Wait...where did my retirement money go?

Okay, so I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I think I might have money somewhere, maybe hundreds or thousands of dollars that I have no idea how to access. When I was in my 20s, I didn't really think about retirement. That was the problem for future me. But now I am future me, 35 years old, and I'm trying to figure out what happened to those retirement accounts for my early 20s. My employers automatically enrolled me in them, or at least I think they did. I don't know. To be honest, I can't even remember the name of the companies that managed my retirement accounts. One night, not long ago while lying in bed, I spent like an hour digging into this, but because everything was saved under my old work emails, I couldn't figure it out. And as I was going to sleep, I thought, surely I can't be the only one in this situation, right? So why don't I make an episode out of this? Maybe if I document my process, it'll encourage other people to do the same. But apparently even turning it into a work assignment didn't really help. After I pitched this to my team, days passed, inertia kicked back in. And soon enough, I found myself on a call with our producer, Alice, who is gently laying down the law. You sacked me. Are there any resources you're coming across about who I should call? And what I was going to tell you is, I think that me telling you who you should call kind of defeats the purpose of me. Of me figuring this out on my own. Why do you keep putting this off? I just haven't been feeling great. And so the fact, like the idea of having to do like an administrative task feels really cumbersome. Do you think part of the reason you've been putting this off is you're afraid that when you look at the account, there won't be any money there? That's part of it for sure. But I'm like, yeah. OK. I'm but what if there's a lot of money? You're going to take me on vacation. Right. Do you want to do the Google search right now while we're on? Yeah, let's just do it. I'll just do it. I'll just do it. OK. In 2012, I worked for NPR as a fellow, so I was only there for a year. But I had retirement benefits. I remember the website was tiaa.org. So then maybe I need to call customer service. The deep sigh after the. No, I don't want to do it. Should I just do it right now? Yeah, do it right now. I feel like I have a gun to your head. Be right back. Oh, I can't tell if this is relatable or just deeply embarrassing. One second. Thank you for calling. This call may be monitored or recorded for quality. The security of cleaning purposes. But I find it. But if you're calling about an existing PIA participant. No. Oh, yes, yes. Please enter in your telephone. Social security number of the person you are calling for. Please enter the number. Looks like we're having a recognizing that. Try that again. What's the security number? Try that again. Oh my God, I hate these remote calls. Let's try that again. Talk to customer service. Let me get someone to help. Thank you for calling your retirement center. This is Brendan. How can I help you? Hi, Brendan. My name is Rima. I have a quick question about a retirement account. And you have an account with TIA. Well, that's what I'm trying to figure out. I'm trying to see if I do have an account with you all. I'm not seeing anything pop up for me. If I don't believe you have an account with us. Oh, really? Do you know if I've ever had an account with you all? No, or else we would have had an account for you with your social. OK. All right, well, thanks. I appreciate it. No problem. Well, thank you so much for calling TIA. Hey, have a good rest of your day. You too. Bye. Bye bye. Welcome to This is Uncomfortable. I'm Rima Grace. We have a thing we do on this show called This Week's Question, where we pose a question about our relationship with money and try to find some answers. And this week I'm getting a little personal because I want to know how much money do I actually have in my old retirement accounts? And why does my brain and maybe yours to avoid these kinds of financial chores that could seriously help us? OK, so even with Alice's help, I didn't have much luck. I'm going to keep looking into it. But while I was on hold, I kept wondering how much of this problem is a me thing versus the system, because it kind of feels like it's built in a way that makes it really easy to drop the ball. I called up Jeffrey Sansabacher. He's a research fellow at Boston College's Center for Retirement Research. And I asked him, how often are people like me losing track of their accounts? It happens a lot. And the reason it happens a lot is because it is really, really hard to take your money from one account to another. That makes me feel better. It's really hard for a lot of reasons. But I think the big one is the company that has your money now doesn't really have any incentive to get rid of it a lot of the time. And there's no requirement that your new company takes it. There was a study like a decade ago that, you know, a third of people have three or more retirement accounts. And this was a decade ago when 401Ks weren't even like fully developed. So now it's almost certainly more than that. Probably many, many people have, you know, three, four, five, four, one case. So I shouldn't feel ashamed. No, you shouldn't feel ashamed. I mean, if you look at like the data, there are