By Paula Pant
When Rand Fishkin was 25 years old, he carried $500,000 in credit card debt.
Less than a decade later, Rand was the Founder and CEO of a company that grossed $35 million in annual revenue.
In this podcast episode, Rand shares the story of hitting his financial rock-bottom and making the ultimate comeback.
By Paula Pant
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.
By Paula Pant
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.
By Paula Pant
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.
By Paula Pant
F.I.R.E. holds four pillars: Financial psychology, Investing, Real estate, and Entrepreneurship. This September, we’re running four weeks of episodes focusing on each of these four pillars, plus one bonus episode sharing impactful lessons learned from those who have reached F.I.R.E.
Enjoy!
———————————————————————————-
Today we’re sharing three talks given at the EconoMe conference, with each of these talks relating to F.I.R.E. The three discussions are:
FI-Landia is a lie – What I Learned On My Journey To F.I.R.E., with Carl Jensen
What If You Achieve All Your Goals But You’re Still Not Happy, with Rich Jones
How To Never Again Say, “I Can’t Afford It”, with Paula Pant
By Paula Pant
Bella is SO CLOSE to reaching F.I.R.E and is worried about her withdrawal rate if the stock market drops. If the stock market does drop, can she withdraw as much as she had originally planned?
Sam has been investing for several decades and thinks that he should stay invested in his portfolio, despite the recent drop in value…but he is still wondering if there’s a chance that he should sell.
Meisha is making more money at her new job but can’t contribute to her 401(k) for the first six months – what should she do with her extra money in this interim??
Kyria is a young investor with multiple goals: she’s wondering how to best save for a down payment without it being eroded by inflation and also whether her investment choices should take on more risk, since time is on her side.
Former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I tackle these four questions in today’s episode.
Enjoy!
By Paula Pant
Chris Hutchins is an avid life hacker, a financial optimizer and the host of the top ranked podcast “All The Hacks”, where he shares his quest to upgrade his life without having to spend a fortune. These passions have led him to being featured in a documentary on financial Independence called “Playing with FIRE” and collecting millions of points and miles.
If you want to learn more about optimizing your spend so that you can travel with less of an impact to your bank account, you’ll want to hear what Chris has to say.
By Paula Pant
Nick’s parents are forced to confront earlier than anticipated retirement…and they aren’t financially prepared. Now, a bank is offering to buy a part of their mortgage or a part of their house. Is this a scam?!
Jon from Colorado is curious about after tax contributions to a Roth 401k, and would like us to talk about why we wouldn’t recommend it.
Anna is househacking, and she locked down an awesome interest rate. But, she’s still carrying PMI and is wondering if there’s a way to remove the PMI without refinancing.
Courtney from Denver is a real estate investor who wants to invest in new locations and wants tips on building out her network.
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.
By Paula Pant
International best-selling author and leadership speaker, Julie Winkle Giulioni, talks through a multidimensional career framework that features eight dimensions of career development.
She spells out how to apply the dimensions of contribution, competence, connection, confidence, challenge, contentment, choice and climb to different parts of your professional life, whether that’s assessing your current job, navigating a conversation with your superior or setting yourself up for the next progression.
By Paula Pant
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 episode, we tackle the challenging decision of how to evaluate a city for rental property investment.
We will cover three specific […]
