Afford Anything - #400: The Lies Told About Early Retirement

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

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 Details below: Carl Jensen: 05:27: Session begins 08:02: Sharing the message of financial independence and being hit with the “What If’s” 12:24: The concern about running out of money 20:16: The real value of fire Rich Jones: 32:50: Session begins 35:55: The importance of knowing who you are, what you want, and why 39:36: Day jobs: love vs. purpose 43:26: Why you should track your work 46:18: How to think like a recruiter 51:44: Why giving yourself permission could be your game changer Paula Pant: 59:34: Session begins 1:02:21: The importance of reframing the word “can’t” 1:10:29: Traditional budgets, zero based budgets and anti budgets 1:19:49: The benefit of high friction activities  * Timestamps accurate as of September 2022. Starting 60 days after episode release, timestamps may shift slightly as we make updates and changes **The next EconoMe will be held March 17th-19th 2023, in Cincinnati, Ohio. For more information or 10% off tickets, please go to: EconoMe Conference and use discount code: AFFORDANYTHING. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything but not everything. Every choice that you make is a trade-off against something else, and that doesn't just apply to your money. That applies to any limited resource you need to manage, like your time, your focus, your energy, your attention. And that opens up two questions. First, what matters most? And second, how do you make decisions accordingly?

Answering those two questions is what this podcast is all about. My name is Paula Pair. I'm the host of the Afford Anything podcast. And today's episode is special for a variety of reasons. First of all, every year, if you're a long-time listener of Afford Anything, as you know, we've been doing this for, I think this is our third or fourth year in a row. During the month of September, our team takes the September sabbatical, and I'm going to talk about that in just a second. But this is the first kickoff episode of the September sabbatical for September 2022. It's also special because we are typically a weekly show.

We air new episodes every Wednesday. but once a month on the first Friday of the month, we air a first Friday bonus episode. So not only is this our first September 2020, September sabbatical episode, but it's also the first Friday bonus episode for September. So what does all of that mean? And what does it mean for this upcoming episode? Let's answer the latter question first. In this upcoming episode, you're going to hear three talks. All three of these talks, came from the Economy Conference. The Economy Conference has its roots in the fire movement, the Financial Independence Retire Early Movement. It's a three-day gathering of speakers and attendees who are interested in really diving into fire. I spoke at the most recent conference last year,

and you're going to hear that speech in this upcoming episode. You'll also hear speeches from Rich Jones and Carl Jensen, delivered from the stage at the same conference, and we're all talking about slightly different topics. I talk about the first major goal that I ever budgeted and saved for, which was to travel the world. I share that story, and then I talk about budgeting. So my talk is much more tactical, actionable, implementable, if that's a word.

Mine is fairly practical. Rich Jones, who is the founder of Paychecks and Balances, a platform that helps professionals navigate their finances, he talks about the pursuit of professional happiness. He asks the question, what if you achieve all your goals, but you're still not happy? And he shares some very personal stories. And Carl Jensen, who retired at the age of 43,

which was six years after he discovered the fire movement, he talks about what he learned during that six-year full-throttle journey to fire. He was 37 when he discovered this idea. He went full speed into it. He retired at 43. And now, with the benefit of hindsight, there's a lot that he understands today that he did not understand when he stumbled across this at the age of 37. So he talks about how Philandia is a lie and what the more nuanced truth is instead. So you'll hear all three of these talks in today's episode. And the reason that we are playing this as our first Friday feature is because this is the beginning of the September sabbatical. And the September sabbatical, for those of you who are

new to this podcast or who may not remember this from previous years, this is the month where we practice what we preach. Our whole team gets to enjoy a one month sabbatical, a one month respite from the workload of constantly producing and managing and editing new content year-round. We talk a lot on this podcast about the importance of taking breaks, mini-retirements, work-life balance, and we want to make sure that we are role-modeling this by example. And so every year during the month of September, we take one month off from producing new work. and instead we showcase some of our favorite material from the archives of our podcast, as well as, as you'll hear in this episode, as well as material from speeches that we've made

and the other people in our community have made at conferences and around the community. Enjoy today's episode. And if you are interested in going to the economy conference, the next one will be held March 17 through 19th, 2023, at the University of Cincinnati. I'm from Cincinnati, by the way. Make sure you eat some Skyline chili while you're there. If you want to attend the Economy Conference, we have a 10% off discount code, and it is afford anything.

One word, all caps. So you can get tickets by going to Economy Conference, E-C-O-M-E, conference.com, and use promo code, afford anything for 10% off. With that said, we're going to kick off with this talk from Carl Jensen. So before we get into it, I'm going to answer the question. I know all of you are asking yourself right now, where can I get this shirt? And to that, I respond with another question, do you live near a Kmart? What the hell am I doing here today?

Back in October 2012, I was a normal person, probably a slightly less than average human being. I was working a computer job, and I had a very, very no-good, bad day at work. I wrote code for a medical device which could potentially kill people, and I thought I had introduced a bug into the code that could potentially kill someone. And I'm coming from a point of extreme financial insecurity. So within like five seconds of me thinking this, I'm like, oh, my God, I'm going to lose my job. My wife is going to leave me off all the kids. I'm going to be bankrupt, and my life is pretty much over.

So in the middle of all this, I googled how do I retire early? and up came these two people, Pete, Mr. Money Mossash and J.D. Roth. I'm going to go off script here for a second. I asked J.D. for a nice HD picture, and he sends me this threatening picture of him holding some kind of dead rodent. Today, make you angry, J.D., is this a kind of mafia threat? I have a gut squad. My animals killed me. J.D., if anything happens to me, there's 400 of my witnesses slash friends here.

I'll get you later. So the first thing I thought, I saw these two guys blogs, and I'm like, oh my God, they retired at like 31 or whatever, earlier term. It is a thing. And then the next thought I had was, this is a bunch of them. Now J.D. Roth is going to kill me with an assist from Pete. But no, it's all good. It's all good. I thought it was bullshit because I never knew anyone who retired before the typical age, like 65 or 70.

Everyone I know who would work to like 70, then they'd go to Florida, and then they'd do whatever those people do. and then they would die. I even knew one relative who actually died on the job of the desk. But then I read a little bit more, and I saw this post from Pete about the 4% rule. I'm like, this is actually a thing. It's just a simple math problem. I don't want to live quite as frugally as Pete, but I could do this.

So my next thought is, I need to tell the world about this. There's just these two guys, and everyone else needs to know about fire, so I need to help these two out. So I started a blog called 1500 days, and that was how many days I thought it would take to complete my journey to fire. And then I thought, I need to tell all my friends about this because I can't just be fire

and not have anything to do. I need cool friends to hang out with. I have a question for you all. Feel free to shout back at me. Don't throw anything at me unless it's money or beer. Have any of you discovered fire and tried to tell the uninitiated about fire and try to convince them? If so, how has that worked out? So Pete, Mr. Bainty Mustache said he created a PowerPoint, showed it to his coworkers,

and they got so mad at him that he never. did it again. I think I have actually pushed people farther into their corner. And if any of you were dragged here against your will, if any of you are that person, this slide is for you. So I thought all my friends would be like this. I'd tell them about fire and they'd make, this is amazing, I'm totally going to do this with you. Instead, they were more like this. And what I say is they came down with a case of what if syndrome, because every time I'd tell them about fire, they'd have some different what if excuse for why fire was not going to work. I'd like to tell you what some of those were today. My first friend said,

I really love my job. I like it a lot. I just don't want to quit. To that I say, does anyone remember this company? Am I dating myself here? Does anyone remember what happened here? Let me show you. No matter how much you love your job, just like that cute other person in college, they might not love you back. What if I die when I quit working? I thought this is the strangest one. I told my friend who will go unnamed, and he said, yeah, I'm really worried. I want to have purpose and meaning in my life. I'll be sedentary and I'll crook. And I Google a little bit, and I found this article that said earlier retirees tend to be more sedentary.

They drink more and they have less of a social life. I disagree with this, and I'm going to show you two extremely embarrassing pictures to show you why. There are pictures of me, oh, God, I hate this part, semi-naked, before and after I quit work. In the first picture, there are men on my underwear. Those men are Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. This is super embarrassing, so I'm going to go through these really quick. There's the first one. Oh, I have no idea how I got in there.

