NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast · NerdWallet Personal Finance

Impulse Spending Fixes and PSLF Choices When You’re in Grad School

February 2, 2026·49 min·4 clips

Amanda uses a magnetic brick to lock her shopping apps and track if being on her phone leads to spending.

The episode frames February as a popular month for no-spend challenges — either avoiding all non-essential spending or picking a specific category to abstain from. Sean, Elizabeth, and guest Amanda each bring personal approaches. Amanda, a two-child homeowner, has found no-spend challenges useful because she can control her discretionary spending even when she cannot control rising grocery prices, insurance premiums, or property taxes. Sean warns against the binge-and-purge pattern: people who front-load purchases before a no-spend month and then reward themselves afterward can end up worse than if they had done nothing. Elizabeth identifies a deeper issue: no-spend challenges do not address the money trauma or emotional triggers behind spending habits. She gives the example of someone raised with food scarcity who now spends impulsively on food as an adult — telling that person to stop ordering Uber Eats for a month does not heal the underlying wound. The hosts discuss how to get genuine benefit from these challenges: tying the savings to a specific goal (clearing a credit card, building an emergency fund), having a single focus goal rather than five at once, making a transition plan so sustainable behavior continues after February, and knowing what you personally want from the challenge. Amanda's challenge this year involves targeting her own family's specific spending leaks given their tight post-second-baby budget. The listener question segment addresses someone in graduate school deciding whether to keep making PSLF-eligible student loan payments or pause and save for a house, and the hosts walk through the PSLF math and housing market realities for 2026.

As heard by us

A practical reset on spending habits and the tradeoff between student loans and a new house.

NerdWallet opens on a money reset and a listener question that turns over a familiar tradeoff: keep student loan payments moving during grad school, or put that money toward a new house.

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Why you'd press play

You want a reset that tackles money habits after youve done too much.

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