Afford Anything - Ask Paula: Bonds Are Tanking. Should I Switch to Real Estate Instead?

Episode Date: May 11, 2020

#256: Jon is wondering if now is a good time to move his RRSP into a tax-free savings account, given the market downturn. He knows you can’t time the market, but the opportunity is tempting. What should he do? Laurel’s question revolves around the CARE Act and early withdrawal from a 401k. She needs to rebalance her 401k and wants to buy a rental. Instead of selling stocks, should she sell bonds as a form of rebalancing and to withdraw for a rental property? After seeing so many businesses experience financial hardship, Rebecca and her husband are curious: why don’t companies have emergency funds? Salome sees the stock market downturn as an opportunity for tax-loss harvesting, but does this hold if you’ve held stocks for less than a year? Sheena has the option to purchase company stock at a 15 percent discount through an Employer Stock Purchasing Plan. However, it’s volatile right now. Should she contribute the maximum amount, or nothing? My friend and former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy joins me to answer these questions. Enjoy! For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode256 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 your time, your focus, your energy, your attention, anything in your life that's a scarce or limited resource. That leads to two questions. Number one, what matters most to you? Not what does society say should, but what actually is a value in your life?

Number two, how do you align your day-to-day decision-making to reflect that? Answering these two questions is a lot of you. a lifetime practice, and that's what this podcast is here to explore. My name is Paula Pan. I'm the host of the Afford Anything podcast. Every other episode, we answer questions that come from you, the community. And today, former financial planner Joe Sal Sihae is here to answer questions with me. What's up, Joe? I am answering questions with you. Yeah, we're doing it. We're doing it. We're answering a bunch of questions. That is amazing. I'm so excited because you know what my days consist of? Sitting around waiting for you to call. Sitting around with a head full of answers.

All these answers and nowhere to dump them now that I'm stuck at home. What do you think with them? So thank goodness you call them. Yeah. And you know, as it turns out, this is most people's first pandemic. So people are wondering how to get through it. Unless you were here in 2000 or excuse me in 1918, right? Yes.

1818, you've been through too. So congratulations. A on surviving that pandemic and B, wow, you made it. Yeah, exactly. man, hope you started investing early because compounding returns are working for you. But I do have to say, well, if we could go back in time, that I'm sure those 20s were a bear as well. Isn't that weird, by the way? The 2020s will be known as a bear and the 1920s, the same.

There's a meme that I posted to my Instagram stories where people are like, I want 2020 to be just like the roaring 20s. And Earth is like, okay, the market's crashing. and people are like, no, no, no, not like that. And Earth is like, okay, there's also infectious disease spreading. And people are like, no, no, no, not like that. And Earth is like, and you can't go to bars anymore. Whoa, whoa, whoa. No, no, no, not like that either.

Definition of beware what you ask for right there. Yeah, exactly. Speaking of how to move through the pandemic and understand what's going on in our world, we're going to answer some questions. Before we start, a quick note. When I began investing in rental properties, almost a decade ago, I had no idea what I was doing. And I know that many beginner rental property investors are in that same boat. So if you are interested in becoming a residential rental property investor, I have a course called Your First Rental Property Property, which covers everything you need to know, the A to Z of how to get started as a rental property investor.

We are opening our doors for enrollment on May 18th. We are closing our doors on May 25th, 2020. So if you want to join our spring 2020 cohort, May 18 through May 25 is your opportunity to join. Once we close our doors, we will not be allowing any new students in until September or October. That's so that we can give our full attention to the students who have enrolled. So if you'd like to learn more about the course, head to Afford Anything.com slash enroll. That's afford anything.com slash enroll. Now with that said, here is our first question, which comes from Rebecca.

Hi, Paula. My husband has asked a question out loud a few times, and I keep wondering the answer myself. With all of these companies experiencing a lot of financial hardship right now, he's wondered, why don't companies have an emergency fund, anywhere from three months to nine months like it's recommended for individuals to have? When we Googled it, we just found a bunch of answers about personal questions, but I'm not going to lie, we didn't Google that hard because I was like, we should ask Paula. So we'd love to hear your answer. Thanks so much. Bye-bye. Well, now we know, you don't have to just Google stuff, Rebecca. You can Paula it. That's a new thing.

Yeah. Hey, I'm going to Paula this question. It's like I'm going to table this discussion. I'm going to Paula this question. But if the valuation on Paula stock goes the way Google stock win, I want to say I'm a founder. part owner, just because I'm here on this episode. You're making an equity grab? I'm totally making equity. That is it.

Rebecca, why don't companies have an emergency fund? Well, first, not all companies. Some do. Joe, Stacking Benjamins, I would imagine, has an emergency fund, yes? We did, absolutely. And I think it's important for companies to have an emergency fund. I mean, you know, if we look at companies slightly bigger than stacking Benjamin's afford anything. What? Yeah, who knew there was a company bigger. But, you know, in the news,

right, was airline stocks. Airline stocks beaten up because they used all of their reserves to go purchase stock to do stocks to keep the stocks moving upward. Because when you buy back the stock, that means there's less money out there. There are fewer shares available. So whenever anybody buys a share, it has more of an influence on the stock price, largely, usually making the stock go up quicker when it decides to go up. So companies burn through it for that reason, but also for other reasons. Yeah, exactly. So to give a little bit more context around stock buybacks, Joe, it's exactly like you said, when companies have free cash flow, they want to satisfy their investors. And investors are happy when the price of a stock goes up. So by buying back their shares on the open

market, they do two things. Number one, they increase demand. And in a market with a limited availability of an item. If supply stays the same and demand increases, then the price goes up. And then also, Joe, as you said, by virtue of buying back those shares, supply actually doesn't stay the same, supply dwindles. So again, for that same reason, value goes up, shareholders are happy, the valuation of a company is high. When a company does have that high valuation, then, you know, sometimes that means that they get better access to funding. You know, they get more opportunities by virtue of being a company that's worth more. But it's also a terrible idea to not have a lot of cash.

