Afford Anything - Ask Paula: “I Ran Out of Gas with 85 Cents in My Bank Account”

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

#537: Frequent contributor Joe Saul-Sehy shares an emotional, personal story of getting into a soul-crushing level of debt in his 20s and early 30s. He owed so much in back taxes to the IRS that he didn’t file a tax return for three years. He ran out of gas and was stranded on the side of the highway, with 85 cents remaining in his bank account. By the time he pulled himself out of debt, his twin son and daughter were seven years old. Learn the gripping, gut-wrenching story of Joe’s past money mistakes in today’s episode. For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode537 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe, how old were you when you got out of consumer debt? Oh, my. Whoa. I was three, maybe 34. And how old were your twins at the time? My twins were seven. Wow. How did that change the trajectory of your life?

Or did it? I guess I shouldn't assume. This is interesting because getting out of debt didn't change my trajectory. What changed my trajectory was the day when I realized I can't keep living like this. when I realized that the laws of the universe applied to Joe Sal C-Hie-high as much as they applied to everybody else. And instead of just dishing good advice to everybody else and watching them get ahead, that, you know what? The reason I wasn't getting ahead was because I thought it didn't apply to me. So it wasn't the day that you got out of debt.

It was the day that you started adopting the habits and taking the actions that ultimately led to getting out of debt. It is 100% the day I made the decision. And it clicked in my head that this is going to go the way I wanted to go, which is not the way that I'm going down now. Jeez. Wow. All right. Well, we're going to talk much more about that in today's very special and very different Ask Paula and Joe episode. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that understands you can afford anything, but not everything. Every choice carries a tradeoff. And that applies not just to your money, but to your time, your focus, your energy. your attention to any limited resource you need to manage. So what matters most and how do you make choices accordingly? Those are the two questions that this show is here to answer. We cover five topics

financial psychology, increasing your income, investing, real estate and entrepreneurship. It's double eye fire. My name is Paula Pant. I'm the host of the show. Every other episode we answer questions that come from you. I do so with my buddy, the former financial planner Joe Sal Cahy. What's up, Joe? It sounds like I'm going to need to be on like the therapist couch. today based on that open. We're going to do a very different type of episode. We are answering only one question because this particular caller has a question where, as you might have guessed, she asks about debt. And it made me think, you know, Joe, you're on the show so often, and you have your own very visceral debt payoff story. I mean, you've talked about running out

of gas. You've talked about your, you know, your car on the side of the road. I won't give your story away for you. But it made me realize that this would be an opportunity, number one, to answer her question, but then number two, for this community to get to know your debt payoff story, your origin story. For people to see Joe cry. Yeah. So we're going to spend about the first two-thirds of the episode doing that. And then after that, in the last third of the episode, we will pivot and go behind the scenes and talk to you a little bit about some of our decision-making processes. We've gotten some questions from this community around how do we make decisions about our sponsors? How do we make decisions about whether or not we address politics?

The last one-third of the episode is going to be more behind the scenes of how we think through these public-facing things that you see. But in the first two-thirds of the episode, we will take the therapist's couch and talk talk about paying off consumer debt. And that conversation will be inspired by this question, which comes from Elise. Hi, Paula and Joe. Thanks for taking my call. My name's Elise, and I love the show. I actually have a few questions for you regarding where I should put my money. For starters, I currently have an 8% auto loan. I was wondering if I should throw all of my extra money towards that

auto loan until it's completely paid off, or if I should only put a percentage of my extra money towards that and then invest the other part of that. Then, as far as my investments go, I have a pension at my job, but I would like to be investing in addition to that. I think a backdoor of Roth is the best option, as we can't contribute to a Roth due to my husband's business income. Regarding the backdoor Roth, is there a way to automate a reoccurring contribution, or do I have to make one-time manual contributions. I'm a little nervous about messing up the backdoor Roth process and having tax implications. Would you recommend working with someone on this, maybe just for the first time? And if so, who? I really appreciate you taking my call and I love the show. Thanks.

