Afford Anything - Ask Paula - How to Repay $50k in Student Loans on a $31k Income, What's the Deal with Bonds, and Do I Really Need Insurance

Episode Date: April 24, 2017

#74: Former financial planner and friend of the show, Joe Saul-Sehy from Stacking Benjamins, joins me to answer the following listener questions: Kicking off today's episode, Nicky asks: I'm young and healthy. My car is old and not-worth-much. And my personal property isn't exactly fancy-pants. Do I *really* need health, auto and property insurance? Or can I drop these insurances and save the money? _______ Next, Shelbi says: I'm 26, recently earned a graduate school diploma, and I'm taking the first steps into my career. I take home $2,600 in monthly income, and my cost-of-living is $1,900 per month. I maintain a $5,500 emergency fund and invest 20% of my income into a Vanguard Target Date Retirement account, with a Roth tax setup. I'll get an employer match after I've spent another year on the job. My employer also contributes $100 per month into my H.S.A. account, which is the only money that I'm putting into that fund. I hold $49,000 in student loans (yikes!!) at 6.8% interest. I pay $400/mo towards this debt, which is included in my $1,900 cost-of-living and is more than the minimum required. My goal is financial independence and early retirement. She asks these three questions: -- Should she lower the 20% she's putting into her 403b in order to max out her Roth IRA and HSA, instead? -- Should she prioritize repaying her student loan debt over retirement savings? -- Should she schedule a private coaching call with me? (Surprisingly, I said no. Tune into the episode to find out why.) _______ Next, Nicole asks: What types of investments can you hold inside a self-directed IRA? If I open one of these accounts, what custodian should I use? _______ Finally, our friend anonymous asks: What's the deal with bond investing? What's a coupon payment? A maturity date? WTF? Can you help me make sense of the world of bonds and bond funds? _______ Joe and I tackle these four questions ... plus reveal a top-secret recipe for the Best. Oreo. Cookie. Dessert. EVER. Like, *ever.* Enjoy! -- Paula _______ For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode74 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything but not everything. Every decision that you make is a trade-off against something else. You can choose one thing or choose the other, but you can't necessarily always have both. So which one is more important? This is the Afford Anything podcast. My name is Paula Pant, host of the podcast. And today I am answering questions that you, the listeners, have submitted. And I'm doing so with a buddy of mine who is virtually in the studio with me, by which I mean he's in Texas and I'm in Nevada.

Joe Saul C. High, host of the award-winning stacking Benjamin's podcast. Here we are. Joe! Hello. Hey, you're back. That's where we start this every time now. Like, we scream at each other. It just feels like coming home now. Yeah, move over at home. Joe, take out the trash.

That sounds totally like home. Mom's all about that. So, how have you been? I'm good. I'm questioning your judgment, given the fact that you've agreed to come back on the show. You must be a stickler for punishment. Stickler for punishment? Is that the expression that I'm going for? I don't know. I don't know anymore.

Yeah, stickler infers that I really, really like punishment. And that's probably true. Or a glutton for punishment. Glutton is the one that most people use. But you're Paula Pant. You don't have to do what everybody else does. Heck yeah, hashtag normal sucks. So you invited me back to answer some of your lovely listener letters.

Yeah. Yeah, you know, I thought two heads are better than one, or I guess in our case, you know, one cumulative head is better than half each. I spend most of my time going what Paula said. So that's good. If you want me to do that, that's great. Yeah, Paula, that's fantastic. I'll be here to say, yeah, I concur. I concur. And you know what? So I'm telling, sort of, I'm telling you this, but I'm also saying it for the sake of all of the listeners who are listening in right now. When I get questions, I get this combination of broadly speaking, questions related to real estate and questions not related to real estate. And so when you're on the show, Joe, I specifically choose questions that are not related to real estate so that that way I can siphon off all of the real estate questions into a different show. So that's good. You're saying I'm incompetent when it comes to real estate. That's what you're saying. I mean, we can do it. But, but, but. No, that's okay. I can take a hint. That's fine. I figure that the stuff that you're really good at is, uh, is, uh, uh, is, uh, is the stuff that we should address when you're on the show. So things like how to knit socks, how to paint your toenails, how to, what are some of the other things to be good at, Joe? How to make a really good chili cheese dip? Cleaning the basement, operating a short wave.

I'm very good at those. Yes, excellent. And speaking French. Yeah, maybe not so much, but we try. So speaking of saying something pseudo-intelligible, should we answer some questions? Sounds like fun. Let's get the party started. Awesome. This first question comes from Nikki.

Hi, Paula. My name is Nikki, and I'm actually from Australia. So I know things can be a bit different between Australia and America, particularly it comes to finances and things like that. But I was interested in hearing your general advice. I think that your attitude towards finances and life in general is really inspiring. So me and my husband have been debating the benefits of having health insurance a lot lately and other insurances in general like car insurance and home and contents insurance and things like that. I get his point of wanting to have all of our bases covered and the fact that if anything goes wrong, then we can, you know, fall back onto something. But I kind of think that we're better off saving that money that we would be paying the company and just putting it aside

for ourselves in terms of emergency funds. Now, I'll be better keeping the insurance? or getting rid of the insurance and then saving, or maybe even trying to save the money alongside the insurance payments until we reach a certain amount. I just feel like we are kind of wasting money, giving it to a company when we rarely even take anything from them. I mean, we're quite young and healthy. We don't ever get sick or we rarely take our extras.

and I've never been in an ambulance in my life. Our car, on the other hand, is also really old. It's not very expensive. Like, it's not worth much. So I don't know if it's worth keeping that insured either. Just interested in your opinion on insurances in general, whether or not you think it's worth it. Thanks. Bye.

I could listen to her all day. She has such a beautiful voice, beautiful accent. It's amazing. I had a roommate in college who was from Brisbane, Australia. and he would just lay it on, man. He would just absolutely lay it on, especially when women were around. He would just bring out the koalas. But anyway, you know, Paula, this is a little known fact, but people say that about me.

Like I walked into Chili's last week and somebody said, that is a lovely accent. Where are you from? And I said, Southwest Michigan, close to the Indiana border, they're like, I could listen to you all day. It's amazing. Mickey and I have a lot in common that. No wonder you host such a popular podcast, Joe? It's all this accent.

Yeah, everybody wants that middle Midwestern thing. It's very exotic like Nikki says. Nikki's got a great question about insurance, doesn't she? She does. Although, before we answer it, can I very quickly say I spent 10 months in Australia? And I remember among the words that stood out to me were the pronunciation of banana, which was banana. And, oh, this one, this one totally surprised me. The car, Nissan, was Nissan over there.

