Afford Anything

Tag: financial independence

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#440: Ask Paula: Am I Saving Enough For Retirement?

“Barbara,” an anonymous caller from Episode 422, is struggling with a scarcity mindset. How does she stop worrying about the future and build the confidence to enjoy life now?

Samantha and her partner have lived out of their truck for 20 years. They sorta-kinda feel ready to buy a house and settle down. But they’re hesitating. What if they hate it?

An anonymous caller wants to retire and travel in 20 to 30 years. How does she know if she’s saving enough?

Trace plans to take a mini-retirement next year. Where should she keep her savings until then?

Former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I tackle these four questions in today’s episode.

Enjoy!

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#435: Ask Paula: How To Prepare for A Layoff

Lee is 30 and facing a tech layoff. She can live for a year on her savings. She’s thinking about taking the rest of the year off. How should she prepare her investments?

Stacy wants to buy an Airbnb but she’s scared she’ll regret selling her company stock to do it.

An anonymous caller is tired of living paycheck-to-paycheck as a freelance artist. How can she stabilize an inconsistent income?

Danelle is a DIY investor. She can’t find a financial advisor who gives advice without insisting on managing her investments. Is she looking in the wrong places?

Former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I tackle these four questions in today’s episode.
Enjoy!

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#433: Ask Paula: Should I Quit My Cushy Job?

Should “Walker,” an anonymous caller, give up a cushy job to take a year-long sabbatical in Europe?

Blue wants to rent out his East Coast home, take a sabbatical from work, travel to the West Coast with his family, and start a YouTube channel and other entrepreneurial projects. How should he manage his money to make this happen?

Melissa regrets buying a house two years ago in Ft. Lauderdale. She’s poured $30,000 into repairs, all of which she borrowed. Her home-related debts have mounted. She’s over-extended. Should she cut her losses?

Former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I tackle these three questions in today’s episode.

Enjoy!

P.S. Got a question? Leave it here.

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#420: What We Learned in 2022, with Paula Pant

Dr. Ellen Vora, M.D., shared insight into the roots of procrastination, offering evidence-based tips for how to overcome our own inner demons of anxiety, fear and laziness.

Psychology professor Bill von Hippel described why too much happiness is just as detrimental to our long-term health and wellbeing as too little happiness.

Wall St. Journal columnist Spencer Jakab observed the perfect storm of conditions that gave rise to meme stonks and other oddities of our era.

Former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy argued for “strategic under-diversification” and explained the Sharpe Ratio.

Data scientist Nick Maggiulli explains the save-invest continuum.

And financial planner Bill Bengen, the creator of the 4 percent retirement withdrawal rule, talks about what most people misunderstand about the safe withdrawal rate.

These are just some of the highlights from the Afford Anything podcast in this 2022 year-in-review episode.

Enjoy!

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#418: Maybe We Should Spend More, with Dr. Jordan Grumet

When Jordan Grumet was a child, his dad died unexpectedly.

That was decades ago.

Jordan is a father today, but he thinks often about the possibility of dying young.

And he wonders how to balance enjoying today vs. saving for tomorrow, given that none of us know how long we’ll be on this earth.

How do we think about our lives when the clock starts to run out?

Beyond money, what other tools can we use to live a fulfilling life?

Jordan Grumet, a hospice doctor and host of the Earn and Invest podcast, discusses this in today’s episode.

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#414: Ask Paula: I Think I Can Retire Early. Am I Delusional?!

Natasha thinks she and her husband have saved enough to retire early, but they’re scared. Are they ready or are they delusional?

Should Krista tap into the equity from one of her rentals to rebalance a portfolio that is weighted heavily in real estate?

Anonymous is a savvy investor who wants to retire early. She wonders if she should hire a financial advisor, or if she can manage her investments herself.

Amanda is worried that her recently diagnosed health condition might force her to stop working.  How should she financially prepare her family?

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.

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#412: Ask Paula: Should I Repay Debt or Invest?

Taylor recently graduated. She wants to reach financial independence as soon as possible. What should she do first: invest or repay low-interest debt?

Carter doesn’t want to pay too much for his investments. He’s worried about the tax drag. He wants to know how to improve cost efficiency in his portfolio. How should he manage decisions about basis points, dividends and capital gains?

Our first anonymous caller has been working and investing for a decade. Today her portfolio is large enough that she and her husband can finally take a mini-retirement.

They’d like to rebalance their portfolio. They want it to reflect the fact that they won’t be working for a while. They’d also like to calculate how much money they need to travel with their children. How should they handle this?

Our second anonymous caller is worried that their portfolio is out-of-whack. Their money is in a target date retirement fund. They’d like to move some of it to a three-fund portfolio. But this is a scary time to sell. Stocks are low. What should they do?
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.

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#408: Build YOUR 15 Year Career, with Kiersten and Julien Saunders

When Kiersten and Julian Saunders began dating in 2012, they fell in love quickly, and their relationship felt strong – until they started talking about money.

They broke up as a result of their first money conversation.

Luckily, they got back together, figured out how to have tough conversations, and paid off $200,000 in debt over the next five years.

Then they started thinking about how to hack their careers. They came up with a plan for a 15-year career.

Today, they join us on the podcast to talk about the 15-year career framework and how to approach your career – and your finances – in 5 year stints.

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#403: How I Reached Financial Independence, with Chad Carson

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.

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#402: The Psychology of Money, with Morgan Housel

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.

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