Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios down in Soho. We're happy to spend our day with you. I'm grateful that you're here. On today's show, Director Kaouther Ben Hania joins us to discuss her new film, The Voice of Hind Rajab, which blends documentary and narrative filmmaking to tell the story of one Palestinian girl trapped in Gaza. Actor Karolina Wydra will be here as well. She stars as Zosia in the Apple TV series Pluribus. It's an All Of It watch party.

We'll speak with two reporters about why breaks between show seasons have gotten so very long. That's the plan. Let's get this started with How to Be a Rich Old Lady.

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Alison Stewart: Financial expert Amanda Holden is a former Wall Street banker who realized after several years that she was one of the few women in her workplace, and she was making rich men richer. She decided to start a business to focus on helping people, women especially, learn how to invest and be financially independent. In her new book, How to Be a Rich Old Lady, she writes, "Money is harder for women to accumulate, and this is the fact that is deliberate outcome of centuries of economic design.

As recently as the late 1980s, women were denied access to business loans and credit without a male signature. In the decades before that, women were frequently refused property ownership, work in certain professions, credit cards, and banking privileges. Some states even had a head and master laws which gave husbands total control over the finances. Yes, the next time someone waxes a tad too nostalgic about the good old days or about how marriages used to last, feel free to remind them that Grandma didn't have a bank account." Amanda is with us today. Hi, Amanda.

Amanda Holden: Hi, Alison. It's so great to be here.

Alison Stewart: We're so glad to have you. Hey, listeners, are you trying to save for retirement, or do you have questions about the best way to do it? Do you need an explainer about your 401k if you have one, a Roth IRA? Do you need the best way to figure out how to pay down debt, or maybe you have some dreams, and you need to know how to go about achieving them? Give us a call, 212-433-WNYC, 221-2433-9692. Remember, Amanda's here to offer advice. What might work for you might not work for others. We want to say that out loud. Amanda, in your book, you said a trip to Reno was how this started. What happened when you went to Reno?

Amanda Holden: Sure. It was a birthday party. I was going with a friend, so I did not know the birthday girl or any of the folks in attendance. This is while I was working in finance. My friend, that I was with, worked with me in finance. We went to Reno with no intention of talking about the type of work that we did, but what we found ourselves doing one morning, totally hungover and over some burnt coffee and hash browns, was trotting out these explanations of what is a 401k, answering questions about what is a Roth IRA? How do you invest the money inside of these accounts, to all of these women that were in attendance.

Alison Stewart: So interesting that they felt comfortable asking you.

Amanda Holden: I think that that was it is that they didn't know where else to go. When they heard that we had worked in finance, they were like, "Hey, we got some questions for you. That was the first time I realized, "Oh, just by nature of doing this work that I'm doing working in finance, I am learning this skill that everybody needs to know, including my girlfriends."

Alison Stewart: When did you begin to work in finance? Why did you begin to work in finance?

Amanda Holden: I began to work in finance because I was just doing what I thought you were supposed to do after you graduated with a degree in economics, but it didn't take very long for me to realize that it was a bit of a spiritual mismatch, and I wasn't in the right place. Like you said in the introduction, helping rich men get richer was never going to be my life's calling. It was about six years, and those years, I should say, began in 2008, during the financial crash of 2008.

It was a very wild time to be working in investment management. My job specifically was to be on the phones with our high-net-worth clients, basically letting old rich men yell at me about their money. That is the job that I did. It was really great in that I learned so much. There was an incredible learning curve, but it just also wasn't for me. I ended up leaving with the intention of walking away from finance altogether, but when I did, this idea just kept gnawing away at the back of my brain, which is, "You know all of this incredibly valuable information and why don't you turn around and get it to the folks that you want to have this knowledge, which is folks that have been left out of these conversations forever."

Alison Stewart: When I look at you, I would think, "Oh, she's an artist from Bushwick," by what you're wearing.

Amanda Holden: I give artists from Bushwick for sure.

Alison Stewart: What was it like when you were working in finance? Did you have to bring it in? Did you have to put on a face, a mask?

Amanda Holden: Yes. I think that a lot of what I did was to really lean into maybe my more masculine tendencies in order to play with the boys. I can fit into that world too. I can party with the best of them. It was a very work-hard, party-hard atmosphere, and I liked being with the guys, but I did naively take it as a sign of maybe my exceptionalism. Now I know that it is a sign that something is very, very wrong. I have been in the rooms where wealth is being discussed and those people don't look like us. These are tools of power. What I wanted to do was democratize this information and get these tools of to folks like our friends.

