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Welcome to the NerdWallet Smart Money podcast, where we answer your personal finance and help you feel a little smarter about what you do with your money. I'm Sean Piles. And I'm Liz Weston. To send the nerds your money questions, call or text us on the nerd hotline at 901 730-6373. That's 901730 Nird, or email us at podcast at nerdwallet.com. Hit that subscribe button to get new episodes delivered to your devices every Monday. And if you like what you hear, please leave us a review and tell a friend. This episode, I am joined by our occasional co host, Sarah Ratner, to answer a listener's question about whether to rent or buy when moving to a new city. But 1st, an hour this week in your money segment, Liz and I are going to talk about the so called great resignation and how to know if now is a good time for you to find a new job. So you may have heard this term, the great resignation, which was actually coined by Anthony Klotz, associate professor of management at Texas And M University. And it's true a lot of people have quit their jobs in 2021. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4,000,000 Americans with their jobs in July alone. Yeah. And there are a lot of reasons why this is happening. It actually started before the pandemic and just really accelerated during it. But what clot says is that a number of workers have had pandemic epiphanies that inspired them to pursue new careers. Some of the workers were burnt out. Others said no to returning to the office. Some were worried about their safety. And other people just decided, you know, life is short. I'm gonna do what I want. Yeah. I think that being told, you have to go into a workplace that, you know, feel safe in in the face of a deadly pandemic. A lot of people realize I can do something else with the brief time that I have on this earth, and it's not going to be, you know, carrying during to people that are gonna yell at me at a table or pulling a bunch of sweaters at the gap, which is something that I experienced early on that made me change where I was going with my career.
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NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Haggling Tips and What's Driving Volatile Car Valuation
Mon Oct 04 2021
Right. For example, here's where relationships are really important. You obviously don't want to be a jerk because then you're not gonna get what you want. Yeah. Like maybe the job at all. Exactly. But interestingly, most people don't negotiate their salary. I didn't realize that, but there's some fairly extensive research that most people just accept what they're given. I always think, you know, women get the bad rap that we don't do that, but apparently, most people don't do that. And most managers expect you to. So they're not expecting you to just grab the first offer that's on the table. How can people go about negotiating a salary at a new job? Well, the thing with all negotiations is most people don't prepare enough. Over preparation is really key. You go on salary.com, Glassdoor, Robert Half, the temporary services firm, they have a salary guide. Just look up what other people are making, what's the going rate. Talk around your workplace if you can. If you're already there and asking for a raise, it's kind of a different situation than if you're trying to get in. But do all the research you can and have a game plan. Actually write down what you want and how you're gonna ask for it. The next most important thing is go for salary first. Go for the dollars before you start talking about things like extra time off or extra benefits because those are fairly easy to give you. The money is hard. Get the money down first and then ask for the rest. I think it makes sense to negotiate the big ticket item like your salary first, and then you can get into smaller things like PTO or Mhmm. Insurance. So that way, whoever you're talking with doesn't feel like they've already given you the good stuff if you negotiate the little details first. For this article, we interviewed Kwame Christian, who's in charge of the American Negotiation Institute. He said, if you start off with the creative options, then they feel like they might have given you enough. And money is exhaustible. The other stuff is basically inexhaustible. That also speaks to the sort of psychological element in negotiations where they're going to give you some perks no matter what, but you want to play a pretty tact
So here is a very important not so secret secret. It is very, very, very difficult to beat the market. In fact, most professional fund managers, the people who try to do this for a living, don't beat the market. And if even the professionals can't do it, like, it's kind of a hard sell to an individual to try and say, okay. Like, you can do this. But this is a great case for just investing in a low cost index fund because then you'll match the performance of an index and not underperform it. Okay. That makes sense. So what about ETFs? ETFs are also typically passively managed, so they're less expensive than actively managed mutual funds. But ETFs are also cool because you can buy and sell them throughout the trading day similar to stocks. They also tend to have lower fees than other types of funds. And another thing that I like about ETFs, mutual funds, and index funds is that they can allow you to invest in an industry you're interested in with a single purchase. There are funds for real estate, information technology, and there are even cannabis funds. As far as investing in an index fund or an ETF, can you give me an idea about how much that would cost? So as of this taping, a Schwab S and P 500 index fund, and that's just, you know, a fund that's happened to be managed by Schwab, is trading for $69.20 per share. And an iShares s and p 500 ETF is trading for just over $450, so they can really range. Like with stocks, the price of ETFs and index funds can vary greatly. And I do wanna circle back to the topic of fees, though. These types of investments have a sneaky little fee known as expense ratios that people should be aware of. Can you explain what these are? Sure. Expense ratios are a charge shareholders cover that pay the fund's operating costs, like administrative cost, compliance, and marketing. They're just charged on top of your annual fee, and they're taken out of your investment, so they're easy to miss. But if
This year and continue it on into next year. That's smart. Like, what are you thinking? Well, one thing I really need to do is get a fence for my house, which is the maybe least sexy thing I've ever purchased in my life. But the last quote I got for it was that it was going to be $11,000. So I'm trying to think about how I can shave a little bit off my spending here and there to have that much more to put toward my fence fund, which is the name of one of my many savings accounts. So, again, it's the idea of knowing how much I'm spending on my house, knowing how much I'm spending on things I travel, and being able to save as much money as I can in between. There you go. That's one of the things about homeownership because you spend 1,000 and 1,000 of dollars on things no one will ever see or that they do see, they don't notice. So sorry about that. But at least you know, and you have that satisfaction. Yes. Exactly. You're not taking on debt to do it. Even better. Yep. Exactly. Most importantly. Okay. And with that, I think we can get on to this episode's money question segment with Sarah Ratner. Alright. This episode's question comes from Renee, who emailed us a question about kid debit cards. Here it is. I've seen a few debit cards for kids where parents can transfer allowances and teach money management. Do you have recommendations for which one to use? I have a 9 year old and would like to get her started on money management. Thank you. To help us answer Renee's question, we are joined this episode by banking nerd, Margaret Burnett. Welcome back onto the podcast, Margaret. Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be back. I knew we had to have you on when we got this question because you have written about just this topic. To dive into it, can you explain what these cards are and how they work? First of all, I do wanna say that in the majority of cases, these are joint accounts. So the parent has the account. And because they are joint accounts and the parent is the adult on the accounts, There are parent controls. And what types of parent controls are there in place? There could be controls about how much money can be spent in