And you see a lot of the big tech companies such as Apple are sitting on piles of cash for exactly that reason because they know that that's a smart thing to do. Well, for that reason, and I've also heard colloquially, like I don't sit in on Apple board meetings. But, you know, what is worth buying to Apple? Part of that is also direction to the company. where will we go with this cash that really will make a difference? So I think there's two reasons there. There's a third thing. Under a normal economy, when a company buys back its stock, it can then deploy that stock later

when they need cash. So much like the Fed that people ask the question, why does the Fed ever raise interest rates, right? Why wouldn't we leave interest rates low? And the reason is it's a way for them to slow down the economy, but also when the economy gets in trouble, it gives them a device to allow them to make things easier for people to borrow in the future. So by making interest rates higher now, they can then use their power to make interest rates lower to influence the economy. Same thing here. Companies got a lot of stock. Now they can

deploy the stock when they have capital improvements or they run into a little bit of short-term trouble. The problem, obviously, that happened with airlines here. Not only did they run into trouble, the whole economy dropped out from under their feet. They all of a sudden have many fewer passengers and that sent the stock worth less, which meant that this reserve they had of stock worth a hell of a lot less than it was worth just a few weeks ago. So by not having cash, that hurt them. And you know what's funny? This can be compared to the same argument that you and I have had with people before,

which is why would I keep money in cash when it doesn't earn anything? Right. My money is just sitting in my emergency fund not doing anything when it could be earning an 8% annualized. interest rate in an index fund. Yeah, it's the same thinking. You can argue that United Airlines had their money sitting in stock that they owned, that they could deploy later, but because the value that stock has gone down significantly, they can't grab it. I mean, who wants to go grab money out of their stock portfolio right now? Exactly, exactly. And a lot of the people who try to justify at an individual level who try to justify not having a large emergency fund will often say, yeah, but I have a

helock on my house, which is a revolving line of credit. So if I need money, I can just tap that helock. Like I have that available option, which is a terrible way of thinking. I mean, you know, a helot could be a plan B, plan C, plan D. But it's a callable loan. It can go away any time. So if that's your, that's a terrible plan A. But unfortunately, there are a lot of people, particularly in the real estate investing community, there's that group of people who have been taught to over leverage, and you often see them substitute an emergency fund for a HELOC, which is just a bad idea. I will say, though, that in terms of companies not having an emergency fund, you know, what we're talking about right now are large publicly traded companies,

like American Airlines, Delta. You know, we're comparing those airline companies to major tech companies like Apple, when it comes to smaller companies that do not have the same type of access to funds, most of us, if we can, tend to hold large emergency funds. My goal is to always have a 12-month emergency fund for afford anything. Sometimes I have to tap into that or draw it down. I aim for 12 months and, you know, if that falls to five or six months, then that's the bottom floor of where I would allow it to go. It rains. between six to 12 months depending on what's going on, but 12 months is always what I'm shooting for. And if I'm only at five or six months, then I know it's time to beef it up. But that's because I don't have access to investor capital. It would be difficult for me to get a business loan. Like if I needed to tap funding to keep this in operation, that would be challenging.

Rebecca's in direct question might have to do with some of these business programs like the PPP and the EIDL, which are two programs that the government has enacted through the small business administration and involving banks on the side of the PPP to give them some emergency funds. So maybe what Rebecca is wondering is, you know, why do we have this bailout? Well, here's the answer to that, even though Rebecca might not have been thinking. I might be making up questions, Paul. But there is an answer to that, which is that the government, because of the way the system works, is on the hook either way. Either we're going to have huge amounts of people, 30 million people now on unemployment roles, or we hand businesses money and say, this money is specifically to protect these people's paycheck so that they don't go on unemployment roles. Now, you can look at the cost of unemployment and you might make a reasonable mathematical judgment that putting people on unemployment rolls is going to be cost less money than handing money to employers to keep them operating. However, maybe this allows them then to keep people on the payroll longer, even though, as an example, a restaurant because of social distancing is going to only be able to open maybe a quarter of their capacity that they have before or half the capacity that they have before, but they still have all of these fixed costs.

You still have to have a chef there, no matter how many people they're serving. You still have to have the building heat running or air conditioner running, whatever it is, no matter how many people are inside the building. So because fixed costs stay the same, you could say that the government's out a bunch of money, no matter which road they take. It isn't the government handing out a bunch of money that they're never getting back that it may appear if you just look at it in a vacuum. Right, right, exactly. Because if people are kept on the payroll and they continue to earn the same salary that they earned back in January, then they can work in exchange for getting a paycheck. like as many people do. Because of that, like because they are continuing to exchange labor for capital by virtue of the

PPP program, that means that that labor hopefully will lead to productive gains within the economy. You know, that labor will create productivity that will lead to more transactions, which creates more sales taxes, that the local governments can collect. It'll lead to the volume of money. moving around faster. Like the speed at which money transfers from hand to hand to hand to hand, from buyer to seller to buyer to seller, is a signal of economic health. And so by keeping people on the payroll rather than paying them unemployment, you're keeping them employed. And that

employment hopefully leads to productivity. And not to make this an economic discussion, because I think that that's really beyond the scope of your podcast, Paula. But to really try to answer that question. What does that mean in the future? I don't know. But that's another reason why keeping our emergency fund intact and having it, whether it's us or a company, is still the prudent move it's always been. Like financial planning 101, have an emergency fund. And it seems like whenever times are good, Paula, people want to argue about that. I don't really need an emergency fund. Yes, you do. Yeah, exactly. Morgan Housel has written some interesting material. He was a former guest on this podcast on episode

125. And he has written quite a bit about what happened during World War II when again, government spending went high and people were quite concerned that there would be hell to pay later. Ultimately, what ended up happening later was that the gains in the economy grew faster than the hell that had to be paid. And so it ended up actually in the case of World War II, it ended up not being

this big problem that people feared it would be because of the fact that economic growth was strong enough that it more than made up for it. That being said, the economic growth that we had after World War II was historically some of the best that we've had in the United States ever. And granted, the United States is still a young country, so we don't have that much history, but the period after World War II was particularly fantastic with regard to our economic history. So will that happen again? We will see. Well, and that's the thing is, and it goes back to the same point. If we don't, another reason that uncertainty, what does that say?

Emergency fund. I should mention, by the way, in a recent episode, I talked about getting approval for a PPP loan. And I mentioned that my approval came in within two days. I just want to be clear. It took me two days to get a letter of approval from the SBA, but I have not received the money yet. Yeah. So thank you, Rebecca, for asking that question. It's an interesting question, and I think that one of the silver linings of what's happening right now is that it does invite opportunities for many people to learn about both the economy as well as their personal finances from a new framework and a new light. I love that, by the way, whenever you see headlines in the news about companies and why they failed or why they succeeded, I love case analysis and digging.

into those. I know that when I was working with American Express, I had a fantastic leader who whenever something like that was in the news at our weekly meeting, he'd bring it up and he'd say, okay, what does this have to do with your clients? What's it to do with you? And he taught me to help my clients think of themselves as business owners, like me, me thinking of my client as if their personal financial situation is a business. And that allows you to make far less emotional decisions. And where people go, well, no, I feel better if I pay off this loan that's at zero versus this loan at eight. I just really like the feeling of not having it. Well, when you apply math to these decisions, you're feeling changes. When you say, how do you like paying an extra $1,500

because you felt better? They said, well, I feel better not paying the $1,500. Like you take people through the necessary decision process to make better decisions like a CFO of a company will. Pretty powerful stuff, Paula. Absolutely. Our next question comes from Laurel. Hi, Paula. I've really enjoyed your podcast, and I have a question about the new CARES Act

and early withdrawal of 401K. I was wondering if it might be prudent, we're at a point where we should rebalance our 401K, and rather than sell any stocks, I was wondering if selling bonds as a form of rebalance, to withdraw for a rental home, maybe something that we should consider. I know that we would owe taxes on the withdrawal up to three years if it's not reinvested into the 401K.

