Author: Paula Pant

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    #170: Ask Paula – When Should I NOT Use the One Percent Rule for a Rental Property?

    ByPaula Pant
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    When should you NOT use the one percent rule for rental property investing? In today’s episode, I encourage two callers to violate the One Percent Rule for real estate that they already own.

    WHAAATTTT? Why would I say that? Especially given that I’ve gained a bit of a reputation as The World’s Most Staunch Advocate of the One Percent Rule? (Long title, I know, but someone’s gotta wear it.)

    And if you’re not going to use the One Percent Rule, how should you make decisions about your real estate investments instead?

    Find out in this podcast episode. Enjoy!

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    #169: One Tweak a Week in 2019 — Easy Improvements to Your Financial Life in 2019

    ByPaula Pant
    [smart_track_player url="https://traffic.libsyn.com/paulaandjaymoney/AA169.mp3" title="One Tweak a Week in 2019 -- Easy Improvements to Your Financial Life in 2019" artist="Paula Pant" social="true" social_twitter="true" social_facebook="true" social_gplus="true" social_linkedin="true" social_stumble="true" social_pinterest="true" social_email="true" ]

    Happy New Years! To kickoff 2019, we’ve created a free book called One Tweak a Week, outlining 26 easy, actionable ways that you can improve your financial life.

    Today’s podcast episode covers these 26 tweaks, so you can listen in audio format, in addition to reading the book.

    If you put these into action for the first six months of 2019, you’ll be in a stronger position in June than you started in January.

    Each tweak takes less than one hour (some are as quick as five minutes), and taken together, these tweaks can accumulate into a serious impact.

    Improve your money management and get closer to financial independence with our free book, One Tweak a Week. You can download it here: https://affordanything.com/2019

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    #168: How to Optimize Your Time and Energy — with Mike Vardy, The Productivityist

    ByPaula Pant
    [smart_track_player url="https://traffic.libsyn.com/paulaandjaymoney/AA168.mp3" title="How to Optimize Your Time and Energy -- with Mike Vardy, The Productivityist" artist="Paula Pant" social="true" social_twitter="true" social_facebook="true" social_gplus="true" social_linkedin="true" social_stumble="true" social_pinterest="true" social_email="true" ]

    You can do anything, but not everything … and definitely not everything at the same time.

    How can you optimize your time and energy? How do you choose what’s worthwhile and what’s a waste of time?

    How can you eliminate small decisions so that your mind is free to focus on the few choices that make a massive 10x impact?

    How can you spend less time struggling with your Inbox, and more time on long-term projects that can boost your income?

  • We did it!! We raised $21,978 for charity

    ByPaula Pant

    A year and a half ago, I saw a speech that changed my life — and the lives of at least 600 other people in the developing world.

    I was at the World Domination Summit in Portland, where I’d later be speaking. I sat in the audience as Scott Harrison took the stage.

    Scott is a former nightclub promoter who, at age 28, had a crisis of conscience. His job was encouraging people to get drunk. He smoked two packs a day. He gambled. He felt like he wasn’t adding anything to the world. And he wasn’t sure if, or how, he could.

    “One day, I woke up and I realized I was the worst person I knew,” he wrote in an article on Medium.

    He quit his job, sold most of his possessions, and spent the next two years as a photojournalist on a hospital ship off the coast of Liberia in west Africa. He saw diseases that were unlike anything he’d imagined.

    As WIRED describes: “Some of the patients were grotesquely deformed by grapefruit-sized tumors, while others were nearly blind from cataracts that turned their eyes opaque.” (Here are images.)

    He felt surprised — and then sad, then angry, then determined — when he realized that thousands of people die from preventable diseases, like cholera and dysentery, that are spread by drinking dirty water. More than 660 million people in the world don’t have access to clean drinking water, which is almost 1 out of every 10 people. That’s twice the population of the U.S.

    That’s unacceptable.

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    #167: Ask Paula – Should I Pay Off Student Loans While in School?

    ByPaula Pant
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    Angelisa is a college senior with $30,000 in student loans. She has a part-time job, from which she’s saved $2,500. Should she keep saving money, or should she get a headstart on paying down her student loans while she’s in school?

    Mackenzie is also a college senior with some student loans. She recently received a settlement from a car accident. Should she invest this money? If so, how?

    Franchesca is 35 and is carrying $212,000 in debt, mostly student loans. Could she reach financial independence, even with a late start?

    Erica wants to make environmentally-friendly investments. How should she approach this?

    Caroline is 42 and has started making after-tax (non-Roth) 401k contributions. Is this a good idea?

    An anonymous listener is curious about podcasting. How did I get started?

    I answer these six questions on today’s podcast episode, alongside former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy. Enjoy!

  • Maybe you don’t need to figure out what’s wrong

    ByPaula Pant

    A few months ago, I interviewed a behavioral economist named Dr. Stephen Wendel on my podcast. He suggested an idea that’s so crazy it might work.

    We were discussing the fact that people often stand in their own way; there’s a gap between intention and action. We know what we “should” do, but we don’t follow through. We procrastinate. We make excuses. We act against our own self-interests.

    We have an image of our ideal self, we have the reality of our current self, and it’s harder than expected to bridge that divide. Why?

    Most people try to figure out the problem. “Why can’t I stick to my goals?” But during our interview, Stephen turns this conventional wisdom on its head.

    Maybe we should approach this as treatment first, diagnosis second.

    He suggests that you try a handful of solutions. When you find the one that works, you’ll know the problem.

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    #166: Everything I Learned About Money Came from My Grandmother – with Michelle Singletary of the Washington Post

    ByPaula Pant
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    Michelle Singletary learned everything she knows about money from her grandmother.

    Well, okay, I shouldn’t say “everything” that she knows. After all, Michelle also has an MBA from Johns Hopkins University. She writes about personal finance for the Washington Post. Her nationally-syndicated personal finance column, The Color of Money, is published in more than 100 newspapers nationwide. She’s written three financial books.

    Oh, and guess what? Her column was nominated for a Pulitzer.

    Michelle has been learning, thinking, writing, researching and speaking about money management for decades. Yet the most important education she received, she says, came from the lessons her grandmother taught her.

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    #165: Ask Paula – Should I Invest in Index Funds or Rental Properties?

    ByPaula Pant
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    Should Kim, an entrepreneur, invest in index funds or rental properties?

    Should Nick, an MBA student, househack into a more-expensive home with stronger cash flow, or a cheaper home with more budgetary wiggle room?

    Should Kelly, who is getting married soon, sell her current home and use the proceeds to buy multiple rentals? Or should she use her current home as a rental property?

    Should Trayci and her sister invest in rental properties or bare land?

    I answer these four questions in today’s episode.

    We’re a weekly show, but on the first Friday of the month, we air a bonus episode. This is our December 2018 First Friday Bonus Episode.

    Enjoy!

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    #164: How and Why I Took a Mini-Retirement, with Bob Lotich

    ByPaula Pant
    [smart_track_player url="https://traffic.cast.plus/57b04b389655d0cb71d77f6c/traffic.libsyn.com/paulaandjaymoney/AA164.mp3" title="How and Why I Took a Mini-Retirement, with Bob Lotich" artist="Paula Pant" social="true" social_twitter="true" social_facebook="true" social_gplus="true" social_linkedin="true" social_stumble="true" social_pinterest="true" social_email="true" ]

    As an entrepreneur, Bob Lotich loves growing and expanding. But after a particularly stressful year, he realized he had burned out.

    He woke up one Monday morning and, for the first time since he’d started self-employment, he realized he didn’t want to go to work. This was a new and uncomfortable feeling.

    He decided to take a mini-retirement.