only about 15% of people roll over their balances to a new employer's plan. So 15%. You have one five because that seems absurdly low. Yeah, it's really low because it's just it's next to impossible. I'm a retirement researcher. My wife had a self-employment for one case. She got an academic job. I wanted to transfer it over to her academic place. Yeah. She had it at Vanguard, they're a good company and they were very cooperative and helpful and her new employer was, of course, helpful because her new employer's provider wanted the money. And it was still really hard. And I knew what I was doing. So you're literally an expert. Yeah. And so, so that, that was like the best case scenario. Two willing participants in a retirement researcher and it was really challenging. So if you're facing more than that, a lot of people just don't do it. And so that's how you end up with, you know, even a decade ago, a third of people having more than three of these things sitting around. Why was it hard for you and your wife to do it? You know, I think it was just a lot of paperwork. I think that like it was five to five to 10 pages of paperwork. It wasn't that it was so challenging as it was just. It's a chore. It's like a thing. It's a chore, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's like anytime you put a barrier in front of someone, you have the chance of losing them. And there were at least three different points where I was like, I was gonna give up. I was gonna give up. No. But we persevered and now all our money's in one place. So, but yeah, that's rare. It's very rare. Yeah. I was just talking to my sister-in-law about this. She texted me like, oh, you know, I've already cashed out two different 401Ks, but I want to roll over this one to my next employer. How do you do it? And I was like, well, she's pretty complicated. You can, you know, do A, B or C. Okay. Yeah. Can you walk me through it just like more explicitly? What are the A, B and C options? Yeah. So basically you can leave your balance in the previous employer's plan. As long as it's bigger than $1,000, they should just hold on to it. That is not a terrible option if you have an employer with a good plan. Yeah. So that's option one. You could roll over balances to the new employer's plan. That's probably the best option because you know where your money is. It's all in one place. Then you can roll over your balance to an IRA. It's probably like the second best option. I say second best because IRAs typically have higher fees than a 401k. Just because when you get an IRA, you're an individual and you don't have much market power and so they charge you retail fees. Tens of thousands of dollars if you invest a lot. It's not going to be cheap, but it's still a good option. And then the worst option probably is to just cash out. Say you had $5,000 and you would, you know, say you're 30 years old and you cash out. You know, that money in real terms is probably going to be worth $27,000 when you were to retire. I see. But that's not smart. It's probably not very smart unless you're going to go into debt with credit cards or something and use this money for that. But otherwise it's not very smart and it costs you a lot. Yeah. You get a penalty for that if it was a traditional 401k. Yeah. You got to pay taxes on it. But a lot of people cash out. So those are kind of your four options. By the way, you can check out the show notes or our website for a copy of that list. Why is the system so opaque? That's a really good question. I was thinking about this a lot in the lead up to the interview and I've thought about it a lot over time. Like it is just at a high level strange that we have this employer based system where your account is with your employer. That's not how it works for your checking account. You know, it's not how it works for lots of other accounts, but it's how it works for this thing. I think what that means is that you have all these different providers marketing themselves to employers. So you don't just have like one entity. You have many different competing firms. Right. Yeah. It's very fragmented. And I don't think they have a lot of incentive to change this. I think if they had a lot of incentive to change this, it would be changed. Right. Right. I'm guessing that like not having to do this is just cheaper than having to do it for firms. So like that if they had to make it very easy to transfer money from one account to another, they'd be always doing that. And that could be costly. I mean, just to give you a sense of that, like if a account is less than $1,000, the company does have the ability to automatically get rid of it or roll it over because they hate having small accounts. Oh, so that might happen. Wait. So maybe that happened with my accounts. Like if it was under a thousand, it could have happened with your account. I mean, they would have to send you a check or put it somewhere. They can't just get rid of it. But they are allowed for very small accounts to get it off their books because it's costly for them. I mean, this is like your life's work right now, right? Thinking and studying about retirement. Yeah. I mean, who's like, I'm curious when you think about this more broadly, who is most disadvantaged by this? I think who's most disadvantaged by it are lower income workers who move around a lot. Yeah. You know, if you look at like age and income and