That was the real picture of the last one. So I was overweight. I had high blood pressure. I had other health issues because I sat at a desk all day and didn't have time to exercise. After I quit work, I became much healthier. So to people who say that early retirement is going to kill you, I said by job would have killed me if I would have stayed at it. And the mail clinic confirms us.

They state that sitting at a desk for eight hours a day is similar to smoking a pack of cigarettes or being overweight. So to that excuse, can you repeat after me, I call bullshit. Okay. What if my friends think I'm strange? This was the oddest one I heard. Does anyone read Tim Urban? Wait, but why, have you ever seen that blog before? That's really freaking good.

So he has a post called Why We Should Stop Carrying What Other People Think. And in this post, she states that most humans have an unproductive and harmful obsession with what we think other people think of us. So this is what we think people think of us. This is what we think is happening. And this is the actual true story. In reality, no one gives a shit about you. Sorry, I give a shit about you. I know this first had a couple of years ago, my wife and I were invited to be on this podcast.

About a week or two after we recorded it, the producer called me up and said, hey, I really need some headshots of you too. I'm like, no, I'm sorry, this is anonymous. I'm not going to do that. She's like, please, can I have it? I'm like, nope, she's like, every other person has given me the head shots. Okay, you can have them. This is not a big podcast.

No one is ever going to see this. So about a week after this, we show up on the front of Yahoo News, and there's Tim Cook with Sia, there's Hillary Clinton, Taylor Swift, and my wife and I. So I'm like, I remember having a heart attack that morning, but then I'm like, who reads, yeah, who knows? Like, no one reads that anymore, yeah, who's irrelevant. Turns out that no one reads it except all of my coworkers, all of my family,

and all of my friends. So the cat was out of the bag. But what I found out was no one really cared, except some of my friends who learned I had money and then asked me for that money right after that. So one, two, three, I call bullshit. Yay. What if I run out of money?

This is my favorite one in the last one. To this, I respond with another question, and that question is, what if you run out of life? I hope you all know this. If not, I've got some bad news for you. We are all going to die. And that is bad,

but I don't think most of us will run out of money. We're pretty conservative. A lot of us are a 4% rule. Screw that, I'm doing the 3.1% rule. So we take a lot of, we take a lot of precautions. J.D.'s laughing. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.

We take a lot of precaution. And there are lots of hedges against running out of money. If anyone has a hedge against death, come talk to me after the talk. Or come talk to me right now on this right here, if you know how not to die. What all these what-ifs boiled down to are negativity bias, and my daughter epitomizes it perfectly here. She actually has the book, 14,000 things to be happy about in her head. So, by the way, quick side note, to get her permission to use this, I have to buy her cookies when I get home.

So we're out on this walk. She's carrying this book, and the wind kicked up, and she had just learned about tornadoes in school, so she was convinced a tornado was coming. So she had 14,000 and one things to think about, 14,000 happy, one bad, and she focused on the one bad one bad one, the tornado. So the first thing I want to tell you is when you're presented with a challenge, it might be fire, it might be something else, instead of saying, what if this goes wrong, what if this happens, what if this bad thing happens?

Instead, I want you to shut that down and say, what if I'm wildly successful, what if everything goes perfect? Because I think a lot of times that's what happens. The risks you don't take in life result in a life don't live, and there's a lot of great shit once you get outside that comfort circle. Okay, let's talk. about fire a little bit. We all know what fire is right. If not, you're in the wrong place.

Okay, there's all these derivations of fire now, right? We've got fat fire, which apparently we can buy fancy cars that look like that. There's lean fire where we live on rice and beans and apparently live in something like that. This sounds like university life to me, but what the hell do I know? Today, for the first time, I have created two new versions of fire that I'm going to tell you about. The first is something I like to call dumpster fire. Did COVID screw up any of your lives in 2020? You could shout at me.

2020 was not a happy year for me. COVID screwed up lots of things. Zach, the evil dog, who, this is my sister's dog, this dog, hates everyone and everything about the world. It's a miserable creature, and I've created a video to show you. Okay. There is sound, so listen carefully. not a good dog

not a good dog so this is what my kitchen looked like at the beginning of March of 2020 I do these things called a live-in flip where you fix your house up as you live in it if you think this isn't a good idea sometimes it's not and this was one of those times this was what my family room

look like and so but I told myself I told myself, well, it's going to be okay because my kids were going to be in school for two and a half more months, and I could finish it up in that time, and then I could spend the summer with them and life would be great. Turned out that didn't

happen. Two weeks later, they had spring break. COVID became a thing, and the school said, okay, here's four inches of paper. We don't feel confident with online schooling, so have had it. This work should take you three hours a day. I know my limits, and I'm a shoddy teacher. And my daughter's an extrovert who did not want to be taught by her dad. So often three hours of work turned into

10 hours of work with lots of tears and screaming in between. It wasn't good, but we both learned about each other, so there was that. On April 25th, my parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. I was supposed to be in Las Vegas visiting them, but because of COVID, we had a Zoom call. Not quite the same, right? So that was a Saturday. On April 27th, I get this frantic call from my younger sister saying, hey, dad's been taken to the hospital in an ambulance. It turned out he had an aortic dissection, and that usually kills you at the very beginning. It is a very good way to die, actually. If you have to die, it's not too bad, but it didn't take him until July 10th.

In between April 27th and July 10th, I'm driving back and forth to Las Vegas to support my family multiple times. In the middle, while all this is happening, some idiot on some troll, this wasn't the actual thing, but it went something like this, tweets me, he's like, hey, retired 1500, your stunks are way down, you're going to get a job of Taco Bell. But the thought I had was, this guy had it all wrong because fire was doing exactly what it was supposed to be doing. I had dumpster fire, so I had the time to deal with my life

as it was disintegrating around me. Let's talk about something a little bit more fun. This is the other version of fire I created, and this I like to call Instagram Fire. Instead of telling you what Instagram Fire is, I have a couple magazine front covers that I can show you that will explain it. I'll let you look at each of these for a moment. I have three of them.

The first one is from Best Life. So this last one I'm going to show you. It's really close to home, and I swear I do nothing about this before I googled Instagram Fire and came upon this. So this is a friend of all of ours you're going to see in the next one. I wish you would have told us about this. It's pretty cool. So how do you all feel? when you see articles or Instagram feeds that look like this that show all this glory.

Here's how I feel about them, except for Diana. The Diana one is awesome. And I don't like these because this is not what normal life is like. And then I started thinking, I took a look at my own Instagram feed and I realized that I'm part of the problem with this. I've got here I am at the beach. Here I am at the beach again. I've got six likes on this. I'm not doing too hot. I took a picture of this cactus to be a bit. and because of pretentious, you see where I'm going with this. You see where I'm going with this.

Because I'm extra pretentious, I turn this in black and white. And after I put this in the slide deck, I'm looking at this picture. I'm like, do you see something weird about this or different about this cactus? I'll show you what I mean if it's not obvious. And then I asked myself, what if my Instagram feed was actually true and real? What pictures would it have? Here's my kids assaulting each other. Here's my wife Mindy on the hunt for dumpster treasure.

Yeah, dumpsters are awesome. It's a theme of my life somehow. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what happened here. My kid and her friends got the phone and are screwing around. I should lock my phone, I guess. So I invented these two new forms of fire, but I think both of them are kind of stupid because most of your life isn't spent on a van on the Mexican Riviera and most of it isn't spent

in a hospital room. The real value of fire is that how it empowers your data to do that. day life. So I could just spend more time with my kids. I volunteer at their school all the time. I get to see my wife more often and I get to goof around with my friends. So fire increases everything I like to do in my day-to-day life. So love your life where you live it and let fire help make that daily life better. I told you what I was doing before I discovered fire and I'll tell you what happened afterwards. I wasn't happy at my job. I thought I was going to get fired. I thought I was going to go broke and live under a bridge somewhere. But then I found fire and that was going to

fix all my problems. Life was going to be so great after I got to fire. I would be in Philandia and there'd be eunuch, like, what is that thing, giant, my little pony and rainbows and bicycles. And so we sold our big fancy house and bought this little one that had mice and other insect infestations in it. And then I made the decision. I need to increase my net worth. So I'm going to put some sweat equity into it. So I spent the next five years, of my life working on this house with a full-time job and with two children. Mom, this was not a good decision. I call this part of my life my death march because I was working $100 a week

and lots of puncture wounds and lots of support for the local urgent care facility. But the results were good. This house eventually became this, so that was pretty nice. We sold it for good money. Thank you. Okay, so I'd get the fire and then I'd be super happy. But I felt like this. Does this still sound the same?