Elise, thank you for the question. So I will take the latter half of your question first, just so we can get it out of the way. And that's the part about automating a IRA contribution, particularly in your case a backdoor Roth, you can automate contributions into a traditional non-deductible IRA. After that point, you would have to manually go to your brokerage and process a conversion from your non-deductible IRA into your Roth IRA. So there are three ways that you can do this. Either you do a big lump sum. So make a giant lump sum into your non-deductible IRA. then log in and convert that whole thing in one big lump sum into a Roth IRA. Or if you want to make monthly contributions or periodic contributions,

you would make those contributions into a non-deductible IRA, let it sit in cash, which is, of course, inefficient. And then once a year, or maybe once every six months, once you've accumulated enough money in there, log in and manually process the conversion. So it's a little bit inefficient because you've got a lot of, you know, you've got that money sitting in cash, but it spares you from having to log in and make all of these manual conversions. So that's option number two. And then option number three is you make the

automatic transfer into a non-deductible IRA. And then every single month or every period that you make that transfer, you set a reminder to log in and manually process the conversion. I guess option number four would be that you invest the money. You know, you make the periodic contribution. Yeah. Invest it in something super short term. Well, actually, you know what? You could invest it in something long term. Sell it.

And then because it's a like kind exchange, but I don't, you know, that way it wouldn't have to sit in cash the whole time. But I feel like now we're just overcomplicating it. We totally are. Yeah. Yeah. I think the easy thing, because it sounds like what she wants to do really is not have to think about it. There's no way around not thinking about it at all. Right.

At least once a year, she's going to have to go in and make. flip the switch to turn it into the Roth. But that's just one move a year. So if she calendars that move, does it once, has automatic monthly contributions go there, then she's good. Right. Yeah. I do like that idea, though. She asked, she said, I think Backdoor Roth IRA is a good place for it. It is a good place for it. Yeah, I love the Backdoor Roth IRA. I use Schwab personally, not necessarily recommending them over any other discount brokerage. Like, Fidelity is great, Vanguard is great. But I use Schwab for mine, and it's a very simple process. Once a year, I log in. I personally do it by just making a big lump sum move. So I move a lump sum into the non-deductible IRA,

and then I move that entire lump sum into a Roth. Boom, bada-bbing, bada-a-boom. It's completely painless, very quick. Yeah, and frankly, she could even just do that too. I mean, she could just have money going to her high-yield savings account at Schwab or wherever she has one. monthly into that to build up that contribution and then just make the single transaction every year, hit the traditional for a second, flip it, done. Yeah, you know what? I like that way better than making periodic contributions into the traditional and then letting it sit in cash there.

Because a cool thing there, if she's fighting with debt, Paula, then she's got the money available. Right. Plus, if the money's going to be sitting in cash anyway, may as well put it in a savings account, where you've got the liquidity. Yeah. Yeah, make the lump sum. I like that better too. Teamwork makes the dream work.

Yeah. Look at us workshop that one. We totally did. Yeah. That was us workshopping that live. That is a great answer. And I'll take some of the first part, which is at an 8% rate, does she throw all of her extra money at it? or does she just throw a part of it? It depends on where she is at in, I think what we could refer to as the order of operations, right?

And in this particular case, I agree with a lot of other experts out there who say, you know, get to $1,000 fast, get to maybe double the number of what you think the biggest checked would be, don't pay anything but the minimum toward that debt at first. So once you get to roughly $1,000, then you have this emergency fund.

I would still work a little bit at building the emergency fund beyond that. We can get to why that is in a second here. But I would have still, if somebody go toward the emergency fund until you get to your target, three months, six months, whatever it might be, worth of expenses, whatever that number is. The rest of it then goes toward that debt. If your emergency fund is already built and you have as much as you need in that fund, then we look at the interest rate and frankly another piece that's behavioral, which is how much of your mind share is this taking up, right? Sometimes it's a math question. Sometimes it's a,