job mobility, you know, the people who lose out are people who move jobs at any point and younger people move jobs more. And really importantly, I think lower income people move jobs more. Now, lower income people often don't have access to a 401k at all. But when they do, I think this system really disadvantages them by making it very easy for them to lose track of their money. And to some extent, since we're all younger workers at some point, since we're all at some point probably lower income, we end up being at disadvantage is all of us at least a little bit, I think. Right. I mean, doesn't that, do you get frustrated by that? Because when I think about it, I'm like, wow, I am someone who has resources. I host a podcast about money and I'm still struggling to get my financial life in order. But like, do you ever feel that kind of like, I don't know, I don't know. That frustration, I guess. I mean, definitely. The thing that frustrates me is the idea that like these, these accounts don't obey like a basic rule, which is they don't go with you. Like when I get paid by Boston College, they put money in my checking account. And if I switched my jobs, that would not change. The next employer would do that too. And that's very easy. So it's very easy for me to keep track of my checking account. Why this wouldn't be that easy is completely insane to me, actually. I'm sorry. Like I said, I'm trying to track down these retirement accounts. I'm trying to like set my expectations or have reasonable expectations. How much money do you think I may have in these? Like, I see. Were you automatically enrolled? Did you actually get to me? Okay. No, I was 22. Did not know what I was doing. Did not look into it. I was automatically enrolled in the one you probably have like two or $3,000. And then if it was invested recently, it might be like maybe six or $7,000. And the one that was just for a year. The other one you said was, you know, a little longer. Three years. Yeah. So there's three, let's say six, two thousand more. No, maybe they matched something 11. Maybe like 15,000. Ooh. Maybe. I mean, I'd be happy with that. At the delusional part of my brain is like, what if I have hundreds of thousands? Obviously. Yeah. Maybe you invested it all in like Bitcoin when it was a center thing and you're now, you can just retire right now. Yeah, maybe. Maybe this is my last year of working. After talking with Jeff, I can't stop thinking about the millions of workers with retirement accounts just sitting there that are ignored or forgotten. I'm still on a mission to figure out what happened to mine. And I'll also look at why our brains love to avoid these kinds of tasks and how we can trick ourselves into doing them anyway. That's after the break. Also, is there a money chore like this that you've been putting off or another money question keeping you up at night? We'd love to hear about it and maybe even try to help. Give us a call and leave a message at 347 ringTIU. And your call just might inspire our next this week's question. Welcome back to This Is Uncomfortable. I'm Rima Harris. This week, I'm trying to track down my old retirement accounts for my first two jobs in my early twenties, which led me to meet up with our producer, Alice Wilder, and start making some more calls. Because after digging through some old paperwork, I eventually tracked down the name of one of the retirement administrators. I'm pretty sure I had an account with. Welcome to the North Carolina retirement system. Please enter the last four digits of your social security number, followed by the town. His voice is so funny. No, I'm like, he should be a radio host. Please enter your zip code. Oh, by the town. Oh, I don't know if I should put my old zip code or my current one. Oh, please enter. There are currently. Callers ahead of you. What? Not going to lie, I was tempted to hang up and try again later. But in that moment, I thought, why? Why is my brain working overtime to get me out of this? I'll tell you how this phone call ends later in the episode. But first, I really wanted to dig into the psychology. So I called up Katie Milkman. She's a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. And she spends her days studying decision making and behavior. They gave her a rundown of my predicament. The class of problem that you just described is incredibly common, which is there's a thing that's important in the long run for me to do, right? Like I need to figure out my retirement. Yes, savings situation in the long run. But right now I'd rather be binge watching Netflix. Yeah, right now I don't have to figure it out. Eating Doritos or whatever. Yeah, like there's something else right now that's much more enticing to be doing with my time. And so I'll just put it off. So the procrastination problem that you just described, that's massively common for everything from your finances to figuring out, you know, that online degree you've been meaning to get or the health routine you've been meaning to set up or the colonoscopy you've been meaning to arrange. Right? Like it's everywhere. It's like basically if you don't feel the effects of whatever it is that's looming, then it's easy to put it off. Um, not just easy. We are designed. Our operating system as humans is built to procrastinate on things that are not instantly gratifying, you know, we're wired to eat the Oreo now and to forget