But I just wanted to get your take on whether or not that's something to look at if we find a good investment property. So thank you. Laurel, that's a fantastic question. And what's interesting about your question is that it deals with multiple topics. There's the topic of asset allocation and the balance of assets that's in your portfolio. And then there's also the topic of 401k early withdrawal, which is there are two really interesting issues that are going on at the same time. Let's talk about both. And let me start with just the asset allocation portion of it. The way that I think about both bonds. and rental properties is that both of those are fixed income assets. Rentals aren't exactly fixed income in the way that bonds are, but rentals are the type of investment that people go into because they want returns that come in the form of that dividend or that income stream. So both bonds

and rental properties are income-oriented investments as opposed to capitalized. appreciation-oriented investments, which is what you largely have when you're in the world of stocks. And so reducing your portfolio asset allocation with regard to bonds in order to move some of that into rental properties is something that I agree with wholeheartedly because, again, both of those are income-oriented investments. So if you think of your asset allocation, not as equities versus bonds, but rather as more volatile capital appreciation oriented assets versus less volatile income-oriented assets, then both bonds and rentals live in that income-oriented slice of the pie. And therefore, I think that it's a reasonable trade-off.

So with regard to asset allocation, I'm on board. You know, in a lot of ways, real estate compares very favorably to bonds, but mostly, and we'll deal with the taking money out of the 401k portion later, but mostly because real estate has lots of tax advantages, a lot of the returns, you can offset capital improvements into the property if you have any costs associated with the property. So in that way, historically, you look at real estate versus bonds from performance standpoint. Rental real estate, by the way, not a house you live in, because we're going to get to that later with another question that we have. But rental real estate is a better thing. But there are different types of risk. Historically, over longer periods of time, real estate does have more standard deviation than bonds do. So realize that you're skewing, you are skewing your mix toward a more voluminable.

little mix over longer periods. That said, you're also upping the potential return that you will have by getting rid of bonds. So my question to you would be more about what return do you need and can you sleep at night? But then there's another type of risk that I worry about, which is going from this idea that you have lots of different investments in a bond to a single real estate property. And then you have single item risk versus diversification. And I worry about that. So another question I would have for you is, is this your first rental property or are you a seasoned real estate investor that has done this several times and it's much more doing the same thing again versus trying to figure it out? I don't know that I like taking investments that are part of

a basket and moving those into Laurel's real estate trial and error fund. Yeah, and with regard to single item risk, part of that is also going to involve the question, are you buying a single family home or a multi-unit? The advantage to a multi-unit is that even though, yes, it is one building, which means that if that building catches fire or there's a tornado that destroys it. And it's also in a single city. Yeah. I mean, it's in one place on one block where things around it might have things that happen to them too. Exactly. So investing in a multi-unit does not remove some of that single item risk with regard to one city, one neighborhood, one building. But it does spread the income risk because then you have two or three or four doors so that if one of those is vacant, you still have income coming in from the others. Whereas if you only own one rental property and it is a single family home, then depending on vacancy versus occupancy, your income is. either 100% or 0%. So having multiple doors can alleviate some of that risk. I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole of rental property risk profile, but there are many aspects of rental properties that have different risk considerations. The condition of the property is also one form of risk. The age of the property, which is closely related, but not in tandem with condition, is also another form of risk. The type of neighborhood that the property is located in, class A,

class B, class C is also another form of risk. The amount of leverage, if any, that you have on that property is also another form of risk. So there are, if you think of it as a giant audio track, each of these operate on a specific track, right? And if you're going to dial up the risk on one track, then dial down the risk on a different track so that the overall aggregate risk is a little balanced out or a little bit metered out. Well, that's also a great spot to get into taking money out of the 401K because I think that the CARES Act really does a disservice for a lot of people by even potentially making this an option.

It's an option if you have nowhere else to go. That's what it was meant for. even then Paula, if you've nowhere else to go, trading current expenses by mortgaging your future drives me crazy, right? So people are using their 401K to eat. I get that that's what many people need to do right now. And for that reason, I say, hooray. But to take money out of the 401K because you have this opportunity and put it into rental real estate when every year you're only allowed to so much. You have caps. There's going to be, it's going to be very difficult to, to make that up if the real estate doesn't work, which is another reason why I would be much more likely to say,

yeah, go for it if those bonds were outside of the 401K. Bonds outside the 401k, I'd say, okay, your first time, yeah, let's see if you can make your goal without this money. And if you can, then that makes it even easier. Yes, let's learn a new skill. Let's figure out how to do this, this thing that potentially could be a great part of your portfolio. You've seen how many people succeed with real estate. But if it's your first one and you're taking money out of your 401k that you can never replace again, man, I come down pretty heavily on the, I wouldn't do that side. Would I maybe move bonds into a reed and leave it inside your 401k if you have a reed fund? Interesting discussion. However, that brings up another discussion are what are the current risks on the table for?

for reet real estate because a big question of my mind right now, Paula, and it's got to be on yours too, is our commercial office buildings ever going to get back to where they were before? Yeah, office buildings, retail, warehouses, those are getting beat up significantly harder than residential. Really, her question is around should I do this now? And so my initial thought was I'd much rather have you do this in a reet inside your 401K. And then I said to myself, maybe not. Not right now. I don't know that I would do that.

Yeah, reits are going to be volatile. Look at the stock returns of Washington Prime Group. They're a company based out of Columbus, Ohio, that specializes in retail space. Their stock, if you want to see an example of something that has really gotten beat up, ticker symbol WPG, wow. I'm not calling, well, I am calling them out specifically, but there's nothing about them that is uniquely special or different. They are one of many examples of commercial real estate publicly traded companies that are getting hit hard right now. Simon Properties, a big American commercial real estate company, stock price a year ago, around $180 a share as we're recording this, trading at 63. Yeah.

