Want to meet the awesome team that fuels Afford Anything? Here’s an introduction to the talented individuals behind-the-scenes!
Afford Anything: Podcast Team
Steve Stewart | Editor Extraordinaire
If you’re a long-time listener of the show, then you know that Steve is our amazing editor. He is a wizard at putting together our shows each week (sometimes multiple shows a week!), and the show wouldn’t happen without him.
Love the music on the show? Thank Steve. Enjoy the sound effects? Thank Steve. Grateful that the show sounds polished because the audio levels are nicely balanced and there aren’t many distracting noises? Also, thank Steve. 🙂
Want to learn more about Steve? Head to his website here.
Joe Saul-Sehy | Ask Paula Co-Host
As Paula’s once-a-month sidekick on Ask Paula episodes, Joe has become a staple addition to the show. We love that listeners call in and say, “Tell Joe I said hi!”
Joe is a podcast juggernaut in his own right, having hosted the award-winning Stacking Benjamins podcast from his mom’s basement since 2012. In fact, that’s how some of you came across Afford Anything. Thanks, Joe!
While he’s best known for his endless financial wisdom and humor, you can also count on Joe to make obscure pop culture references that Paula may or may not get. 😉
Podcast Ad Reps | Podcast Sponsorships
The team at PAR has worked with us for years to bring us some seriously awesome podcast sponsorships.
We have extremely stringent guidelines for sponsorships, and they’ve always worked with us to ensure that sponsors are legitimate and valuable for our listeners. They know that we’re against anything that doesn’t bring value to our audience, and we’re grateful that our relationship helps fuel the podcast you love listening to.
Afford Anything: Your First Rental Property Team
Our premium rental property investing course
Our Teacher’s Assistants
We are thrilled to have a team of amazing Teacher’s Assistants to support all of our students and alumni in the course. They hang out in the forums to respond quickly to questions posed by students, they contribute valuable insights to discussion, and they help manage our accountability groups. Our students are overjoyed to have such friendly faces in the forums, and their answers help guide them along the course and their real estate journey.
Karen | Teacher’s Assistant
Karen was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. In 2011, she moved to Las Vegas, NV and purchased her first rental property. A few years later, she and her husband bought a duplex while living just outside of Portland, OR.
It was around this time that Karen found Afford Anything. She was already interested in the FIRE movement and appreciated how Paula had used real estate as a tool to achieve her goals. She and her husband decided to do the same.
At the beginning of 2020, they purchased two more properties in Pittsburgh, PA, and they’re figuring out where to invest next.
Fun Fact: Karen is happily immersed in motherhood and exploring locally with her small family. She has traveled to 48 states, speaks fluent Spanish, and spent over a month traversing glaciers in Patagonia. When it’s nice out, she loves hiking, camping, and working in her garden. When it’s cold and rainy, she enjoys experimenting in the kitchen and creating various art projects.
Diana Mhuriro-Chageza | Teacher’s Assistant
Diana was born and raised in Harare, Zimbabwe. She moved to the U.S. for college, met her husband, and never left. She now resides in Fairbanks, AK. She’s a registered nurse, army wife, and mother of three.
In 2018, she listened to this Afford Anything podcast episode about getting started with real estate investing. She shared her newfound knowledge with her husband, who was in South Korea at the time. Three months later, they purchased a fourplex that they househacked for a year and a half.
Today, Diana owns nine rentals in Fairbanks. She continues to educate herself on real estate and places her tenants first to keep vacancy and turnover as low as possible. Her love for real estate and nursing has her contemplating the conversion of one of her properties into Assisted Living.
Fun Fact: Diana’s favorite happy hour drink is Jamaican ginger beer. For fun, she takes online interior decorating classes. She and her family spend a lot of time traveling around Alaska, taking pictures and looking for the best place to fish for Halibut and Salmon.
Natalie Forshaw | Teacher’s Assistant
Natalie recently moved to Corpus Christi, TX from Fairbanks, AK. She and her husband bought their first duplex in 2014, and then converted their primary residence into a duplex – before knowing about househacking.
Upon moving to Corpus Christi, they bought a condo and stepped into the short-term rental world. Despite the pandemic, a hurricane, and being new at short-term rentals, they’ve had a successful first year.
They self-manage all three of their rentals.
Fun Fact: Natalie enjoys road trips, reading, puzzles, hiking, swimming, bicycling, and spending time with her family and grandchildren.
Samantha Cash | Teacher’s Assistant
Samantha lives in the Catskills region of upstate New York, where she househacks a duplex. Both units have two bedrooms, so she also rents out the spare room in her unit to bring in more rental income. She looks forward to buying rentals in other states to test and streamline the systems and processes in her real estate business.
Samantha is a civil engineer by day and is curious about the world of housing and construction. Some of her best college memories involve volunteering with Habitat for Humanity. She hopes her knowledge in these areas will give her an edge as an investor.
Fun Fact: Samantha took five months off of work in 2018 to hike the Appalachian trail from Maine to Georgia.
Jess Schultz | Teacher’s Assistant
Jess lives in Raleigh, NC, and owns a rental property outside of Charlotte, NC. She hopes to buy more properties in both of these areas, or branch out to Tennessee.
Growing up, her family owned rentals, and becoming a rental investor was always part of her plan. Jess has spent the last four years educating herself on rental properties, and she’s learning even more as a landlord.
