Afford Anything

Category: Lifestyle

By Paula Pant

#276: Cut the Fluff and Become a Digital Minimalist, with Dr. Cal Newport

Have you found yourself mindlessly scrolling through social media feeds over the last few months? Have you also found yourself in a state of sadness, anxiety, or aggravation afterwards?

We live in an increasingly noisy world. A world in which many of us use social media, or the internet in general, to escape. But our escapes often leave us feeling empty and annoyed at ourselves for wasting several hours of precious time.

Here’s one possible remedy for this tiring, relentless cycle: embrace the philosophy of digital minimalism.

            Okay, I’m in. But…what’s digital minimalism? 

Digital minimalism is a term coined by Dr. Cal Newport, today’s guest.

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By Paula Pant

#261: Why I Quit My Job in the Middle of a Recession — Interview from Lessons from a Quitter

We’re in an economic collapse.

We have the highest unemployment since the Great Depression.

There are many more people who want jobs than there are jobs available.

Yet, you want to quit your job.

Maybe you planned to change careers this year, maybe you wanted to take a sabbatical, or maybe you wanted to retire early.

Regardless of your plans, you might feel as though this recession ripped them to shreds and blew them out the window.

But…what if you could still make your plans work?

What?! Quitting your job at the beginning of a recession is INSANE, isn’t it?

Maybe. Maybe not.

You’re kidding. Right? …Right?? Isn’t that equivalent to career suicide?

Nope. It worked for me.

Since we’re in the middle of another recession and many of you want to voluntarily leave your job at some point in the future, I’m re-airing an interview I did on Lessons From a Quitter two years ago. The host, Goli, interviewed me about quitting my job at the beginning of a recession.

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By Paula Pant

PSA Thursday – Your Guide to Giving: How to Donate, Volunteer and Practice Spontaneous Kindness

Let’s start with the good news: the majority of U.S. households, 6 in 10, donate money to nonprofits and charities, and 1 in 4 adults in the U.S. volunteer their time and talent.

The only way our society is going to get through the struggles and the stresses that we face is if we are good to each other. Compassion and common humanity are crucial.

In this PSA episode we discuss strategies around giving, including how to donate money and volunteer time effectively, as well as how to embrace the opportunity to practice informal, random, spontaneous acts of kindness.

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By Erin @ Team Afford Anything

#251: From High School Dropout to Successful Entrepreneur, Author and World Traveler — with Chris Guillebeau

Do you love the idea of making money on your own — without a boss?

Can you imagine deciding how you spend each day?

Are you bored and looking for a challenge? Do you love the thought of adventure?

Today’s guest, Chris Guillebeau, knows all about hustling, living an unconventional life, working towards seemingly impossible goals, and combining his interests into an epic lifestyle business that brings him freedom and joy.

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Written By Paula Pant

I’m 36 and I tested positive for coronavirus. My so-called “moderate” case is brutal.

You’ve probably heard people say that if you’re young, healthy and you contract Covid-19, you’re likely to only experience mild or moderate symptoms. I’m 36, a non-smoker, in shape, fit and healthy, with no chronic conditions. No asthma, no diabetes, no cancer, no high blood pressure, no history of any type of organ disease. I’m the poster child, the ideal candidate, of someone who would only experience a “mild or moderate” case.

My experience of coronavirus was sheer brutal hell. It was the most intense prolonged physical agony I’ve ever felt.

Here’s what coronavirus feels like.

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Written By Paula Pant

The Importance of Using the Toilet Correctly (and Other Things I Learned Last Month)

When I was 18, I got a full scholarship for a one-month study abroad trip to Japan.

At the time, I didn’t have much interest in international travel. But free is free, so I spent a month in Japan during the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college.

That trip changed everything.

That trip ignited the travel bug.

I came back so enthusiastic about exploring the globe that I’ve based every major decision in my adult life around the goal of traveling more.

Every major life choice, from my initial career in journalism, to my decision to quit my newspaper job to backpack around Southeast Asia, to my pivot to becoming a location independent, self-employed freelancer …

Every choice I’ve made has been based around whether or not this opportunity would allow me to travel. It’s the benchmark against which all my decisions are made. It set me on a meandering path that led to financial independence.

And it all started with that trip to Japan.

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By Paula Pant

#202: Slow Travel is Cheap Travel – with Nomadic Matt

In 2006, Matt Kepnes worked at a hospital in Boston, and he felt miserable. He dreaded fighting traffic, spending his days under his offices’ fluorescent lighting, drinking stale coffee.

He decided to take one year off — a “gap year” — thinking that after his sabbatical, he’d resume another 40 years of punching the clock.

He worked 60-hour weeks in order to save money for his sabbatical year. He saved $30,000, then handed his boss a resignation letter.

Matt traveled for 18 months, returned to Boston, and realized he had lost his willingness to punch the clock. He couldn’t sit still in an office any longer.He re-packed his bags, bought a one-way flight to who-knows-where, and reinvented himself as a travel writer known as Nomadic Matt. He lives on a budget of $18,250 per year, or $50 per day.

In the last decade, his travel information website, NomadicMatt.com, has become one of the most popular travel blogs in the world, drawing millions of visitors. His writing has been featured in The New York Times, CNN, National Geographic Travel, and the BBC. He’s a New York Times bestselling author, and he’s traveled to more than 100 countries.

In today’s episode, Matt and I discuss the art of slow travel.

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Written By Paula Pant

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

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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By Paula Pant

#138: How to Create an Authentic Life

There’s a famous quote that’s attributed to Henry Ford. The quote says, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

There’s no proof that Henry Ford actually said this. But whether or not that quote is historically accurate, the point remains. If Elon Musk had asked people what they […]

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Today is My 10-Year-I-Don’t-Have-A-Job-AVersary

Today is the 10-year anniversary of the day I quit my job.

More accurately, it’s the 10-year anniversary of my last day of employment. Exactly 10 years ago today, on April 4, 2008, I finished my final day as a salaried employee.

I have never been employed by someone else since.

The notion that […]

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