Really? Yeah, Nissen. In fact... And I wonder who's wrong. Is it us or then? Well, I mean, it's a Japanese car, so probably both. Right. Probably both wrong.

Yeah. But yeah, we actually owned a Nissan Patrol during our 10 months in Australia. So now I can cross that off my bucket list. I still have that one coming. I've never been to Australia. I'd really like to go. Well, Joe, maybe one day you and I can record an episode from Australia. We can go to...

All we need is the invite from Nikki. That's what we need. Yes, perfect. Okay, so Nikki, you're probably wondering when we're ever going to answer your question. So let's get to it, I guess. By the way, that car that you have that's not worth very much, is it in Nissan Patrol? I hope so. I bet it is.

So, Joe, what is your take on her question? I know what I think, but I'm going to let you go first. I'm going to pass this one to you. I always love that. You ask me to go first and then you tell me exactly where I'm wrong. Which I love about this relationship. No, that's fine. You know what I'd like, Paula?

I like the fact, I like the way she frames the question. Because what happens with most people is they're sitting with an insurance salesperson, right? And the insurance salesperson starts telling them about the insurance and about all the great things about it. Nikki asks the better question, which is what do I really need? And I think whenever you make it a decision like that, you're not making an insurance decision, which I don't like making insurance decisions. I like making the kind of decision that Nikki's making, which is a risk management decision, right?

I have these risks in my life, and what's the best way to handle that risk? So it comes down to a couple things. You know, I really don't like the fact that she's talking about, well, I've never been in an ambulance. I've never been hurt. That doesn't mean it's not going to happen tomorrow. And I hate, you know, I would meet when back when I was a financial planner,

I would meet sometimes with people and we talk about their lack of disability insurance. and they'd say things like, well, I'm a really safe skier. I've never had a problem. So what I like doing is I think of myself as an actuary. And what actuaries do in the insurance industry is they look at the risk and the insurance cost is based on the risk. So as an example, I think these are directionally the right numbers. Your home, if you buy homeowner's insurance, the risk of something happening to your home in a given year is one in roughly 1,200. The risk of something happening to you and your car is around 1 and 350, I believe.

Could be wrong, but it's going to be in that general area. So that's why when you look at insurances, your car insurance costs more than homeowners insurance. It isn't based on the value. If your car's worth more than your house, well, it clearly, number one, isn't a Nissan, whatever that is. But then number two, you might have a problem if your cars, you know, not the best accommodations if your car is. is worth more than your house. So I like looking at insurances, what's the chance of something's going to happen to me? So once I look at the probability, then I like looking Paula at how can I cover it? Because if I talk to an insurance person, I automatically am going to think of insurance.

But if I'm making a risk management decision, maybe there's another way to cover it, right? So I look at when she talked about health insurance as an example. Once again, to rephrase that, what's the chance that something bad's going to happen to my health? It's actually fairly good and it's going to get better as you get older. Well, going to get worse, I suppose, is the correct phrase as you get older. So health insurance for me is possibly a big thing, but I think about, are there other ways I can handle this besides health insurance? Maybe. But what's the cost of that stay going to be? I don't know what that is in Australia in the United States. It's ginormous to use the technical term. So for me, health insurance is got to have it. It's going to be way too expensive for me to cover. And especially

since for me, I'm in a relationship with someone else. Cheryl and I have been married next year for 25 years. Congratulations. Well, thank you. If I get really sick, Paula, I'm blowing through all my assets. And now, if I die, Cheryl's left with nothing. So for us, for that reason, health insurance is really important. She talks about her auto insurance on the other side.

She said her car's not worth much. She is a sizable cash reserve. In the United States, you have to have car insurance as part of our laws here. I don't know if that's the case in Australia. but if you can replace the auto and get by any liability, I don't know once again about lawsuits, because a lot of our auto insurance has also covered lawsuits from other drivers. If you can get through the lawsuit on Skate, then I'd say having a cash reserve and not having that insurance might be a better plan.

Right, right. Joe, I'm totally with you. I agree that insurance is when one thing that concerned me about the way that Nikki framed the question is she said, we don't use it. insurance is a purchase that you never want to use. Like, ironically, it's one of those things that you buy that you hope you will never have to use. So the fact that you're not using it doesn't mean that it is an ill-informed purchase. The fact that you're not using it doesn't mean that it's a waste of money. In fact, that's the best case scenario. Great. It's fantastic that you're not using it.

I view insurance as almost a form of bankruptcy protection or a form of protection against bills that are higher than what you could reasonably pay. Or another way to phrase that, as long as I'm like phrasing things poorly right now, is insurance is what you're buying is protection against the risk of losing a significant chunk of your assets as the result of X or Y or Z. So health insurance, perfect example, you're not prepaying for that ambulance trip. That's not what health insurance is. With health insurance, you are buying protection against the risk that you will have to lose a lot of your assets or declare bankruptcy or otherwise end up in a very, very tough financial situation as a result of a cancer diagnosis or a broken leg or a burst appendix or anything else that might happen. That's what you're buying. Yeah.

You know, what's sad is that when I would meet with families and they didn't have a bunch of money and they were struggling, the first thing they wanted to do. to do was raise their deductible. That's the amount you're going to pay in the case of an accident or whatever it might be. And they also wanted to talk about eliminating insurance. And it's funny because the way that you and I talk about the problem, the people that can afford to eliminate insurances are people that have significant assets. So people think about it backwards. Get rid of insurances when you have plenty of assets to cover that. And it still doesn't affect your lifestyle. Doesn't affect anything. You have to keep it if you haven't developed that portfolio yet. Right, right. Exactly. the way that I frame that is only eliminate an insurance when you have enough money that you can self-insure against that.

So, for example, if you have a car that's worth $5,000 and you have enough money that you could easily and fully replace that car if that thing got totaled, then you don't need coverage that would otherwise replace the car. You do need coverage, of course, to comply with laws. And again, I don't know what the laws are in Australia, in the U.S. there's a minimum legal car insurance that you are legally required to have. But, yeah, but beyond that, the point at which you eliminate car insurance is the point at which you self-insure. I'm sorry, the point at which you eliminate the rest of your car insurance is the point at which you can self-insure because you have a thick enough emergency fund to do so. I'll tell you also on a related note, Paula, you know, when you eliminate insurances, going back to my analogy with the actuaries,

and they're looking at the probability that something will happen, everybody wants to eliminate in their life the insurances that are really expensive. Everyone wants to keep the insurances that are really cheap. And if you think about that, if there's an actuary at the insurance company, the reason why an insurance type is really expensive is because they think you're going to use it. Right. And they need to get their money back. If an insurance is really cheap, they think it's not going to be used. So when I was a financial planner, I would eliminate things like accidental death. and dismemberment, especially if you have a desk job and you have good disability insurance,

get rid of that AD&D coverage. Insurance on your pets, that can be valuable, but a lot of the time you're flushing money down the toilet. Cancer insurance, you know, unless you live in a hurricane zone, okay, maybe hurricane coverage. But I see people that have these wacky insurances that are really cheap and really inexpensive add-ons that somebody convinced them to buy, and they hold on to them because they don't cost much. They don't cost much because you're never going to get your money back.