about retirement savings. So. Yeah. I like that you use the phrase operating system because it makes me feel like it's detached from who I am. Like, oh, that's a separate entity that is controlling my life and it's not me. That's right. It doesn't mean there's something wrong with you specifically. Right. Something that's wrong with the way we were all designed, but it could become a problem for you specifically. And so you've got to outsmart your operating system and figure out a work around that's going to get you where you want to be. But how much of it do you think is, comes down to us just not knowing the potential payoff earlier today? I was actually crunching the numbers and it always, like when I actually sit down and do that, it always astonishes me a little. I'm like, wow, if I save a thousand dollars in 30 years, that could be 10,000. If I save 10,000 in 30 years, that could be 100,000. Yeah. I think this is a separate issue, which is that people don't understand compound interest very well. Yeah. And so if they do not appreciate how hard it is to catch up. Yeah. Even if you were saving at a higher rate later, starting early gives you this massive benefit because of compounding. And our brains are very confused by compounding. We sort of assume processes are linear and that we can add them linearly. And I can catch up because I'll just do all the savings when I'm at my peak income, which I assume I'll reach in my forties, but here in my twenties, I'm like, I'm barely able to get enough together to go on a vacation. So this isn't the time to save. But that's wrong because of compound interest and how massively beneficial it is to be putting even a little away early compared to more away later. So I do think that is also an issue when we think about, there's a lot of unfortunately, unfortunately when it comes to saving for retirement, there's a whole lot of human operating system features that are not working for us, that are working against us. Well, speaking of which, so then how do we get ourselves, like what are some science backed ways we can overcome this kind of procrastination when it comes to our financial lives? Also a great question. So there's a lot of different strategies that can be helpful here. Most of them boil down to trying to change the calculus of it's only going to have payoffs in the distant future. And even though I keep saying, oh yeah, tomorrow I'm going to get to that. Tomorrow I'm going to prioritize that. You've got to break that cycle. And to break that cycle, you need to figure out a strategy that will ensure when tomorrow becomes today, you actually want to be locked in to taking care of it as opposed to able to easily procrastinate yet again. So essentially you want to entrap your future self, like tomorrow you into doing something. So there's a variety of strategies you can use for that. One form of entrapment that's pretty light touch and can help a little but may not be enough for most people, but it's just sort of like, I'm going to put it on the calendar, I'm going to schedule time for it. So that's the lowest level of entrapment of yourself is sort of, I've now, instead of a vague commitment to do this soon, there's an explicit commitment. Here's the time, here's the date. And maybe I even told another human so that I'd feel some shame. So now you're changing the cost benefit a little bit. Okay. Now the cost of procrastination has just inched upward a little because now you've got shame involved. And before you just had like this vague thing you'd put off. So that's like a very low level way to entrap yourself. Okay. But then for those of us who put it on the calendar and then cancel it. Yeah. Yeah. For those of you who that's not enough, which is like maybe 97% of you, you can get more aggressive. And by the way, the category of tool we're talking about here, like social scientists call what we're talking about commitment devices. The idea is you're used to having other people create constraints to help you do a thing that you might not do otherwise. Like you're used to your boss being like, get this to me by Friday or else you're not going to get your bonus at the end of the day. The world is full of others setting up systems that create incentives that align our long-term goals with what we do. What's weird about a commitment device is it's you preventing yourself from doing the thing that's tempting. So it's like you're flipping it around. You're like, you're your own teacher, your own boss, your own nanny state or whatever. Okay. So we talked about the low level, which is, yeah, like put it on the calendar, get somebody to nag you. All right. Let's up the ante. The most extreme form of commitment device is literally saying you're going to find yourself. So basically you need to create a contract that's like, I'm going to, you know, have to give $50 to a politicians campaign who I hate. If I haven't done this by next Friday. And now here, there's a couple of ways. One, they're literally websites. I have no affiliation with them that will help you do this. There's a website called stick. STICK.com built by some economists that will let you put money on the line, choose a referee. So someone who will hold you accountable and report to the site on whether you successfully rolled those over to someone who, you know, will be a truthful reporter who can check on you. And then, you know, they