So, Laurel, to your question, I am also not a fan of taking early withdrawals from a foreign. 401k. It's perhaps more of a principled stance than anything, but that principle exists for similar reasons to what Joe said. You can only contribute so much to a 401k every year. That contribution level is capped. It does not roll over year over year. So, you know, there's ultimately a 401k is limited in that there's only so much you can put in it. And that restriction is not there with regard to assets that live outside of, your retirement accounts. That's one reason. But another reason is that if there are certain pots of money that are just non-negotiable, don't touch it pots of money, I think the mind is remarkable

at figuring out how and where to find money without touching those things. If mentally you adopt a mindset that your retirement accounts, your 401k, your IRA, are not accounts that you can touch for any reason prior to the age of 59.5 or older, then I think you will rise to the challenge of figuring out where else or how else you can come up with those same funds. So the asset allocation portion, the trading some bonds for rental properties, I'm on board with that. I just wouldn't pull it out of a 401k. We'll come back to this episode after this word from our sponsors. 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

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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.com. Sale ends December 7th. Our next question comes from Salomey. Hi, Paula. Appreciate all you're doing during this time of crisis to be a sane voice among all the panic. Got a question about viewing the stock market downturn as an opportunity for tax loss harvesting. In scrubbing through my portfolio, I'm sorry.

seeing that I could potentially harvest some losses by selling some funds, but they were purchased in the months leading up to the crisis. Is there something to keep in mind on doing such a short-term tax-loss harvest? Or does the length of ownership not come into play with tax loss harvesting, as much as tax gain harvesting, aka, can losses on assets held for less than one year be treated the same as losses from assets held longer? Would they follow the same rules of being able to carry over $3,000 worth of losses against ordinary income per year and every year following until the losses are realized. So is the biggest watchout still going to be the wash sale rule? So in my case, could I avoid this by potentially buying a different enough asset? So as an example,

selling VTI, the total stock market ETF at Vanguard, and buying the S&P 500 ETF like B.OO. Just looking at some options for silver lining in the stormy time. Thanks for all you do and keep it going. Thanks to that question. I love the way that you talk about the wash sale rule. So no reason, Paul, for us to go over that again because Salomey covered that. For anybody else who's listening, since she's not the only person listening to this podcast. Everybody else listening can back up and listen to what she said because it was awesome.

It was perfect. So when you sell stuff, you have to worry about the buying something. thing that is materially different. You can't get back in right away or you risk what's called the wash sale rule. In other words, if I sell a stock that's down today to take the loss and then I buy it right back later on that day or the next day, there will be this rule that falls into place that says, nope, you just did that so that you could make lemonade out of lemons. You could now take this loss and put it on your taxes for a tax write off. And because of that, we're going to pretend that doesn't count. So she defined that fantastic because what you can do, you can buy an index that

is materially different. She gave you a great example of that. So it has to be, the IRS defines it is materially different. What does that mean? I don't know. And when I talk to tax professionals, the answer they give me, Paula, wait for it. They say, I don't. Open to interpretation. Yes. But I believe myself that if I'm buying ticker symbol IVV, with proceeds from SPY, I'm buying the exact safe 500 companies and probably the exact same configuration or very close to the same configuration in my head. I know that's probably too close. Yeah. I should probably change it up a little bit like Salomi talked about. Exactly. So you don't want to trade one S&P 500 index for another S&P 500 index. Yes, right. Right. So the answer is,

though, when it comes to capital losses versus capital gains, there are holding period restrictions with capital gains. There are no holding period restrictions around capital losses. So no, you can buy it today. You can lose your butt on it tomorrow. You can go ahead and sell it that day and you'll get to write it off, which is not as fun as it seems because you're not going to get back all that money that you lost. But there is no holding time you have to wait for to be able to do that. The only thing I'll add to that is that I'm really happy that you are looking for the opportunities and looking for the silver lining in everything that's going on. You're looking at this situation that's causing a lot of people to worry, to panic, to feel despair,

and you're saying, hey, where are the opportunities within this? How can I take this set of circumstances and use it to the best of my ability, improve my financial situation? So I love the approach that you're taking. And I will say for the sake of anybody else who's listening, If you have any certain assets that or certain investments that in hindsight were a mistake, maybe you bought this could have been in January, it could have been a few years ago, but maybe you bought into some funds before you started learning more about personal finance and you haven't wanted to sell them because you haven't wanted to convert paper losses into real losses. but these are not the funds that fit your current asset allocation rules. These are not the funds that you would choose if you were starting from scratch today. This is a good time to get rid of those oops, shouldn't have invested in that mistakes. So thank you, Salome, for asking that question.

Our next question comes from John. Hey, Paula, I wanted to get your opinion on moving my RRSP to my tax-free savings account. I believe that's the equivalent to your traditional IRA and Roth IRA. I may be wrong on that, but I was thinking that with the massive downturn in the markets right now, if it would make sense to pull my money from my taxable account and put it into one that won't be taxed long term, while the markets are low. I know you can't time the market, but, well, markets are really low like this. I thought it might make sense to take advantage of it.

I'm just wondering if there's anything I'm missing or any thoughts you have on the matter. Thank you very much. John, that's a fantastic question. Now, first, I'll start with the disclaimer that I am not an expert in the Canadian system. I don't know the intricacies of RRS rules in the same way that I'm familiar with 401Ks and IRAs. But broadly speaking, if you are trying to move money from a pre-tax account to a tax-exempt account, So essentially the American equivalent of moving money from a traditional account to a Roth account, because you will pay taxes on the tax deferred money that you had in a traditional account, at the time that you make a conversion, you'd have to pay taxes on that money. And so what matters, at least in the American system, what matters is your income in the year in which you make that conversion, because your income,

is what determines your tax rate. So if you think that you're going to have a relatively lower income year this year as compared to the income that you might make next year or the year after or the year after that, then sure, this is a good time to make a conversion from a tax deferred account into a tax exempt account. But that's only because you'll be taxed at a lower rate on the money that you convert. And, John, if your income's going to stay the same during that time frame once again using the American system if your income is going to stay the same by all means do it sooner so that the effect of that hit on your long-term goal is spread over you know a wider number of years than if let's say you need the money next year or the year after make as much sense as if it's

