffs of claiming Social Security early versus waiting. Gas Costs (Not Just Pump Prices) Hit Some States Harder: https://www.nerdwallet.com/finance/studies/2026-gas-prices-costs Catch-Up Contributions: How They Work and 2026 Limits: https://www.nerdwallet.com/retirement/learn/catch-up-contributions Average Retirement Savings by Age: https://www.nerdwallet.com/retirement/learn/the-average-retirement-savings-by-age-and-why-you-need-more Retirement Calculator: https://www.nerdwallet.com/investing/calculators/retirement-calculator How to Invest With Your HSA — And Why You Should: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/how-to-invest-hsa NerdWallet Wealth Partners, fee-only financial advisors: https://nerdwalletwealthpartners.com/smart Smart Money’s YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/@nerdwalletsmartmoney Subscribe to our podcast's free email newsletter for bonus content and more from our hosts at https://smartmoney-nerdwallet.beehiiv.com/ 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 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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You're faced with a threat That can be anyone The world may have forgotten Peter Parker I'm just a neighbor Friendly neighbor But he hasn't forgotten them Sometimes Spider Man has to do the hard thing That's my responsibility

Talk to Banner I didn't know you could get that big Spider-Man Brand New Day In theaters July 31st Do you think it's possible to change your habits At a fundamental level What about if you've been a little lax

with your money for, say, the past 50 years. This episode, we talk about whether old dogs really can learn new tricks as retirement is fast approaching. 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, we're going to answer a question about how to reset your money habits, but first, our weekly news roundup, where we bring you the latest in the world of finance to help you be smarter with your money. News colleague, Anahil Hoski is back and she's here to talk about what's happening with gas prices. Anna, they're so high.

They are high, but they have also eased from the highs that we saw during the height of the Iran war, but they are starting to rise again. As of recording, the average price per gallon is $3.86, according to AAA. Now, peace between the U.S. and Iran remains tenuous. On July 8th, Trump said that as far as he was concerned, the ceasefire agreement was over. Now, oil markets are sensitive to that uncertainty, which means that gas prices are, too. Now, the conflict with Iran underscores how quickly global events can affect household budgets. But here's the surprising part. The drivers who are likely to feel the most pain aren't actually the ones paying the highest prices per gallon.

Now, here to explain more is my colleague, Kurt Wook, data studies producer here at NERBOL. Kurt, welcome back to Smart Money. Hi, Anna. Glad to be back. Now, you did an analysis that looks beyond the prices labeled on the pump. Why is total gas spending a better measure of consumer impact than the price per gallon? That's a great question. And I'm going to answer it with a quick story. So I live in Chicago, but I spent the July 4th weekend with my sister-in-law's family in southern Indiana.

And on the drive back, we watched those gas prices tick up. The closer we got to the Illinois border. And we filled up near Gary, Indiana, and a ton of cars were there with Illinois plates. And when we were in Chicago, gas prices were like a dollar more expensive per gallon. And that's usually how the story goes, right? People talk about where they saw the craziest highest prices. But that's actually just the start of the story. Think about your credit card bill or your bank statement the last time you bought gas.

You will not see the price of gas anywhere on that. Right. You're just seeing the total amount that you spent. Right. So if we all bought the same amount, let's say five gallons a week, then knowing the price might be all we need to know. But we don't all buy the same amount. That's the missing piece of the puzzle here.

How much people consume? Well, that makes sense. So if gas in my town costs a dollar less than gas, your town, but you buy five gallons per week and I buy 10, who's really winning? Total spending is really what matters to our budgets. So we estimated what that average consumption level looks like in different states by looking at a variety of data. For example, the types of cars you drive and the average fuel efficiency of those cars and

how many highway miles versus city miles people put on. And we ultimately came up with the estimated number of gallons of gas that the average driver buys in each of the 50 states. Okay. Okay. So you have a general idea of how much gas people are buying and you know how much gas costs in each state. Yes. We track the average gas price in each of the 50 states. And I'm going to complicate things just a little bit further. Oh, good. We compared prices in February before gas prices rose to June when they were higher. And guess what? They didn't rise equally.

