Afford Anything

Author: Paula Pant

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#409: Ask Paula: Should I Sell My Rentals to Buy More Stocks?

Liz and her husband are planning to retire in 5 to 10 years. They have rental income properties, but Liz is bored of managing these, and she’s intrigued by the idea of buying stocks at a discount when the market is low.  Should she sell her rental properties and use the money to buy stocks instead?

Rebecca is a high income earner and thinking about investing in a Roth 401k … but she’s scared of how much she’ll have to pay in taxes. Should she do it anyway?

Anonymous made big changes last year: she got a new career AND sold a house! Now she needs help figuring out capital gains and lowering how much she’ll have to pay in taxes … and she won’t have access to her company’s 401K for most of the year.

Kyle and his wife are moving into their dream home! What should they do with their current place?

Former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I tackle these four questions in today’s episode.

Enjoy!

P.S. Got a question? Leave it here.

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#408: Build YOUR 15 Year Career, with Kiersten and Julien Saunders

When Kiersten and Julian Saunders began dating in 2012, they fell in love quickly, and their relationship felt strong – until they started talking about money.

They broke up as a result of their first money conversation.

Luckily, they got back together, figured out how to have tough conversations, and paid off $200,000 in debt over the next five years.

Then they started thinking about how to hack their careers. They came up with a plan for a 15-year career.

Today, they join us on the podcast to talk about the 15-year career framework and how to approach your career – and your finances – in 5 year stints.

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#407: Ask Paula: The 5 Types of Accountants (and Who To Avoid!)

Ionnie wants to vet her tax professional as diligently as she assesses her financial advisor – how should she go about doing that?

Anonymous needs a career change, and she needs help figuring out how to approach the decision making process when choosing and preparing for her next field of employment

MM prefers the simple path to wealth and investing in real estate but is looking for more information on a more intentional and selective approach to investing.

Ingrid calls in to ask whether she should include her rental income when trying to figure out how much she can contribute to her Roth IRA.

Former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I tackle these four questions in today’s episode.

Enjoy!

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#406: Invest Anywhere: I’ve chosen my city…now what?

Welcome to Invest Anywhere, our monthly series on long-distance real estate investing.

Invest Anywhere airs on the First Friday of each month and is co-hosted by Paula Pant and Suni Rao.

__________

In this two-part episode, we first tackle the data points needed to assess various investment locations within your city of choice.

We will […]

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#405: Ask Paula: WHOA – We Got a $750,000 Windfall; How Should We Spend It?

Daniel and his wife want to go on an extended vacation and leave their jobs next year…and still have money in case there’s a problem at their rental properties. Would a HELOC help them?

Anonymous and her husband have received a large commission and want to understand how to better plan for their future by optimizing for these inconsistent windfalls.

Brian has hit coast F.I.R.E and would like guidance on how to prioritize between tax advantaged accounts and retirement accounts.

Anonymous and his wife have been focused on getting short term rentals in a single location – is his portfolio too focused on this singular strategy??

Former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I tackle these four questions in today’s episode.

Enjoy!

P.S. Got a question? Leave it here.

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#403: How I Reached Financial Independence, with Chad Carson

Chad Carson’s friends called him a “nerdjock.”

When former college football linebacker Chad Carson graduated from Clemson University, he decided to start a business. But he didn’t have any money.

He was a 235-pound athlete who attended college on a football scholarship. He graduated debt-free with $1,000 in savings from various odd jobs. He wanted to become an entrepreneur, and he knew he was starting from zero.

As Chad viewed it, starting from zero meant he had nothing to lose.

He started jogging around local neighborhoods near the university. Whenever he noticed a property in disrepair, he’d ask if it was for sale.

If he noticed a ‘For Sale by Owner’ sign in the yard, for example, he’d dial the number.

If he noticed a home with an overgrown lawn and no curtains in the windows, he’d leave a note on the door, or he’d knock on the neighbor’s doors to get the owner’s phone number.

