From "This Is Uncomfortable": Wait...where did my retirement money go?
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 1 May 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
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Summary
Hey Smarties! There won’t be a livestream for “Economics on Tap” today. But don’t worry! We’ll be back next week. For now, we’re sharing an episode from our friends over at “This Is Uncomfortable.” Enjoy!
What happens to your retirement savings when you leave a job? And if you’ve forgotten about an old 401(k) account, how do you track that money down? That’s the mystery Reema is trying to solve this week, as she confronts her own financial anxiety and goes searching for retirement accounts left behind at previous jobs.
Along the way, she talks with retirement expert Geoffrey Sanzenbacher about just how common this is -- only about 15% of people roll their retirement savings over to a new employer's plan! And she asks behavioral economist Katy Milkman why this kind of chore feels so hard. Plus, brain hacks that will help you get through that daunting financial to-do list.
Here at Marketplace, we’re celebrating Public Media Giving Days on May 1 and 2. Help us keep the conversations going. Donate now: https://support.marketplace.org/smart-sn
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, Smarties, it's Kimberly. |
| 0:02.1 | Today, there won't be a live stream for economics on tap, |
| 0:05.3 | but instead, we're sharing an episode from our friends over at This Is Uncomfortable. |
| 0:10.8 | Host Rima Kres tries to figure out what happened to her retirement money from earlier in her career |
| 0:16.7 | and what to do with those forgotten accounts. |
| 0:20.3 | Here at Make Me Smart and all the shows at Marketplace, |
| 0:23.8 | we're celebrating Public Media Giving Days on May 1st and 2nd. |
| 0:28.6 | It's a great time to support Make Me Smart because we are public media. |
| 0:34.0 | That means we rely on your support to keep the conversation going. And those conversations |
| 0:39.1 | are better when you're here by our side. Donate today at marketplace.org or click the link |
| 0:45.2 | in our show notes. All right, here's the show. Okay, so I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I think |
| 0:52.0 | I might have money somewhere, maybe hundreds or thousands of dollars, |
| 0:56.5 | that I have no idea how to access. When I was in my 20s, I didn't really think about retirement. |
| 1:03.7 | That was a problem for Future Me. But now I am Future Me, I'm 35 years old, and I'm trying to figure |
| 1:09.4 | out what happened to those retirement |
| 1:11.0 | accounts for my early 20s. My employers automatically enrolled me in them, or at least I think they |
| 1:16.4 | did. I don't know. If I'm going to be honest, I can't even remember the name of the companies |
| 1:20.4 | that managed my retirement accounts. One night, not long ago, while lying in bed, I spent like |
| 1:26.2 | an hour digging into this, |
| 1:27.7 | but because everything was saved under my old work emails, I couldn't figure it out. |
| 1:32.1 | And as I was going to sleep, I thought, surely, I can't be the only one in this situation, right? |
| 1:37.9 | So why don't I make an episode out of this? |
... |
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