Right. Of course they didn't. So an example. What do you know about gas prices in California? Well, they're really high. Yes. California, notoriously high gas. prices. The average price per gallon in February was $4.64. And in May, it was all the way up to $6.9.9 per gallon. That is pretty high. Now look at Ohio. Gas cost $2.76 in February. And at the high point in May, it was $4.57. Now, that's a lot of numbers, but this is what that means. In other words, even after oil prices jumped, the price in Ohio was still lower than California's

average before the prices jumped. Now, I get the feeling that you're going to tell me the higher prices are somehow better than the lower prices, but I'm not sure why. Well, prices are definitely much higher in California, and I'm not going to tell you otherwise. But in this specific period of time, the change in price was bigger in Ohio, about $1.80 more per gallon compared to California's $1.45 jump. So if two people in these two states, both buy the same amount of gas per week, the person in California still has a higher overall gas bill, but the person in Ohio is paying more compared to what they were paying before. And now they have to come up with that additional cash to cover the additional cost.

Well, that's a lot of moving parts. So which is better, or in this case, least bad? Yeah, that's probably the best way to frame this, which is least bad. For me, surprise expenses, those are the budget killers. That's why this study matters in the first place, right? Whether you live in a place where prices are really high historically or even historically low, you've hopefully had time to build whatever that reality is into your budget. It's predictable to a certain extent.

And if your budget is already tight, then a sudden rise in expenses can be hard to deal with whatever that price is. So going over your budget because prices rose can force you to make really tough tradeoffs or even take on debt to pay for it. With all those variables in mind, how much gas people consume, what price changes have looked like this year, which seats ended up seeing the biggest increases in gas spending? So our analysis showed that Wyoming, Oklahoma, Montana, and Utah had the biggest increases in weekly gas spending when you compare the prices at the end of June to prices from the end of February. Now, you've mentioned a lot of factors that went into these findings. Which were most responsible for the extra spending?

For these states, at the top, it was a little bit of everything. They don't have the most expensive gas overall, but they did see some of the biggest jumps in prices during this time period. And you'll also notice that these are large rural states. So drivers tend to put on more miles compared to the smaller states or states with particularly dense areas. And then finally, pick up. pickup trucks are really popular in these states, and pickup trucks do not get great gas mileage.

How much did weekly gas spending actually increase in some of those hardest hit states? So this is a pretty broad estimate, but we found about $17 in Utah and Montana, $19 per week in Oklahoma, and $26 in Wyoming. And that's, again, additional spending compared to what they were spending before, not overall spending. And what was the national average? About $12 more per week in gas spending. So you found that weekly average gas spending increased by at least $10. in most states when gas prices were at their highest point. $10 seems like no big deal, but how quickly does it add up for a typical household?

$10 may not seem like much, but remember, that's per driver per week. So if you have two drivers or three drivers even, maybe your household is paying $20 more per week. If you multiply that by the weeks in a year, you're looking at more than $1,000 in extra spending per year if that price holds. And of course, prices have fallen a bit since May, and that does help the budgets, but prices are still higher than they were earlier this year. And don't forget about that other app of the story, that consumption side, right? It's not a smooth chart. If you're going on a summer vacation and taking the car, your consumption is probably

higher during those summer months than it was in January. So we have seen gas prices that have eased from their highs, but we're also starting to see them rise again. And history shows that price bikes tend to recur. What's the biggest thing consumers can do to make themselves less vulnerable the next time oil prices really surge? You know, it could say everyone should go out and buy a sedan. or live within a mile or two of work, but that's just impractical.

That's one size fits all advice and it just doesn't work. Instead, I think what you can do, the best thing you can do, is make sure your financial plan is resilient. You should know ahead of time what happens when you face a sudden expense like a rise in gas prices. Do you have an emergency fund or some other source of cash that you can tap into to cover those costs? The other thing is, how diligent are you with that financial plan when you're making big decisions? For example, if you're buying a new vehicle, are you thinking about that total cost of ownership, which includes fuel efficiency, right, the amount of gas you're planning to buy per week?

That should be a factor. Scoping out the lowest gas prices in your area when you need to fill up might save you a dollar to each time. But the bigger thing that's going to help you is, again, making sure you have that financial plan and then putting it to work. All right, Kurt Wook, thanks again for walking us through that. Thanks. And thank you, Anna. Up next, Elizabeth and I talk about how to really change your financial habits. But before that, a reminder, folks, to send us your money questions, maybe you're wondering whether you should switch from an expensive pickup truck to a sedan and how that actually might play out financially.