Right. Exactly. And sometimes those are valuable, like liability umbrella policies. Right. They don't cost much and they're fantastic. And again, that is an insurance that hopefully I will never have to use. Hopefully nobody who owns it will ever have to use it. But it's cheap and it can save your butt in the event that you will ever have to need it. But yes, but I also completely agree with what you just said, which is that there are many insurances that are cheap that are not necessary or perhaps redundant. That's the other thing. There are a lot of people have redundant insurances, so that's worth taking a look at as well. That's a British phrase that I like. I mean, not Australian, but it's a British phrase when they talk about redundancy. You know, we talk about people getting laid off in Britain. They talk about redundancy. Yeah, being made redundant. Yeah. I like that better. I don't know why. I always thought that's a cool phrase. Yeah, I like that too. You know, the other phrase that I really like is have a go. Yeah. I love that one. We're having to go with these letters today. Yeah, or just like, oh, I'll have a go at it. Oh, do you want to slide down this slide? Sure, I'll have a go at it. Yeah, I love that phrase.

I don't know where to go with that. Okay, our last comment that I'm going to make about insurance before we switch to the next caller is that if for somebody like Nikki who seems to be in a good financial place and who has, you know, good cash savings and a good emergency fund, in that type of. of situation, there's definitely an argument to be made for increasing your deductibles, because typically the higher your deductible, the lower your monthly premium. And again, if you have the cash reserves to cover it, then you can self-insure not for everything, but for that deductible portion. So my health insurance, for example, has an insanely, ridiculously high deductible. And that's fine with me because I'm young and healthy and I keep health insurance around only to protect my assets in the event of a worst case scenario, a catastrophic scenario. So I don't expect my health insurance to pay for any type of medical care that I receive in what knock on wood, hopefully, will be a normal year. I essentially expect it to be catastrophe insurance. And because of that, I've got a high deductible and relatively lower premiums. So, so yeah, so Nikki, that's what you can do if you want to.

shave off some of the money that you're spending there. I can't believe we've just talked about insurance for like, how long? Like, out of 10 minutes or something? Is anybody still listening? And that's the show. Hello. Are you still listening? Do you realize you are listening to a podcast about people talking about insurance? I love it when we talk about insurance this way because most people don't. And when I dig into insurance this way as risk analysis instead of insurance analysis, much more fascinating. Yeah. You know, When you said that thing about, oh, the way I like to approach it is I think of myself as an actuary. First thought that popped into my head and I didn't want to interrupt you.

I was like, Joe, you should put that on your Tinder profile. Yeah, the Tinder profile would go over great with Cheryl. Yeah, so what are you doing? Swiping my phone. What are you referring to? Oh, geez, but where else could you put a phrase like that? I mean, I don't know.

signature line of your email Yeah Maybe get it as a tattoo Want to be an actuary We'll put that at the start of the Stacky Benjamin show That's what we'll do Two guys who want to be actuaries Awesome

Okay well Nikki I hope that that helps I hope we've sort of kind of answered your question And enjoy driving your nissen All right Our next question comes from Shelby Hi Paula My name is Shelby

and I've been listening to your podcast for about two or three months now. My question kind of has a lot of components, so I'll do my best to explain it. I'll start by saying that after taxes and insurance, my monthly income is $2,600. And my monthly costs for living are $1,900. I recently graduated from grad school, and I'm 26, and I'm in the first step of my career, which I'll be able to work toward making more money as I gain. more experience. After listening to your podcast, I've been able to set up an emergency fund, which currently has $5,500 in it. Through my work, I am currently contributing 20% to a 403B

Vanguard Target retirement account, and I'm doing this through a Roth contribution. My employer offers an employer match after two years of working for the company. I currently do not qualify for this as I am still within my first year. Because of my high-dive, deductible insurance plan through my employer, they offer an HSA where they contribute $100 per month into my account. I am not currently contributing more than that. My only debt is my student loans, which totals $49,000, and this is coming from the government, so it's 6.8% interest. I'm currently paying more than the minimum payment, and I pay $400 a month, which is included in my $1900 of cost of living monthly. I do not currently have a Roth IRA and my ultimate goal is early retirement

and financial independence. I'm wondering what is the next step and what do I need to do to be most effective with the money that I have? After reading your recent email about investing the geeky way, I saw that number one was to get an employer match and number two was to invest in a Roth IRA. So I'm seeing that this is something that I need to do soon and that I know Max it out being under 49 years old would be 5,500. I also see that step three is to max out your HSA. So I'm not doing either of those things right now, but I'm wondering, do I lower my 20% that I'm putting toward my 403B in order to be able to max out the other two? Or what is the best option? I'm also wondering how my student loans play into all of this as it is a huge chunk

of money that I still owe, and I'm not sure if it's important to be putting those in priority over the investment options that I've talked about on here. My last question is that I have a lot more to talk with you about, and I'm wondering, with the little money I make, is it worth the investment to talk further about these topics and others through calling you through your online services that you offer through afford anything? Thanks for everything you do, and I look forward to hearing back from you. Bye. I love this question. So first, just for the sake of everybody who's listening, I'm going to briefly recap everything that Shelby said, just briefly recap the situation. So she makes a take-home

income of $2,600 per month, and 1900 of that is her monthly cost of living, which means that there is a gap of an additional $700 in between cost of living and monthly income. She's got a $5,500 $400 emergency fund. She's contributing 20% of her income into a Vanguard Target retirement account. It's a Roth contribution into a 403B. After a year from now, she'll qualify for an employer match. And the employer currently contributes $100 a month into an HSA account. She currently has $49,000 in student loan debt at a $6.8% interest rate and is paying $400 a month towards it, which is more than the minimum required. That $400 a month is included in that $1,900 cost of living figure. And so questions include, number one, should she lower her retirement contributions,

should she lower her 20% contribution into her 403B in order to max out a Roth IRA and HSA? That's question number one. Question number two, should she prioritize repayment of her student loan debt over retirement savings? And then question number three, should she schedule a call with me? Joe, I'm going to send this one to you first. What do you think? I know exactly what I'm going to say, but gentlemen first. Well, I think the answer to this question all revolves around the 403B and her ability to remove funds.

