By Erin @ Team Afford Anything
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.
Written By Paula Pant
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.
Written By Paula Pant
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.
By Paula Pant
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.
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.
By Paula Pant
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 […]
Written By Paula Pant
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 […]
Written By Paula Pant
“My dreams feel impossible. Everything is so far away. Five more years until I pay off the car. Twelve more years until I pay off the house. Do I have to wait until I’m 50+ to enjoy life?”
______
Let’s say you have a goal that’s audacious and unconventional.
You want to create […]
By Paula Pant
On today’s podcast, I’m sharing this random smattering of lessons on money and life.⠀
1) Simplify everything.⠀
2) Risk = Probability x Magnitude.⠀
3) Curate.⠀
4) Never delay gratification.⠀
5) Know your net worth, relative to your lifetime earnings.⠀
6) Don’t half-ass anything. (Whole-ass a few things.)⠀
[…]
Written By Paula Pant
Here’s the funny thing: I hate flying.
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Yet I’ve taken 18 flights in the last 9 months. Including one Wednesday. And my next flight is today.⠀
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To be clear — I’m not afraid of flying. I just don’t enjoy it. It’s noisy. It’s cramped. I can’t sleep. I […]
