By Paula Pant
Millions of smart, educated and successful people make dumb mistakes with their money … and they don’t realize it.
I’m not talking about obvious dumb mistakes, like spending 85 percent of your income on a fleet of Ultra-Luxe-Fancymobiles for your 16-car garage. That’s clearly a bad idea.
Instead, I’m talking about hidden dumb mistakes that you may not realize until it’s too late.
By Paula Pant
Imagine that you’re going to take a 6-month to 9-month mini-retirement. How should you plan? What should you do? Sure, you’ll need to have enough savings to cover your expenses. You might want to find some part-time work. You may need to sell off a few investment. And of course, you’ll need to think about health insurance.
But what else should you consider? And how will your first taste of voluntary unemployment impact your mental and emotional health?
Former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I discuss this in today’s podcast episode.
We also answer a question from a New York-based father of two who’s trying to choose a health insurance plan.
We talk to a woman who wants to roll her six-figure SEP-IRA balance into a Roth IRA account.
We answer a question from a listener who’s moving back to Amsterdam with his wife and two children, and is wondering what to do with his 401k in the U.S.
And we answer a question from a man who’s wondering if he should invest in a taxable brokerage account, rather than focusing on so many tax-advantaged retirement accounts, so that he can more easily access this money before he turns 59 and a half.
By Paula Pant
Elaine Pofeldt, a writer for CNBC, Forbes, Fortune, Money Magazine and other business publications, decided to deep-dive into the world of solopreneur million-dollar companies.
What are the stories of entrepreneurs who gross $1 million or more in their businesses, despite having no employees? How did they begin? What do they do differently?
She interviewed hundreds of founders of non-employer seven-figure companies and wrote a book about her findings called The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business. Today, she joins us on the podcast to talk about what we can learn from this special class of entrepreneurs.
By Paula Pant
Should a couple in New Orleans sell their single-family home and use the sale proceeds to househack into a duplex?
What do you think about turnkey investments?
What tax consequences will someone face if they transfer their property to their parents?
How do you handle tough situations related to the way some home renovation contractors treat women?
What’s the latest update on your real estate course?
I answer these five questions on today’s podcast. Here are the details.
By Paula Pant
Tanja Hester retired at age 38.
She had a negative net worth until her late 20’s, thanks to a combination of student loans, buying expensive cocktails and clothes, living far beyond her means, and not paying attention to her money. If you were to have met the 27-year-old version of Tanja, you wouldn’t guess that she’d be a likely candidate for retiring early.
Yet a decade later, she’s saved 40x of her annual cost of living.
How? Tanja worked as a political consultant in Los Angeles, and during her career, ascended to important high-ranking roles. Every promotion came with more grueling hours, accompanied by a raise.
Tanja maintained her same standard of living, banking every raise. This simple strategy allowed her to rapidly grow her net worth.
By Paula Pant
Imagine that your job is extremely well-paying, but you don’t enjoy it.
You’d like to switch employers, even though this will probably require a paycut. But before you make the switch, you want to accomplish two goals: buy a home and catch up on retirement savings.
Should you pursue both goals? Or should you defer the home purchase, given the potential future paycut?
If you decide to pursue both goals, which one should come first?
This is one of the five questions that former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I answer in this week’s podcast episode.
By Paula Pant
Cal Newport created a philosophy called digital minimalism, which is the idea of reducing your digital life down to only the most important core essentials. Remove the apps from your phone, then slowly re-introduce only the ones that are the most useful and beneficial. Take control of your smartphone, rather than letting it control you.
Digital minimalism is a philosophy of technology use. This philosophy pulls from the concepts of minimalism, essentialism, the slow movement, and the 80/20 principle, applying these ideas towards your digital life.
Cal discusses the digital minimalist philosophy on today’s episode.
By Paula Pant
Larry Swedroe is one of the most respected investment thinkers and writers of our time.
He’s published 8 books on investing, including one of the first books to explain the science of investing to a layperson audience. He recently wrote an ultra-comprehensive guide to retirement planning.
He joins us on the show today to discuss the nuances of investing and retirement planning.
By Paula Pant
Should a 48-year-old New Yorker who’s retiring next year buy more rental properties?
Should a Michigan-based first-time homebuyer use an FHA loan to buy a duplex for $135,000 that rents for $1,800 per month?
Should a 40-year-old music professor who owns a duplex transfer his property into an LLC?
Should a New Jersey condo owner sell her unit as For Sale by Owner?
And should a woman who’s anxious about owning her own rental properties dive into real estate crowdfunding deals instead?
I answer these five rental property questions in today’s podcast episode.
By Paula Pant
She catapulted to fame as an accidental personal finance writer after she published an article called The Story of an F-Off Fund.
This article tells the same narrative twice: in Scenario A, the protagonist in the story doesn’t have any emergency savings, and in Scenario B, she does. Paulette wrote this as a work of narrative fiction that vividly shows the power of an emergency fund, or as she rebrands it, an F-Off Fund.
This story went viral. More than a million people read it, it was translated into multiple languages, and it landed her a book deal and a major profile in the Seattle Times.