this thing's driving me crazy question. But math wise, 8% is a hard enough interest rate to beat that to get a solid 8% rate of return on your money by paying that debt off quickly. Yeah. Pretty good use of money. Really good use of money. So I like paying it down. quickly if you have the emergency fund in place. If you don't, I like splitting it between continuing to build toward the emergency fund and every dollar extra goes toward paying off that debt. The other thing I like, Paula, is as you're paying off that debt, I like it when it makes you a little angry. Because as you gamify the debt, when you get a little angry, you turn into a game, can I do more? How can I do more? What's a way that I can get rid of this quicker? And then you

find yourself coming up with ways to bring in more money. My brain, because I worked in a blue sky income job, I thought about that all the time as I was paying down my debt as I finally got really serious about it. And I also knew that we could sell things around the house and all that money went toward the debt. I would get so fired up about putting $25 extra toward my debt. We would not go out to dinner and we would take the money that we were going to spend at the restaurant and we put it towards the day. Yeah. Yeah, I love those games. I did that when I was saving up to travel. So I was saving for this big, you know, I was going to backpack around the world for two years, which I did. It was a total of 27 months. But as I was saving for that,

I would go to the grocery store and I would fill my car. I would walk around the grocery store. I would fill my cart with everything that I was going to buy, all of the groceries. And then right before I got to the checkout line, I would look at what was inside that grocery cart, and I would pick out a couple of the expensive but kind of superfluous or unnecessary items, like orange juice. You know, because orange juice, it can be expensive and no one really needs it. And so I would put those items back on the shelf, and I would calculate how much that would have cost.

And then I would go after the grocery store checkout, I would go back to my car. and I had this envelope that I kept in the glove compartment of my car, and I would physically take the dollar bills out of my wallet, and I'd put it in the envelope that I then put in the glove compartment of my car. So I would be like, all right, on this particular grocery run, I put back $36 worth of items that I otherwise would have bought. And then I would take that $36 out of my wallet. I'd put it into this envelope, just a standard letter envelope that I kept in the glove compartment of my car. And I would wire. And it, you know, it would build to 400 and then 500 and then 600 and you know, over time, I'd be like, wow, that's an extra thousand dollars. You know, and I got to put that towards the trip. I'm wondering if it works in your head and in everybody's head the way

it worked in mine, which was the more money I had in that, quote, envelope, the more money that I put toward, like, the further I got along on my debt journey, the more, it's almost like the fact that I was doing it was paying interest in my brain. So you've got interest that you're not paying or interest on the money that's quote in the envelope in this account. But because of the fact that it's occupying more and more of my brain this game does. And I think about it more. I was, I was paying down debt more quickly. And it wasn't necessarily that I had more money. It was because it was on my mind more and more often. Like the, I think interest is a good, is a good analogy. Like I felt like there was brain interest. Right. That makes sense. The more it's on your mind, the more it stays on your mind.

Yeah. I mean, they always say you are what you think about. Right. Right. And you know, that's the reason also why I think some of the standard personal finance advice where people say, you know, in your 20s or when you're young, make sure that you do X and Y and Z. Make sure that you're always doing these financially savvy things because it builds the habit. Well, my beef with that advice is that particularly in the fire community and among people who are engrossed in personal finance as their central hobby and their, their central passion, which I was in my 20s. And well, I still am.

I guess it's a lifelong thing. But I, while I developed the habit to save, I didn't develop necessarily the habit or the skill set to save when I wasn't obsessed with it. So it was very binary. It was either I'm obsessed with this thing and everything that I do is based around it, or I'm not obsessed with it and therefore not really doing it. You know, I didn't know how to how to save moderately, I suppose, you know. I was either binge saving or not saving at all.

It was either abstention from saving or just binge saving. There was no like this is part of that. Halfway. Yeah, healthy lifestyle. So in my 20s, I was hyper frugal and I was obsessed with penny pinching. And then once I veered away from that, the pendulum swung hard to the other side. It's party time. Right?

Yeah. So that's my disagreement with people who say, oh, you should save or you should for the sake of building the habit because you might not be learning how to incorporate the habit into your life in a sustainable way. It is wild how this translates from one area of your life to another. You know, every dietary expert you talk about says it's not a diet. it's got to be a lifestyle. Right. I mean, it's really cool about a year ago, I finally adopted just eating locally. We go to the farmer's market every chance we get.