Okay. But I still felt like this and I'm like, what the hell is going wrong? Philandia is a bunch of bullshit. Finlandia is a lie because I feel pretty much the exact same as I did before I found fire. I'm no happier. So then I started researching, and this is from Sandia Libermurski, who is a professor of psychology who researches happiness. And she states that about half of our happiness comes from genetic tendencies. So we can't do anything about that.

40% comes from intentional activity. and 10% comes from circumstance. So it's no wonder fire didn't make me any happier because fire is a circumstance. And I don't want to downplay it or not be thankful. It's a really great circumstance. I'm so thankful for it, but it's still just a circumstance of life

that may not necessarily make you happier, make your life better, but not happier. So then I started thinking, I'm pretty frugal, maybe I should be spending money. Maybe the big spending people are doing something right and I'm doing something wrong. So I started looking at house sizes. It turns out our house size

are about, and this only goes up to 2010, about 250% bigger than they were only 60 years ago. We have a name for 1950s houses now. Do you know what it is? Yeah, tiny homes one. I should have put that in there, but starter homes is what we often call these two. And then I thought about cars. We used to drive stuff like this, and this is a lot nicer than some of the cars I've won in my past. So now we have things like this to go two miles to the grocery store.

And if I sound like a judgmental jerk up here, I did all this. Here's my fancy house that I sold to buy that crappy one that I showed you moments. So, four bedrooms, four bathrooms, we each had our own toilet. So luxurious. No weight ever. I had this car, this is ridiculous, that I bought for $45,000 that I drove two miles to the grocery store every once in a while. And then I started looking at this, and it turns out where, despite these bigger houses in nicer cars, we're less happier now. than we've ever been. Look at that. In 1993, apparently we are real happy. Does anyone know what was going on there?

We're they pumping drugs into the water? I don't know. It's a mystery to me. And it's no wonder that stuff doesn't make us happier either because that's still just a circumstance of our life. So then I started thinking, what do I need to do to be happy? What is the real cause of happiness? And it's right there. It's intentional activity. It is the other 40% of stuff that we can control. And then I started thinking, what are intentional activities in my life. And some of them are health. Here I am running a 10K with my daughter. I'm about to give a talk,

and I'm up here now giving a talk because this scares the shi' out of me. But I know I'll be a better person for having done it. It's having really good friends to share your life with. It's about giving back and charity. Here we are on Bike to Work Day, handing out breakfast burritos to our local bicycle community. And it's having really, really great community in life.

I'm looking at this picture now, And the amazing thing is I met all these people a long time ago, and most of them are here in the audience today. How cool is that? So I started my blog in January of 2013, and I didn't know what to expect. I was doing it to amuse myself. But one of the weird side effects of it is the people I've met

have become really, really good friends in life. And a lot of ways, a lot of them are better friends than some of the people I knew before. When my father was dying a couple days before he died, Doc G. Jordan knew about us, and he's like, hey, why don't you jump on a call with me? I'll help you talk through disconnecting him from life support. How cool is that? Some guy who I met on the internet and maybe interacted with a couple times in real life for five minutes is offering to sit with me. A doctor, nonetheless, I'm sure he's got better to do calling to help me out. It's so thoughtful and nice. I think there's a reason why we're here. I think it is this community, and I think it's because we have money at the core of this, and money acts. As a filter, I hate talking about money because it's stupid and we should all figure it out and get past it. Yeah. Oh, man.

If we could just all help each other out and get past it, we'd all be better off. In this case, I think money acts as a filter. If we have money in common, we have a lot of other things in common too. We like books, board games, beer, excessive profanity, apparently, too, right? Like, every other, I might be the only talk who doesn't have an F-mom, although I did have one on that car. So I don't know, I have no idea why y'all came here, but I hope what you leave with are new friends and new community, and I hope you go to future events. And even if you don't, I hope you connect and exchange phone numbers and connect with people. I hope you come out here, come out of this with new friends, and I hope one of those friends is me.

But if you were dragged here, is there a hand signal? I know TikTok has those. I don't see anyone who looks at the restaurant. So what I've come to is intentional activities are an expression of our availability. And deep down, I think we all pretty much have the same values. We all want to be healthy. We all want good friends to share our lives with. We all want challenge, and some of that can come through work.

Work is not a bad word. Like the Internet Retirement Police would say, good work is good. And if you think about all those things, none of them really cost any money. So the focus of life and the focus of your journey should not be financial independence. It should be fire. Instead, you should focus on your values, because you should focus on your values, values because I think if you live a life that's true and a life that's good, you're going to realize you don't have to spend money. Friends don't cost money unless you have friends like mine

who find out you're wealthy and then ask you for it. I didn't send them any though. If you do all this, I think fire is just going to be a happy side effect. And there's more to it. You're going to have to have some knowledge about how to invest and save. But focus on your values and don't focus on the money. And I think you'll arrive at the right place. I'd like to leave you with one thing before I end today. I quit my job in April of 2017, and my first goal was to spend as much time I could with my children. So every single event they had at school I would volunteer for.

It came to the point where the school would be like, yeah, we only have so many parents you need to back off a little bit. We appreciate it, but please sit this one out. I'm like, okay. Anyway, this is the first event I attended with my younger daughter, Taffney. This was the end-of-school event in 2017. And at one point in this, I'm standing there on the sidelines, watching all these kids running all over the place, screaming and yelling.

She runs up to me and said, hey, dad, hey, dad, hey, dad. I'm like, what's going on, Daphne? She said, Dad, I'm so happy you could be here with me right now. I'm like, oh, I'm sure she's long since forgotten that. It was probably gone after five minutes. But you know what? I'm never, ever, ever going to forget that moment in my life, May 2017. So I didn't do everything right in life.

this home construction odyssey, many puncture wounds. It was a big mistake. Spending any time with this. It was a terrible mistake. Is anyone interested in canine adoption, by the way? But all that, despite all these things I did wrong, despite the puncture wounds, trips to the emergency room, almost getting bit by that multiple times, it's all completely worth it because I get to have more moments like this in my life. and traded for anything. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed that talk. We're going to take a break for a word from our sponsors. When we come back, the next talk you'll hear is from Rich Jones, the founder of Paychecks and Balances, who talks about an important but uncomfortable question. What happens if you achieve all your

goals, but you're still not happy. It's coming up next. Fifth Third Bank's commercial payments are fast and efficient, but they're not just fast and efficient. They're also powered by the latest in payments technology built to evolve with your business. Fifth Third Bank has the big bank muscle to handle payments for businesses of any size. But they also have the fintech hustle that got them named one of America's most innovative companies by Fortune magazine. That's what being a fifth third better is all about. It's about not being just one thing, but many things for our customers. Big bank muscle, fintech hustle.

That's your commercial payments, a fifth-third better. The holidays are right around the corner, and if you're hosting, you're going to need to get prepared. Maybe you need bedding, sheets, linens. Maybe you need serveware and cookware. And of course, holiday decor, all the stuff to make your home a great place to host during the holidays. You can get up to 70% off during Wayfair's Black Friday sale. Wayfair has Can't Miss Black Friday deals all month long. I use Wayfair to get lots of storage type of ice.

for my home, so I got tons of shelving that's in the entryway, in the bathroom, very space-saving. I have a daybed from them that's multi-purpose. You can use it as a couch, but you can sleep on it as a bed. It's got shelving. It's got drawers underneath for storage. But you can get whatever it is you want, no matter your style, no matter your budget. Wayfair has something for everyone. Plus, they have a loyalty program, 5% back on every item across Wayfair's family of brands. Free shipping, members-only sales, and more. Terms apply. Don't miss out on early, Black Friday deals. Head to Wayfair.com now to shop Wayfair's Black Friday deals for up to 70% off. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. Sale ends December 7th.

