Sean, so let's say that I decide out of the kindness of my heart to pay you $1,000 every month. So you have an extra $1,000 in your budget. What are you going to do with that surplus? Well, first I'm going to say thank you. I might take you out to a nice meal because it's so generous of you. And then, you know, my needs are pretty much met. So I'm just going to invest the rest of that for my future.

What would you do with that money? The whole thing? After a nice meal. So maybe, let's say we have $800 to invest. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm probably going to invest maybe like $700, and then I'm going to spend the 300 to live my best life because, you know, you've got to do both. There you go. I love that. Well, today we're going to be talking with the listener about what to do with an extra thousand dollars in their

budget. Welcome to Nerd Wallet's Smart Money Podcast, where you send us your money questions

and we answer them with the help of our genius nerds. I'm Sean Piles. And I'm Elizabeth Ayala. Today we are joined by a listener

named Manny, who had a question about how to spend an extra thousand dollars. We decided to make this

a budget rehab episode. And for that reason, we have Manny here with us today. Hello, hello,

Mani. Mani, welcome to Smart Money. Thank you, Sean. Thank you, Elizabeth. It's good to be here. I am going to start with an icebreaker. I'm going to dig into my hat with all my questions for my ice breakers. And the one I'm going to pull out is describe 2026 so far with one word, Manny. Lemons, I would say, is my one word. And I know you're probably wondering why. Yes. You know, there's an old homage, when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. But it feels honestly like every day in 26, we're just being pounded by lemons. This year has been particularly, you know, hard. But it's also, like, lemons are really a beautiful

thing. There's so much you can make from it, whether it's like, uh, lemon, I love making,

you know, homemade lemon chicken pasta, but it seems like we're getting a lot of lemons recently.

And I think it's hard to keep up with that amount of them. So that's my year, at least this year.

Yeah, I feel that. Do you think that you're

still in the lemon accumulation phase, or are you turning that into lemon chicken pasta or

lemonade or whatever you want? I got to steal that. I think I'm still accumulating lemons,

and I just hope they don't go bad in my fridge, you know, that awful vegetable door at the bottom,

you know. Well, hopefully your finances aren't full of lemons too.

So let's learn a little bit about you.

Tell us about what you do for a living, Manny.

I work at the Ohio State University, so I live in Columbus, Ohio.

I work with our downtown commissioners, our downtown city council,

and just really work to understand what policies are affecting higher education.

Given changes in higher education at the federal level, I imagine that's a big part of why you're

getting lots of lemons nowadays. I'm very thankful to be on my local government affairs team.

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