take your credit card and they have a list of charitable organizations you can say your money is going to go to if you fail. And PS, they actually try to choose charities on either side of hot button topics because you kind of don't want to silver lining. So ideally you should commit to sending your money somewhere that would really sting if you don't succeed. That's insane. And if you don't want to like have a middleman, middle person type website involved, you can just do this yourself. Do it with your friends. Yeah, do it with your friends, do it with your family, whatever it is. But the idea there is what we know from research is sometimes we need a nanny state kind of situation to get something done. And like you can set that up for yourself. But I can imagine it might make people, some people feel bad about themselves. Like, oh man, I have to resort to something like this in order to get a very basic task done. Yeah, I find that sad and silly. Like I think it's really smart and clever if you figured out how your operating system works well enough that you can, you know, deal with all the bugs and get stuff done. So I'm like, no, don't think about it that way. Retrain our minds to be proud of finding the strategies that work. Some research and I've done some of it looks at the carrot approaches. Like how do I make it more fun and enjoyable to get this done? Yeah, this feels very punitive. This is very punitive, which PS punitive can work, right? But you don't have to take the punitive approach. There's a carrot based approach. Let's talk about the carrot approach. Like, what does that look like? So, you know, you can self reward. And that actually is literally the same thing, right? Like, because you're imposing a treat on yourself, but only under these conditions. So that's one strategy. If that like resonates with you more, of course, there's research showing that losses loom larger than gains. Like, you know, being threatened with a fine of $10 is more motivating than being offered a reward of $10. So like the penalty clause does tend to outperform. On the other hand, you may just find it unpleasant and finding something unpleasant can be a good reason not to use it. And you can also like give yourself a reward whenever, right? That is true. Although there's interesting research showing that we are surprisingly decent at sticking to rules when we set them like that. So not as good as, you know, your boss would be or your teacher, like someone else who doesn't have the temptation of like, well, just have that ice cream anyway. But better than you'd expect. Another thing you can do, though, is think about like setting up a situation that will make it more pleasant to get this done. So I've done some research with led by Rachel Gershaw and at UC Berkeley on tandem goal pursuit, which means like doing the thing that you've been putting off, but with a friend. And people, they find it more fun and there's someone holding them accountable when they pursue a goal with a friend. So like more gets done and they're more effective. If you have a friend who is in the same boat and you can like, you know, say, you know what, like we're going to, we're going to set aside two hours next Saturday with a nice bottle of wine at the end. We're going to sit next to each other on the couch with our laptops and we are going to get each get this done and roll it over. And like, it's not going to be as unpleasant. Like there's somebody there with you. I know. That's the only thing. Honestly, that's the only thing. And not the only thing, but that's one of the things that works best for me. I mean, that's what happened, honestly, earlier this week where I kept putting it off and then our producer Alice was like, Ema, let's just get on like a call and just do this together. And yeah, once that, once she like set that in motion, it was much easier for me to do by myself when she eventually got off the call. So, okay. So we can. And by the way, there's a reason that there's like an entire industry, right? Of like financial advisors and health coaches, like all these kinds of people in some ways they're sort of like commitment devices. They're sort of like accountability partners or sort of like your buddy who you tandem goal pursue with. There's a lot of different hacks to help you. If someone's still listening to this and's like, Oh man, I should do this too. I should consolidate my 401ks or I should do this financial thing, but I'll get to it tomorrow. What would you tell them? I would tell them you won't get to it tomorrow. Most likely. She's going to call you out. Okay. You've probably said that before. So make it harder for yourself to procrastinate beyond tomorrow. How are you going to make sure you actually get to it tomorrow? Put it on your calendar, tell somebody you're going to do it, maybe get a friend to come over, maybe schedule a zoom with someone in your life a bit like Remus Alice. So think about like, how do you set up a situation where failure tomorrow is not really an option because you've changed the calculus and it's no longer sort of cheap and easy to put it off another day. Like Katie said, these kind of chores are much easier to do together. And I'd love to connect with you all and hear what challenges you're trying to tackle. Let me know over on Instagram and on TikTok that this is uncomfortable hot. Okay. So let's go back to that