Whatever your money question, you can leave us a voicemail or text us on the nerd hotline at 901-730-6373. That's 901-730 nerd. You can also email us at podcast at nerdwollet.com. And we are on YouTube, folks. Please go and follow us. There is a link in the show description in case you're unable to locate us by Google. All right, more in a moment. Stay with us. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this.

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and maximize savings when you're in a later stage of life. David wrote to us and says, I'm an old dog, 50 years old trying to learn new tricks with my money. My first memory with money was being given a dollar when I was five by a family friend and my parents took it from me afterward to put away for me. But at the time, I felt like I was being punished for having money. So as an adult in my past years, I've spent it almost as fast as it comes in. I'm trying very hard to change that, and I've started throwing money into a few savings

accounts I opened as savings buckets, allocated for different reasons or goals. Love to hear that. And I even opened a Roth IRA and have already invested. I'm not trying to make up for lost time, but rather I'm trying to use the latter years of my life to accrue anything I can to help me, in my future, whatever way possible. As I'm contributing to these accounts, is there any advice that you can offer to maximize them? Help them grow. David, thank you for sharing that story.

I can relate. As a child, when people would give me money, my parents would always take the money away. Until today, I have never seen any of that money. So as a result, now that I'm older, when my son, I all gets money from anyone, thank you to all the aunts and uncles who give him money. I put it either in his 529 account or in his brokerage account.

That's great. And you're talking with him about this so we can see the money and it's still his money? Do you know what's really interesting? He's always, I think I've told you, he's always asking me how much money you got, mom, how much money you got. And I just tell him like I got $100 because I don't know if you need to know how much money I got. Always $100. Right? But I've been slowly explaining investing terms to him and I was actually talking to my niece about it the other day. And I said to her that I all has a brokerage account. And then he overheard me and I was like, yes, you do and you have money in it. So I think he's

getting to that age. He's going to be nine in November where I could start to tell him how much he has, but I'm also terrified because he's going to keep asking me to buy things with his money. So I don't know. Well, that's a time for a conversation about goals and what you use your money for. And I really like David's question because it gets into things like our first money memories and how that can have a huge influence on what we do with our money for the rest of our lives. And I really laud them for being self-aware to connect the dots saying, hey, my parents took this dollar from me when I was so young.

And that had a lasting impact on how I spent my money for my adult years. And a lot of us don't really have that ability or that sort of metacognition to be able to piece those things together and see how we can maybe change our behavior in the moment. But kudos to you, David, for doing that. And I hope that you can still kind of fight that impulse because when these habits are formed when we're so young, it's really hard to shake them. And it seems like they still have issues with impulse spending. That's right. It can be hard to shake. And that's why we talk about it on the show a lot.

It's important to try your best to work through any financial trauma that you. have, which David is already doing a great job at. And as we talked about, there are several ways to do that. One is by speaking to financial therapists or just a general therapist about those early childhood memories that may be impacting your finances and something that I personally did was just read books and look for online resources. If you're someone who finds healing and community, you could look for Reddit forums or Facebook groups where you can find other people who have shared similar experiences as well. And really just being able to connect the dots and say, hey, yeah, I had this kind of traumatic thing or even seeing you.

seemingly minor thing happened, but it had a huge effect on the rest of my life. Acknowledging that can help you move past it in a way that just denying this part of you just won't. So I encourage everyone to sort of explore that part of themselves into question, why do they do what they do with their money and how is it connected to their first interactions with it? It reminds me of a conversation I was having with a friend recently about what they learned about money growing up.

And she said, well, nothing. I don't learn anything about money growing up. And I was like, well, you did. You maybe didn't even realize it, but you learned a lot about your finances and how to manage money just by seeing what your parents did and how they talked to you about money, whether it's a thing that was shameful or a thing that they encouraged you to embrace like you're doing with your son, Elizabeth. And again, consider all of that as you're thinking about how you can change your habits. Even if you are 50 or 25, you can begin to shift your habits. And that's what we're here to do today for David. So, Elizabeth, where do you think David should begin to change some habits after?

he's gone to therapy and poured through Reddit threads and all that. Well, David is already doing some of the things that I would say are awesome, such as creating savings buckets and opening a Roth IRA. But in order to continue taming that impulse spending, I think one of the things that helps is automating your savings. Y'all know I have an impulse spending problem sometimes. And what has helped me is knowing that all my savings comes out first and I'm only allowed to spend what's left over.

