By Paula Pant
Three listeners, three very different financial dilemmas, but all connected by the same underlying question: What do I do when life doesn’t follow the plan?
In this Q&A, we tackle three high-stakes money decisions. A post-divorce real estate leap overseas. A retiree with a suddenly swollen portfolio. And an investor questioning whether smarter returns cost […]
By Paula Pant
In this Q&A episode, Joe and I tackle three listener questions that touch on career transitions, portfolio evaluation, and giving your kids a head start on retirement savings.
We start with a burned-out teacher in New Zealand who’s paid off her mortgage and is ready to shift to part-time work, but she’s caught in […]
By Paula Pant
In this Q&A episode, Joe and I tackle three listener questions that touch on concentration risk, major retirement decisions, and entrepreneurship. We start with a new investor wondering whether the AI-dominated stock market requires rethinking traditional index fund strategies, or if diversification is already built in.
From there, we explore a complex 65-year-old’s situation involving […]
By Paula Pant
In this episode, I continue my conversation with Cullen Roche to explore the 10 fundamental principles every investor needs to understand before building their portfolio. Moving beyond which portfolio to choose, Cullen breaks down how to actually invest properly, covering everything from understanding what you’re really doing when you buy stocks, to managing costs, to […]
By Paula Pant
In this episode, I sit down with Cullen Roche, financial advisor and portfolio strategist, to discuss why there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to investing. Cullen breaks down the most famous investment portfolios in history, from the classic 60/40 to Warren Buffett’s 90/10 strategy, and explains how to customize these models to fit your unique financial situation. […]
By Paula Pant
Why do smart, well intentioned investors still make costly mistakes?
In this episode, I sit down with Barry Ritholtz to explore why investing success has less to do with intelligence and more to do with behavior. Barry explains how bad ideas, bad numbers, and bad habits quietly derail portfolios, even for people who know better.
[…]
By Paula Pant
In this Q&A episode, we tackle three questions that sit right at the intersection of money, time freedom, and life design. We start with a listener who’s planning a self‑funded sabbatical and needs to decide how much risk to take with savings earmarked for a very specific timeline.
From there, the conversation widens into […]
By Paula Pant
Welcome to Greatest Hits Week – five days, five episodes from our vault, spelling out F-I-I-R-E.
Today’s second letter I stands for Investing. This episode originally aired in April 2022, but the framework remains one of the most practical guides we’ve shared for building wealth at any age.
Nick Maggiulli joins us to reveal […]
By Paula Pant
They’ve done everything right on paper. Mid-40s, nearly $2 million saved, clear spending numbers, and a realistic plan to downshift work within the next five to seven years. And yet, the hesitation is real.
In this Q&A episode, we unpack the hesitation that shows up right before a major financial transition, even when the numbers […]
By Paula Pant
If you’ve ever stared at an insurance quote and wondered, “Is this really worth it?”, you’re not alone. Liability and umbrella policies can feel like an expensive mystery, especially when your net worth is growing and your risks are shifting.
In today’s episode, we dig into a listener’s dilemma about soaring liability and umbrella insurance […]