Alison Stewart: I'm speaking with author and financial expert Amanda Holden about her debut book, How to Be a Rich Old Lady: Your Guide to Easy Investing, Building Wealth, and Creating the Wild, Beautiful Life that You Want. Are you trying to save for retirement? Do you have questions about what to do about your 401k, the best way to pay down debt, or maybe you have a dream that you'd like to figure out how you can save for? Our Phone number is 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Here's a text for you. It says, "What's the best way to pass my assets, money in the bank, IRA, a co-op, on to my only child?"

Amanda Holden: Your first step is going to be to set your beneficiaries. Your beneficiaries can be set on any retirement account. You'll want to make sure that you put their name and their Social Security in there so that the money will be passed directly to them. That's something that I tell all of my parents who are saving and investing for themselves and for retirement is that you are not only investing for your own retirement. You're building a legacy for your kids as well.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Sana in Clinton Hill. Hi Sana, thanks for calling All Of It.

Sana: Hi Alison, this is Sana. I was curious what the guests would have to say to me. I'm 26. I'm very much a Gen Z woman existing in this world. I see things crumbling around me. Saving for retirement can feel very pointless as we see the cost of living and affordability across the country just become very intimidating. I think that's definitely stopped me from being very future or forward-thinking. I'm curious what your guest would have to say about that.

Alison Stewart: That's a great call.

Amanda Holden: It is a great call. I even have a chapter in my book that is titled Apocalypse, and it is inspired by a conversation I overheard down at B&H Dairy at the counter where a young woman said, "The Apocalypse is my retirement plan." Financial nihilism is understandably growing amongst young people. We are not giving young people a lot to be excited about. I am a teacher who is willing to say that whole-scale systems collapse is not outside the realm of possibility, but I do not necessarily think that it is likely.

This is a matter of hedging our bets. If that happens, if the whole thing comes down, then we're screwed either way. Taking some action now is a way to hedge your bets. It is a way to say, "Okay, well, maybe this whole thing doesn't come down." We know that they're probably going to save the financial system at all costs, even at the cost of the environment or a functioning society itself. Do we want to bet on riding the coattails of this system, of which we know we are going to work overtime to protect? Not we, but the government and the corporate money that owns a lot of our government structure?

Alison Stewart: Go ahead.

Amanda Holden: No. This is a matter of, I think doing retirement investing. It is good because this money is earmarked for the long term, but it also gives you a psychological benefit of just knowing you're doing something for yourself right now.

Alison Stewart: Your book is interesting because it's written from the viewpoint that a capitalist system, it's fundamentally broken in many ways, but it's also about learning the system and learning the system so that it benefits you. How do you reconcile these two different ideologies?

Amanda Holden: Sure. If you follow along with the work that I do, I spend about 90% of my time railing on the system and fighting for collective solutions for all. Even something like learning to invest as an individual, even from an efficiency standpoint, having every single person have to be their own master of portfolio management theory, it just does not make sense. Also, having a retirement system that requires every individual buy in, only people who buy in are able to retire, is not to me a sign of a functioning society. We need collective solutions for all, but I also want us to have some agency within this system before the revolution comes.

Alison Stewart: Here's a text for you. It says, "I have thousands from a settlement just sitting in a savings account. I don't know where to begin. I'm always afraid that bankers are taking advantage of me. Can you help?" Someone comes to you and say, "I got a pile of money, what should I do?"

Amanda Holden: The first step is always to just take a look at our financial foundation because investing for retirement is great, but really, the first step, and this is for anybody, all of our callers, the first step is to make sure that we've got some cash in savings. We would call this an emergency fund, which, especially for women, is incredibly valuable. Don't let the finance bros tell you that there is not power in having cash available to leave a bad situation.

We want some cash in an emergency fund, which you can keep in, for example, a high-yield savings account or in a savings account at your bank or at your credit union. Start there, build up some emergency money, keep it there in case of emergencies. Next, what I would do is I would look to see if you have any high interest like credit card debt or even just emotionally distressing debt, and I might throw some of that money at paying that debt down, because ideally, what we want to do is get high-interest debt paid off because we are paying an exorbitant rate of interest on that debt.