Now, granted, there are credit cards and people could still overspend, but at least, you it gives you a mental check and says, hey, I have whatever it is, $500, $200, $200 in my account, and I shouldn't go over this amount. I hope that David is doing that with their different savings buckets. One thing I want to know is really what they're saving for because it's great to save. It's great to have a retirement account. But I think that they should have different specific purposes for each of the savings buckets and for what they want to use them for down the road.

And also when it comes to investing, they may want to think about a, taxable brokerage account so that they don't have to deal with some of the restrictions around their Roth IRA and other retirement accounts. Just know what you want to have these different parts of money deployed for in the future. I want to implore David to do something fun as well, which is create a spending bucket if David hasn't already. And that is simply to have fun with. David, ain't nothing wrong with spending down to zero if it's your fun money. Okay? So create a bucket for your fun money and then you can have a ball spending it. I also really want to encourage David to think about how much they would need in a retirement because they said they're not trying

to make up for lost time. I kind of want to encourage them to try to do that at least a little bit because we know that we're going to need a lot of money to fund our retirement and a lot of people just don't have enough saved. Now, according to the Federal Reserve, average retirement savings for someone between the ages of 45 and 54, that's around $313,000. The median is about $115,000. And again, we're all going to probably need a few million dollars to comfortably fund our retirement. So I don't want to scare anyone with these numbers, but just do what you can to get closer to that number. And in terms of not scaring people, I always remember the first time when I started saving for retirement. And I calculated my number.

And I was like, oh, my God, I need $4 million and I have zero. And then later, I remembered compound interest is in my favor. And the most important thing is to save consistently. And then that money will grow over time. And so that's why it's really important for David to think about these different savings accounts and what they might need in the shorter term. That would be like their high-old savings account money that they would probably use within five years or so. And then longer term, maybe five to 10 years, they could put money into a taxable brokerage account. And then for maybe 15 years down the road when they're looking at retirement, that would be for things like the money they have in their Roth IRA or other retirement accounts.

Well, let's move on to some specifics of accounts, which is the bulk of David's questions. Now, one of the things that first came to mind when I read this question is that David could utilize catch-up contributions. For those who don't know what those are, if you're 50 or older, you have the chance to save extra money for retirement in addition to the standard annual IRS limit. And then you can save an array of accounts that includes a 401K, 403B, 457B, or an IRA. The whole alphabet and letter soup of different retirement accounts there, yes. And one thing that's cool, too, is that there's also a super catch-up contribution. That's thanks to the Secure Act 2.0 from a few years back. Now, if you have an employer-sponsored plan and you're between 60 and 63,

which isn't quite David's age range yet, but, you know, one day will be, they can contribute an even higher amount. And we'll have a link in the episode description. There's more information about that because it gets a bit technical. We'll quickly go over some of the contribution amounts for retirement savings account that David or anybody at that age could utilize. For IRAs, if you're 50 and older, you can contribute 1,100,000, extra. Now, the standard limit is $7,500. So I'm going to do the math for you guys. Basically,

David could contribute an entirety of $8,600 into an IRA. And that's for 2026. It's important to note that these limits change pretty much every year. They do. Usually going up, praise God. Yes. I've never heard of them going down, thankfully. But I still, that number is still very low. We talked about how we'll need millions of dollars for retirement. So just that $8,600 for those who are over $5,000. 50 and 7500 for those who were younger. It just, to me, it's a frustratingly low amount of money because I wish everyone had the access to workplace retirement plans that allow you to save, you know, over $20,000 each year if you max them out.

And that is actually going to be one of your best ways to have enough to fund your retirement is using these workplace plans. But again, we don't know David's employment situation, so they may not have access to that. And speaking of workplace retirement plans, if you have one of those, the contribution limit goes up from the standard $24,500 to $32,500 since you can make a catch-up contribution of $8,000. Again, that's another area where I'm so frustrated that these employer workplace retirement plans are so much better than what you can have in an IRA. Consider the catch-up contribution that is $8,000 compared to $1,100 with just an IRA. It's not really that fair to me.