By doing this, Chad started a real estate wholesaling business. He’d find off-market properties, enter into a sales contract with the owner, and then ‘flip’ the contract to an investor. He earned around $5,000 for each deal.

The benefit to a wholesaling business, Chad discovered, is that he could get a foothold inside the real estate industry without much access to capital. He was a recent college graduate without any official employment, so most banks weren’t interested in offering him loans. Wholesaling gave him a start in the industry.

But after awhile, he wanted to chase bigger deals. He and a business partner decided to start flipping houses themselves. They earned profits of around $20,000 to $30,000 for each deal.

While this was great, Chad wanted to transition into something that would provide a steady, stable income stream. He was running an active business; he wasn’t accumulating a portfolio of passive investments.

He and his business partner stopped flipping homes and began accumulating buy-and-hold rental properties. Today they have 90 units between the two of them.

A few years ago, Chad realized that the passive income from his investments made him financially independent. He and his wife decided to enjoy their newfound freedom by moving to Ecuador with their two children, ages 3 and 5.

They spent 17 months living in Ecuador, learning Spanish and enjoying a slower pace of life. They recently returned to the U.S. and are considering moving to either Spain or Germany — or maybe Colorado? — for their next adventure.

In today’s episode, Chad and I discuss real estate, financial independence, and international travel with children.

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Are we in a recession?

👋 Hey there! FYI, this post is part of our First Principles series.

About the series…

When most people talk about money management, they discuss tactics. Occasionally, you’ll encounter someone who elevates the discussion to strategy, rather than simply scattershot tactics.

But what’s missing from both conversations — both tactics and strategy — is a […]

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#402: The Psychology of Money, with Morgan Housel

Do you wrestle with the idea of leaving your savings in an account earning next to nothing versus investing it in the stock market?

Do you use investment strategies that allow you to work with your nature, rather than against it?

Are you careful to seek investment advice from those who share your investment goals, or do you get caught up in the trends of day traders?

Morgan Housel, author of The Psychology of Money, joins us to discuss why investing is not the study of finance, but the study of how people behave with money. Morgan is an award-winning financial journalist, former columnist for the Wall Street Journal and The Motley Fool, and one of the foremost thinkers in the world of investing.

As a long-term investor who shares our buy-and-hold philosophy, Morgan has behavioral finance insights that can help us invest for financial independence with more clarity and a better understanding of ourselves.

We discuss how to develop self-awareness around biases, the importance of flexibility for long-term strategies, saving like a pessimist and investing like an optimist, becoming durable in the face of market adversity, the key difference between patience and stubbornness (and how it affects your mindset), expectation management, the importance of bonds and emergency funds, and a difficult lesson about tail risks that Morgan learned at age 17.

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#401: You Are a Badass at Making Money, with Jen Sincero

Jen Sincero says she used to be a “grouchy broke person.”

In her early 40’s, Jen lived in a converted garage, buried in credit card debt and scrounging for spare change.

She was the type of person who’d join her friends at a restaurant for dinner, order nothing except tap water, and fill up on the complimentary bread basket. She used duct-tape to repair her shoes. Her “splurges” consisted of buying new windshield wipers.

Despite her struggles, Jen believed that pursuing wealth was…icky. She’d internalized negative social attitudes towards money, such as:

Money isn’t important. People are.
Rich people are lucky / gross / shallow.
You can’t make money doing [insert your-dream-here].
You have to attend a good college to make money.
Money is out of my reach.
It’s lonely at the top.
Who has that kind of money?
He/she is only about the money.

Those negative attitudes, Jen says, were holding her back. So she created a more positive script — such as “I’m good at making money,” and “Money is a tool that helps me live my best life.”

This attitude shift made all the difference.

In today’s interview, Jen describes her journey from broke to badass, and she explains how everyone can become more of a maverick at making money.

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Afford Anything