We found places to, we're both carnivores. So we get our meats locally. And I have to tell you how much better I feel, how much I've lost weight, almost unintentionally lost weight because of that. And it truly is something I think I can do forever versus some of the critical. crazy-ass diets I've been on that have been just the dumbest. Like in hindsight, you're like, what are you doing? Right.

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Don't miss out on early Black Friday deals. Head to Wayfair.com now to shop Wayfair's Black Friday deals for up to 70% off. That's W-A-Y-F-A-R.com. Sale ends December 7th. Fifth Third Bank's commercial payments are fast and efficient, but they're not just fast. and efficient. They're also powered by the latest in payments technology built to evolve with your

business. Fifth Third Bank has the big bank muscle to handle payments for businesses of any size. But they also have the fintech hustle that got them named one of America's most innovative companies by Fortune Magazine. That's what being a fifth third better is all about. It's about not being just one thing, but many things for our customers. Big bank muscle, fintech hustle. That's your commercial payments a fifth-third better. Joe, let's talk about your lifestyle shift when you made the decision, as you talked about earlier, to pay off debt, or really more broadly, to stop living in the way in which you had been living. You know, what I've realized in hindsight was I was fighting a lot that had even happened in my childhood. And this definitely is blaming my parents because my parents,

Paula were like a lot of parents. And what I mean by that is when my sister and my brother and I would enter the room and there was any conversation ever going on about how we make money, how we spend money, how we pay the bills, how we save and invest. We were told to leave the room. That was not appropriate for kids. So when I went to college, I literally knew nothing about money, which is why for anyone who's a parent out there or who's teaching people about money, I think the first thing that you have to do is trust a child with a little bit more money than they should have. Now, not enough that they're going to get into serious trouble, but enough that it hurts a little bit without wrecking them forever like it could have done for me,

because I literally had zero money skills. Again, not blame on my parents because, man, if I heard this story over and over from so many people, you just don't talk about it. And I think that's still the case in a lot of families today, right? I can just hear people nodding their head. Yep. That was my family over and over. Yeah. I'm at this college, the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina. And I walk into Mark Clark Hall, which was our student union, the first week of school. And there's this line, Paula, nearly out the door. And I don't remember if it was for a beach blanket or for a frisbee, but I get in the line. And by the way, this is illegal today. The companies can't. Did they find other ways to get at our youth? But then I get to the front of the line and I'm applying for an American Express card. And I'm going to get this beach blanket.

And I say very truthfully, what is your income? Zero. My ability to earn an income, by the way, to pay off any debt was zero. I'm in a military college. We march, right? I don't have time off. I can't have a job. There's no virtual industry I can work in from the barracks.

I can't do any of that stuff. So my ability to earn any money, zero. I put that down all honestly on my card or on this thing. I get my beach towel. You know exactly what happens. A couple weeks later, I get this cool green card that says member since. No idea how this thing works except for the fact I've got this line of cash. We go to the first time we have leave for a weekend day, me and a bunch of my

freshman friends, we were called knobs. You know what we were called knobs at the Citadel, Paula? No, why? Because we had knobby heads because they shave your head. Really? And that's, yes, they call freshmen at the Citadel are called knobs. Huh. Yes.

So apparently I missed those days. Walking in the gutters, doing lots of push-ups. We, but we go out to North Charleston. There was a mall. And Paula, we go to this high-end restaurant. I don't know if you're familiar with it. It was called Ruby Tuesday. day.

Ah, yes. Very high in. So fancy. Fancy. Sal a bar, the whole deal. Yeah. The check comes at the end, and there's six of us. The check comes.

And me, I'm from Michigan. I'm in South Carolina. I don't know any of these people. I just want to get along. And I take out this beautiful green card and I go, I got it. And obviously, everybody goes, really? And I go, oh, yeah, I got it. It's great.