It's not. And it's a huge difference, especially if you use a compound interest calculator and look at the numbers, you can see a start. difference there. There is a new change that folks should be aware of, though. High earners whose wages were $150,000 or more in the previous year have to make catch-up contributions to a rough IRA or workplace retirement account starting in 2026. Now, what does that mean? That means that you have to pay taxes on your contributions now versus in retirement. Basically, the government wants their tax money now because a bunch of people have money in traditional accounts and they wait a while to pull the money out, the government says, not so fast. Give me that tax money. But if you're anything like

me, I actually wouldn't mind that because I would rather as many tax three dollars as I can during retirement. And there is a plus side too where if you have been saving primarily or exclusively in traditional accounts, having to put some money into a Roth account can give you some nice tax diversification in your retirement years if you don't have that already. But I'm assuming that people who are earning that much money, I mean, I would hope that maybe they are already thinking about these things since they have so many dollars at their disposal. Catch up contributions aside, another low-hanging fruit that David could utilize is an employer match. And that's essentially when your employer matches you dollar for dollar for a certain

amount that you contribute to a retirement account. And it's free money. This is the thing that I just harp on and on about why people should use it. You literally only have to contribute up to a certain amount and you get free money from your employer. Where do we get free money? Do you ever get free money, Sean? Hardly ever, except in my 401k match or if I find a dollar on the street, which honestly has not happened in so many years because people don't carry cash anymore. Whatever happens the dollar on the street. I missed that. But... Core childhood memory unlocked. Yeah. David is wondering how to maximize their savings, and this is one of the best ways just to accelerate what you're already putting in. It can really

help boost what he'll be having available in retirement. Now let's visit one of our favorite accounts, the high-yield savings account. And this, it seems like I hope David is already used. with their savings bucket strategy. We talk about these accounts all the time. For those who don't know, they're typically offered by online banks. They'll offer you a much better yield than you would get at a brick-and-mortar bank. And it's one of the best ways to at least stay a pace with inflation with your dollars. You might be able to get an APY, a yield of around 3, 3.5% depending on the bank.

It's been kind of going down over time, which isn't great. But, hey, it's still better than what you'd be able to get at an old-fashioned kind of bank. and this is one of the best places, if not the best place to park your savings. Considering David's age as well, having extra cash can be helpful, especially to weather market swings because David will need to leave their money inside of their savings accounts, particularly retirement for a certain amount in order not to be penalized for withdrawing their funds. Something I am really curious about is how much money David has at their disposal. What does their budget look like?

because we talk a lot about the 50, 30, 20 budget, right? Where you have 20% of your income going towards additional debt payments and savings. So hopefully, David doesn't have a lot of debt. We know that most people will have some, but I would love if they could put as much of that 20% into different savings categories. And honestly, since they are a little behind the ball savings wise, maybe actually pull from the 30% your wants category and just try to accelerate whatever you can into your savings,

because we know the more you can tuck away, the more you'll have in the future. It's just simple math here. So I would really encourage them or anyone who wants to save more money to get super clear on your numbers. What are you working with right now? And how can you get to a goal number down the road? Nerdw wallet has some really handy savings and retirement calculators. We can link to them in the show notes of this episode. I highly recommend playing with them to get some concrete figures for what you can save and what it might turn into over time.

I started saving for retirement pretty late. So my rate had to be higher than maybe someone who was saving at 20 in order for me to feel like I could catch up quickly. And think, too, about the motivation behind all the savings. For David, it's because they, I assume, they want to have a really comfortable retirement of some kind of cushion to help them not just live hand to mouth when they're older. So getting clear on this goal might make it easier to sacrifice some things now. So that might mean not going on a vacation and having some extra cash that you put into your savings, sacrificing little things here and there. can add up to more savings overall, and that's really what David needs right now. I want to talk about another account that David could use to maximize their savings right now.

