December 22, 2025 • 6 mins
CBS News Business Analyst and host of Jill on Money Jill Schlesinger joins us to discuss your financial resolutions heading into 2026.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And this is West Michigan's Morning News Steve Kelly and
Brett Makita. It is our final conversation with Jill's Lessen,
your CBS news business analyst and host of Jill on Money,
not only before the holidays, but before the new year.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Jill was good, yeah, you good morning. How are you
guys doing? What about your Lions?
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Come on, man, I know I was there, Jill.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
It's oh no really, oh yeah, okay, all right.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
I hate loosening to Aaron Rodgers.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I hate Aaron Rodgers. How about that. Let me just
start with that, thank you very much as a Jets fan,
which is like just the most really, it's the most
ridiculous thing to be as a Jets fan.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
If you were hoping for maybe a better end of
next year with your money or like the Lions. We
have financial resolutions for twenty twenty six in our free
conversation we do. I heard on Jill on Money somebody
had asked you about paying off debt or maybe having
an emerge and see fun. I thought that was really
(01:01):
interesting in the in the last half hour. But what
as we step into a new year, should we do
right this year that we didn't last year.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Well, I think that the problem that most Americans have
right now, and I say most because it's about seventy
five to eighty percent of Americans are feeling very much
financially anxious. Okay, and I feel anxious. And when you
do feel anxious, whatever it is, whether whatever your endeavor is,
you want to try to do something. So as my
(01:31):
dear friend who got me into this business thirty years ago,
once said, to me, get off your pity pot and
do something. So so what that means in your financial
world is that you know you're not going to magically
just say like, oh, I make eighty thousand dollars a
year as a household. I'm not going to magically make
eight hundred thousand. But what you can do is try
(01:52):
to start with a one step that will advance your
feeling of control. And that one step is probably to
track where your money is going. So when we talk
about financial goals, we use this acronym called smart specific, measurable, achievable, relevant,
and time bound. So what I mean by that is,
(02:12):
let's say that we have one financial goal, track where
my money is going for ninety days January tewod you
know right after you like say I'm never gonna eat
another carb. You say, I'm going to just track my money.
That's it. It's almost like if it were a diet.
You just say I'm tracking what I eat. Do You're
not going on a diet. You're just saying I'm going
to track. And so you can track in the sophisticated way.
(02:34):
You might have a bank that has an app that
can help you track where you spend your money. You
can have free apps like Pocketguard or good Budget or Honeydew.
You can write everything down with a receipt that you
stick in a shoe box, which is very old school,
but hey, it works whatever it is. What you're trying
to see is what's coming in, what's going out? And
(02:55):
do I want to continue spending the way that I'm
spending for some people? I get it, you're not going
to find any money to save for others. You might
you might say, you know what, there's ten dollars every
week that I just spend on a couple of coffees.
I'm not going to do that anymore. And then you say,
you know what i'd like to do. I'm going to
take that forty dollars every month ten dollars a week,
(03:15):
and I'm going to automatically put that amount into my
savings account from checking to savings. I'm going to forego
my coffee. And you're not going to get rich. No,
you're not going to become a millionaire, but you're going
to just get on the pathway to capturing a certain
amount of money. Putting into your savings, you can capture
that same amount of money and pay down that debt
a little bit extra. You're going to send one hundred
(03:37):
dollars on your credit card bill, make it one hundred
and forty, do it automatically, and get in the rhythm
of having automatic payments that are moving you towards your goal.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
And here's the thing, Jill, It's so funny. We do
it with our kids right when they become financial responsible,
get a job, and then we as adults don't want
to do the same thing, you know what I mean.
I just went through this with my daughter. She got
her first job, and she used to just love to
go to Starbucks because guess who was pain mom and dad. Yeah,
now now when she realizes what, oh, it's an eight
(04:10):
dollars drink that I'm ordering, you know, that's three hours
that I worked or whatever the case might be, and
so they start to quantify that. But we as adults
get in that habit. We don't want to do it.
Here's the other thing that I'll add to what you're
saying is there are ways that you can make money.
Look closer at your interest that you could get or
what you could do. You've talked about CDs all the time,
(04:31):
right on top of what you're spending. How can I
make a little more?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
I mean, I think it is better, you know that.
I think that's sort of like one of those advantages
of having some money. There's a number of people who
just keep the you know, it's like the friction of
moving is always like, oh I don't want to move.
That's a main in the neck. But maybe there is. Hey,
maybe you're an investor. You've got an IRA account okay,
and someone is managing that account. Are they managing it well?
(04:56):
Are they charging you one percent for something you could
totally do on your own. Does that add up to
thousands of dollars that you could be capturing yourself. I mean,
there's a lot of different places to start. I think
that the folks who feel like they're so under pressure.
They don't even go to that level. They just just
freaked out about the level of prices that they're dealing with.
(05:17):
And you know, I'm the kind of the person who
says it doesn't really matter, Like I can give you
the economic or financial analysis of how people are making
more money over time, and they should feel a little
bit better, But that does not account for the fact
that inflation brought price levels up very dramatically in a
(05:41):
short period of time. We are still in the process
of getting used to that. And even if the inflation
rate comes down, the rate of increase starts to come down,
let's say we get down towards two percent, it won't
matter because if you're spending fifty grand to buy a
new car, that is still a high price. So I
think that we should all just stop telling people how
(06:01):
they should feel. You know, whatever you feel is what
you feel. How can we actually manage those feelings and
get you one step closer to your financial goal?
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Spend a little time at jillonmoney dot com on vacation Jill.