phone call with the retirement administrator who put me on hold, the one with 90 callers ahead of me. I did eventually get through to a human and I am happy to report that I got some answers. Once I got off the phone with them, I called up our producer Alice to share the news. Okay, Remus, did you do it? Did you, did you move the money? How much money? Tell me everything. Okay. So I have some answers. Okay. So this is for my WUNC North Carolina Public Radio account. So this was the second job I had in my early twenties and I worked at this place for three years. Let me pull up actually a recording from my conversation that I had with a representative. Let me see. All right. And so you said you wanted the total balance that is $10,461.32. Oh, wow. Okay. So that's like less than I guessed, but that's still a pretty decent chunk of change. I'm just, I'm proud of you for like getting through all of the phone trees, all of the logistics, like, well, that's a task. I know I felt very accomplished after that conversation, but then I proceeded to talk with her for like five more minutes about how to actually roll it over because yeah, it's like, it's still not as straightforward as I would, you know, I would hope. Um, so that is the next task. Okay. So still work ahead. Yes. There's still a lot that I have to do. Okay. So that was with my second job. And then I tried to get answers for my first job at NPR when I was like 21. And then I just contacted NPR and I was like, Hey, like what's going on here? And then they wrote back and let me pull up that email. So they said, thank you for reaching out. I pulled up your W twos for calendar year 2012 and 2013 and there is no record that you made contributions. They're like, we don't know what you're talking about. Which is like, there was a, I was bracing also for this possibility because again, I was like 21, 22, I didn't care about retirement, but you know, I thought that they would have automatically enrolled me, but I guess that didn't. I don't know. Okay. So if there are any like 21 year olds listening, yes, you have access to retirement, figure it out, enroll for your future self, please. But hey, you got an answer. At least I have answers. Yeah. And I guess I don't have the task of rolling that over. Yeah. I'm so proud of you. Oh, thank you. And I assume when you visit next, you're taking me out to dinner, right? I mean, I know you're not liquidating it. Right. Right. Following camera. But now that I know you have a picture 10, 10, 10, it's like, you know, we can go to the co-op. I think of the co-op, get some chicken biscuits at, oh my God, that place. I still drink my drink. Sunrise biscuits. Sunrise biscuits. Yes. Oh, yes. We'd love to hear your stories about discovering, rolling over, or I don't know, maybe being disappointed by old retirement accounts. You can call and leave us a voicemail at 347-RING-TIU. That's 347-746-4848. Or you can send us an email at uncomfortable at marketplace.org. Also, I should say there are now federal requirements that make it so more Americans are automatically getting enrolled into retirement accounts these days. So if you just started a new job, definitely look into that and check out how much you're depositing. Okay, before we go real quick, it is time for our mailbag. We love getting voice messages and emails from y'all. We read all of them. And sometimes your messages spark conversations among our team. And today, Alice has a good one that we want to get into. I do. And it's very timely. So this comes from Holly Rich in Texas. Okay, she says, let's talk taxes and how as Americans, we seem to have a belief system that if you don't find a way to reduce your taxes, you're not being smart. Like we've built cheating into the system. And yet we all know our government has a big deficit and we still want services to be provided, but it's hard to see or feel the direct line between paying our taxes and how we benefit. And then there's the guilt about trying to pay less. This may be a me thing, but I make around $180,000 a year as a single mom. I'm not a billionaire, but I'm also not struggling. I feel a social obligation to help those who need more services and breaks, which I do through volunteering and donating. But when it comes to taxes, I try every trick I can find to keep as much money in my pocket as possible. I'm a freelancer and I set up an S corp so I can pay the bare minimum. I'd be very interested to learn more about how we collectively deal with this tension of trying to be a good socially upstanding citizen and a tax avoider. Tax time is coming. Okay, Reema, what is your reaction to that? Ah, that's really interesting. I think she's naming a real tension that's baked into our system. Like I can understand how some people like her would feel this weird moral tension around taxes in the US. Like if you don't take advantage of every loophole, then you're doing something wrong, you're leaving money on the table. But on the other hand, you feel this like moral or social obligation to not avoid your taxes. But also, I don't know about you, but the way I think about it is that like our tax system is full of incentives that we use to encourage things like, you know, homeownership or having kids or starting a business. Yeah. So it's like when we're trying to lower our taxes, really we're responding to those incentives. I thought it was interesting that she used