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Tag: lifestyle design

September 23, 2022By Paula Pant

#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.

Keep reading...

September 15, 2022By Paula Pant

#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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August 24, 2022By Paula Pant

#398: How To Travel For (Almost) Free, with Chris Hutchins

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.

Keep reading...

July 20, 2022By Paula Pant

#392: Ask Paula: Did the Great Recession Lead to the FIRE Movement?

Colleen and her husband own SEVEN paid off rental homes. Now they’re heading into retirement and disagree on what to do with some of that equity.

Kevin wants to hit FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) and believes his motivation comes from witnessing the financial trauma of the Great Recession. He’s wondering if others are motivated to reach FIRE for similar reasons.

Anonymous wants to learn more about utilizing HSA accounts and Susan wants to learn more about investing in tax liens.

My friend and former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy joins me to answer these questions on today’s episode. Enjoy!

Do you have a question on business, money, trade-offs, financial independence strategies, travel, or investing? Leave it here and we’ll answer them in a future episode.

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July 13, 2022By Paula Pant

#391: Powerful Tactics to Take Control of Your Life and Career, with Dr. Reza Abraham

Dr. Reza Abraham, an international leadership consultant, walks us through a framework of staying in control of your career and your life. This framework utilizes a singular core, three cornerstones and twelve principles.  He explains how to apply and execute these principles to reinforce personal fulfillment, growth and progression.

0:00:47: Introducing Dr. Reza Abraham

0:02:48: […]

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June 4, 2022By Paula Pant

#384: Invest Anywhere: Six Strategies to Make Money in Real Estate

Welcome back to the third episode in our special series, Afford Anything Presents: Invest Anywhere.

Invest Anywhere is a new monthly series that runs on the First Friday of each month. It lays out the information you need to invest in real estate at a distance.

Many of you want to invest in real estate, but you live in a high-cost-of-living area. (Ahem, California and New York). The homes in your city are prohibitively expensive, and they offer lackluster returns.

You could invest in a lower-cost area like Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Omaha or Wichita … but HOW? That sounds terrifying.

We’re here to dismantle that fear, piece by piece, by sharing our knowledge and experience.

The Invest Anywhere series is dedicated to giving you the guidance you need to make smart, confident choices about investing out-of-state.

It’s co-hosted between myself (Paula) and esteemed real estate investor Suni Rao, who’s experienced everything ranging from buy-and-hold rental investing to (accidentally) wholesaling. She’s managed short-term and long-term rentals. She’s owned houses, multi-units, and even a mobile home park.

She joins me in this episode to talk about a variety of strategies that will help you make money in real estate.

Keep reading...

May 24, 2022By Paula Pant

#382: Ask Paula: There’s No Such Thing as a FIRE Number

Sara wants to leave her job to spend time with her children, and she needs help in calculating her FIRE number. But is this possible?

Joe is buying his first house hack and would like to understand if the FHA loan or the doctor loan would be better for him.

Kat received a windfall and is wondering if she should invest it in stocks, real estate, or a combination of both.

Aisha is moving to the US and wants to start investing ASAP – how should she approach her goal to reach FIRE?

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

Enjoy!

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

Keep reading...

May 19, 2022By Paula Pant

#381: How to Not Let Your Feelings Hijack Your Decisions, with Mollie West Duffy

Maybe you’re envious of your friend who bought Bitcoin in 2015 and held until it hit 7-figures.

Maybe you’re anxious about rapidly rising home prices.

Maybe you regret that you didn’t buy a rental property five years ago, because – at the time – you felt like prices had already risen so much (from 2012 to 2017) that you just couldn’t justify paying 2017’s pricetag.

Our lives, finances and careers invoke many strong feelings. In today’s episode, Mollie West Duffy, the co-author of Big Feelings, shares strategies for not letting our feelings hijack our choices.

Mollie and her co-author, Liz Fosslien, run an Instagram channel about emotional management with half a million followers. Fosslien is an economist and behavioral scientist whose work has been featured by The Economist, Freakonomics and NPR. Duffy is an organizational and leadership development expert who’s written for Harvard Business Review.

They tackle relatable workplace issues like perfectionism, productivity guilt and Zoom fatigue, among much more.

Enjoy!

Keep reading...

May 5, 2022By Paula Pant

#378: Ask Paula: Should I Take a Higher-Paying Job if I Can’t Save As Much for Retirement?

Anonymous is 25. She has a job offer that comes with a substantial raise. Hooray!

Buuut … there’s a problem. If she accepts this job offer, her new employer won’t allow her to contribute as much money to her company retirement accounts.

How should she think about the trade-off between increasing income and funding her retirement?

Meanwhile, Dan from California is retiring soon and wants to know what he and his wife should do with the loan they took out against their 401(k).

Finally, an anonymous caller who goes by “Daughter” has a whole life policy that only costs her less than $50 per month. Since her policy is so cheap, should she keep it?

Keep reading...

March 23, 2022By Paula Pant

#371: What’s the Point of Happiness, Anyway?, with Dr. Bill Von Hippel

When our earliest ancestors noticed their immediate surroundings change – the trees began disappearing and their environment morphed into open savannah – they sensed they had a huge problem on their hands.

They were easy prey. They lacked adequate speed, strength and sharp sense of smell that would be useful for protection from predators.

But if they huddled together, they would be more protected. So like a school of fish or a herd of zebras, early humans began to band together as they roamed the dangerous and exposed plains.

But in any herd of zebras, a few slowpokes, the very young or old, the ill or injured, get eaten alive. This needed a solution.

Early humans improved their odds of survival by using handheld tools to kill predators from a distance, for example, by throwing rocks at lions in a coordinated defense.

Once they developed a coordinated, weapon-centric defense, they began using these same weapons offensively, in order to hunt.

They enjoyed the most successful hunts when they cooperated, communicated and coordinated, imagining future scenarios, strategizing and planning together. This required sharper cognition.

They traded brawn for brain.

And so an unprecedented cognitive revolution began, one that made humans the most remarkable species the world has ever seen.

In today’s episode, psychology professor Bill von Hippel explains the evolutionary science behind how we’re hardwired as humans.

We’re wired to be social, to connect, to communicate and cooperate.

We’re wired to want to learn and teach, to build a collective body of knowledge that stretches beyond what any single individual could ever learn in their lifetime.

We’re wired to feel surges of happiness that fade, so that we’re intrinsically motivated to keep repeating behaviors that lead to additional surges of happiness.

Once we understand the evolutionary science behind what makes us happy, Dr. von Hippel explains, we can apply this knowledge to making better decisions for our work, money and lives.

Bill von Hippel is a graduate of Yale University and the University of Michigan. He’s currently a psychology professor at the University of Queensland in Australia. He joins us to share his insights into the history and science of happiness.

Keep reading...

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Afford Anything

  • Start Here
    • About
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    • Binge
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    • Binge
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  • Community
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    • Your First Rental Property
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