David, I don't know if you have a health savings account. This is one of my favorite accounts because of the triple tax benefits. Your contributions are tax deductible, your money gets to grow tax-free, and then you can make qualified tax-free withdrawals. Essentially, it's a gold mine, David and everyone else. Recently, I've been speaking a lot about the importance of saving for health care costs. as you age because it can be so expensive and we don't know where our health is going to be in the next five, ten, whatever, 15 years and we want to be as prepared as we can be.

Now, you guys know I love a good data point. Guess what's coming out? Your handy notebook for the visual people watching us on Spotify and YouTube. Yes, it's a black nerd wallet notebook. Okay. So the 2025 Milliman Retiree Health Cost Index found that a healthy 65-year-old male retiring in 2025 with original Medicare, MediGAP, and Medicare Part D would spend $275,000 on health care expenses in retirement, which is assuming that they live 23 years. Wow. That's more than a lot of people have safe retirement, as we saw earlier. Right, right. But I do want to say that Medicare would pay part of the cost, but that mail would still have to call for up $185,000. And now that number goes up for women because we're expected to live longer. I don't know how I feel about that in this context. But if we lived for 25 years in retirement,

that cost would go up to $203,000 for us. Jeez, you better start saving Elizabeth. I guess you are. You have your HSA, right? I do. I do. And I love seeing that number go up. Luckily, I'm healthy. So I don't end up spending a lot on health care expenses every year. So I'm able to save that money and invest it. Yeah, that's the challenge and the opportunity with an HSA is that you can use the money now for things like sunscreen or medical visits or operations, or you could hold onto that money and use it just for kind of a retirement health care savings account. It's a tough balance.

Sometimes you have to pull from that just because something pops up and you don't have the cash on hand. But if you can cover your medical expenses from whatever you have in savings, that might be the better out. So longer term, you have this money growing in the background because, You can invest the money that's in an HSA typically, and that is a huge way to accelerate your savings. The catch, though, is that you do have to be on a high deductible health care plan which not everyone has access to. That is true.

And I have an oh my God for you, Sean. Okay. Ever since that episode where you were talking about being able to potentially buy a mattress with your HSA funds, I sat down one day and went down a rabbit hole on the HSA and HSA website, I don't remember what it was called. looking at all the potential things I could buy. The list is really long. It's long. Are you buying a new mattress, Elizabeth? No, no, no, no.

I'm not getting a new mattress, but I did get maybe six months' worth of tampons. And I also got sunscreen. Sunscreen is not cheap, but how do you think about that kind of push-pull between pulling out money now for expenses you need today versus waiting and having all that money in retirement?

I didn't think too heavily or rather deep. about it because honestly it cost me maybe under $100 and it's not going to be a recurring expense because I'm going to use it over the next couple of months. I think a part of me was just also like, wow, I can use my ETSA funds for these things. I think I got some satisfaction out of it, especially considering I invest most of the money in my health savings account. And you will be proud to know there were a whole bunch of things on there that I initially thought I needed and then realized we're wants and I took out my card. What is that ORA ring? The ORA ring is on I was like, do I need that? I've been tempted about those, but no, you don't. They're not cheap. Exactly. And they also come with a monthly subscription.

I've been tempted before, but I'm not there yet. I got my Apple Watch, I guess. Same. So I was like, girl, just use what you have. All right. So last thing on HSAs, if you are 55 or older and you're not enrolled in Medicare, guess what you get a catch-up contribution of $1,000 to a health savings account. Thinking about investments, because we've mentioned them a few times,

we should also talk about timeline and risk management and how they might want to invest this money because we know that the shorter your timeline when you'll need this money, the less risky your investments should be. That doesn't mean that David can't invest at all, but it's likely that they'll want to have a pretty conservative portfolio so that if they do need this money, it can ride out any ups and downs in the stock market and they'll still have something to pull from in 10, 15 years. And some of those more conservative investment vehicles might be certificates of deposits or bonds. But honestly, we are not here to give David or anyone investment advice because that is the job of a financial advisor. And David, I would encourage you to speak to one. You could do a fee only advisor.