And we're back. This is Rich Jones. Asking the question, what if you achieve your goals, but it wasn't what you thought it would be. Enjoy. Did anybody in here have lower back pain before? Any lower back pain sufferers? All right. All right. So I see I got some fellow lumbar. sufferers in the room. So yo, I used to have back pain so bad that sometimes I would feel it down into my hamstrings. And there would be days where I'd wake up screaming and riding in pain, and there'd be nights where it'd be the same thing, a struggle, the frustration of my back constantly hurting. And then there would be periods where I'd be totally fine, where, you know, I'd be running around, riding bikes, doing all of that cool stuff, until I would do something

stupid like throw out my back folding a blanket. Who throws out their back folding a blanket? Or I would throw out my back doing something stupid like stepping off a curb wrong. Who throws out their back stepping off a curb wrong? And I would go through this cycle time and time again over the course of the years. And so what changed? I started strengthening my core and I need a clicker for that. And so as it turns out, glutes, hip flexors, hamstrings, all that good stuff, it's all connected. And for years, I've been neglecting all of these surrounding muscle groups. I've been neglecting all these surrounding muscle groups so much

that my back was working over time to hold it all together. And so while it felt like my back was actually the problem, it was not my back. It was a whole lot of other stuff. And so I share this because sometimes we know there's an issue, but we don't want to do the work to get to the root of it because we know it's going to be hard. and we know it's going to be challenging.

And we'll be fine for a while, but eventually, in some form or another, we break down because avoidance never dissolves the issue. And so I'm going to talk to you a little bit today about how I've navigated my career and how I've made some of these decisions to ultimately get to a point where I'm working out a place like Google, but I'm also going to talk to you about the other work that you need to do

because no dollar amount, job title, promotion is going to bring you the happiness or the freedom that you're looking for. But this other work will. And so your career is a tool. It's a tool to help you get more of what you want out of life. So maybe that's the opportunity to travel to other offices so you can see and live in different companies. Maybe it's the opportunity to pick up skills

so you can say, F, the day job, and go start your own thing. Maybe it's the peace of mind that comes with a steady job and benefits so you have the mental space to spend time with the business. people you love. For me, my day job was why I was able to become debt-free in 2018 after a bunch of horrible decisions. My day job was why I was able to take an exquisite European vacation with boobulkins that culminated in an elevated experience in Amsterdam. I don't know why you're laughing. And my career is why I'm on this stage giving you this talk today. And yes, I did call her boobokens. But this tool is hard to leverage if you don't know who, you're

who you are, where you're going, and why. I know you've heard several versions of this today, but let's talk about what that looks like in action. When you're not clear in these things, life is happening to you. You constantly feel like you're behind. You constantly feel like you're reacting. You might find yourself in situations where you're accepting things out of convenience

as opposed to necessity or purpose. You might even find yourself in situations where you feel so stuck that you don't know what to do to even get yourself out of the situation that you're in. And there's a cost that comes along with these things where you don't find yourself moving intentionally. Time. Because the longer you wait, the longer it takes

for whatever that thing is. There's also the impact in money, which you may not think about. And I've done this myself, where I've been so complacent in a job that I stayed there to the point that I hated it, and I just wanted to accept the first offer that came my way. And so when you do that,

you automatically cut yourself down at the negotiation table and cost yourself money then, and then possibly in the future. And then, of course, there's the cost of sanity, of being in a situation or a place in your life where you want to change things or you feel stuck and you want to be able to move, but despite your best efforts and despite everything you try to summon

within your confidence, you just can't find yourself making progress. And don't get me wrong, no matter what, there's going to be sh** times, right? We all go through shoddy times. But it's easier to maneuver through the manure when you know where you're going. So in 2008, I accepted a job at this staff, agency in Boston. Just before that, I was doing a job in outside sales, and I pretty much looked like Will Smith in pursuit of happiness, carrying a freaking first aid kit through the mean

streets of Boston. That was my life. And I got to a point where I was tired of the 80 call phone blocks, to showing up at people's businesses and getting no-showed and all of the rejection and realized I wanted to get closer to my career in human resources. That's what I went to school for. And so I noticed, as I started applying for HR jobs, the only messages back I got were the ones to say, you don't have enough experience. But it's an entry-level job. How am I not going to have enough experience? I realized that I would have to take on a stepping stone role.

And by that, I mean, what position could I take in between to get me closer to where I ultimately wanted to go? And I started thinking about what transferable skills did I have? And having been in sales, you get a lot of them. and I ended up deciding that I would go work at a staffing agency because you're selling candidates to companies and companies to candidates. I also knew that I would be on the phone again, but this position would get me closer to my goal of being an HR generalist.

So I end up starting this role, and things are fine for a while, and then I start to get worn down because it's not two phone blocks a week. It is 60 to 80 phone calls a day, and I'm an introvert, a hardcore introvert. After I'm done with this talk, I'm going to go back there and pass out. Yeah, I'm that bad.

And so I'd have days where I would go to work, dreading getting on the phone, the constant rejection. And there'd be times where I'd be riding home on the subway, foolishness happening in front of me. And I just wouldn't care because I was just so tired. And I had to wear a suit to work. I don't believe in that. But it was a very necessary step in terms of me being able to progress in my career. And I remember by the time I got an offer for an HR journalist position for a role in New York City, I was outside of my office in Boston, doubled over against the wall in tears because I thought I was free from what I had experienced for the past two years in terms of how exhausting that was to me overall.

And so here's another thing. You don't need to love your day job. That whole myth of all, you got to be passionate, all that stuff. You don't got to love your day job. It just needs to serve a greater purpose. That's all. And I'll tell you, too, that it's also fine if you're not. you do want a day job and you want to chase money,

because maybe you're in a season of your life where chasing money is what you need to get you where you ultimately want to go. So it is okay to chase money. Don't let anyone tell you differently. What's most important is that you have a purpose when you're doing it. And so I get this job in New York. I pack up my life in Boston.

I fly down the highway to this apartment where I would become acquainted with bedbugs, roaches, and mice. Shout out to Harlem. That's not all of Harlem. That was just my experience in Harlem. Shout out to the real people from Harlem. But anyway, so I start this job, and I'm working at this prestigious nonprofit

that's so hard to get into it. I'm so proud of where I work. It's something that it has purpose and there's meaning to what we're doing. And then a year later, I get a different manager. Yeah. Yeah. And then I get assigned some project work

that's completely out of my league because I hate spreadsheet. And then I'm getting negative feedback from my manager. And then I'm finding myself walking down this hallway in New York City's old Port Authority building where Google owns many of the floors upstairs. And I'm thinking, I feel just like I did when I was about to leave the staffing agency. Not a very good feeling. And so at that point, I said, you know what?

The only time I've ever been able to go upstairs to the Google office is when someone's in town to visit who works for the company. So I ultimately want to work somewhere like that. So I'm going to position myself next by going to a tech startup because I know that's where big companies like this recruit out of, and then that's going to help me land at a place like a Google. And so that happened. I'm sure my manager was happy to see me go. I'm sure the tears that she were crying were actually tears of joy,

because now she was going to be hiring someone who wanted to be there doing the work that they were doing. And I got this job, and I'm like, wow, it's this big pay increase. I feel like I'm coming up. I'm going to be working in-house doing recruiting at this tech startup. Man, I can't wait to tell people about this, post this on the IG, the Twitter's, all of them other social media platforms. I was excited about it. And then everything goes fine for a little while.