We cannot invest our way out of credit card debt. You are earning a rate of return when you pay off your credit card debt. The thing I would consider after that is maybe learning a little bit about retirement investing and getting started with something like a Roth IRA.

Alison Stewart: You just believe in being debt-free if you can.

Amanda Holden: It is going to be very difficult to be totally debt-free before you get started on your other financial goals. That's just not the nature of the world that we live in. No, you don't have to have all of your student loan debt paid off or your mortgage paid off before you begin investing. In fact, please don't, but I do know that, especially something like credit card debt, which can just spiral out of control, can be really spiritually difficult to manage. It's just a great place to put some of that initial energy, but no, debt is a fact of life in America. Please, don't wait to build your own financial fortress until you have all your debt paid off.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Joseph, who's calling in from Queens. Hi, Joseph. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Joseph: Hey, how you doing? I know this is a book for women, but the reason I called is me and my fiance, we both are city workers. We're in our 50s. I got another 10 more years to go before I can retire. I have a pension. Current rate of my pension will be about, I don't know, maybe 80, 90 grand a year, which is pretty good, but I'm looking the next 15, 20, 30 years, what that can buy me. I have almost nothing in a 401k or a Roth IRA.

I was doing exactly what you said, since I'm, ironically, getting a promotion pretty soon, and I'll be making almost 50% more than I'm making now. I want to pay off my debt within this year. That's my goal, to pay off my credit cards and other stuff. My question is, what do I need to do in my 50s to start so I can safely retire even with my pension, so I can have a comfortable retirement, because I've heard horror stories about the teachers union in Detroit when they went bankrupt, they were home for 10 years, retired, and they get a notice to say, "Hey, you got to go back to work." I do not want that to happen. That's why I really want multiple streams. I do have two homes.

Alison Stewart: I'm going to let her answer your question real quick. Go for it, Amanda.

Amanda Holden: First, let me say that this book is for everybody. Anybody can be a rich old lady. Thank you so much for calling in. I'm so glad that you're thinking about this now. I'm happy that you have a pension, but you're thinking about it exactly correctly, that what we probably want to do is just very simply diversify. I believe that you will also get Social Security. That is great. Then what do we do on our own? On our own, it's a matter of opening up a retirement account and then investing the money inside of that retirement account.

The reason I make that differentiation is because, often what we think, what we are taught, is that all you gotta do is put money into your Roth IRA or your 401k and that it's going to grow and compound at a rate of 10% per year, but the Roth IRA itself, the 401k itself does not generate a rate of investment return. The investments inside do. All retirement accounts are good. Whatever you have access to is great. If that's a 401k through work or if you need to open up an account on your own, that's great, but the much more important piece is investing a little bit of time into your education, into understanding how the investments work inside of that account.

That goes for you, whether you're 50 or you're 40 or you're 30 or you're 20, because here's the thing. We hear retirement plan, a 401k is a retirement plan, and it leads us to believe that somebody's got a plan for us, when in reality it is simply a vessel for investing in the stock and bond markets. That means we have to understand what that means.

Alison Stewart: I wanted to ask you a question because he said he was up for a raise, a big raise. There's a section in your book called negotiating while female because women make mistakes when they negotiate. What are the most common mistakes? What is the most common mistake that women make when they are negotiating with their boss for a bigger salary? What mistake do they make?

Amanda Holden: Sure. The biggest mistake I would say is probably appealing to somebody's sense of fairness because you may be speaking with somebody who has a bias that they are not even aware of. Instead, what I recommend is coming in with the facts and figures about the value that you provide to your employer. We have to remember the system for what it is. Your value to your employer can be measured by a dollar amount. What can we do to show your employer that you are a valuable member of the team? That's going to be the most important thing.

Alison Stewart: We're talking to Amanda Holden about her debut book, How to Be a Rich Old Lady. Our phone lines are lit up. We'll get to your calls after a quick break.

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Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest in studio is author and financial expert. She wrote a book. It's called How to Be a Rich Old Lady: Your Guide to Easy Investing, Building Wealth, and Creating the Wild, Beautiful Life You Want. Her name is Amanda Holden. I think the second part of your book is really interesting, second part of your title, about creating the life you want. That's important when you consider what you're investing in, how much you're investing. Can you explain that a little bit?

