So Money with Farnoosh Torabi · Friday, September 11, 2026
Farnoosh Torabi reveals that a key outcome of her financial review was permission to spend more now and save less for retirement, a significant shift from her previous default of maximizing her SEP IRA. She had been maxing out her SEP IRA annually on the advice of her accountant for the tax write-off, but realized this might mean saving too much.
“This, for me, was the biggest relief because I had a feeling that I was doing too much in the IRA. You know, as a business owner, um, this is, this is the vehicle, right? This is a great vehicle. There are other vehicles, but for me, I had set up a SEP IRA, basically since 2009, or whenever I incorporated after my layoff. And almost every year, I would maxing out this SEP IRA, um, at the advice of my accountant, because the CPAs love when you do this, because it's a big tax write-off.”
“And what it also meant was that my payroll had to also be at a certain level so that I could make this full contribution. Um, which, when you looked at that and you're not an accountant, you're like, well, this may, you know, this might not align with my accountant, but I started to feel like, I'm saving too much.”
“Could I, you know, at least scale back some of my investing, at least, and free up more cash flow today without jeopardizing my retirement?”