And then I find out, don't ask how, that the person who was in that role before me made 25% more, and they had less experience than I did. Yes. And so I'd run into something called salary compression, and the basic example I give of this is when you've been doing a job for a while, maybe you even get promoted, you get your pay increases year after year, and then someone comes in with less experience making exactly what you make,

if not more. And what I hadn't accounted for was that I'd spent three plus years in the nonprofit industry. And nonprofit pay increases aren't like they are in the private sector, and I found that out the hard way. And so even though I got what seemed like a huge pay increase, it was nowhere close to where I should have been, and there were some mistakes I made along the way, because with that job, I let myself stay there

to the point that I got desperate that I accepted the first offer that I got that felt like it was a good decision. But there are some ways to avoid the squeeze, and this is going to sound like really basic stuff. Look every couple of years, and I say this because people are like, oh, man, like, you know, I'm going to be loyal to loyalty, but I'm not even going to go there. But you look every couple years because no one says you have to leave. You're just doing market research just like you would for anything else, just like you would for anything that you've probably learned about in some of the other sessions that you've attended. And you owe it to yourself to see what's out there and to see if there is an opportunity for you to maybe go somewhere else.

Or maybe you say, hey, there's something out here and you bring that back to where you work, and then they're giving you a promotion and doing all that shit that they probably should have did for you in the first place. Second is tracking your work. It sounds super basic, but the more information you have of all of the work that you've done over the years, the people that you've worked with, you've had a positive impression on, those become assets and tools when you get into a performance negotiation conversation. Because a lot of people expect their manager to track their accomplishments, their accomplishments, but guess what? Tracking your accomplishments is your responsibility.

You don't rely on a manager to remember everything that you've done for the past few years or the past year. I've been in that role myself, and I barely could keep track of what I was doing. And so when you have this information and you go into a performance review conversation, that's the opportunity for you to advocate for yourself. Another use case, you're going on a job interview. You have this list of all of these things that you've done from over the years. That's more information and more opportunities for you to be able to answer questions and show them why they need you to pay you at the highest dollar amount. So make sure you're tracking your work.

And if you find yourself in a day job where you're scrambling at the last minute during performance review season, you might want to change that in the 2022. Yeah. And then lastly, hold on sharing numbers. And this is a mistake that I've made a few times in the past because you start negotiating with a recruiter. you find yourself in a situation, I don't want to mess things up, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you tell them what you made in your last job, or you throw a number out there,

and now you're anchored in that number when you get to salary negotiations, and you have to find yourself backtrack in a bit. And candidates have a lot more power than we think that we do. And at least as of a few months ago, 21 states have banned employers from asking salary history. Some states have gone a step further and have banned employers from declining candidates who don't want to provide past pay information. And some states have gone a step further and said if a potential employee

ask what the pay range is for the role, you have to tell them. Or maybe it even has to be posted. And so I ask you to keep that in mind again because of how much power you have. And especially if you're at the point of interviewing with a company or whatever it is, they've obviously shown interest in you.

And if you're at the point of getting to an offer, they obviously want to bring you on board. And we talk a lot about creating passive income, but how about creating passive opportunities? So six months into my time at this tech startup in New York City, I got an email or actually a LinkedIn message from a recruiter at Google, and I actually thought it was spam. Even though I had taken that job with the intent of moving to a company like that,

it happened so soon that I was like, why would they want me? I mean, they're in California. What could this possibly be? And then that conversation would go on for an additional six months, and I'll talk a little bit more about getting that, job, but part of the reason they reached out to me is because I had optimized my online presence. And since I'd been a recruiter for years, I knew how to think like a recruiter. And if you're thinking about looking at new day jobs, I encourage you to think like a recruiter as well. Quick tip,

when recruiters are looking for candidates on LinkedIn, they're using it just like they would a search engine. So if you know that you want a certain job, you want to make sure that you incorporate some of the most general titles out there somewhere in your profile so that when these recruiters are searching, you pop up. You also want to make sure that you want to make sure that you sure that you're telling a consistent story between your resume and your LinkedIn profile. So you don't want to have a LinkedIn profile that makes you out to be this amazing project manager, program manager, and then your resume is talking about something completely different. Because as a recruiter, you look at those things and you're like, which person are you?

Next. And the importance of follow-up, I would not have ended up at Google if I didn't follow up after the first interview. I remember afterwards, I didn't hear anything for a few weeks, and I was like, oh, I guess I must not have been good enough. negative self-talk, all of that stuff. And then one day I decided I was going to reach out again and just see what would happen, and it turned out, it had nothing to do with me at all. It was some shit that was going on on the near side

where they had the pause things, all that other foolishness. It had absolutely nothing to do with me. That was just a story that I was telling myself. And so I encourage you, whatever it is, so much money, and y'all know that so much money is left on the table by not following up. And a lot of times when you don't follow up, or you don't follow up, or you follow up the first time and someone doesn't respond.

You don't know what the hell is going on in that person's life. So I encourage you, whatever it is that you're looking for, whether it's making a connection, trying to make more money, a job, follow the hell up. And the last thing I'll say on this, as a recruiter, if you're at the point that you're at an offer with a company, the magic words to get that recruiter scrambling, I'll accept this offer today if,

and that is the point where you tell them exactly what you want because they are incentivized to go back and get what you want so that you start and they can make whoever that manager is. happy. So think like a recruiter. And so I go through this process with Google where I probably have, what, 12 interviews total. I end up packing my life in New York City to move across the country. And it's great. I mean, I'm working at Google. I mean, it's freaking Google, man. You know, this is number one place to work, at least at the time, we have since been passed. And I realize I'm making more in this role than I made in my last two jobs combined. Man. It's. And

And it's something to be proud of. It's something I can talk to people about. But five years later, I'm burnt out. I'm managing a small team. I'm not learning. I feel like I'm just there, a cog in the machine. There are so many things that I'm into, podcast and blogging, that I don't get to use at work.

And then one day I'm talking to a friend and a colleague, and he says, you know what, you'd be good in a communications role. And I say, why do you say that? And he's like, well, think about all the transferable skills. skills you have, man. You've been a freelance writer. You've been podcasting. You've been managing projects, workflows, branding, all of this stuff. And me, thinking I knew it all, at that moment I realized I didn't. And I'm like, you're right. There is a lot of stuff that I can do outside of this world of recruiting. And so my point here is you don't need to leave your company to leave your job,

particularly when you're working at these medium and large-sized companies, people underestimate the role of internal mobility. And I actually find when you're working internally at a company, it's often the best time to make a career pivot if that's what you want to do, if that's what's in the agenda for you, if that's how you want to leverage this tool. Because there's already a track record of performance. You've got better access to hiring managers and the hiring team,

and it's less risky versus having the uproach your professional life and go start somewhere else, only to find out that you don't actually like where you work. So if you are thinking about full-time career opportunities still, until you reach financial independence, make sure that you're thinking about medium and larger companies, which will allow you the opportunity to be able to move around without leaving. And so I'm in this new role doing communications, and everything's going fine for a while.

I'm writing. I'm adding value. I'm learning. Man, I haven't learned in at least a year, and I'm feeling great about things. But then slowly but surely, that feeling returned. I'm quiet in meetings. I'm not feeling like I'm learning. And then one day I have a conversation with my manager, and she tells me about this role in diversity, equity, and inclusion for someone who does career coaching and likes playing the role of an advocate. and it feels like this is the career nirvana position for me. Man, I get to do stuff and talk about things in the podcast, like at work? It felt like the dream at the time. But I wouldn't have been able to make that transition for my second career pivot in three years if I hadn't identified my transferable skills.

And so up to this point, I know I've talked a lot about my progression and some of the lessons that I've learned, and I've also talked about how to use your career as a tool, but if you're not careful, your career can also be a crutch. It could become the reason that you don't take chances and you don't do the things that you say are important to you. For me, my career is why I missed weddings and gatherings. My career is why I was never able to fully put my foot in on my business until now.

And my career also became an excuse to drink. So what many people don't know is that through these years where it looks like I'm winning, I'm working at Google, I'm getting these promotions, I'm getting trophies at award shows, behind the scenes of different periods I was struggling. A lot. And there were times that I woke up with so much shame at how much I drank the night before that the only solution for me was to drink that much the next day and find myself in another cycle that would go on for years. And so what changed? Well, I gave myself permission to quit on July 1,

2020, in the midst of the pandemic. And it's no surprise that since making that decision that I've been able to welcome so much abundance into my life, but I also gave myself permission to invest more in myself. And that giving yourself permission really is the first step to breaking whatever cycle it is that's holding you back from where you ultimately want to go. And so what you see is people here

who are on my support team, my therapist, we've been going four years strong, my leadership coach who I started working with, part of a mastermind group, accountability partner. I'm actually getting back in the competitive track and field shape because I finally have the space of my life again as a result of that decision that I made. So I'm working with a trainer.

