2031: Ask Farnoosh: Leave More Money to the Child Who Needs It Most? Plus: COBRA, Life Insurance & Inherited 401(k)s

**Farnoosh Torabi** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:49)
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**Farnoosh Torabi** (1:01)
Welcome to So Money, everybody. I'm Farnoosh Torabi. It is Friday, September 4th, 2026 We made it to Friday. Maybe you're listening on Saturday because I released this pretty late on a Friday afternoon. Apologies. Guys, I'm doing too much. I just can take a second to just confess that I am doing too much. I'm trying to do too much. And you're going to hear pretty soon on the show. I leak it. I wasn't planning to leak it in that way. I was planning to do a big announcement, and I will. I will roll this out more sophisticatedly. But I did tell a guest, and you'll hear it next week, I think next week or the week after. So I'm telling you now that, because I want to control the narrative, that starting in 2027, we're going to have some changes around here. I think there are a long time coming.
For those of you who have been with this podcast since 2015, you know we started with seven days a week, then it was five days a week, then it was three days a week.
I'm not quite sure if we're going to reduce the number of episodes. Actually, I am sure about that. We're not doing three days a week in 2027 We might do two, we might do one, but we're going to be video forward.
I am on YouTube right now, but it's just going to be a different way to experience the show. This is still a work in progress, so if you're wanting to weigh in on this, this is the time. I'm thinking about bringing more of the midlife experience to this programming. I know a lot of you are listening in your 20s, you're maybe in college, and then I have many who are retired and in a different season of life. But I'm 46, I have two kids.
I'm the breadwinner of my marriage.
My parents are getting older, my kids are getting older. I'm changing, my health is changing.
And I feel like there's just so much to talk about that we aren't talking about consistently enough at the intersection of midlife and money. So that's how I want to show up in the new year. And as anyone knows, when you're doing a little bit of a rebrand or a pivot or whatever you want to call it, it takes some time and some considerable steps. Between now and Q1 of 2027, I'm going to be head down in trying to figure out what is the best way to present to you this next iteration of So Money. The channel is staying the same, but I think the conversations are going to get more acute around midlife and money. And I know that there are many of you out there. And what is midlife? I mean, it's pretty big range, right? Some people think it actually starts at 35
For me, it's less about an age range and more about a life stage, right? So just like I explained, a lot on your plate. You've done a lot of things, probably right, some wrong. But you feel kind of ignored, you know, in this space of maybe you're a Gen Xer, you're an elder millennial. People assume maybe you have it all figured out. And guess what? We don't. I'm still learning. I guess all this to say, stay tuned. But let me know how I can tweak this show to meet you where you're at in a better way, in a more accessible way, and in a more fun way. Because that's the other thing that I really want to have more of in my life, is just enjoyment. There, I said it.
So that was a very roundabout way of telling you that maybe you're listening to this show on Saturday because I didn't release it until late Friday. In any case, hope you're having a good Labor Day weekend. We have made it not just to the weekend, but back to school is officially underway in my house. New backpacks are out, alarm clocks are back on, and the chaos has officially arrived. Today's mailbag is really about what happens when life changes and your financial plan has to catch up with it. Things like marriage, kids, inheritance, a layoff perhaps. We're also talking about the surprisingly strong August jobs report came out today. We're also remembering Gloria Steinem, and we're going to debate a question that lit up my social feed, which is, if one of your kids grows up to be wealthy, and you have another child who's not as wealthy or is struggling, should you leave the children different amounts of money in your will? And I have some thoughts. But first, a quick look back at this week on the show, we had on Joseph Moore, historian and author on Wednesday, who dug through roughly 300 years of American financial history to ask this question, how did Americans actually get rich?