20 years away with regard to the the market and timing it around the market which i think is is paula the crux of his question you know if stocks are up and you're buying the same stocks later the same mutual fund ETF later, it doesn't matter because you're moving value for value. If the market's up, it's going to be up equally in your TFSA as it is in your RSP. So that doesn't matter. You can make the argument that while the market's down, if you look at stocks as stored value that are going to be higher later and you want a bigger exposure to occur in your TFSA slash Roth IRA type position, then doing it while the market's low is probably a better opportunity that way. Right. Although you could also make the argument that, sure, moving it while it's down may present the opportunity that that rebound, that recovery gets captured in the Roth account, the tax exempt account. But then you could also make the argument that sometimes even in a bull market, things grow really rapidly. I mean, look at the first two months of 2020. We were in a bull market that had lasted for 11 years. And for those first two months, at least, there was

still massive growth. So the fact that we are in a bare market, that we are almost certainly in a recession, will there be a recovery? Yes, eventually there will be, and there will be great growth that comes out of that. And so to be able to experience that growth in a tax exempt account is wonderful. But that being said, there are often bull market periods in which we also have crazy growth. Which is why, Paula, my answer when I first heard John's question was, John, You and Paula and I and the rest of the family listening were a bunch of money nerds and we overthink this stuff. Yeah, well, I guess what I'm saying is there's always opportunity.

You know, the younger you are slash the further away your timeline to withdrawal, the more of an advantage you have in keeping assets in a tax-exempt account. If you are 20 years old and you're putting assets in a Roth account and you don't plan on tapping those assets until you're 65, you've got 45 years of tax-exempt growth. All the capital gains, all the dividends, all the growth for those 45 years are going to be tax-exempt. Versus if you are 40 years old and you put money into a tax-exempt Roth account and you don't plan on tapping it until you're 65, that's still awesome because you'll have 25 years of tax-exempt growth. But that's, you know, 25 years is amazing, but it's not as amazing as the 45 years.

So the younger you are slash the longer the timeline to withdrawal, the more advantage that you get from putting money into a Roth slash tax exempt account. And so really what I'm saying is, John, if this is something that you want to do, I would do it. But not because the market is down, because doing it now gives you more time in the tax exempt account as compared with doing it later. Hallelujah. Preach. Yeah. It's sort of another way of saying, you know, the old adage, time in the market is more important than timing the market. You could apply that to this time in a Roth account is more important than timing the conversion to the Roth account. And then I'll put an asterisk there depending on your income. Assuming steady, stable income with no major changes to your tax bracket, then time in the tax exempt account is more important. then timing the market for the conversion. So thank you, John, for asking that question. Our next question comes from Josh. Hello, Paula.

First of all, thank you so much for everything you do. You've been just a huge help to me, and I've learned so much. And Joe, if you're answering these questions as well, thanks to you as well. Same. I've learned a ton. My name is Josh. I live in Queens, New York, and I'm in my mid-40s. married, two kids. And we have decent retirement savings and we own our apartment, although we do

still owe some on the mortgage. And we also have money in non-retirement savings through betterment. So all of our retirement savings is in Vanguard age target funds. And we have some that are like five years apart because we thought we'd have some money more aggressive than some less. But basically it's all, you know, target age funds in Vanguard for our retirement. For our non-retirement money, we use Betterment and we have kind of a mix of different savings goals based on their times, horizons. I really like how they can just, you can just say 30% bonds, 70% stocks, whatever. So we have it there. And then, of course, we have our equity in our apartment. My question is around diversification. Let's say that, for the sake of argument, two-thirds of all of our money

is in some combination of Vanguard index funds and Betterment stock bond mixes, which are, also essentially Vanguard funds, and that one-third of our money is in the equity in our apartment. I've been thinking of whether we should try to diversify more and looking at things like REITs, but wondering if maybe the money, if I should think of the equity that we have in our apartment as essentially a diversification in the real estate market, or if that's the wrong way to think about the equity that we have in our residence. And that's essentially my question. It's given our current diversity mix, where I'm calling it one-third real estate, which is the equity department, and then two-thirds, the stock market and bonds.

Would you recommend further diversification, or does that sound good to you? Thank you so much. I look forward to your answer. Josh, first of all, congratulations on being in a strong financial place. You have made great progress to get you to this point already. You're doing a lot of things right. I love the fact that you're thinking critically about your money and about the types of investments that you have, about the equity that you have in your home, in your personal residence. You're paying attention to your money.

You're making a lot of good decisions. So congratulations on everything that you've done that's gotten you to where you are. With regard to thinking about the assets in your portfolio, I would not consider your primary residence, the place where you're. sleep. I would not consider that to be part of your investment portfolio. And therefore, I would not consider any equity within there to be part of your asset allocation or your asset mix. I do consider it to be part of your net worth. And that's a bit of a controversial subject among people in the personal finance community. Some people say that the equity in your personal residence should not even be counted in your net worth calculations. I disagree. I think it's

fine to include the equity in your personal residence in your calculation of your overall net worth. But I wouldn't consider it when thinking about the way that your investments are allocated for the simple reason that a primary residence is not an investment. A primary residence is a personal purchase. It is consumer consumption. And yes, it is a positive line item for many people on their overall net worth balance. but that does not make it an investment. And yes, there are some people who will sell their primary residence for a gain,

even a gain after adjusting for taxes, it may still be a gain. And for that reason, a lot of people kind of think of their primary residence as an investment, but it's not. But personal residence is simply not an investment. Think of it this way. If you were to own some type of item and you sold that item on eBay for more, than you paid for it. Is that item an investment? Not unless you're selling on eBay in the form of a business. You know, if you have an eBay selling business, then sure, that item is an investment in so far as it's

inventory for your business. But if you just have something laying around the house and you happen to be able to get more for it than what you purchased it for, that still doesn't make it an investment. If you're not running spreadsheets on it, if you're not calculating the ROI, if you're not calculating the If you're not doing the math that a business owner or a rental property investor would do in advance of making a purchase, then you're not buying an investment. So for all of those reasons, a personal residence is not an investment, even if it does happen to ultimately create a gain, it's still not an investment. Josh, thank you for asking that question. We'll come back to the show in just a second. But first, our next question comes from Sheena.

