Jean Chatzky and the AARP roundtable guests get real about the personal finance curveballs nobody prepares you for.
The personal finance advice we grow up with rarely prepares us for real life. Nobody tells you what to do when you get fired at 40, or when your veteran husband has a dental emergency and no insurance, or when your mother needs teeth pulled, and the bill lands entirely on you. Nobody prepares you for the moment you discover you’ve been in the bottom 5% of earners at one of the country’s most prestigious newspapers.
That’s exactly what this conversation is about.
In the second episode of From First Paycheck to Forever Paycheck — HerMoney’s three-part series in collaboration with AARP — Jean Chatzky sits back down with Hannah Williams of Salary Transparent Street, Viviana Vazquez of OverGenPoverty, Ashley Parker of The Atlantic, and Carly Roszkowski, Vice President of Financial Resilience at AARP, for an honest personal finance conversation about learning from life’s curveballs.
Here’s what they said.
The Curveballs Nobody Sees Coming
Going around the table, each woman shared the moment life threw her a personal finance curveball. And none of them were what you’d expect.
For Carly, it was COVID. Her husband, then nearly 50, lost his job during the pandemic and decided to pivot completely. “This new career did not pay the same level, and did not have health benefits or much of any benefits,” she said. “When you’re in those high-earning years, and [your kids] haven’t started college yet, you’re saving for retirement, saving for college, you have a huge mortgage — yeah, that one threw us for a loop.”
Ashley Parker spent 11 years at The New York Times, climbing from Maureen Dowd’s research assistant to a political reporter covering the Republican front-runner. Then she asked for a raise and was told, essentially, not to expect one. So she conducted what she calls “my own one-woman guild survey.”
“What I found out was that of the entire politics team, I was in the bottom 5%,” she said. “You’ll not be surprised to hear that the only other people in that bottom 5% were also women.” When she finally left The Times for The Washington Post, the reality became impossible to ignore. “Without even having to negotiate, just the initial offer that came in from different places was so much more than I was [previously] making. That was the first time I realized, ‘Oh, I really was underpaid.’ When I left the Times to go to The Washington Post, I almost doubled my salary.”
Jean knew the feeling. “When I jumped to Money Magazine from Smart Money Magazine, I did double my salary, and I was pissed.”
“And you weren’t doing a demonstrably different job,” Ashley added.
And the cost of being underpaid compounds over years: lower 401(k) contributions, smaller raises built on a lower base, reduced Social Security benefits down the line. It’s one of the most significant and least talked-about ways the wage gap affects women’s long-term financial security.
The House of Cards: When Two Careers and a Family Collide
One of the most resonant personal finance moments of the episode came when the conversation turned to the impossible juggling act of modern family life and who, if anyone, steps back.
Ashley was honest about what it looks like in her household. Two journalists, three kids, and a system that works until it doesn’t. “It’s a house of cards where if there’s a sick kid, or a late meeting, it feels like we are barely surviving.”
She described a recent scenario in which both she and her husband had flights departing at the same time, and someone would have to cancel. “By not talking about it and not being willing for either of us to step back, it does create a life that at times can be pretty unpleasant, if I’m being honest.”
And stepping back from work, even temporarily, has long-term ripple effects on earnings, retirement savings, and Social Security benefits that most couples don’t fully account for until much later down the line.
Carly’s juggle looks a little different, but it’s no less exhausting. After her husband’s COVID pivot, she became the family’s primary breadwinner, while simultaneously being, as she put it, “the default parent.” Scheduling, sports, school, and yes, treasurer of the high school boosters club.
And Jean offered a solution from her own life, as someone a little closer to retirement with a husband who’s almost a decade older. “I recommend a retired spouse,” she said, drawing laughs from the table. “They can pick the kids up, put things together, and do all the things.”
Gen Z Is Rethinking Everything — Including Whether to Have Kids at All
Perhaps the most candid part of the conversation came when Jean asked Hannah and Viviana how listening to all of this made them feel about having children of their own.
Hannah didn’t hesitate. “Full confidence, my husband and I have talked about this several times. We’re not having children.” Her reasons weren’t purely about money, but finances were part of it. “It’s very expensive,” she acknowledged.
The bigger factor was a generational one: “We’re questioning what our role is supposed to be as women. Growing up, it was just kind of put in my brain: you’re going to have kids, you’re going to get married, this is how your life is going to go. When my husband and I started asking ourselves, ‘Do we really want kids?’, it became very clear that the idea of having kids is very different than wanting kids.”
She added a point that gets to the heart of the personal finance case for better policy: “I think I’d be way more enticed by having children if I knew that the United States had a solid paid paternal and maternal leave policy. If we had way more support in our society as mothers and families.”
Viviana shared a similar position, citing both personal finance realities and a difficult childhood that included her sister’s cancer diagnosis. “I think that mental health is really important for our generation. You have to be really, really prepared if you wanna have a child and give that child the best life possible.”
Ashley put the broader personal finance issue plainly: “Whether you want to work or not, there are plenty of people who would like to stay home or take some time off when the kids are little, but they just don’t have the ability to do that. If you have kids and you’re married, you need two incomes.”
The Bottom Line: Time Choices Are Personal Finance Choices
Jean brought the conversation home: “These are all choices,” she said. “They’re all time choices, which makes them money choices.”
It’s the throughline of this entire series, and the core truth of personal finance for women: every decision a woman makes about her time, her career, her family, and her safety net is also a financial decision. And the more honestly we talk about those decisions — across generations, across income levels, across life stages — the better equipped we all are to make them.
MORE ON HERMONEY:
- Stop Keeping Up With the Joneses in Retirement
- Take this test to find out your Money Personality Type
- The Retirement Phase Nobody Talks About
This is the second episode of From First Paycheck to Forever Paycheck, a three-part series in collaboration with AARP. Don’t miss Jean Chatzky’s new book, The Forever Paycheck: The New Retirement Strategy to Spend More, Worry Less, and Never Run Out of Money, available for pre-order now.
Whether you’re looking to save money, manage debt, or prepare for retirement, AARP has resources and tools to help you prepare for your financial future to reach your goals. Get started at aarp.org/planningforchange.
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