Power move. It's a power move. And everybody is thanking me and I'm buddies with everyone and I pay for lunch. And then I walk down the mall to Nordstrom because God knows I'm like a magnet for the most expensive store in the mall. And I'm not a great shopper, but I'll tell you what I am great at. I'm great at looking what's on the mannequin and going, ooh, that looks good. And there was this, the year is 1987. And I had this, this sweater that I bought.

was so Duran Duran Fancy. I still own it, by the way. I should have worn it. But it is, well, it's hot in Texas right now, but it was this bright purple. And it had this green, this wild Paisley kind of looking cool V-neck. I seriously looked like the missing member of Duran Duran in this thing. And I didn't think about it. I just put it on the card.

Well, about, you know, three weeks go by. And I, there's no such thing yet as electronic. statements. And the cool thing at the Citadel was you would go to Mark Clark Hall to check your mail. And on some random days, you would go to the mailbox and have one of those glass fronts and you'd look and you'd see a letter and your heart would go pitter-patter because is it my parents sending me something? Right. There was this young woman that I sat next to on the flight over there. She lived in Colorado and we were writing back and forth. Was it a letter from her like was it what was it and i opened it up it's a letter from american express and i'm sure it's

american express thanking me like we make a good team they give me a card i spend the money high five it's going to be great so uh i open it up it's a freaking bill i have to pay them and by the way american express card the green one was a charge card not a credit card i couldn't just make a minimum payment. You have to pay the whole thing. So I did what any smart kid that isn't going to make any money can't make any money would do in this situation. You know what I did, Paula? Called your parents? I called my mom. Yep. First thing I did. And I said, mom, we have a problem. We. What is this we business? There's a great older book. A lot of the afford anything community might have heard of the book called the One Minute Manager, just a classic book about

managing people. Highly recommend it, older book. But they came up with a whole line of books. And there was one book called The One Minute Manager meets the monkey. And the monkey is this. Paula, I work with you and you and I get on a Zoom call. And the monkey is on my back, this problem that I have. And I say the words, Paula, we have a problem. And if you buy it, that and you say, what is our problem? Now the monkey has swung away from just being on my back to being on both of our backs. And usually what happens in a lot of workplaces still today, the boss goes, I'll take care of it. And then I walk out and it's great. And that was my goal, right? I mean, my goal was to get this debt off of my back and onto my parents back because what was I going to do? But my mom didn't answer that way.

She didn't accept the monkey. My mom said, no, I think you have a problem. And about 90 days later, the card was done. I went to a collection agency. I spent the summer then in crappy jobs back home paying this collection agency. My credit was horrible. But that wasn't enough for me. When I had my first jobs, every time I had a chance for credit, I took it. and I still spent the money like it was my money.

And it wasn't my money. And I had no appreciation for interest. And even when I became a new financial planner and I'm teaching other people the secret to getting out of debt, I thought that didn't apply to me because Paula of a big lie that most people still have. I think most Americans think most people around the world. even believe in this lie. You ready for it? Oh, can I guess? Yes. I'll make more later. If I just make more money, this problem will take care of itself. I can cover up my bad money habits by

just making more money. And at the time, as a first year financial planner, I made about $85,000. By the way, that was in 1993. Oh, I am so putting that into an inflation calculator right now. BLS.com.com. Gov, 85,000 in January 1993 has the same buying power as, are you ready? Can we get a drum roll? $187,000 in July 2024. Almost 200,000. Wow. But Paul, it didn't matter what I made. And by the way, I had clients like this too. It didn't matter how much money I made. I had clients back then that made $250,000 had trouble making their payments on their stuff and managing their budget. If I made, instead of $85,000, if I made $100, I would have spent $120. If I had $120,000, it would have spent $140. And if I had $140,000, would have spent $150, because I was doing back of the envelope math. And I thought the second lie was, if I make this money, that's who I am. Meaning, I make $85,000, I can spend $85,000. There was no thought process

around future me or around I am not my paycheck. So you bring home money to, you bring home money to, Joe Sal Cahy, Inc. Like a company brings home money, they go, hey, let's just deploy all this right now, right? They figure out what the game plan is, what they really want to do, and then they do what they want to do, and they use that money to fund the goals.