Hi, Paula. I have a relatively new job where I have access to an employee stock purchasing plan that allows me to purchase my company's stock at a 15% discount and provides a look back feature. So I was wondering whether this would be a good investment, particularly given the volatility of COVID-19. You previously discussed ESPP and a conveyor belt approach where you buy at a discount, sell as soon as you can, buy diversify the funds. with the amount you sell. And that's what we would be looking to do. I contribute about 18,000 a year currently in taxable brokerages. And so I would simply contribute to the ESPP and then move that over to a taxable brokerage as soon as I could sell. Some considerations, though, are compared to that previous caller that you talked to about an ESP. My company's stock is significantly more volatile, especially given COVID-19, it lost 50% of its value with COVID-19. It's now back at about 70% of its pre-COVID value. So it's definitely possible that it could drop more than the 15% but it seems that if I'm quickly selling soon after the purchase date, there can be a two-to-three-day

lab before I could sell that more than often than not I would be making around a 15% profit. And that's, if you think about risk or reward, the reward side of equation, you generally not make a 15% profit on an index fund over time. The second thing to consider is that I do have a significant amount in company's stock in terms of restricted stock units that will vest over the next four years. So about $25,000 a year will come in in company stock. My plan is to sell this when it's at a reasonable price, but it may involve holding it during a recession, waiting for a reasonable price. I have about $125,000 between retirement accounts and taxable brokerages, about six and a half month emergency fund, and $10,000 extra set aside if we want to buy a car. So far, our job seems

stable as we can work from home, but if one of us did lose our jobs, I could pause the contributions, but I cannot increase the contributions from what I choose over the next offering period. So what would you do? Contribute the max sum or none to the ESPP. As an avid listener, I think you might say it depends on your goals. So I should say that our primary goal is that in 10 years or so, we'd like to take a one-year mini-retirement to travel. And the rest is just for the flexibility. It provides us to perhaps take lower-paying jobs or buy a house closer to downtown.

Thanks. Sheena, thank you for asking that question. Thank you for all of that detail. That's extremely helpful. I'm going to start by addressing the very last thing you said, which is that in the next 10 years, you want to take a one-year mini-retirement to travel. The way that I would approach that is, first of all, you said in the next 10 years, do you mean 10 years from now? Or ideally, would you want this to happen maybe seven years from now or five years from now? What I would encourage you to do is pick an ideal number of years from now in which this happens.

So let's just say for the sake of example, let's say you want to do this literally 10 years from now in the year 2030. Pick that number. Estimate how much that might cost, that one year mini retirement might cost. It will take you some research to be able to do that. The best way to make that estimate is to decide what you want to do during that year. and of course that's subject to change. Your interest 10 years from now will be different than your interest today. But broadly speaking, do you want to buy an RV and drive across the U.S.? Do you want to travel across South America? Do you want to travel across Europe? Do you want to live in one country for three months and then repeat that for a total of four times? Or do you want to be in a different country every two weeks? Get an idea of what you want that one year to look like and then start reading. accounts from people who have done that and make cost estimates in today's dollars based on approximately how much that would cost. And once you have that information, once you know

an approximate cost and number of years until the goal, then it's a simple division problem in terms of how much money you would need to save every year in order to be able to set aside the cash to be able to do that. And I would, for the money that you want to spend on that mini retirement, the one-year mini-retirement, I would literally keep it in cash or cash equivalence because your timeline to withdrawal is going to be 10 or fewer years. If you're uncomfortable keeping that much cash, I mean, you could maybe take a small portion of it. The one to five-year portion, you could keep in cash and the five-to-ten-year portion you could maybe put into a conservative bond fund or something. But I mean, at a certain point, cash is simple and it allows

you to focus on the goal and you can then concentrate your investing in your investments and then concentrate your cash holdings in this money that you're setting aside for a very specific short-term goal. That's how I would approach in terms of planning your overall budget, the mini-retirement that you want to take the one-year mini-retirement in a decade or less. Yeah, I love that. That sounds exciting, doesn't it? Yeah, absolutely. And the reason that I bring that up, Sheena, is because you mentioned that you have a six and a half month emergency fund and you have 10 grand set aside for a car purchase. So it sounds to me as though you don't yet have a savings account set aside specifically for this mini retirement. So what I would encourage you to do is open a savings account that's specific to this mini retirement and earmarked exclusively for that purpose.

When it comes to the employee stock purchase plan, which Sheena talks about as the ESPP, where she can buy stock in her. company. Let's run through that part of the question, Paula, because this is, this is interesting. And I agree with Sheena that things might change a little bit here. And I'll tell you kind of how to think about where we're at now versus where we usually are. But first, let's define a few things. So Sheena, it works for a company. Maybe some people listening also work for companies. And they meant not even know this. Like when I was a financial planner, I would ask people, do you have an employee stock purchase plan? They'd say, no, I don't think so. But I'll go check. I get an email the next day.

I have this thing. I never realized I could do this. This is a program that allows you to buy stock and your company at a discount. What's cool about it in Sheena's company, it's a 15% discount. Sometimes it's a 10% discount. It's different company by company. You put money into the program and different employee stock purchase plans of different rules. But for a lot of them, they take the price of the beginning of a six-month period

and the end of a six-month period, or maybe the time frame is different, but they take the beginning price, the end price, and you don't buy the stock based on the price at any time as you're putting money in, it's either going to be what price it was on the end day or on the beginning day, whichever one is lower.

And on top of that, and I'm going to say this in my best, but wait, there's more voice. You also get a discount on whatever that price is, maybe 10%, maybe 15% off of that. So if your stock just finds, a way to stay even during that period, you will get an automatic to Sheena's point 10 or 15% return. And like she said, you won't get that from an index fund.

Historically, you haven't. And we should never expect to get that from an index fund. So it's this really great thing. Now, today, though, Sheena works for a company that's been hit hard by this crisis. And so like she said before, the stock is way, way, way, way down. And it has recovered some, but it still is, is down. Remember, when you buy an individual stock, there's always the risk that the company could go under. And when you buy stock an individual company versus buying an index fund, that's a big risk you're taking.

The fact that you could lose all of your money in that individual position. And while we always take that seriously, I think we're all seeing just how seriously we should take that right now. So before you invest in an ESPP, realize that you're investing in a single company. And by the way, sure, you work for that company, but studies have shown that makes you more confident that you probably should be. Remember that there was a company called Enron. And if you go back and look up Enron, there were literally four people, four who really knew that they were faking it. This huge company full of people, everybody lost their job. The company completely imploded because four people knew.

And before it imploded, everybody would have told you that work there. Oh, no, we're safe. We're fine. Everything's great. So always keep a healthy respect for the fact that you could lose everything when you invest in individual stock. That is why we don't accumulate an individual stock. Instead, we use what Sheena referred to as the conveyor belt approach.

