Money Talks: The Cost of Caring

Slate Money

Slate Podcasts

Investing, Business

4.3 • 988 Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2025

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this Money Talks: When his intellectually disabled brother-in-law suddenly came under their care, Professor Harold Pollack and his wife found themselves in a financial crisis. This huge life shift prompted him to face down his own lack of financial planning and eventually help demystify the topic for others with his book, The Index Card. In this episode, Harold joins Emily Peck, for whom this topic is also very personal, to discuss the oft ignored financial realities of longterm caregiving. Want to hear that discussion and hear more Slate Money? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slate Money show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/moneyplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Jessamine Molli and Cheyna Roth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Money Talks, a special extra podcast from Slate Money, where we chat with brilliant and interesting people.
0:17.7	I'm Emily Peck. I'm a correspondent at Axios and co-host of Slate Money, and I'm here today
0:22.7	with Harold Pollock. He is the Helen Ross Professor at the Crown Family School of Social
0:28.3	Work Policy and Practice at the University of Chicago. And he's the co-author of the Index Card,
0:34.5	which is this amazing personal finance book that all started from literally
0:39.1	just an index card that Harold jotted down. Harold, welcome to Money Talks.
0:45.2	Oh, thanks so much for having me. It's great to talk to Emily. You actually, you messaged Felix
0:49.0	about coming on this show, but the topic you wanted to talk about is like one that's very,
0:54.1	just really personal and
0:55.7	important to me, and that is the cost of caring for someone in your family or a close
1:01.0	loved one who is disabled or elderly, and how that care can just radically, profoundly change
1:08.2	your life and your finances and the way you see the world and the government
1:12.4	and just, I mean, it really can radically change everything. And that's something that's really
1:18.0	has mattered to me since I was growing up because I grew up with a mother who was disabled.
1:22.3	And Harold, I can't wait to talk to you about this because you have been caring for your
1:26.7	brother-in-law,law Vincent for so long,
1:28.7	you and your wife. But I also, if there's time, and I'm promising listeners, there will be time.
1:34.7	We have to talk about the index card and, you know, see if personal finance advice in 2025
1:41.7	is as simple as it was when this book first came out, I guess,
1:45.1	more than a decade ago. So we'll get into all that after the break on Slate Money Talks.
1:59.7	It's the most wonderful time
2:03.1	Are you a smart booker or a silly booker?
	...

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