Amanda Holden: Sure. To me, the rich old lady is really an avatar for financial Independence. It is the face that we are putting on the process of learning to become financially secure and then ultimately financially independent. I'm pretty upfront that my goal for the book is to teach people how to be financially independent, which is really just another way to say retire, but we do exist in this system where the folks that get to retire, you get to walk away from work when you have enough money to walk away from work.

Most of us will not have pensions. For younger folks, it is true that attacks on Social Security continue, and the program is under duress because of it. It all falls on us to figure this out. Being financially independent, unfortunately, in this country, is just not something that is going to happen spontaneously. We gotta have a plan. Bring on the revolution, but until the revolution comes, we're going to have to have a plan and figure out how to work within this system to create the wild, beautiful life we want.

Alison Stewart: Laura is calling in from Queens. Hi Laura, thanks for calling All Of It. You're on the air with Amanda Holden.

Laura: Hi, my name is Laura. I live in Queensland. I'm 28. I have a question. I was out of a job last year for about six months. I was unemployed. I racked up a lot of credit card debt during this time, because I'm financially independent. I didn't have any family I could reach out to for money. Now that I have a job, I have no idea how to tackle the credit card debt. It's the first time I've had this much in my life. I don't know if it's smart to do a credit transfer. I'm not sure. I'm just able to pay off the interest right now. Do you have any tips or advice?

Amanda Holden: You can consider doing a balance transfer? That will put you onto a card that has a zero percent rate. That is something that may allow you to get ahead of this thing, but anytime you do a balance transfer, just be sure to read the fine print. For example, if you end up charging more money to that card, all new purchases will have an exorbitant rate of interest, or it may trigger a rate of interest. That 0% introductory rate probably has an end date. If you do it, use it as a tool to get ahead of this thing, but do be aware of any of the fine print.

Another thing that you can consider doing is calling the credit card company and trying to negotiate your interest rate. Just say, "Hey, I had a really rough year last year." Also, I'm so sorry that your year was difficult. I think a lot of people are dealing with this. Thank you so much for sharing. Tell them that. Tell them, "Hey, it was a really difficult year, but now I'm on top of it, and I want to pay it off. I could really use some help because right now I'm only able to make the interest payments."

Oftentimes, you call once or twice, you're going to get somebody who is willing to help. I would start there, but you're absolutely right that right now, now that you've got an income coming in, that this can be your place of focus. This can be what you focus on this year.

Alison Stewart: Ed is calling from Hackensack, New Jersey. Hi, Ed. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Ed: Hi, longtime listener. I'm actually really excited for this segment. Unfortunately, I am not a lady, nor am I rich yet, but I'm actually working on that. Back in 2023, I remember hearing that, by the time my generation gets to the retirement age, Social Security might run out. That put the fear of God in me. I ran to the Internet. I started learning what I could. I opened the Roth IRA with Robinhood, and I was able to scrounge up $2,400 to throw into it, but for the worst part of a year, it mostly sat there.

I looked into it. I learned what I could. I invested in a bunch of ETFs and index funds. I was able to grow approximately $2,180. Right before 2026, I pulled out-- Not pulled out, but I sold what I had in those certain stocks so I could start fresh in 2026 with proper event advice and guidance. Then you guys came on, and I was like, "Oh, this is exactly what I was waiting for."

Alison Stewart: If you have a little bit of money and you want to invest it, where would you suggest?

Amanda Holden: Robinhood is a fine place to start. I don't love that Robinhood is what we would call a gamified trading app, where, by design, it encourages you to trade perhaps more than is necessary for your average investor. For most investors, doing something like you did, Ed, where you buy a couple of index funds or ETFs that basically just invest you across some entire market, like the whole US Stock market, or the whole international stock market, or the entire bond market, and then just letting it sit and grow over time, is a really great strategy. That way, you're not trying to pick the best stocks, which I would consider that to be a little bit even closer to gambling than investing.

Alison Stewart: This text says, "Hello. For people like artists, self-employed with uneven income periods, what is or are the best places to invest small or large quantities? It's a strange world for those of us who make money one year, but then not for a couple, but obviously, we need to plan as well."

Amanda Holden: That's right. It's maybe even more important for us because we don't have help from an employer, we don't have a company match. Creating our own system of benefits, it's all on us as self-employed people, freelancers, contractors, and artists. What you want to do is, you probably want to start with some sort of retirement account because you are getting a tax benefit when you invest for your own retirement, specifically when you invest for the long term. A great place to start is a Roth IRA.