I always liked this when I was a financial planner. I love the employee stock purchase plan because of that free bump up in money that you may get if the stock stays even. So every time I put money on the conveyor belt, buying new shares, on the other end of the conveyor belt, I'm selling. So I'm never accumulating new shares. I'm just buying now. I'm selling it right away and diversifying. Buy, sell. And different purchase plans with different companies will tell you when you are allowed to sell. I love that plan. Sheena's problem also is compounded by the fact that she has restricted stock units, which means she's gifted shares of the company on top of that,

which she's not allowed to sell until she hit certain vesting time. So this is a way of getting employees to stay with their company longer. I could go to the competitor, but I've got $100,000 worth of stock that I will lose if I go away. And so it's, you know, a lot of the time we'll call that golden handcuffs, right? Maybe I'm not paid that well, but I have all this stock that could be mine if I just stick with the company and stay with them. By the way, good on the good on the company for doing that. It's good for you.

It's good for them. And it breeds this long-term relationship between the two of us in an environment that's increasingly brand-you. I work for me, not for the company. And I'm giving my services company for maybe just a couple of years. and then I leave. Any employer that wants to make that relationship more long term that shows some good faith. That said, I think you can see that now it's a tough decision

that's based on a couple things. I'm going to start with the overall. Love the approach of using the ESP. Because we're using the conveyor belt, I think the restricted stock is a whole different discussion. We're not accumulating anything. We're just trying to manufacture more return. So, you know the type of company that you're in better than I do.

What does this company's outlook look like in this particular environment? This is when I might look at the recent financial analyst reports. How much debt does your company have? How have sales been impacted? How does the CFO, when they give guidance to shareholders and to financial analysts, what do they see coming up? I really want to know all of that stuff. And by the way, also realizing that the CFO of the company is going to present that in as rosy a fashion as they possibly can.

So you have to kind of be a little more negative about the company than the CFO might be. In other words, if everything goes wrong, what's the likelihood that I'm going to lose this money now versus in a, quote, normal economy? That's number one. Number two is because this is for a set time frame goal, how likely is it that this company is going to rebound versus is that goal. If this is a 40-year goal, my thought process is, yeah, definitely, go for it, all in, no problem outside of what I just mentioned about your company, if your company looks good. But if you're in a volatile company, you want the money in just a few years, you know, 10 years is kind of that time, Paula, that's the beginning of just investing in an equity portfolio

and to say that we're going to use a more aggressive approach for a goal that may be just exactly 10 years away versus 20 or 30 years away, I think I'd consider that too. So those are my thoughts. I definitely can't tell you what to do. I don't know the company. I don't know how set you are on the timeframe of that many retirement. But I think those are the considerations that I'd have before making a decision how much to put in it.

Still overall, I really like the ESPP. I do want to challenge one more thing though that Sheena said, which was she talked about with her restricted stock units waiting for a reasonable price. Realize that your company is down at the same time that other stocks in the stock market are down. You don't want to accumulate shares because of the fact that you're waiting for a better day. it's a bad day overall. Even if you sell now and you diversify that, you're going to see your diversified portfolio come back to. So I have seen too many investors make the mistake of.

I'm not going to sell my individual stock now because the price doesn't look good. Anybody owning the S&P 500 right now doesn't think the stock looks good. Go from one individual stock forest fire into a diversified forest fire. fire. And I think while you might not come back as fast, the reasonable expectation that you will come back and you will hold onto that money and you'll get a much greater safety net with that money I still like. I don't like waiting for a quote reasonable price. And when everything is priced unreasonably, when you're looking at your whole array of options, and Sheena, I don't just mean you on directing this at everyone who's listening to this. When you're looking at,

looking at an array of investing options, as we are now, where nothing seems that great. Bonds are not a great investment right now. Stocks are volatile and many people might argue are overvalued, but certainly quite volatile. I mean, in any environment, but particularly in an environment such as the one that we are currently in, some degree of safety comes from selecting broad market, diversified index funds because of the fact that we don't know how any individual company is going to fare over the span of the next year or two. And so the more that we can diversify those bets, the more that we can bet on the economy as a whole to eventually recover rather than an individual company to eventually recover, the less volatility that we're going to see. And in the long term,

greater our likelihood of success relative to the amount of risk that we've taken. And by the way, if you've ever listened to my show, you know that we're always kind of schooling Paula on current events and on pop culture. Before we hit record, Sheena, we showed Paula your song that you are a punk rocker. I had never heard it before. In fact, I'd never heard anything by the Ramones before. So Joe introduced me to that song. And I'm sure that it's not the first time that Sheena's introduced yourself to people and they pointed her and go, oh, you're the punk rocker. It's the very first thing I thought. She was the rocker. And Paula looked at me, by the way, like, what the hell are you talking about? I have a friend whose name is Caroline and she gets that

same thing. Yes. I think the Jimmy Hendrix with mine, people will come up to me and go, hey, Joe, where are you going with that gun in your hand? And by the way, at first I didn't know what the heck they were. And I didn't even look it up, right? I just didn't understand. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's some kind of joke. I had no idea it was a Jimmy Hendrick song. Paul doesn't know that. Yeah. So if you've listened to Joe's podcast, the Stacking Benjamin's podcast, the long-running joke, and by joke, I mean it's funny because it's true, is my complete lack of knowledge about anything pop culture related. Yeah, it is. It's too fun. All right. Anyway, thank you for that question, Sheena. Our final question today comes from Jenny.

Hi, Paula. My name is Jenny. I would like to say thank you for everything you've done with afford anything. A little background on me. I married. My husband and I make about $220,000 to $240,000 a year depending upon the year. I graduated 2015, so every year it just, I mean, it started out at like $100,000 and now we've grown to the $220, 240. We paid off our school loans, which was $145,000 about a year ago. We own everything other than our house. We have a mortgage out on that of $220,000. $120,000. I am maxing out my 403B at work and I am maxing out my HSA at work. I have another $4,000 a month that I am not sure where to invest. I'm doing plenty of reading, listening to podcasts, but I still don't know what would be the best option for me based on the amount of money that my husband and I make. We also have a rollover 401k to a 401 or a, you know, Yeah, the rollover IRA in Vanguard, I am not sure what to do with that either. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