the word cheating. Like we've built cheating into the system and I'm like, I don't think that's cheating. Like taking all the deductions you possibly can isn't cheating. It's, I think that the government assumes that everyone is going to do that. And they put those tax breaks in there intentionally to say like, okay, maybe we're not going to have universal parental leave. Right. But what we will give you is a credit for childcare, which, you know, big gulf between those two things, but it is like something that we're being given. And so like, I don't know. I'm not a parent. I'm like, why not take that if they're putting it on the table, take it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cheating is an interesting word. Clearly this person's trying to be a good, helpful citizen and like contribute to their community. And, you know, I guess lowering your taxes, it can feel like you're kind of gaming the system, but like I've said, it's how it's designed to work. We are being asked to think individually about how to pay less while also being part of this structure that depends on all of us contributing. So I get it. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it would be a very different conversation if our taxes were itemized. And it was like, will you be paying the tax for the US military? Will you be paying the tax for your local library? Like I think people would treat that very differently. But because it's all, you know, federal taxes and state taxes, we don't have that option. And so it is about like trying to, especially in this economy, like pay as little as you can. I was interested in what she said of it's hard to see or feel a direct line between paying our taxes and how we benefit. Because at least for me, like my tax dollars pay for the community pool that only costs four dollars for me to go swim in after work or like the dog park that I take my dog to or my friends who are teachers in public schools. I'm like, like I feel like I do see the benefits on a really regular basis, at least when I think about my state and local taxes. Yeah. I agree with the state and local taxes, but I think the federal can feel more abstract. It makes me think of this TikTok that I just saw. Yeah. It's from this lawyer, Rachel Cohen. Oh, I did actually see this. Yeah. She was talking about her decision to not pay her federal income tax this year, which is certainly not a choice that I think she's recommending other people make, but she's paying her state taxes because she generally supports and sees the benefits of her state taxes. I'm not paying my federal income tax this year. So a little background, my name is Rachel. I am an attorney. This is obviously not legal advice. The thing is right now, my federal income tax is going overwhelmingly to disappearing my neighbors to concentration camps and to the military industrial complex. And so as an individual, I was like, OK, well, I'm not going to send my taxes to the federal government. It's interesting. Her video got so many strong responses from people in the comments. Do you see that? Like, yeah. Yeah. There are folks who are supporting her. Hey, girl, like I support the ethics behind this, but like you really might be in a big trouble for kind of a long time. If you do this, I would be very interested to see what happens down the line for her, especially like publicizing it like this. Like, yeah, because it is technically illegal, right? It's not not technically it is illegal. Yeah. There are a couple of people who also mentioned the comments, this larger movement of tax resistance. There's this group called the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee. I think their whole thing is that they refuse to pay some or all of their federal taxes that go to pay for war. But yeah, I mean, I don't think any of this is really new. I think one of the first protests in this country, right, was the Boston Tea Party. Right. Yeah, where they're protesting unfair taxation. Yes, we have a rich history in this country of not wanting to pay taxes. So I don't think this person is alone. And like the Quakers, they're pacifists and they've had movements in the past of withholding taxes when the US is at war. But I'm also hearing in Holly's letter and also in the video of people in like, it seems to stem back to this larger question of like, is the government actually using our money in a way that improves our lives? And for a lot of people, the answer is in some cases, no. Anyway, Holly, thanks so much for writing in. Totally get this tension that you're naming. If you're listening to this conversation and it's bringing up something for you, let us know. You can call us at 347-RING-TIU. Or if you have another question or thought that you want to share, you can do that too. All right. Any final thoughts, Alice, before we go? Just that I have one more document I need to upload for my taxes. So. Oh. That reminds me I need to do my taxes. I need to start. All right. That is all for today. This episode was lead produced by Alice Wilder and I'm your host, Rima Kres. Zoe Saunders is our senior producer, audio engineering by Drew Jostad. Bridget Bodner is Marketplace's director of podcasts. Marketplace's chief content officer is Joanne Griffith. Neil Scarborough is vice president and general manager of Marketplace. And our theme music is by Wonderly. All right, we'll catch you all next week.