If you're making more money and you want to do even more, that's amazing. You can look to incorporate something like a SEP IRA or a Solo 401K, but remember, those are just the bank accounts. They're bank accounts that get special tax treatment that also hold investments. The next and most important piece is that we actually invest that money. You can do something like we just described to Ed, where you're investing in low-cost index funds that invest you across these markets.

Alison Stewart: I want to ask you a really basic question that's in your book. At the very beginning, before investment, before 401ks, before Roth IRAs, you talk about tracking your spending and how important that is. Tell us first of all why it's important and the way you should do it.

Amanda Holden: Saving and investing are functions of our income. How much money we have coming in, and we are able to allocate to our goals. It's really going to be hard to know how much money we have, of our income that comes in, available to save if we don't know how much money is also going out. One of the greatest things that we can do here at the beginning of the year, I know a lot of us have financial resolutions, is to print out all those credit card statements, light a candle, put on the musical stylings of your favorite diva, and just spend a little bit of time getting to know your spending.

This is a know thyself situation. You want to know about what you need to get by every month and then how much is fun or bonus spending, because, really, what we're trying to do is get you to a place where we can find ways to save in order to build our financial foundations.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a couple of more calls. Lisa is calling from Linden, New Jersey. Hi Lisa, thanks for calling All Of It. You're on the air with Amanda Holden.

Lisa: Hi, thanks for taking my call. I'm an avid listener of your show. My question to Amanda is this. I'll be 63 this July, teaching for 36 years, and I think I've just about had enough of that career and wanted to move on, but my question is if I pick up a part-time job, I know there's a limit of around $24,000, and if you make over that, you get your Social Security recalculated. Is it worth putting that off collecting Social Security if I'm in that situation, or should I just look to work part-time and leave Social Security alone for now?

Amanda Holden: In general, it's a great idea if you can take your Social Security at what is the regular retirement age, or even pushing it off to the late withdraw, which is what nobody wants to hear, but you do get more money if you are able to put it off until later. When we're talking about retirement, we are talking about an issue of money coming in. Could you walk away from work right now? Do we have enough resources to walk away from work right now? Most people probably couldn't.

What we are talking about with retirement is doing that for maybe 20 or 30 years. Now, hopefully our caller has some sort of-- I believe that they said that they were a teacher, and so perhaps they have some sort of pension, and so they will have an income, but do we need more? If the question is, we are definitely going to need more money to come in to be able to live off of, then transitioning over to part-time employment might be a great idea, but that is getting a little bit personal. I don't know your total financial situation, and it's a little bit hard to say.

Alison Stewart: One final call. Let's talk to Tina in Manhattan. Hi Tina. You're our last caller.

Tina: Hey, thanks, Alison. I wanted to ask also about the IRA. When you get required minimum withdrawals from your IRA, how are you supposed to know how much to take that would help cover the taxes, because this is all pre-tax dollars? How do you calculate how much to take, and how do you choose which investments you're liquidating?

Amanda Holden: Sure. These are questions that are going to largely depend on your own personal financial situation, but I will say about the tax piece specifically. Your RMD is if it's coming from a what we call tax-deferred account, like a 401k or a traditional IRA, so any of the retirement accounts that don't say Roth in the name, then any withdrawals are going to be treated as income. Let's say you're taking $10,000 and use an RMD calculator to figure out how much you need to take out from your account.

Let's say it's $10,000. Imagine plopping that $10,000 right on the top of your income for the year. Whatever is your highest marginal income tax rate is the rate at which you will be paying a tax. Let's say, between state and federal taxes that that comes out to a rate of about 20% or 25%, then that is going to be what you need to account for in taxes. Now, to be clear, you can pay the taxes out of the RMD itself. You can even have a tax withholding from your RMD. Have that money sent straight to the Feds.

Alison Stewart: Our phone lines have been full for this entire segment, so we're going to ask you to come back sometime in the next week or so. Would that be okay?

Amanda Holden: I would love to.

Alison Stewart: We would love to have you back. Our guest has been Amanda Holden. Her book is called How to Be a Rich Old Lady: Your Guide to Easy Investing, Building Wealth, and Creating the Wild, Beautiful Life You Want. We'll see you in a week or so.

Amanda Holden: Sounds good.