If you listen to Marketplace Money with any regularity, you know we like to say it’s never too early to start thinking about your money. How to manage it, save it, spend it, and understand it so you can control your money and not have it control you.
So when Ron Lieber and the Your Money staff at The New York Times approached us with the idea of collaborating on a special project about how money issues change through the decades of our lives, we thought it would be a great opportunity to go in-depth “through the ages.” And that’s just what we did on the show this weekend.
Host Tess Vigeland, and a team of reporters working for The Times, including Ron Lieber, Tara Siegel Bernard, and Paul Sullivan, traveled around the country for the coverage. Their profiles ranged from 18-year-old Mino Caulton, trying to carefully chose college to minimize his debt later, to 70-year-old Susanna Wilson, who’s worked her whole life, but never saved for retirement.
Some interesting themes emerged – like the fact a lot of us just don’t like thinking about money that much. Also, issues don’t end from one stage of life to the next. In fact, if you don’t deal with them, they can simply compound.
We added a decade to our version of the collaboration – 83-year-old E. Danby Brandon, a working financial planner who still has a dozen clients in their 90s. So I guess if the bad news is that it’s never too early to start thinking about money; the good news is it’s never too late, either.
You can read the print stories at NYTimes.com/ages and listen to some extra web audio elements. Plus, don’t miss the cool interactive checklist that helps you navigate finances through the ages, produced by NYTimes.com and also made in a special section on our website.
Let us know what you think and enjoy this weekend’s show.
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