2022: Ask Farnoosh: Trump Account Updates, Money-Maxxing and Stay-at-Home Boyfriends

**Farnoosh Torabi** (0:00)
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Welcome everyone to Ask Farnoosh Friday, August 14th, 2026 We've got a big update to the Trump accounts that we've been discussing on the show for many weeks and taking the politics out of it because I know a lot of you don't like the name and I get it, but these accounts do have benefits and we are investing in them in our household for each of our kids. We're going to get into the why of it and the updates. This week we got some updates that I think parents, maybe even employers, will want to hear about. We're also going to get into this new phenomenon called money maxing. What is that? What is that all about? We have sleep maxing, looks maxing, health maxing. My son, who's 12 the other day, he said, mom, that guy's aura farming. I was like, I'm sorry, what? Apparently, this is internet slang, aura farming, for deliberately doing something stylish or nonchalant in an effort to look cool, to accumulate aura points. Gosh, I don't understand. Now we have money maxing. Also, what the heck is a stay-at-home boyfriend? This is trending online. Of course, we have stay-at-home moms, and then we have stay-at-home dads. We have had the stay-at-home girlfriend phenomenon across my Instagram, and now, apparently, boyfriends are staying home. I just can't keep up, everybody.
I have questions. Also, we're going to talk about why consumers are just so angry right now. I don't mean generally angry about the economy. It's a separate thing, and that is happening. But people are losing it over customer service. There's actually research that tracks something called consumer rage, and the numbers are pretty wild. Finally, also in the news, a little housing update from my neck of the woods. realtor.com just ranked the hottest zip codes in America, and Montclair, New Jersey, where I live, is currently number two, behind Peabody, Massachusetts. We'll have more on that because as somebody who lives here and watches this housing market up close, I've got some opinions. Later, we're going to tackle the mailbag. We have two questions. The first is one about pre-retirees and what are the mistakes that I think we might be making. But even someone in midlife, what is something that we aren't doing right now that would show up and haunt us in retirement? Then another question about what to do with your money once you've got the emergency fund and you're contributing to retirement, where does your next dollar go? What is step three? But first, if you missed any of this week's shows, go back and watch and listen. We're on YouTube now. Hello. Come find me there. Subscribe, watch, leave a comment because these are all the things the algorithm enjoys. On Wednesday on So Money, we talked about the power of using your voice on stage and in everyday life. Our guest was Samara Bay. She is a speech and speaking coach to CEOs, politicians, and tech founders. She is the author of an incredible book called Permission to Speak. She was on the show last talking about that book, and now she's back with something brand new, a viral TEDx talk about how to actually sound human when you're speaking in public, as opposed to talking like this on stage, which, listen, listen, I may have done in my past, I may still do it.
I'm now a work in progress, everybody. News flash. So how to actually sound human when you're speaking in public, whether that's on a stage, in a work meeting, on a Zoom call, or in private, like having a hard conversation with a partner at home. One of the things I loved about our talk is that it wasn't really about becoming a better speaker in the traditional sense. It was about what inhibits us from speaking in the first place. What are we afraid people are going to assume? What parts of ourselves are we sanding down? Because we think sounding professional means sounding less like ourselves. And in a world where AI, I feel like I'm a movie trailer now, in a world where AI can increasingly generate the polished words for us, there is something even more valuable about sounding unmistakably human, which means sometimes making mistakes. And Samara talks about that as well. Then on Monday on the show, did you know that some parents are now calling employers on behalf of their grown ass kids? Helicopter parenting has reached new heights, everybody, or lows, depending on how you look at it. We talked about how over-parenting can kill resilience among young adults and what it actually takes to become someone who can stand on their own two feet and navigate uncertainty, whether you're 25 or 45