These are all the investments that I've made, to myself in the output of this, that business that I wasn't able to put my foot all the way in. I made more in the last year than I made probably in the past two and a half years for that business combined. I started seeing more success at work. I ended up getting that job that I was telling you about, where I'm now working in diversity, equity, and inclusion. And things were fine for a while, as they normally are. And then I noticed this year, in March, I got that job a few months later. I started having panic attacks.

And then it got to a point where really basic work tasks became difficult to do. And I had to give myself permission a second time to take a mental health leave from work at the beginning of September. I'm actually still in that mental health leave right now. I consider this part of my therapy. And right along with this is the importance of giving yourself permission, but also it's okay to take the time, whether that's from your job, whether it's weighing a decision, whether it's reflecting or doing the work on your self. to get to where you got to go, it's okay to take your time.

These companies, the loyalty, all of that stuff, I know some of us are afraid to use the vacation days that we've actually worked for. It is okay to take that. It is okay to take that. And it's interesting because we talk so much about freedom, but I'll tell you a little something about freedom that I learned by having time alone with my thoughts,

because that's what it's been probably for the past 10 to 12 weeks. And I've realized that a lot of these career moves had absolutely nothing to do with my career. of satisfaction, it was things that had gone unaddressed for most of my life. And I'd realize that for much of my career, I actually hadn't been running to something. I had been running from something. And I believe a lot of times that we work so hard and we stay busy because we don't want to confront those things that are deep in the back of our mind.

And we know that if we have enough time with ourselves, we'll have to hear all of that negative self-talk. So when you think about freedom and what that means, that's part of it too. It's not just being out on a beach. It's not just having vacations and all of these other things. But what I learned from this time has been impactful. And what I've been able to accept has been especially impactful. I had to accept that I'm a childhood survivor of sexual and physical assault.

I recently learned during this time off that I've had PTSD for most of my life and didn't even know it. And I've learned all sorts of other stuff along the way that I've had to come to terms with to finally free myself and actually start making the progress that I want to make. Because throughout all of these different moves, I found out I kept getting what I wanted and I still wasn't happy. And so I look at where I'm at now, on this stage, 11 weeks

into this leave, just rebranded my podcast from paychecks and balances to the mental wealth show. Go figure. And I'm on this stage talking to you because, and I'm on this stage talking to you because like I said earlier, I've learned no dollar amount, job title, promotion,

award, trophy is going to bring you that freedom. happiness. In fact, those are all just band-aids. And so if you really want freedom, if you really want to live a life where it's not just about the things and you don't find yourself in a position where you're constantly saying, man, I keep getting what I want and I'm still not happy that I encourage you to strengthen your core. Thank you. What an amazing and heartfelt speech. I am so grateful to Rich Jones for having the courage to give a talk like that and have so much respect for him.

I hope you enjoyed that and learned from that as much as I did. We're going to take one final break for a word from our sponsors, and when we come back, you'll hear the talk that I gave about how to never again say I can't afford it. It's a talk about how to save and budget and stash enough cash that you can live your dreams. I'd share my travel stories, and then I'd share my travel stories, and then I talk about the anti-budget.

So all of that is coming up right after this final break. Here's the thing about credit cards. If you're going on some champagne and caviar-infused shopping spree and you're going to run up a bunch of debt, obviously credit cards are not for you. But if you are responsible with credit cards, if you pay them off in full every month, they create an excellent opportunity to get airline miles,

to get cash back, to get the reward miles that will allow you to book round-trip tickets, sometimes in business class, and to use miles to cover that ticket cost. I'm not going to recommend any particular card because there are different cards that are better fits for different people depending on the way that you spend. But we have a page if you go to afford anything.com slash travel, where we work with a partner website card ratings to have an up-to-date list with the latest offers and bonuses for top travel cards, top hotel rewards cards, top hotel rewards cards, top cap.

Cashback cards, top cards if you run a small business, top cards if you're trying to rebuild your credit. Check it out, afford anything.com slash travel. That's afford anything.com slash travel. We keep this list up to date with sign up offers, with bonuses, and you can search based on the way that you spend, based on your credit rating, based on your personal parameters. So again, afford anything.com slash travel. Check it out and enjoy. If you want to make a little extra money and you're interested in starting a side hustle, you're going to need a website, no matter what it is that you're doing, whether you are dogwalking, consulting, freelancing, any type of side hustle that you start other than gig economy

stuff, you're going to need a website so that clients can find you. Here's a great deal where you can get hosting at less than one-third of the normal price. We've got this deal with Bluehost. Normally their plans start at $9 a month, but if you go through our special link, which is afford anything.com slash Bluehost, you can get really solid. hosting for less than $3 a month, $2.95 per month. So if for less than $3 a month, you want great hosting with one-click WordPress install, 24-7 support, a 30-day money-back guarantee, free domain and site builders, the whole shebang. You can get all of it for less than three bucks a month. Just head to afford anything.com slash blue host. That's

afford anything.com slash blue host, B-L-U-E-H-O-S-T. And we're back. Here is the talk that I gave about how to afford anything. We're going to talk about how to never again say that there is a dream that you have. There's something that you want to do, but you can't afford it, because that sucks. That sucks, and we're going to make sure that that sucky thing, that you feel like there's something that you want. There's a dream. You want to travel. You want to quit your job.

Who wants to quit their job? All right. We're going to talk about how to make those things happen, because I know. that whatever your goals are, whether it's that you want to travel. Maybe it's a personal goal. You want to travel to Iceland. Do you want to go to Hawaii? You want to buy a home.

Maybe you want to support your family, your extended family. You want to help grandparents with their retirement. Whatever it is, we're going to talk about how to make that happen. And I'll start by telling you a little bit of my own story. And we will climb into the way back machine because I'm kind of old. Once upon a time I was in college, I really wanted to travel. And the study abroad programs at my school were prohibitively expensive. They were between $15,000 to $20,000 for a single semester.

In fact, I purposely chose an image of the Great Pyramids because the cheapest program that my school offered was an exchange at American University in Cairo, and that was $15,000 for one semester. And that was the cheapest. the cheapest thing they offered. And there was no way that I could pay for that. I mean, I would have had to have taken out loans. Like, I wasn't as a college student, and especially one who didn't understand money. So I gave it some thought. And I realized, I didn't actually want to study. I just wanted to go abroad. So, you know, I was like, nope, I am not going to pay a whole bucket

load of money for this thing that I could just do myself. And what that illustrates is an example of not performing the script that's handed to us, not following some preordained, like, here's the normal way to do things. You know, you go to high school and then you go to college, and if you want to travel, you take a study abroad, and then you graduate, and then you maybe go to grad school, and then you work, and then you die. Well, with the exception of the death part, let's like switch up the order here and do some different things in different orders and think outside the box a little bit. And so a lot of how I tried to tackle this problem in my head was first to cut to the chase, to get to the heart of what I really wanted. What I wanted was to travel,

to explore, to see the rest of the world. There are all of these countries that I had only read about in books. This is before YouTube, of course. I don't read books anymore. No, I'm just kidding. And I also, instead of saying I can't, you know, when people say I can't afford it, like you're leading with the word can't. And it's much more powerful to lead with, how can I? Because when every can't gets reframed as a how can, ideas start to unfold. Life begins to change. And you stumble upon solutions that are maybe a little bit less conventional.

less standard, but way more fun. So, I decided I was going to graduate, get a big kid job, save up some money, and go travel. And so I got my big kid job, this is 2005, and my starting salary was 21,000 a year. Sometimes when I say that, people are like, oh, are you talking like $1962? You know?