And again, thank you so much for what you do. Jenny, thank you for asking that question. And congratulations on all of the success that you're experiencing. And congratulations on being in a position in which you have a good amount of money every month to invest. And you are trying to figure out how to make a whole. wise decision about what you do with that. So the classic principles of personal finance apply perfectly here, which is make your investment decisions based on a combination of four factors, your goals, your timeline to withdrawal, your risk tolerance, and your level of interest or

enthusiasm in a certain thing. And here's what I mean by that. So when I say goals and timeline to withdrawal, those two things are fairly intricately tied. If there's money that is being earmarked as retirement money, then you have a particular timeline. The goal is retirement, and the timeline is whatever you want that timeline to be. And so you would take on a level of risk in terms of a mix of equities and bonds. And then if you wanted to add in reeds or commodities, you would take on a mix of different asset classes that reflected your personal risk tolerance in the context of that goal in that timeline. Likewise, if you are investing money for a goal that you want to reach maybe 15 years from now or 20 years from now, that goal may not be retirement. It might be

some big ticket item, some dream that you have of like 20 years from now, we would really like to do X, or we would really like to purchase X or own X. You know, then you have, again, a particular goal with an ideal amount of money that you want to create in service of that goal, and you have a particular timeline. And so, again, that mix of asset classes will reflect all of those factors. So we've talked about goals, timeline, to withdrawal, and risk tolerance. So then the final thing, the fourth factor is your level of interest or enthusiasm. And what I mean by that, is when it comes to non-market investments, such as purchasing rental properties or investing in small businesses, some people buy small businesses, I would not do that purely for the money alone, because if you have no interest in it, no enthusiasm for it, if it would be a chore or just another job that you're just doing because you think the returns will be good, or because you think you've found a great opportunity, if you're not into it, then when problems inevitably arise and problems arise in any investment or occupation, you know, you're not going to do well in it.

Like no matter how good the opportunity to buy a small business or the opportunity to buy a small apartment building or the opportunity to buy several duplexes on the same street, like no matter how good those opportunities look on paper, maybe you have found an undervalued gem. And maybe on paper, everything looks great. But if you're not excited about it, then it's not going to work out. So in terms of non-market investments, that matters. Yeah, instead of chasing. And by the way, and this isn't just for Jenny. This is for everybody that I think a classic mistake people make is looking for the perfect investment by itself, right? What's the investment that's doing well now?

what's the thing that's going to prevent me from whatever conditions are happening currently in the market. Instead of, Paula, what you're talking about, starting with the end of mind, start with your goal, and then work backwards to, regardless of the current environment and all the news and what's hot, what's not, what historically gets me to that goal. Much, so much safer. So I think instead of chasing the investment, it's chase your why, right? Why do I want this money? I think if we start chasing the why, it's much better.

And in a lot of ways, this issue that Jenny has may be a problem of. And it certainly was, and I don't know Jenny well enough to say this about her, but it certainly was for some people that I work with, I was an advisor, which was thinking too small. In other words, Jenny sounds like she's going to be okay, right? There are a lot of people in this economy that aren't going to be okay. Jenny sounds like she's going to be all right, that she has. has all of her bases covered. She's stuffing money into every tech shelter that she can find. But because of a lack of what do I want, not sure what to do with this other money directionally.

Jenny might be able to begin thinking bigger, Paula, which is the way I challenge some people listening to this. Instead of thinking, will I be okay? And yeah, I'm all right. Let's start thinking about the next step, which is what is your legacy going to be? What are you going to build? What are you going to do that's outside of, I'm going to be okay. Like there is a bigger, there's a bigger game you could be playing now. And I think too often we stop at, okay, I got enough for me. I'm done. Man, you could really have an impact now. And maybe that's not what Jenny wants or what people listening that are in that case want. And if not, that's fine. But I do think there's some people out there that when I presented that challenge, suddenly you could see the excitement build.

But now, now I can do something that really, really impacts the world around me. And now we have a whole new level of fun. And by the way, then the enthusiasm comes for what investments then will help me reach this bigger goal. And now all of a sudden, instead of seeing the world through the lens of not sure what my personal goal is, now we're looking at a whole, whole new world. So thank you, Jenny, and thank you to everybody who called in with a question and to all you who are part of this community. Joe, where can people find you if they would like to hear more

of you? And what are you up to these days? I can talk forever about what I'm up to because it's a, that might be a whole episode of what's going on here. I am very excited. We just joined a big network called Westwood One, which is one of the biggest radio conglomerates in the United States. They're known mostly for sports, but now it's the sport of finance. So for all of us money geeks, we finally have a foothole with one of the big bullhorns out there that can help our words get out. So stacking Benjamins every Monday, Wednesday. Friday is where I will be and super excited about the fact that lots of people that know nothing about money get to listen to us broadcasting from my mom's basement. I can see what they're thinking already.

Like people are going to listen to it and go, what the hell? This is not Dave Ramsey. No. So you're on the radio. I am not on the radio. We are part of their podcast buildout. So we've had discussions about the radio, but that's in the future. Right now, and I've had friends of mine already listening, friends of mine already listening on the radio have heard radio stations that are part of the Westwood One community where they're doing advertisements for the stacking Benjamin show.

Which is weird, by the way, Paula, hearing a guy in the stereotypical hot 955 voice going, financial news that just might make you laugh, stacking Benjamins on Westwood One. It's so flipping weird. Nice. It is so weird. Joe, I also have to say the last week of April was the first week ever that we released, The Afford Anything podcast released three episodes in the span of one week. We had our normal Monday show, our weekly Monday episode.

Then PSA Thursday, which is a special segment that I'm doing right now where I talk about the pandemic and coronavirus. coronavirus and current events. And then the first Friday of the month, we also do a first Friday bonus episode. So that last week of April was the first time that we had a Monday, Thursday, and Friday release. Oh, man, I need to sleep for a month after that. Which is why you could tell, you know, we have a team of six people, right, that make the show. So yeah, it's a machine. Well, you're doing a great job. I'm glad that now there are radio DJs. out there who are talking about personal finance whether they want to or not on hot 95 5 well thank you so much for tuning in my name is paula pant this is the afford anything podcast

if you are interested in learning more about the world of rental property investing residential rental property investing we have a course and that course it's called your first rental property, as the name implies, it's for people who are beginners to the world of rental property investing. If that's you and you want to know what to do, how you should approach, how do you even get started, how do you find properties, how do you find the financing, how do you manage tenants, how do you build a team? And what is going on with this current market and this current economy? What's going to happen in the year 2020? How will the pandemic affect things and how should you adjust your strategy accordingly? We are. We are,

are going to cover all of that in this upcoming course. And so May 18th, mark your calendars, is the date that we open enrollment for the course. Between May 18th to May 25th, 2020, that is the limited one-week window in which you can enroll. After that, we close our doors and all of the students go through the course together as a cohort for 10 weeks. It's an online course. You're welcome to self-paced if you prefer that. But if you like a group setting, group accountability, then the cohort will go through this course together over the span of 10 weeks where we cover everything you've ever wanted to know about beginner rental property investing. So for more information on that, go to afford anything.com slash enroll.

That's afford anything.com slash enroll. That is where you will get the lowdown. Thank you again for tuning in. My name is Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast, and I will catch you in the next episode.