Are you listening to this episode on the website? If so, hopefully you're seeing the new layout...it's slowly rolling out and will hopefully be complete by the time you're reading this.  

If you haven't checked it out, please do! It's so much cleaner and easier to navigate.  

Okay, on to the show.  We started hour one with Ari from NYC, a physician who has done a great job of saving for retirement but is a little concerned about his asset allocation.  Next up was Dianne in Portland who was wondering if she and her husband need to consult with a financial advisor.  Two great calls to start the show.  

This week is another example of how the radio and podcasting world really is like a small fraternity/sorority where hosts often appear on each other’s shows.

Today it’s Felix Salmon, host of the Slate Money podcast, joining us. If you’re not familiar with Felix, I think the best way to describe him is as a contrarian and/or curmudgeon…something he happily admits!

I’m a big Felix fan and have been reading (he did stints at Reuters, Portfolio Magazine and Euromoney) and listening to him for quite some time so I had a list of topics to cover, including:

• Corporate responsibility
• Active versus passive investing
• His ongoing relationship with Anthony Scaramucci
• The student loan crisis
• What’s next for the US economy

In addition to hosting Slate Money, Felix is currently the editor of Cause and Effect. 

If you want some good laughs and top notch commentary, follow Felix on Twitter.

Have a finance related question? Email us here or call 855-411-JILL.

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Ask some Wall Street veterans where they were on October 19, 1987 and they will likely regale you with details of any crisis. My life changed that day in ways that often creep up on me. Indeed, Black Monday was the single worst day in Wall Street history, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunging by more than 22 percent in one session--that’s the equivalent of the blue chip index diving by more than 5,000 points today.

It was a “First Class Catastrophe”, according to our first class guest and storyteller supreme, Diana Henriques, who dropped by the studio to help us retrace the events that led up to that day.

Diana joined us on the podcast earlier this year when her book, The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust, was made into an HBO movie. This time around Diana is joining us to discuss her latest book, A First-Class Catastrophe: The Road to Black Monday, the Worst Day in Wall Street History. As Diana recounts, Black Monday was more than seven years in the making and threatened nearly every U.S. financial institution.

There were missed opportunities, market delusions, and destructive actions that stretched from the “silver crisis” of 1980 to turf battles in Washington and a rivalry between the New York Stock Exchange and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

Here’s the crazy thing...you’d think that after Black Monday, lessons would be learned. But in her analysis, Henriques demonstrates how that Monday in the fall of 1987 was the predicate to the financial crisis of 2008. Sadly, investors, regulators, and bankers failed to heed the lessons of 1987, even as the same patterns resurfaced.

This was a fascinating interview for me because I lived through this period. I had just started my career on Wall Street, as the chaos was unfolding. I watched firsthand as my father nearly lost his business. This chat was like going down memory lane and it’ll give you guys a good glimpse of the life I used to live before I started hosting podcasts and radio shows!

“Better Off” is sponsored by Betterment.

Have a finance related question? Email us here or call 855-411-JILL.

We love feedback so please subscribe and leave us a rating or review in iTunes!

Connect with me at these places for all my content:

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http://betteroffpodcast.com/

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"Better Off" theme music is by Joel Goodman, www.joelgoodman.com.

So often on this podcast, and on my radio show, we field questions from recent grads with insane amounts of student loan debt. Sometimes it’s enough debt to wreck a life.

There’s enough blame to go around, but so often it’s a case of students feeling the pressure to go to fancy, high priced colleges to study what seems like an obscure major. But before you think that I am about to argue that every able-bodied student should be studying for a degree in a STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) field, read on...

Let me pose a question. What is wrong with a well-rounded liberal arts degree? A degree, which I might add, can be earned at countless reasonably priced colleges.

George Anders, our guest this week on Better Off makes a strong case in his recently released book, You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a "Useless" Liberal Arts Education.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or know how to write computer code to succeed in today’s work environment.

When you really think about it, it’s amazing how many doors a so called “useless” liberal arts education can open.

As George says, you can be yourself, as an English major, and thrive in sales. You can segue from anthropology into the booming new field of user research; from classics into management consulting, and from philosophy into high-stakes investing. At any stage of your career, you can bring a humanist’s grace to the rapidly evolving high-tech future.

If you’ve got kids starting the college application process, who are resisting calls to declare a STEM major or if you’re thinking about furthering your education by going to grad school, listen to this episode before making any decisions.

“Better Off” is sponsored by Betterment.

Have a finance related question? Email us here or call 855-411-JILL.

We love feedback so please subscribe and leave us a rating or review in iTunes!

Connect with me at these places for all my content:

https://twitter.com/jillonmoney

https://www.facebook.com/JillonMoney

https://www.instagram.com/jillonmoney/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillonmoney/ 

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/jill-... 

http://betteroffpodcast.com/

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/b...

"Better Off" theme music is by Joel Goodman, www.joelgoodman.com.