We have a range of them at NerdWallet Wealth Partners that you can choose from. And what can happen is they can actually give you a detailed and tailored financial plan according to your age, your income and your financial goals to help you have a better, more concrete idea of what to invest in and how to maximize your savings. Yeah, that's a great point. Talking with an advisor is super important when you're in this sort of pre-retirement phase of your life, when you're beginning to look at the end of your working years, taking stock of all the money that you do or maybe don't have at your disposal, and trying to make some kind of plan for that comfortable retirement, getting an outside expert opinion is really crucial because it can be so overwhelming to do this on your own. But David and anyone else, if you do want to do it on your own, an easier route versus stock picking might be to use a target date fund, which adjusts risk as you age. Or you could use a low-cost SMP 500 index fund for a diverse portfolio.

Fortunately, for David and those who maybe don't have a ton safer retirement, there are still Social Security benefits. A lot of people think that they are going to go away, but that is propaganda. Do not fall for it. We still have these benefits. and if we want them long term, we will fight for them, so don't lose hope people. We can have these benefits. And David likely has access to some of them. If they don't know how much they might be earning, you can actually go to ssa.gov.

That's a social security website run from the government, and you can get an estimate of how much you would actually be earning in retirement. And it might be worthwhile to wait to pull those until full retirement age or beyond to maximize benefits here, since it seems like David doesn't have a lot saved. When I'm saving for retirement, something that I forget is that I will have access to Social Security benefits when I retire. But I guess to motivate me, I don't factor in that income. But since David is starting late, I think it will be a good idea to combine that Social Security income that you'll potentially get with what you are trying to save. Now, I always love these conversations around Social Security because it's like, well, when should I take it? Should I wait until the full retirement age? Should I wait until beyond that or should I get it earlier at the age of 62?

And it's always, it depends. And I think the part that always strikes me is, well, what if you wait until the age of 70 and you get the maximum benefit, but then you die at 72? And then you didn't even get to enjoy your money, right? So it really is such a personal decision. And when you're making this decision, some things that you want to think about is your history in terms of your health. You want to think about your life expectancy. And the most important one is your income. How desperately do you need the money?

Also looking at the break-even point when the amount that you would earn, by delaying outpaces the amount that you would get just by taking it immediately. Looking at that and considering these factors can help you make that decision. So it's a really tough personal decision. A lot of people just decide to take the benefit immediately because they frankly need the cash and that's okay. But know that you are sacrificing some benefit over the long run. And I think it's usually around 80 or so that you begin to hit that break-even point. So just think about that and whether you'll be living into your 80s because a lot of people will and even if they don't think they are.

Oh my gosh. When do you want to die? Sorry, that's kind of morbid. We've talked about this. I'm living to 500. I'm going to be a robot. Oh my gosh. Sean, please. Well, I used to say my 70s, but now that I think, well, I potentially may have grandkids. I'm like later, but imagine living to 100 how much money you need. And I don't know. It's very overwhelming sometimes. I think that that's why we need a bigger social safety net. More social security benefits. So that's the argument for that. Well, any other considerations that you would like to throw out there for David, I just want to implore, David, to go back to the why behind all the savings, what they want and what they envision is going to come of it and just encourage them to get super clear on their numbers like we've mentioned before to know exactly what they can save, how they're going to save for it, and when they'll use that money. In summary, if you're starting your retirement savings journey at the age of 50, here are five things that you should consider doing. One, have a clear goal of what you're trying to achieve.

two, utilize catch-up contributions for IRA's workplace retirement plans and a health savings account. Three, build up a robust cash reserve over time. Four, assess your potential future social security benefits. And five, evaluate your investment portfolio to ensure that it lines with your risk tolerance and your time horizon. Well, I think that we did a great job outlining a few different ways to save and how they can begin to optimize this journey. And David, I hope this helps you begin to really save four your golden years. And that's all we've got for this episode. Remember that we're here to answer your money questions.

So send them our way. You can hit us up on the Nerd Hotline by texting us or leaving us a voicemail at 901-730-6373. That's 901-730 Nerd. You can also email us your question to podcast at NerdVollop.com or leave a comment on Spotify or YouTube. Follow Smart Money on your favorite podcast app that includes Spotify, Apple Podcast, and IHeartRadio to automatically download new episodes. And here's our brief disclaimer. we are not your financial or investment advisors. This nerdy info is provided for general educational and entertainment purposes.

It may not apply to your specific circumstances. Some companies mentioned in this episode may be nerd wallet partners, but that does not influence how we discuss them. And with that said, until next time, turn to the nerds.