Happy New Year to you and yours, Talk
Speaker 2 (06:16):
To you soon, to you and yours and to your lions.
And this is West Michigan's Morning News Steve Kelly and
Brett Makita. It is our final conversation with Jill's Lessen,
your CBS news business analyst and host of Jill on Money,
not only before the holidays, but before the new year.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Jill was good, yeah, you good morning. How are you
guys doing? What about your Lions?
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Come on, man, I know I was there, Jill.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
It's oh no really, oh yeah, okay, all right.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
I hate loosening to Aaron Rodgers.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I hate Aaron Rodgers. How about that. Let me just
start with that, thank you very much as a Jets fan,
which is like just the most really, it's the most
ridiculous thing to be as a Jets fan.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
If you were hoping for maybe a better end of
next year with your money or like the Lions. We
have financial resolutions for twenty twenty six in our free
conversation we do. I heard on Jill on Money somebody
had asked you about paying off debt or maybe having
an emerge and see fun. I thought that was really
(01:01):
interesting in the in the last half hour. But what
as we step into a new year, should we do
right this year that we didn't last year.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Well, I think that the problem that most Americans have
right now, and I say most because it's about seventy
five to eighty percent of Americans are feeling very much
financially anxious. Okay, and I feel anxious. And when you
do feel anxious, whatever it is, whether whatever your endeavor is,
you want to try to do something. So as my
(01:31):
dear friend who got me into this business thirty years ago,
once said, to me, get off your pity pot and
do something. So so what that means in your financial
world is that you know you're not going to magically
just say like, oh, I make eighty thousand dollars a
year as a household. I'm not going to magically make
eight hundred thousand. But what you can do is try
(01:52):
to start with a one step that will advance your
feeling of control. And that one step is probably to
track where your money is going. So when we talk
about financial goals, we use this acronym called smart specific, measurable, achievable, relevant,
and time bound. So what I mean by that is,
(02:12):
let's say that we have one financial goal, track where
my money is going for ninety days January tewod you
know right after you like say I'm never gonna eat
another carb. You say, I'm going to just track my money.
That's it. It's almost like if it were a diet.
You just say I'm tracking what I eat. Do You're
not going on a diet. You're just saying I'm going
to track. And so you can track in the sophisticated way.
(02:34):
You might have a bank that has an app that
can help you track where you spend your money. You
can have free apps like Pocketguard or good Budget or Honeydew.
You can write everything down with a receipt that you
stick in a shoe box, which is very old school,
but hey, it works whatever it is. What you're trying
to see is what's coming in, what's going out? And
(02:55):
do I want to continue spending the way that I'm
spending for some people? I get it, you're not going
to find any money to save for others. You might
you might say, you know what, there's ten dollars every
week that I just spend on a couple of coffees.
I'm not going to do that anymore. And then you say,
you know what i'd like to do. I'm going to
take that forty dollars every month ten dollars a week,
(03:15):
and I'm going to automatically put that amount into my
savings account from checking to savings. I'm going to forego
my coffee. And you're not going to get rich. No,
you're not going to become a millionaire, but you're going
to just get on the pathway to capturing a certain
amount of money. Putting into your savings, you can capture
that same amount of money and pay down that debt
a little bit extra. You're going to send one hundred
(03:37):
dollars on your credit card bill, make it one hundred
and forty, do it automatically, and get in the rhythm
of having automatic payments that are moving you towards your goal.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
And here's the thing, Jill, It's so funny. We do
it with our kids right when they become financial responsible,
get a job, and then we as adults don't want
to do the same thing, you know what I mean.
I just went through this with my daughter. She got
her first job, and she used to just love to
go to Starbucks because guess who was pain mom and dad. Yeah,
now now when she realizes what, oh, it's an eight
(04:10):
dollars drink that I'm ordering, you know, that's three hours
that I worked or whatever the case might be, and
so they start to quantify that. But we as adults
get in that habit. We don't want to do it.
Here's the other thing that I'll add to what you're
saying is there are ways that you can make money.
Look closer at your interest that you could get or
what you could do. You've talked about CDs all the time,
(04:31):
right on top of what you're spending. How can I
make a little more?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
I mean, I think it is better, you know that.
I think that's sort of like one of those advantages
of having some money. There's a number of people who
just keep the you know, it's like the friction of
moving is always like, oh I don't want to move.
That's a main in the neck. But maybe there is. Hey,
maybe you're an investor. You've got an IRA account okay,
and someone is managing that account. Are they managing it well?
(04:56):
Are they charging you one percent for something you could
totally do on your own. Does that add up to
thousands of dollars that you could be capturing yourself. I mean,
there's a lot of different places to start. I think
that the folks who feel like they're so under pressure.
They don't even go to that level. They just just
freaked out about the level of prices that they're dealing with.
(05:17):
And you know, I'm the kind of the person who
says it doesn't really matter, Like I can give you
the economic or financial analysis of how people are making
more money over time, and they should feel a little
bit better, But that does not account for the fact
that inflation brought price levels up very dramatically in a
(05:41):
short period of time. We are still in the process
of getting used to that. And even if the inflation
rate comes down, the rate of increase starts to come down,
let's say we get down towards two percent, it won't
matter because if you're spending fifty grand to buy a
new car, that is still a high price. So I
think that we should all just stop telling people how
(06:01):
they should feel. You know, whatever you feel is what
you feel. How can we actually manage those feelings and
get you one step closer to your financial goal?
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Spend a little time at jillonmoney dot com on vacation Jill.
Happy New Year to you and yours, Talk
Speaker 2 (06:16):
To you soon, to you and yours and to your lions.
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