No, adjusted for inflation, that's like, it's still pretty close to $21,000, maybe $25,000. in today's dollars. My highest salary that I ever earned working for somebody else happened in 2008 when I quit that job. And at the time that I quit that job, I was making $31,000 a year. That's the most I've ever made as someone else's employee. Despite the fact that I was earning in that range, I saved $25,000 during that three-year time span from 2005 to 2008. And I did that through side hustling. On average, I made about $800 a month. I mean, it wasn't perfect.

It was like, you know, some months more, some months less, you know, the side hustle thing. But I averaged around $800 a month after three years of consistent action. That came to $25 grand. And I was like, woo, I've got like a year's worth of income saved. That's nuts. I think I'm going to quit my job now. So I did. And so this is my friend Kim.

She's one of my two best friends. Kim and Mo, if they're watching the YouTube video of this, hi. So my friend Kim and I decided that we were going to travel through the most expensive place that we could think of, which was Western Europe. So we go to Spain. We do it as cheaply as possible. So there's Kim sleeping on a camping mat on the floor of, I guess it's a bus terminal. Because, you know, hey, it's a place to sleep. and we joined this program.

It's worldwide workers on organic farms, and so we go to these different farms. That's Kim. She's obviously posing for the photo because nobody smiles like that while they're using a trout. That is not a natural facial expression for that movement,

but it's a cute picture, so I included it. We went to this organic farm in Spain where in exchange for hard manual labor in the sun, we got like a sandwich and a place to sleep. This, by the way, was where we slept. We slept in this old RV. That thing gave both of us the most terrible case of head lice. Okay, you see this, right? And I know this is going to sound difficult to believe, but 12 years ago, when I was 12 years younger, my hair was even longer and even thicker than it is now.

Like this, I go, like, you can tell that I've aged by how short my hair is now. I go home and my mom's like, you're old, yeah. So I'm glad that by the time we did this trip, I had quit my job because if I hadn't, I would have needed to quit my job to manage my hair. Can't do both. I can't do both. So, we're in Spain, quite literally scratching our heads, trying to figure out what to do next. And I'm like, I got to get out of Western Europe. I can't, like, I can't. Well, not I can't. How can I? You know, I'm going to go somewhere else.

And so I fly to Egypt on a one-way ticket. That's the bottom photo is in Egypt. So I fly to Cairo on a one-way ticket. And for the next two years, I travel through the Middle East, primarily through the Middle East and Southeast Asia. So I go to to places where the dollar exchange rate really works in my favor. I go to Lao, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, and I travel very, very slowly. I spend on average about a month in every country that I go to, and money goes a lot further. There are some places where money goes a lot further than it does in others. And so I travel slowly. I develop efficiencies. I create friendships, you know, the type of friendships that you can form when you're somewhere for a month, that you can't

form when you're somewhere for a few days. And that's what I discovered is one of the great quote-unquote hacks of travel. It's not really a hack. It's just like, oh, truth. I guess we use it a word a hack for whatever. It's like the longer you stay somewhere, the cheaper, i.e., the more efficient it is, because you learn how to truly live there, to set some roots there. Even if you don't intend on being there permanently. You have a deeper, pardon the pun, richer, more connected experience. And as a ancillary benefit, it also happens to be more wallet friendly. So the thing is this trip that I'm describing, which was life-changing. This was not just a vacation. This changed, I mean, it changed everything about me. I wouldn't be on the stage had I not quit my job,

done this trip, and I actually came up with the name of Ford Anything while I was on the trip. You know, I came up with that concept because I wanted to show people that you can afford anything, not everything, but anything. And so if there is some dream that you have, it is within the realm of possibility for you. You just may need to get really creative and also have really low personal hygiene standards. So the reason that it almost didn't happen is because most of what I learned about money management, the traditional model,

wasn't working for me. Because the traditional model assumes that you are like a responsible adult who can manage her own life. And I wouldn't go that far to describe myself. Because the thing is, I'm really bad at details. I suck at details. Like really, okay, you know where I was at 2 p.m. I know there was a single speed dating event right here that I wanted to go to. But you know why I wasn't there? It's because I realized that I'm about to be on stage in front of 400 people. I looked down and as it turns out I had shaved somehow, I had shaved one leg but not the other. I had to go back to my hotel room to shave my left leg.

And so I missed the speed dating and so single dudes, if you're hot, come talk to you. me afterwards. Yes, I'm canvassing from the stage, although I realize that by way of introduction, I have now told you about my headlights and my unshaved leg. So, that's where we're at that. All right. Anyway, back to me being terrible at details. I'm just like only chronologically an adult. I wouldn't say I have the habits of one. And so the traditional budget did not work for me, And that's what we're going to talk about for the rest of our time together. The traditional model, which if you are an adult enough that you can do it, props. But for people like me who cannot detail our way out of a paper bag,

here is the anti-approach. So let's talk about boring. Okay, traditional budgets. They're very detailed. Arguably restrictive. I know some people are going to be like, but there's freedom and discipline. Okay. Sure.

But a traditional budget, I kind of think of it as the calorie counting of the financial world, because you have to be so meticulous and regimented about tracking every single calorie, every macro, you're knowing precisely where every dollar is going. I don't even know where the rest of the sentence is going. Like, how can I know all of that? and there's a zero-based budgeting, which we heard about earlier this morning, it's great for people who can stick to it. If you have the ability to stick to it, again, more power to you, I couldn't.

I sure couldn't. So here's an example of what zero-based budgeting might look like, you know, where you start with your income, that's the top line, and then you, you know, of course, you pull your savings, you know, you put that right up at the top, because, duh. You know, and then you work your way down from there, and then at the end, there's a plan for how you're going to spend every dollar. Great. Excellent. You know how many times I have gone into, like, My Fitness Pal or lose it, like one of those food apps, and I've made a plan for what I'm going to eat tomorrow, and then tomorrow comes, and I'm like pounding the chocolate cake. Yeah, it's that. And so the thing that worked for me,

and hopefully for anyone who has a brain like mine, the thing that might work for you is what I call the anti-budget. The anti-budget is just a budget for people who hate budgets. And I liken it to the intuitive eating of personal finance. If traditional budgeting is calorie counting, anti-budgeting is intuitive eating. And in the anti-budget, you cut to the chase. You kind of take that step back and say, wait, what's the point of a budget?

The point is to make sure that you're saving enough or that enough of your money is going towards the goals that you've set for yourself. So if that's the point, why not just cut to the chase, cut the fluff, go straight to that. So it reduces your money to really just two buckets, what you save and what you spend. and that's it. And between those two, you save first, and then you just chill out about everything else. So it's very big picture oriented, and after a while it becomes a little more intuitive. You don't have to be so detailed or regimented about it. And so the instructions for it are quite simple.

Decide how much you want to save, pull that off the top, chill. Now, let's talk about what precisely we mean when we say the word, save. So when I'm talking about savings in this context, I'm referring to anything that improves your net worth. So that might mean literal savings in a savings account, which is typically what people think of when they hear the word savings. But it could also mean 401K, 403B, IRA, HSA, the alphabet soup of tax advantaged accounts. It could be saving in any of those. It could mean saving in a taxable brokerage account or investing money in a taxable brokerage account. it might mean making extra payments towards a debt, payments above and beyond what you are

required to provide every month. I've gotten so many emails from people who say, hey, I wasn't able to save any money last year, but I paid off $10,000 worth of additional debt. And I'm like, well, you did save then, right? You made those extra debt payments. That's a form of savings because it improves your net worth. So anything, anything, anything that improves your net worth is savings. Because at the end of the day, savings is deferred spending. So if you're not spending it and you're using it to enhance your net worth in any capacity, that's what we mean. So the anti-budget philosophy, hey, I already remembered to say that. Look at that.