And that's going to depend on actually the employer. So she needs to make sure with their employer that she can get the money back. The reason I say that, Paula, is that when you invest in a Roth, you know, 403B, you know, 4.3B, Roth versus an IRA Roth. Sure, we're going to compare investment opportunities. We're going to compare costs. But let's say that those are the same. If they're the same, why open up another account so you have a whole other page on your dashboard when you don't need to? So the key for me is, in a regular Roth IRA, you're allowed to take the principal out without penalty. The money that the Roth earns has some hangups, has some restrictions. So we don't want to mess with that. But I do

want to make sure that she has as much flexibility as possible. If the 403B, all of the things being equal, if the 403B Roth gives her that flexibility, don't open up another account because it's just one more thing to try to keep track of. If it doesn't and the employer has some hangups, well, then certainly I think she should open the Roth. I mean, so I agree with you. My simple, my simpler answer to that question, and I guess I'm saying this in part for the sake of all the listeners is that generally speaking, and again, this is a broad generalization, but generally speaking, if you open up a Roth IRA, assuming that you income qualify, which this caller does, you will have two advantages. One is that the Roth IRA, you will be able, like Joe, like you said,

you'll be able to withdraw the principal contribution from the Roth IRA, penalty free. You shouldn't. You should absolutely make it a goal to never touch that money, but it is nice to know that it's there if like, you know, poop hits the fan and you need it. So that's one advantage. The other advantage is that you can choose your brokerage. So if you open it up at Vanguard or Schwab or Fidelity, any of the low-cost brokers, you just have a greater likelihood of being able to invest that money in low-fee index funds in the places where you want to put it. You know, whereas with a 403B that's sponsored by your employer, who knows what broker you're using, who knows what investments you have access to. Yeah, but she'll know. Yeah, she'll, she'll, she'll,

She will know, absolutely. But generally speak, like the reason that I recommend prioritizing a Roth IRA over a 401k or 403B after you get the employer match is for those two reasons. It's for the option of principal withdrawal and for the flexibility of being able to choose your brokerage and choose your investments. Right. As far as, so basically, I guess the TLDR of that is, you know, Shelby, you can look at your plan and see, you know, where. where your 4-3B is kept, what options you have. But if Vanguard is a sexier option, I would just go with them. I would just open a Roth IRA and go with them. And as long as you're contributing 20% total to retirement savings, assuming that your goal is to continue contributing 20% total, I know that's one of your questions. But assuming that you decide to continue to contribute 20% towards retirement savings, you can split that between your 403B and your Roth IRA in whatever way makes the most sense.

and that way will be determined by the employer match that you get a year from now. So. Am I supposed to say something there? Da-da-da-da. Jazz hands. And then as far as the HSA goes, one of the keys to using your HSA as a proxy for a retirement account is to make sure that you have your HSA money stored in the type of financial institution that will allow you. to invest it. So if your HSA money is just sitting in cash and you can't invest it, that sucks.

But if your HSA is at a financial institution that allows you to buy broad market index funds, then hey, party on. So mine, for example, and again, I don't know what financial institutions you're using, Shelby, but I have an account with HSA Bank. And HSA Bank links to, they give you a couple of options. I chose TD Ameritrade, unfortunately, Vanguard, Schwab Fidelity. are not among those options. So my HSA bank account links to TD Ameritrade. And so all the money that I put in my HSA, I immediately send over to TD Ameritrade. And then from inside of there, I buy the lowest fee, broad market ETF. And then that's where my HSA money sits. And I don't touch it. So I never spend HSA money on health-related spending. I just use it as a proxy for an additional retirement account. But I know, again, like in the same way that I can tap the principle on a IRA contribution, I know that if I ever did need to tap that money, I could withdraw that money penalty-free as long as I have health-related receipts that can support that. So basically, I've just got a big folder in Dropbox that's, like, health-related receipts.

And I know that if I ever need to withdraw money from the HSA, I can just check that folder, see what those total up to, and that's what I've got access to. And hopefully I'll never have to do that. And then a party down at the sizzler. Dude, Sizzler. Is that where people party in Texarkana, Joe? Well, it's either that or the outback. I mean, you have a lot of choices.

I tell people when they come visit us in town that we'll take you to both good restaurants. Oh, wait, do you not have a Chili's? No, we do have a Chili's. I'm being facetious. We actually have quite a few nice restaurants. We have, what, about 60,000 people that live here. So it's a nice little town if you want to come visit. I sound like I'm part of the Texarkana Chamber of Commerce.

How about a Brio Tuscan Grill? You got one of those? We do not. No, that's too big. That's big city. We have to drive two hours to Little Rock to get one of those, sister. Yeah, that's a, we're giggling all the way for two hours, hoping to get the Brio. We also don't have a P.F. Chang. We don't have one of those. Oh, yeah. The amazing thing when I moved here was how, you know, when you live in a small town, and we only moved here eight years ago and before that I was in Detroit. So when you live in a small town, some of the things that I took for great. granted, like some of these chain restaurants, other people think are just amazing. Like, we're on our way to Dallas, one of the first weekends that we lived here. And, you know, I hadn't been to Dallas besides the airport. And we said, hey, what's a great restaurant in Dallas? And this friend of Cheryl said, oh, there's this amazing plate.

They have the best desserts. It's called the Cheesecake Factory. It's incredible. You've got to go there. You have to go there. Like, I've been to Cheesecake Factory in about four different cities. Oh, it's great. Oh, you got all really four different cities. That's amazing. So I said thank you. And then I went to TripAdvisor and found my own. But, you know, like any discussion, you have to see the other person's side of the cube, right? You have to see what they see and through their lens, not getting to the big city much. Cheesecake Factory is pretty awesome, Paula. Yeah, I do love, well, I love cheesecake. I love chocolate. I love peanut butter. I love Oreos. And I love any place that can combine those four things.

Oh, oh, did I tell you about the dessert that I invented? Oh, no. Okay, quick tangent here. Oh, this is amazing. Okay. So what you do is you get a packet of double-stuff Oreos, and you take out two Oreos and you twist each of them so that, you know, you've got one side that's blank and then one side that has the double-stuff stuffing. So that way, when you put them together, it's a quadruple-stuff Oreo. Oh, ho!

But here's what makes this even better. before you put it together, put on a layer of chunky peanut butter, a layer of sliced strawberries, and a tiny strip of bacon. Bacon. Yeah, I'm totally serious. And then dunk it in a glass of milk. It's amazing. It is a quadruple-stuff Oreo peanut butter strawberry bacon sandwich.

And your eyes are wide open and you're running 900 miles an hour for like the next three hours. And then you take the world's best nap. What do you think powers me through this podcast, Joe? That's it. I got to put up with you, Joe. You could be I have six of those before we even. Yeah, you have me at double-stuffed Oreos. That's, by the way, the key dessert I invented, Paula, very much like yours.

I get a pack of double-stuffed Oreos, and I eat them. Please tell me you dip them in milk first. You have to. Oh, the milk is not even optional. We have a name for people that don't dip their double-stuffed Oreos. what that is? What's that? Heathens. They are heathens. Ooh, strong words from the guy from Texarkana, Texas. Well, you know, we're mixing it up here. I would never say that on my podcast, but on your podcast, we'll create some controversy. You can send your angry letters to

Joe at stacking benjamins.com. That's right. Yeah, I'll have the double-stuffed dario council out in front of my, in front of the basement here, burning torches and, yeah. So Joe, what about the, so her second question, Shelby's second question is, should she prioritize repaying student loan debt over retirement savings? Now, as you recall, she's got student loans of $49,000, government loans at a 6.8% interest rate. And she's currently paying $400 a month towards those loans. Well, the key for me is always a couple things. It's cash flow and interest rate. So a lot of people will go for interest rate first. I like looking at cash flow. So in other words, if I've got a little debt. hanging around and I only I can make one payment to avoid the next four or five months worth of payments and I capture that cash flow right away. I'm going to do that, especially if cash flow is a problem in my family. But assuming that it isn't, then I just go to the interest rate and

6.8 percent, Paula, as you know, it's like a 6.8 percent return on investment. So I like that. What I like doing first is projecting some type of a worst case scenario, when is it's a, the time that that I might see myself needing to be financially independent, so maybe 65, 60, 65. And if I project it just that my... Her goal is early retirement. Yeah, but I wouldn't even look at that. I would just look at putting away for a normal retirement. Am I already putting enough away to get that normal retirement? Because I think paying off the student loans will help her toward the early retirement, right? She'll get cash flow. She'll eliminate that 6.8%. So I'm going with the student loans as long as she's putting away enough to get a normal retirement. Yeah, Joe, you and I,

the last time that you were on the show, we talked about risk premium. And that is what strikes me when she's asking about money that she invests in a broad market index fund versus that 6.8% interest rate. In a broad market index fund, over a long-term aggregate average, she can expect to get maybe 7, 8, 9, 10%, somewhere in that arena, depending on, you know, how long of a time period we're talking about, et cetera, et cetera, depending on a variety of assumptions. Given the fact that the interest rate on her student loans is effectively 7%, you're just shy of 7%. And she may get some minor tax advantage, some minor tax benefits that lowers her effective interest rate. But, I mean, basically she's paying, we'll say 6 to 7 percent.

on those student loans, the risk premium doesn't justify going heavy into market investments. That's basically a really long and complicated way of saying at that interest rate, it makes more sense to pay off student loans. Again, I'm agreeing with you, Joe, cash flow is important. And that's another reason that I'm such a fan of Roth IRAs in particular is because the the money that she puts into a Roth IRA, that initial principal contribution is effectively a secondary emergency fund. So she's already got a $5,500 emergency fund. That principal contribution into a retirement account is sort of a secondary emergency

fund for like really, really, really black swan worst, worst, worst, worst, worst case events. And so that is a big part of the argument for her prioritizing, putting money into a Roth IRA or some other retirement account where she still has access to that initial principal contribution. And once she does that, sufficiently enough that she has, you know, sizable enough cash cushion that she can fall back on in the event that everything goes to hell in a handbasket. And I think she's close because her cost of living is less than $2,000 a month. Her emergency fund is already $5,500. So she's already got an emergency fund that is almost three months' worth of living expenses. Do that one more time.

Max out a Roth IRA for one more year with another $5,500. Boom. Now you've got six months. worth of living expenses, sort of kind of. I mean, that's funny math, really. That's sort of a different conversation of how to conceptualize emergency funds principle. Anyway, I'm not going to go down that road. But once she does that, then she's got the liquidity. She's got the access to capital. And then it makes sense to really get aggressive on the student loans. You know, there is another road while we're talking about risk premium. She could look into refinancing the student loans.

If she really wanted to invest that money, that'll make the risk premium lower. So if she can find a place where maybe she gets those down to, you know, somewhere in the fours, then by all means that that changes our answer to that discussion too. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Shelby, the final question that you asked is whether or not you should schedule a call with me. So for the sake of everybody who's listening, who's wondering what that's in reference to, one thing that I do is, like I have this blog, I have this podcast. I take listener questions every other week. if anybody wants individualized personalized attention above and beyond that, you know, like half an hour or an hour of just personalized attention, I do also have this service page, whatever you'd call it, where I schedule calls with people. But that's a, I charge a high rate on that because effectively, the income that I make from that helps me keep 99% of my content free. And so the income that I make from those private coaching calls allows me to do the rest of this for free.

Honestly, given the income that you make, I would not feel right about that. I really wouldn't. I think that you should prioritize paying off your debt and putting money towards retirement. I don't think that you should schedule a call with me because you make $2,600 per month and you have almost $50,000 in student loan debt. And I just wouldn't feel right about that. See, Shelby, I've got, I've got a different answer than Paula has, which is if you really, really want that call, you know, you have to learn negotiation, Shelby. So here's what you do. You reply to Paula when she says, well, I don't think that this would be a great use of funds. Instead, pay her in double-stuffed

Dorios and bacon and Paula will be all over it. I mean, then you got her. Oh, man. You can't say no, Paula. I know you won't say no. But, you know, that being said, Joe, you and I have now spent, what, 20 minutes talking about Shelby's question? Yeah, yeah. I guess part of the reason that I host these Ask Paula episodes is so that it's exactly for these types of situations where if you have a question and you want personalized, individualized attention on that question, I will happily spend 20 minutes for free discussing

the answer to your question and giving you personalized feedback along with Joe, yeah, as long as I can record it and then broadcast it to the entire community so that everybody in the community benefits. So that's a big part of why I started these Ask Paula episodes is because I was getting all of these questions that were coming in through email and through, you know, it was overwhelming. And I didn't want to ignore them, but I didn't. have time to to answer every individual questions. So, you know. So here you are. Yeah. These episodes kind of, they allow me to, they allow you, Shelby, to get that individualized attention while simultaneously allowing the entire community to benefit from the answer. So that seemed to me to be

the best solution, like the, you know, the win for all parties, a win for the broad audience, a win for you, and, you know, something manageable that I could incorporate into my life. But, And I benefit too from the Bacon Talk. Yeah. Hashtag winning. Right. But yeah, you know, I am not afraid to give advice that is counter to my own interests. And frankly, I don't think that you should pay me.

I think that you should focus on, I think you're doing a great job. And you should focus on building your emergency fund, investing for retirement, and paying off the student loans. I would rather see your money go to that. Good stuff. Yeah. I want to give a shout out to Bluehost. you're interested in starting your own blog, check out Bluehost. They're a company that offers hosting, which is basically the term for the space on the

internet where your blog lives. Absolutely fantastic if you are getting started as a blogger and you need hosting and a domain name. You can learn how to set up a blue host account in five minutes or less by visiting afford anything.com slash start a blog where I've got a full set of detailed instructions, step-by-step guide including screenshots of every step along the way plus a YouTube video. Check that out, afford anything.com slash start a blog. All right. Our next question is from Nicole.

Hi, Paula. I have a two-part question for you. First part is what exactly can you invest in if you use a self-directed IRA. I believe you can invest in things like real estate and gold. but I was wondering if you can also invest in something like royalties. And then secondly, I was wondering which custodian, if any, you would recommend. I've only seen a couple and I just wanted to know if you have any experience with them. All right.

Thank you so much for the show. Hope to hear from you soon. Bye. Thanks for the question, Nicole. Investing in royalties. The royalties off the Afford Anything podcast. That's what she really wants to know. Wow.

Hashtag worst investment ever. Going down already. Right. hashtag do you take dividends and Oreos? Well, you know why it's going down is because we spent so much time talking about insurance right off the top. Pure game changer. And not in a good way. Oh, I completely forgot.

Nobody is still listening to this episode anymore. Just you and I. But we'll have fun with this because this is a fun question that I think people don't know, Paula, the breadth of things that you can own inside of an IRA. You could actually own lots of different things. I mean, you can own almost any investment out there. The issue is, and directly, you could earn racehorses. The answer is, yes, you can own royalties. You can own all kinds of stuff.

Here's the issue. The issue is that you can't touch it in any way. So let's take, as an example, let's take one of your favorite investments, Paula, real estate. And you're going to own a home that you rent out inside of your IRA. You can do that. Number one, you can't own the home. You have to establish a company. that owns the home, not you directly, because if you own the home directly, you touch it,

you've got problems. The second thing is, you can't be the one to go fix it up and go into that house. You also can't be the person that looks at, now this is all my understanding. I'm not a CPA, but I've answered this question a lot in the media before in general. So I'm 99.9% certain that I'm correct here. You can't interview the people that are going to live there. You have to have somebody else do that. And when the rent checks come, they can't come to you.

They have to go to a custodian who then puts it inside of the IRA. If you want a racehorse, she can't go pet it. You can't buy it yourself. So all this stuff, it's got to be hands off to be an IRA type investment. So the answer is yes. You have to be super careful. You also have to think about, and I want to, you know, if anybody's getting excited about Nicole's question, you also got to think about the risk of these things.

You know, if I'm going out and I'm purchasing an individual investment, in a piece of property to put in a real estate investment. And I'm maybe 30 years old. And I can't get at that IRA until I'm 59 years old. I've got 29 years of changes to that particular piece of real estate. If I ever have to sell it, if I, you got a ton of pain in the ass stuff going on. Can be done, not for a ton of people. And because of that, the part of her question I'm not an expert in at all is custodians,

because I discourage people from doing this a ton. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I agree. The self-directed IRAs give you the opportunity to own lots of stuff. You can own partnerships, you can own tax liens, you can own franchise businesses. I mean, you can own rental properties, of course. And a lot of real estate investors talk about using a self-directed IRA in order to buy rental properties. And that is certainly an option. But philosophically, my approach to most things in life, dessert excluded, is figure out what it is you want to achieve. And then figure out the simplest possible way that you could achieve that. And only add layers of complexity if those layers are necessary and if the complexity differential justifies the benefit. So that's like basically. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That was a really nerdy way of expressing that idea.

But functionally, what I'm saying is if you can at all. purchase the investment that you desire, whether that investment is a royalty or a franchise or a rental property, if you can purchase that in a simpler manner, then do so because it just, complexity is the enemy of action and it eliminates complexity from your life. And also, many mistakes that people make are often errors that were triggered by complexity. There was some eye that wasn't dotted. There was some tea that wasn't crossed. And then all of a sudden and everything blew up. Now, there's certainly an industry that has grown up out there that helps you handle all, you know, lots of this. But again, that industry charges money.

It has fees that reduces your returns. So you've got, you know, you've got those additional fees to pay. And in addition to that, you've also got the additional complexity to handle. So that's really basically just a, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I have a similar congruent philosophy about investing and about income streams, not the same, but very much congruent, which is that with my direct investing into building my net worth, I want to make sure that those are skills that I've honed, and I can't be great at a lot of things. So I want to make sure that my direct time and energy is related to the place

where I can have the greatest impact. And if I'm dabbling in real estate or I'm dabbling in royalties or I'm dabbling in racehorses or whatever it is, as part of my investments. Maybe I'm doing that for play, Paula. but I'm not doing it as much to build my net worth. Now, let's say that she is a real estate guru, and she's fantastic at it, and she has piled money and properties into places outside her IRA, well, maybe adding places inside your IRA, so part of your tool belt that's an area where you have a great skill set, then I think go for it.

I just think because you've got a much bigger reach on this podcast, I guess I'm not discouraging Nicole from doing it as much as I'm saying, It's a great question, and yes, you can do it. And if you're listening to this out there thinking you're going to go dabble, I wouldn't. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Exhaust your other options first. Amen, sister. Woo! Thank you, Nicole, for that question.

Let's go to the next one, which comes from... Ooh, our next question comes from Anonymous. Hi, Paula. I'd like your take on the best way to purchase bonds in order to build a balanced portfolio. I generally like to keep my investing simple and easily manageable. My 401Ks and HSA are in target date funds, and my taxable portfolio is primarily in Vanguard total stock market. I know I need to begin building a bond portion of my portfolio,

but with interest rates so low and so many options from treasuries to corporate bonds to indexes, I don't know how to get started. Can you help me with what I should be looking at and how I should be evaluating the average age of maturity in a bond index. For example, what happens in an index when some bonds reach maturity and others do not? I'm in my early 30s and would appreciate any basics you can share about getting started with bonds. Thank you, Paula, and thank you for all the great work you do to keep us focused and informed. Joe, I know you are a bond nerd.

Your name is Bond. Joe Bond. That's not the da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. I'm Joe here to answer your bun questions. I've never actually seen the James Bond movie so I wouldn't know if it was the right soundtrack or not. Of course you haven't. That's so bad. You got to get out more, Paula.

But I know how to make the reference. Like I, on the surface, almost sort of kind of fit in. Right. Hashtag fake it till you make it. Right. That's good. Hashtray pretend I've seen a movie. I'm going to disagree with the premise of the question.

How about that? Ooh. Oh. Fighting words. Let's go. Well, I wonder on our podcast, OG, who is a certified financial planner, often asks, why do you really need bonds in your portfolio at all? Because a lot of people lately have had serious discussions, very good discussions about the volatility of stocks versus the volatility. There's the volatility in bonds, and then there's the perceived volatility in bonds.

And for a long-term perspective, ownership of companies, which is what equities are, remember, a stock means you own a piece of that company, and you're kind of, going to go where that company goes. When you own a bond, you're loaning a company money. So I can see the perceived safety for a shorter term investment of being in bonds. And I do like bonds for that reason. And OG and I fight about this fairly often about that, because he still doesn't like bonds. So I can see that. But for longer term portfolios, if you've got 20, 25 years, I think both of us kind of agree, if you're putting a lot of bonds in your portfolio, you're giving away returns and not really making your portfolio a heck of a lot less risky. Now, you have to keep that long-term perspective, right? Because over the short run, what's going to happen is you've fewer bonds

in your portfolio. It's going to be a little bit more of a roller coaster ride. But we spent a lot of time here already today, Paula, talking about, you can't get this money until X date. If that X date is far in the future and you have the temerity to sit and watch, do you like that? I used a big word. That is a nice word. Yeah, instead of panicking, I think fewer bonds make sense. But that said, I'm happy to talk about evaluating bonds and bonds indexes. So the first thing people have to know is maturity. And a bond has an end date.

It's like, I loan money to you, Paula, because I know you really need cash. And then you to buy more double stuffed orios. To my warriors, right. Right. And then you pay me back. When I reach maturity. Oh. Yeah, and then you might give me some interest along the way.

So there's a few things that you have to ask about a bond. If you're buying an individual bond, what's the coupon? And that means the interest gets paid along the route. Different than like when you make a house payment or a car payment, you'll pay a little piece of that loan all along. A bond doesn't pay anything except the interest until that maturity date. So that's when they're going to get paid back. You can sell bonds on the open market, and this is the key.

A long-term bond is going to swing a lot in the open market based on where interest rates are and based on people's perception of what's going to happen next. So I don't even think we need to get into all that today. But what I will say is to keep it very easy, long-term bond in Texas, something that says it's a long-term bond. You know that's going to swing quite a bit. Right. because the price side are going to swing. If it's a short-term bond, like let's say at Ginnie Mae, you're going to have, well,

and those can be long-term bonds, but they're insured by the government. But if it's a short-term bond, short-duration bond, those aren't going to swing hardly at all. So if I'm looking long-term, I'm probably going to go more with long-term bonds because they'll pay a higher interest rate. If I loan you money for 30 years, I'm going to demand more money than if I loan it to you for 15. In most cases, a 15-year mortgage has a lower interest rate than a 30-year. year. It's the same concept. Right. If you sell your bond fund, some bonds might be at maturity, but when a bond reaches maturity in a bond fund, they just replace it with another bond.

With another bond, exactly. Yeah. So what's going to happen is for the most part, most of the bonds inside that portfolio aren't going to be at maturity, and you're going to sell it based on them selling it at the open market rate. Right. So I feel like this discussion would benefit from separating out, conceptually, separating out buying individual bonds from buying a bond fund. Because, Joe, as you said, when you buy an individual bond, like if you loan me money, then throughout the duration of that loan that I take from you, I pay you interest. Those are the coupon payments. And then at the maturity date, you get the entire principal back.

So if you're buying an individual bond, assuming that there's no default, then that removes a big component of the risk because essentially you're making a loan, you get interest payments along the way, and you get your principal back upon the date of maturity. And so that is the simplicity of an individual bond where your risk of default is really like the primary risk that you're carrying. And any swings in the resale value of that bond during the time in which you're holding it is basically noise that you can ignore because you know that as long as you hold it to maturity and as long as it doesn't default, you'll get your principal back plus whatever interest you made.

Right. Right. So in that regard, individual bonds remove a lot of risk other than that risk of default. Now, a bond fund gets rid of that risk of default by being a big basket of bonds. But again, once you get into a bond fund, then maturity becomes a little bit of a moot. not a moot concept but you know not as important yeah exactly not nearly as important yeah so but i do yeah sorry when i buy bonds for me once you understand a few concepts that rate of the risk of default i'm comfortable in my portfolio taking that risk and i prefer an individual bond for that very reason because i can forget about the noise i understand the concepts of buying a bond there's a few

things to watch out for. Like as an example, the interest rate it says it's paying on the bond is not the interest rate you are going to get as an investor if you buy it on the open market, because it is an example. If a bond sells for $100, I might buy it for $95. If I buy it for $95, that coupon I get is actually going to be a higher percentage rate because I paid less for it. I don't know if that makes sense to anybody. But in a lot of cases, I met people when I was a financial planner that they would overpay for their bonds because they had. what they thought they perceived was a fairly good coupon, which is maybe, let's say, 7%, and they're like, oh, I'm getting 7% of my bonds.

Well, what did you pay for it? $105. You're not getting $7 because that interest rate you get is decreased by the fact that you paid $105, and when they repay you, you're only going to get $100. So you're actually going to lose money on that bond purchase. So once you can grasp that piece, the interest rate they tell you is not the same as you're going to get. individual bonds, you know, as long as you're comfortable with what you said, that risk of

default, love it. Right. Where do you go to buy individual bonds? You know, I rarely do, but I will just use my TD Ameritrade brokerage account. Cool. Now, Joe, I want to disagree with something that you said earlier. Oh, yeah. Here we go. It actually surprised me when you talked about how you aren't a huge fan of holding bonds, particularly for younger people. I Let me see if I can say this in a nuanced way without overly complicating it. I think that for the majority of people, there is a strong argument to having some bond component in your portfolio. And I typically just recommend going with a bond fund because it's simpler, it's easier. You don't have to mess around with this, that, and the other.

So just a Vanguard total stock market bond fund is the simplest 8020 solution. But the reason that I recommend a bond fund for most people is twofold. Number one, generally speaking, and again, these are broad generalizations, but historically, bonds have moved in inverse correlation to stocks, meaning that when stocks go up, bonds go down, and vice versa. Not true. Not true. Not true. Very common misconception. A lot of people say that bonds move directly against interest rates, not against stocks. True, true, true. If you look especially, if you look especially at that 2,000, 2008 downturn, you know, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. True. There's definitely, I agree with you, Joe.

There's definitely a closer correlation, but, you know, bonds moving with interest rates, absolutely yes. But if you zoom out and you look at how that correlates with stocks, generally, and this is, again, just a broad generalization over a very long term, historically, that has also been moved generally inverse with stocks. Here's how I can study that, because I think, I think you're really. right long term. But here's what's kind of cool about asset allocation diversification. This is one of my favorite topics and I'm sorry that we're almost out of time. But the issue for me is when I

first looked at asset allocation, I couldn't believe what I saw when I saw that if I had an S&P 500 fund, let's say, and then I added emerging markets to that fund, which you and I will agree is way more risky than an S&P 500 fund. Now I've got little tiny companies in diverse economies around the world. It can be a kind of rollercove, big time roller coaster ride. You add the two of those together because you have two different types of risk. You actually, over time, lower your risk by adding riskier investments. And so then we add two or three different riskier investments to that portfolio and the risk comes down even more. And people automatically go to a less volatile asset class like bonds, when you can actually, by the way, I'm not advocating going the other way. I'm just

making an analogy. You can actually go the other way. And because you're combining different types of volatility, which is what you're expressing, I think, Paula, is that, hey, you've got this volatility. You can add different types of volatility, and you'll get the same type of portfolio smoothinging out without decreasing. Listen, in a bond fund, you're guaranteeing that you're giving up returns. You're totally guaranteeing that. There's no way loaning money to somebody is going to pay as much as owning the company. It just isn't going to happen. And if it does, it'll be in something like a junk bond. And a lot of advisors will say, why invest in a junk bond where your default risk is through the roof when you could just pick quality companies and invest in those? Because the risk ends up

being not that dissimilar. So I hear what you're saying. I just think that the more we look at the numbers, the more I'm not an advocate for long-term money. For short-term money, I'm, I'm, I love things like Ginny Mays. I absolutely adore bonds for that nebulous five to 10 year goal, you know. I think it kicks the butt of cash. But, you know, and it removes the volatility of the stock market during that time. Hmm. Okay, but what do you think about the behavioral?

I guess I don't want to go too deep down the rabbit hole here. Yes. I totally agree with this here. I think I know where we're going to go. The behavioral component of that volatility, of witnessing that volatility, because generally people underperform the market and it's because people panic when they see what's happened in their portfolios. This is Paula.

This is exactly where you're spot on. You are a hundred a trillion percent spot on. That's the technical term. There's the numbers and then there's the way you're going to act. Once you get past the way people act, I think that I'm right. However, I know the way, having been a financial advisor during two different awful markets, that you know what? I had some clients.

They had to have a lot of bonds in their portfolio. portfolio because they couldn't take the sleepless nights. They worried way too much. They were bound to make dumb decisions. In fact, I was at a, I was at an event recently with a bunch of financial advisors. We were just having this same discussion that the majority of a financial advisor's time is spent with the behavior that your client had and making sure that they don't go off the rails. So I think you have to look inwardly first. And if you can't take that up and down or the fact that I just said, you know, take different risks. If you're going to look at investments individually and you go, oh my goodness, this investment's down 25%, which could easily have an emerging

market market. Heck, that could be down 45%. If you're going to look at your portfolio individually and you can't take that, you certainly shouldn't do that. You should go toward bonds instead. If any listeners are interested in tapping into a much more detailed conversation about this, we had a two-part interview with a guy named Andrew Hallam, two episodes. We broke it up to two episodes and each one was long and detailed. And we covered among many other topics. We covered this in depth. In fact, the Andrew Hallam episode was fairly pivotal in, I forget whether it caused or just reinforced my decision that I decided to go to an all-equities portfolio. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he reinforced your decision. Smart guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, absolutely.

Right. Right. Okay, well, Joe, I think we're running out of time here. I wanted to answer one more question. We've got a lot of questions coming in, which is awesome. But it looks like the, it looks like people are getting tired of us, yo. Why? No, they're screaming at their device. They're listening device. I want more Oreo talk. Yeah. So, okay, cool. So, Joe, before we sign off, could you please let people know who you are and how they can find you. where they can learn more about you, Mr. Joe from Texarkana. Yeah, so I am the creator and co-host of this little show that Paul appears on every Friday called the Stacky Benjamin's podcast. Kiplinger named us, I felt very lucky. We didn't even have to pass them any money. Best podcast 2016 in their December issue, which we're very proud of. Ooh, the December issue.

Oh, and the Art of Manliness website said put us on their list of top podcasts for men. And our podcast is definitely not a manly man podcast. It's just the lighter side of personal finance. Paula, you know that where you guys take deep dives here, if we ever go deep about money, we're doing something wrong. Our mutual friend, Paula, Adam Carroll, who has this great documentary called Rook Busted and Disgusted. He says we have a morning show vibe.

We're not really going for that. We're just kind of entertaining ourselves. So it's actually, this is a secret. It's based on the science of play, where if you think you're not learning anything, maybe you'll pick up a few things. So every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Friday stacking Benjamins. Science?

Dude. How about that? I don't know I was part of a show. Yeah, so I'm part of the Friday shows, the roundtable. Not every roundtable, but the majority of them. And that's been going on for like three, three and a half years-ish, right, Joe? We've had a ton of fun, and we'll have different guests around from writers like Pete the Planner from USA Today, Roger Whitney, the retirement answer man.

Well, people sit in, but generally it's three award-winning writers. You, Len Penzo, who's a crazy man at Len Penzo.com, and Greg McFarlane, the author of Control Your Cash, who we love him because he can be a little surly, Paula. Greg is also my cat sitter, true fact. Which is amazing, because that's one of those facts about Greg. If you heard him, you'd never believe he'd be a cat sitter. And we just learned recently, Greg was once a nude art model. He posed nude for art classes.

It was good money. $25 an hour. hour. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to see those pictures, though. You're like, good thing this podcast is audio only. I know, really. Thanks for having me, Paula. This was fun, as always. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for coming on, Joe. And throwing a wrecking ball through the show, as always. My job here is done. Awesome. All right, you and I can, we can debrief at the Brio Tuscan Grill of Little Rock, Arkansas. Or maybe the Chili's of Texarkana. It's a date. Bye, Joe. Thanks.

That's our show for today. Thanks for joining. Coming up on future episodes of the Afford Anything podcast, I've got an interview with Jen Sincero. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller, You Are a Bad Ack. She's just come out with a new book called You Are a Bad Ack at Making Money. So we're going to talk about bad assery. If you enjoy today's show, please head to iTunes and leave us a review. And also, do me a favor.

head to Afford Anything.com slash who are you to let us know who you are. We're trying to collect a survey of the listeners, which is going to be very helpful in terms of, you know, talking to sponsors, making sure the money comes through the door so that Steve can get paid. Yes, yes, brilliant idea. This is Steve and I approve of that message. So again, that's afford anything.com slash who are you? My name is Paula Panthe, host of the Afford Anything podcast. Thanks for joining us. and I'll catch you next week.