And it's funny when I started divorcing, which sounds like a strong word, but I think I use that word on purpose. I needed to completely divorce that my paycheck is me. And that was part of why I very, a lot of people quote me when I say that a trick for me that I taught to a bunch of people. I've given this advice on this show because it worked for me, especially if you've commissioned

income or up and down income like I had, take that money, put it in a separate account and then give yourself a paycheck. And that paycheck was not based on the amount of money I had coming into that first account. That paycheck was based on the amount I needed to live the lifestyle really wanted to live. And by the way, the second I started doing that as part of this whole process, all the sudden, all my mistakes began fixing themselves. Because when I had a set budget all the time based on what I really wanted to do, I got away from using other people's money to solve my short-term problem without a long-term solution, much, much, much, much, much more effective. But that wasn't it. I didn't know, I didn't know how fast,

that would accumulate. I also got to see firsthand that everything's fine until it's not. And then all a sudden, when you can't make the payment, that ball starts rolling downhill very, very quickly. Everything's fine until it's not. That resonates. It reminds me of something Morgan Howsell talks about, where he says, good things often build slowly. Bad things tend to happen all at once. But if you really unpack that, bad things, there's often an inflection point where the, bad things come to fruition all at once. But behind that inflection point, the circumstances that made that inflection point possible accumulated over time. I'm thinking as you're speaking, I learn from analogies. And I have a friend who is a physician who works with older people.

And he talks about how often people late in age, late 80s in their 90s will break a leg, they'll break a hip, they'll have a fall. And that is very quickly, they will go from healthy and fine and everything's great to they pass away within six months. Just because the underlying engine is not what it used to be. In my case, I didn't have the underlying money engine at all. I was just paycheck to paycheck, just making it, making it, making it, making it, making it. And then something, the first bad thing would happen.

And to your point, it was done. Because then all this underlying, there is no foundation. There's no backbone. There's no budget. There's no strategy. There was another piece for me, which is that my spouse, Cheryl and I also didn't talk about money. And because we didn't talk about money, and I was a special. endaholic Paula, and I was a financial planner who wasn't doing good. I wasn't doing well. I was kicking

ass. I was a first year financial planner making almost $200,000 in the Midwest on a retail level. I wasn't a Goldman Sachs banker making a million dollars in my first year, but a dude working with retail people that had a creative writing major, right? Wow. Yeah. Who comes in with a bunch of finance majors and I light it up. I was one of the top advisors in the Detroit area for first year advisors. I was the rising star. And my own personal financial picture is in shambles. So I'm smart enough to figure this out. I know I can figure this out. If I just make more money, I will figure it out. So I also hit it from my spouse. Wow. So when the phone call start coming, you can imagine how then that went. Because nobody likes to be lied to have things hidden from them. So most of the advice that I

give today comes from personal experience because this work for me. The final straw for me, and then we can get into the healing. The final straw was during that first year, I make $85,000. I get this money all is 1099 income, meaning I own my own business. I don't understand credit. You think I understood how to run my own business? I had no idea. Business structure, business set up how a business ran. I just knew how to talk about money and solve other people's problems. Then the money came in and I'll set money aside for taxes later because I need all of this today right now because I don't know the math. So I get advice around April 1st. Taxes are due on April 15th. April 1st, I start looking around like, hey, I need some CFP

to help me with this stuff. I like 15 days to file my taxes. So let's get this done. So I get this name, a guy named Bill, CFP named Bill. I go and I meet with Bill. And Bill's like, hey, you have this, you have this, you have this. I'm like, what, what, you need? What? Huh?

So I cobbled together a few things. And because I didn't know all the things that you can write off for a business, I gave Bill next to nothing. So Bill on $85,000 of income then tells me that I owe like $12,000 in taxes. Right. It could have been $200. I didn't have it. Right. It could have been $75. I didn't have it. I had no credit, no money, no recourse. I certainly wasn't going to come clean about tax debt to a family member. Like I wasn't going to say that. So I did two things. I got mad at the profession I was working with. I literally said to Bill, how can you do this to me?