It's to make sure that you're saving enough, which is to say it is to make sure that your net worth is improving so far as your locus of control allows it to do so. Outside of your locus of control, there will be things. there will be market declines, there will be medical emergencies. That stuff is going to happen and you can't exercise any control over it. But the purpose of a budget is to make sure that within what you can control, you're taking positive action every month to make sure that you're controlling the things that you can. And that ultimately is the point. And so when we get rid of the detailed, for those of us who are not,

not good at details like me. When we get rid of the spreadsheets, when we get rid of the excruciating detail and we take a step back and say, what's the purpose? What's the point? All right, let's lean in that direction. Here's an example of what an anti-budget might look like. Again, we start with the income. We decide how much money we want to put towards various types of savings, retirement versus, you know, anything else. And then the everything else category, if you're not, if you If the money is like out of sight, out of mind, there will be, for most people, an intuitive adjustment. You know, you know that the money that's left over, you have a pretty good sense of what

you've got. And as long as the savings are taken care of first, then whatever is left over is sort of yours to feel out. One thing, kind of one supplement to this, is what I refer to as batching. It's kind of the debt snowball of the savings world. it's where if you have multiple savings goals, you pick one, focus everything on that, do it till it's done, and then move on to the next. And so with a batching technique, let's say that you can save $600 a month, but you've got

four different goals, right? And your goals totaled $36,000, but you can only save $600 a month, and oh, my goodness, it feels like you're never going to hit these goals. you could split your money up in different ways and make like incremental progress to each, you know, each of those four goals. And then you're going to slam your head into a wall because you're so frustrated because you're only making incremental progress. And that doesn't provide a psychological win.

And it's totally frustrating and nobody likes it. Or at least I don't. So I'm going to stand here on stage and say that nobody does. But if instead you pick, and again, this borrows from that debt snowball technique, if you pick the smallest of the goals and then throw all of your savings towards that until it's done, then boom, you get a win right away. If we were to do that with those examples, okay, let's say one of your goals is that you want to upgrade your phone and you can save $600 a month. Well, guess what? In less than two months, you've hit that goal. Now you have a

victory. Now that victory motivates you to continue to save and to continue to hit the next cheapest goal and then the next and then the next until eventually you have the motivation and the habits and the automation you have you have that wonderful triangle of habit motivation you have it to be able to pursue bigger dreams habit motivation automation a couple of like again I call it hacks but they're really just like techniques tips tactics if you have particular problem spending areas just stuff that you know you have, you know, it's the stuff you really can't get under control, going to cash only for those specific expenses can actually be pretty helpful. That doesn't mean you have to be cash only for every single thing in your life,

but if there are just certain maybe restaurants, you know, like if you have like a restaurant, if that's always the problem area, going to cash only for that, withdrawing all of that cash at the beginning of the month and boom, that's what you've got for the month. I think that's another really good way to manage specifically those problem areas. And, of course, the big three, housing, transportation, food. It's so common for people to over-emphasize the small discretionary items that are salient, right? When we buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks, it's salient because we are physically there. Now that post-pandemic, we're physically there in a Starbucks.

We are handing our money over to the barista. We're getting a hot mug of liquid in our hands. It's immediate, it's visceral, it's tangible. And as a result, we tend to over-emphasize those expenses. And so when we think about how to save, we over-emphasize the importance of something like that. And we under-emphasize the things that statistically we spend the most amount of money on. housing, transportation, and food overall, not just the Starbucks run, but food in general, right?

Having cheaper housing is high friction. It's not a decision that we make daily. Like, downsizing from a big house to a smaller house or from a three-bedroom apartment down to a two-bedroom apartment, that is a high-friction activity that is a huge pain to execute. but do it once and it pays dividends for years to come. But oftentimes we ignore those big wins in favor of these small items that capture our attention but don't actually move the needle. You know, those are a couple of quote-unquote hacks,

but I think in the spirit of the anti-budget, the thing I really like to emphasize is what I call the anti-hack, which is I can give you all of the tactics, the techniques, the whatever's. But you don't need more tactics. You don't. Like, you're in a room full of people and you all have access to the internet. There's an endless supply of tactics out there.

What you need is to keep your head in the game. And keeping your head in the game requires having a purpose. Because if you don't have a strong why, if there isn't a reason why you're saving, You're investing. You're learning about that alphabet soup of tax-advantaged accounts. If there isn't a good reason why you're bothering to do this, then you're not going to stay in it for the long haul.

And so much of success comes from consistent action. Stay in it. It's like consistency over intensity. You stay in it. You play the long game. And eventually, over time, things start to add up. And that can only happen, that consistency can only happen, if you remember your why. And so for me, it always comes back to traveling, you know, being in Spain with my best friend,

with a head full of lice, and two shaved legs at that point, I assume. You know, I, for the rest of my life, will always remember that trip. And all of the many, many, many other trips that I've taken with other friends. solo and nothing will ever replace that. No other opportunity could ever just, nothing compares. And I'm so thankful that I never had to say, oh, geez, I would love to do that, but I can't afford it. And the reason that I didn't have to say that, again, comes from everything that we've just talked about, from being clear about your why, your priorities, and using that why to keep your head in the game so that you can stay consistent for the long haul.

Thank you. Thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Don't forget the next E. ConnoMee conference will be held March 17 through 19, 2023 at the University of Cincinnati. So you can get tickets by going to Econome Conference, E-C-O-N-O-M-E, conference.com and use promo code, afford anything, for 10% off. And we'll also put that in the show notes.

You can subscribe to the show notes for free at afford anything.com slash show notes. That's where you'll get a synopsis of every single episode, including timestamps. Plus, you'll get all promo codes, discount codes, all special offers for which we have a code. A little housekeeping notes on myself, just an update on my own life. I am starting my fellowship at Columbia University right now. In fact, it started two weeks ago. I am one of 10 people who is what's referred to as a Knight Badget Fellow, which is a fellowship in business and economics journalism. This is a very intense one-year fellowship in which the 10

night Badget Fellows together as a cohort really dive into how to be better specifically business and economics journalists. All of the fellows are mid-career journalists who have worked for a wide variety of platforms, including NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the AFP, the roster of Knight Badgett fellows, and not just in this cohort, but in years past, is incredibly impressive. All of us are mid-career journalists who have decided that we want to take a one-year sabbatical in order to live our value of lifelong learning by deep diving into how to be better at telling stories about business, about finance, about economics. That then-diagram intersection between business and journalism, that's what we are

sinking our teeth into for this year. At the end of this fellowship, I will emerge with a master's in journalism, with a concentration in business and economics, Master of Arts. That's specific to the track that I've chosen. There are other fellows who, are choosing a more business-centric track, and they're going to emerge with, some of them will emerge with a certificate in business. Some of them will follow an MBA experience. You know, different fellows have decided to style their fellowship differently, but the commonality that we all have is that we take our jobs seriously and we take lifelong learning seriously. And speaking for myself, as a podcaster who talks about personal finance and who talks about economics

and business, I want to be better at what I do. When I conduct an interview, I want to ask better questions, dive deeper into the subject matter. When I present key takeaways, I want to be more thoughtful, more concise. When I write for the Afford Anything newsletter or, heck, even create Instagram captions, I understand that I'm talking about incredibly important material. about people's money and careers. And I want to make sure that I'm being trained by the best in the business in how to be a journalist or a podcaster. I guess podcasting is technically journalism adjacent, not journalism per se.

But I want to be sure that I'm being trained by the best in the business on how to deliver those stories in the best possible way. So that is the project that I'm undertaking for this upcoming year. year for the next 10 months, starting right now. It's going to be intense, particularly doing that and hosting this podcast, the Afford Anything podcast at the same time. It's going to be intense, but it's going to, I think, be transformative. So that's what's happening in my world right now, and I'm very excited about it, and I want to share that with you. I will occasionally be posting updates on Instagram. You can follow me there at Paula P-A-U-L-A, P-A-N-T. It won't be anything fancy. I'll just be brain dumping thoughts and reflections, but I know I'll be learning a lot, and I'm

eager to share everything that I learn. Thank you so much for being part of this community. This is the Afford Anything podcast. My name is Paula Pantt. Please make sure that you are, subscribe to this podcast that you're following this podcast in whatever app you're using. Just open up that app, hit the follow button. And please share this podcast with a friend or a family member. Again, remember, you can subscribe to the show notes for free at affordanithing.com show notes. Thanks so much for tuning in. I'm honored to play a role in your personal finance and financial independence journey and I will catch you in the next episode.