Fun Fact: “Exploration in all its possible forms has always been my greatest source of joy. Having as many diverse learning experiences as possible is what I consider a fulfilling life. [The principles of FIRE] have served me well enough to live and work throughout Asia, take a Spanish sabbatical in Mexico, withstand transition during COVID-19, and purchase a rental property.”
Amanda | Teacher’s Assistant
Amanda was born in Seattle. She grew up in Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN, and went to high school and college in the Northeastern U.S. Today, she lives outside of Boston, MA with her husband, toddler daughter, and two rescue dogs. Amanda first began nerding out on spreadsheets in her MBA program, and continues to do so at her day job in sales strategy at a tech company.
She was introduced to Paula and Afford Anything by a friend in late 2018 when she needed to tighten up her budget to pay for daycare. She immediately binged the podcast, which reignited a long-held interest in rental property investing.
After graduating from the Fall 2020 cohort, Amanda closed on her first rental property: a 4-plex in Vermont. She’s excited to continue to learn alongside all of the students, TA’s, and alumni of YFRP!
Fun Fact: When she’s not crunching numbers, you can find Amanda hiking, traveling, doing ropes courses, and zip lining.
Alyssa M. | Head Teacher’s Assistant & Deputy Course Administrator
Alyssa lives in the Quad Cities with her husband and three house rabbits. Having spent her career in education, she loves breaking down ideas and helping others grasp the concepts in Your First Rental Property. She creates many of the course resources, and leads our Study Hall sessions!
In early 2021, Alyssa made an offer on a property in Memphis, TN … sight unseen. After visiting the property (which she determined was the wrong property), she’s thinking of searching elsewhere, though she’s narrowing down a list of cities. Stay tuned for updates!
Alyssa has also participated in BiggerPockets webinars and is an avid listener of real estate podcasts.
Fun Fact: When not at her day job, Alyssa loves traveling (using points and miles, of course), working in her garden and arranging flowers.
Rebecca | Spreadsheet Magician
Rebecca was born and raised in Maryland. She and her husband own two rental properties and are looking to expand their portfolio in the near future.
When she’s not researching real estate, Rebecca loves creating spreadsheets to help organize information. She uses spreadsheets in all aspects of her life – from managing finances to organizing her pantry to planning her Christmas lists!
As for how Rebecca found Afford Anything – although her day job paid the bills, she was looking for something more and started learning about the FIRE movement. After hearing Paula’s story on a popular podcast, Rebecca checked out Afford Anything and the rest is history!
Fun Fact: In her free time, Rebecca enjoys reading, running, cooking, traveling, and hanging out with her husband and two fur-babies, Roo and Nala.
Afford Anything: Website Team
Greg & Hannah | Design Visionaries
Greg and Hannah are the world-traveling couple who designed both our main site and our course site. They have fully embraced the digital nomad lifestyle, and we’re glad that they worked with us to bring Paula’s vision for the site to life.
If you’d like to learn more about the services they offer, check out their website! If you want to follow along with their travels, here’s their YouTube channel.
Zach Swinehart | Technical Genius & Developer
Zach is responsible for all the awesome features this site has. He took Greg and Hannah’s design and implemented it so that it runs smoothly.
He’s originally from Colorado, but lived in Thailand when he joined up with Afford Anything. In 2019, he and his girlfriend moved to Portugal, stayed for a few months, and then moved to Georgia the country.
Zach also helped implement Greg and Hannah’s design for our real estate course, Your First Rental Property. When he’s not working on sprucing up the website, he’s helping us update YFRP. We’re always adding new features, thanks to Zach.
Karen Hoxmeier Murphy | Affiliate Manager
Karen helps keep the lights on by facilitating affiliate partnerships that align with our values and bring you awesome discounts and promotions. She works super hard to filter out the hundreds of affiliate opportunities that don’t meet our extremely strict specifications. 🙂 She has tons of experience, too – she founded MyBargainBuddy.com all the way back in 1999!
Affiliate partnerships allow us to compensate our team and reinvest in the business.
Afford Anything: Team Literally Everything
Erin Millard | Chief Sanity Officer
Erin joined Team Afford Anything in 2015. In 2019, she became the first full-time employee of Afford Anything. 🥳 She wears many hats in the business, switching between Course Administrator, Video Editor, Podcast Producer, Community Manager, and Content Manager, sometimes all in one day.
These all come together under the umbrella of Chief “Sanity” Officer (credit for this prestigious title goes to Paula). Tasked with ensuring Afford Anything runs smoothly, you’ll likely hear from Erin if you need to get in touch with us.
Paula Pant | Founder
Paula created the Afford Anything movement back in 2012 and hasn’t looked back. She’s an enthusiastic investor with a soft spot for spreadsheets. She’s a globe-trotting entrepreneur who quit her job in 2008 (yes, during a recession), and proceeded to turn her writing skills into a lucrative freelance writing business.
In 2015, Paula made the decision to focus her full attention on Afford Anything, and the result is what you see today: an award-winning blog and podcast, and a premium rental property investing course that took three years of development.
For an official biography, click here.
Afford Anything: Mascots
These are the furry and not-so-furry friends that support us along the way!
Pictured above: Tazzie, Azra, and Geoffrey the Turtle…named after the butler on Fresh Prince. He was born in April 2014 on Hilton Head, South Carolina. (Paula’s pets.)
Pictured above: Penelope, Ziva, Bugsy, and Pye. (Erin’s pets.)
Need to contact us? Click here.
