Written By Paula Pant
Here are a handful of lessons from 2018 (although many of these ideas originated during a lifetime preceding that). I’ve shared most, but not all, of these lessons on Instagram in the past year.
1: Your net worth is not your self worth. That’s true regardless of whether your net worth is low or […]
Written By Paula 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.
Written By Paula 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.
Written By Paula Pant
I’ve learned a ton during the past decade, thanks to reading, interviewing, and massive trial-and-error. I’ve distilled many of these lessons into today’s blog post.
Here are 17 lessons that can improve your money and life.
#1: Money Can’t Make You Happy, But Lack of Money Can Make You Unhappy
They say, “money can’t make you happy.” But that’s false.
Researchers have examined the link between money and happiness — and guess what? Money can make you happy, to an extent. Multiple studies found a significant correlation between money and happiness among people in low-to-middle income brackets.
Written By Paula Pant
Guess what? The Washington Post published an interview with me about the Financial Independence, Retire Early movement (the FIRE movement).
They asked if it’s possible to save half of your income. They asked about the accuracy of Suze Orman’s statement that you’ll need $5 million to retire early. (Spoiler alert: No. You don’t.) And they asked if everyone who reaches financial independence then spends their time blogging about said topic, because if that’s true, then what’s the point?
Written By Paula Pant
The FIRE movement is misunderstood. The drama of the last two weeks proves it. The question is, how can we fix this?
Ohhh we have a new supporter!!
Last week, Suze Orman called FIRE “dumb and stupid.”
“When I was 30 I was dumb and stupid as well, okay?,” she said in an interview with Yahoo! Finance, adding that she’s “pissed off” at people pursuing early retirement.
But since then, she’s taken more time to learn about the movement — and she’s in support.
In a Facebook post titled “What I Hate — and Love — about FIRE,” Suze writes…
Written By Paula Pant
Want to retire early? You’ll need at least $5 million, more likely $10 million, says famous financial personality Suze Orman.
I should know. She said that to me, directly, on my podcast.
I asked Suze for her opinion about a frugal, flexible person who wants to retire early with a $2 million portfolio. She warned that retiring would be a massive mistake.
“Two million dollars is nothing,” Suze said. “It’s nothing. It’s pennies in today’s world, to tell you the truth.”
Wait, what?
Written By Paula Pant
A few weeks ago, I received an email from Suze Orman’s publicist, asking if I’d be interested in interviewing Suze on my podcast.
“Duh,” I replied.
Suze is a legend in the world of personal finance. She’s appeared on Oprah multiple times, published 10 mega-bestselling books, and hosted The Suze Orman Show on CNBC from 2002 to 2015. She’s one of the most famous voices in this space.
I read her most recent book, Women & Money, and sketched out a framework for the interview. Then I threw it away, feeling dissatisfied with my questions, and I turned to the Afford Anything community on Facebook and Twitter.
“I’m interviewing Suze Orman,” I wrote. “What would you like me to ask her?”
Written By Paula Pant
I’ve been following Rand Fishkin’s career for years. He has one of the best rags-to-not-quite-riches-yet stories I’ve heard.
Rand is a college dropout who spent his early 20s spiraling into a deep debt hole. His problems began when he tried to grow a marketing company but funded it in the worst way possible. He leased office space, rented booths at conferences, hired expensive contractors — and paid for everything with a personal credit card. Yikes.
His credit card debt ballooned to $150,000. He couldn’t make the minimum payments, so he defaulted. The late fees and penalty interest rates caused his debt to swell to more than $500,000.
Anyone else might have declared bankruptcy, but Rand stayed the course. He doubled down at work. He decided to specialize in a marketing niche, search engine optimization, which set him apart from the pack.
He brought new clients into his business. He developed internal tools to use for his clients, then started selling subscription-based access to this software.
Written By Paula Pant
“If Elon Musk has asked people what they wanted, they would have said better gas mileage.
“But Elon never bothered asking. Because he knows he can’t change history from the middle of the bell curve. And he knows design by consensus, by definition, leads to average results.”
Last week I published a transcript of the speech I delivered at the World Domination Summit, in which I challenged people to be true to themselves despite the fact that others may not like it.
A few days later, WDS released the video of the speech. (I had no idea they were going to release it so soon! I thought it would take a couple months.)
It’s the most heartfelt talk I’ve ever given. It’s deeply personal, and it describes a philosophy I’ve been creating for years. I’d encourage you to watch it here:
