This is NPR's life kid.

I'm Chris Arnold, a cover personal finance and consumer protection for NPR.

And a host life kid podcast that tackle all sorts of financial questions.

Like what's the best way to start budgeting or how should we think about whether to rent

or to buy a home or I know I need to start saving for my kids college.

But where do I even start?

You know, it's like increasingly our lives.

We have all this stuff to address the paperwork, the call centers, all this crap we don't

want to deal with.

That's not our job right now.

Nobody's paying us to do with this, but it feels like a job.

It feels almost like adults homework, but it's homework that nobody talks about.

It really is striking how it's invisible.

We don't generally see it as labor.

That's Elizabeth Emmens.

She's a Columbia law professor and she actually wrote a whole book on this concept, which

she calls life admin.

Here's her definition.

Life admin is all the invisible office work that steals our time.

It's the kind of work that managers and secretaries get paid in an office to do, but that we all

do invisibly and for free in our own lives.

Things like getting your car inspected, organizing your kids after school schedules and their

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