It's not Bill's fault. It isn't Bill. Now, on one hand, I realized Bill wasn't the right guy for me. And I'll get back to this. But I realized Bill wasn't right for me because I needed people with the heart of a teacher. I love, we had a guest on recently at Stacking Benjamin's John Hope Bryant. He's a financial activist. He's a wonderful man.

He's great. John Hope Bryant has an older book called The Memo. And he's like, there are people that just haven't gotten the memo. I was that guy, Paula. I was totally that guy. I didn't get the memo. I didn't know crap. I'm like, really?

How does all this work? And then we're expected to know it. We're expected to understand exactly that works. I didn't know anything. And so here I am because I'm a good talker and because I'm taught these sales skills and because I know this stuff works from third parties. I can teach it to other people. I'm a good teacher.

I'm teaching other people I got out of debt, but once again, I didn't think these rules applied to me. So I went and did my own thing and I'm just digging harder and harder and harder. Oh, and along the way, this is fun. Along the way, by the way, in my bank account, because I didn't have any money in my bank account, I would also do that with back of the envelope math and Bank of America, every single time that I would do an overdraft, another 40 bucks. Yeah. And then there was an overdraft on the next transaction, the next transaction, next transaction,

because I would then put $41 in, but they were already negative. the next one. And so then there was another one. And I had hundreds of dollars in, in overdraft fees, all because I didn't get it. Completely my responsibility, by the way, I'm not shirking responsibility, completely my responsibility, but I didn't get the memo. I didn't know, I didn't get it. So that was the first thing I did was I got mad at Bill. Bill was not the right person. I needed people around me who were teachers. I needed people around me that would explain things to me like I was the third grader, even though I was explaining stuff to other people. I also needed to look at people who had walked this walk before because a lot of people I worked

with were just good with money and came from families where their parents talked about money and they just, you know, they immediately had the funds to get out of situations. I need somebody who had walked this walk before, those people around me. I needed to change my inner circle of people. And that was effective. And Bill was not that guy. But the second thing I did was the other smart thing that anybody would do when you owe a bunch of money to the IRS and you don't have it. You just don't file the tax return. So for two years, I did not file a tax return.

And then the government caught up with me. And by the time, all of these fees were done. And when you look at the, when you look at the amount of the so I didn't file that year. I didn't file the next year. And I didn't file the third year. and I had not only the interest payments, but these monster penalties that the IRS assesses. So then the IRS writes threatening letter, threatening letter, threatening letter. And finally, the house is going to come down.

And by the way, this is, this was the scary part, was that I was going to, if they had put a lien on my property, which is what they were going to do. They were going to lock down my bank account, locked down my property. they were also going to garnish my wages. If they garnish my wages and the company found out, I couldn't have been a financial planner anymore. Oh, no. I would have been gone, completely gone. So I realized, and you brought this up earlier, I was meeting with some people across town. I'm in a rusted out minivan because it's all I can afford. And I'm driving through the middle of nowhere and I run out of gas. And by the way, I parked this minivan around the corner because I didn't want the, I didn't want, I didn't want my clients to know what I drove. Because my clients looked at me a certain way and I didn't want them to know.

Now I would drive that rusted out minivan as a badge of honor. I would totally do it. But not back then. So I walk like a mile to this mobile station. The dude doesn't want to give me the gas can because he thinks I'm going to steal it. I had found like 85 cents in change underneath the car seats on the floor and, you know, in the console between. And so I'm taking out pennies and nickels and dimes. And, and I put 85 cents worth of gas. The guy makes me give him my wallet, which I guess he could

have my wallet. He could have my wallet. It was worthless plastic in it, my ID. I did give him the gas gas came back. And I drove home and I barely made it. I don't even remember. how I made it home because 85 cents shouldn't have. Shouldn't have made it, but it did. But that was the day I cried. And that was actually the day when I ran out of gas. I'm like, this is done. I'm done. I got to do things a different way. And I went home and Cheryl and I talked and that's when we began instituting what became now the weekly meeting that I talk about. It can't be monthly. It can't be quarterly. I see these money geeks that want to have a meeting twice a year with their spouse is a loved one. It's like some freaking Camp David Summit. Your spouse doesn't want to Camp David

Summit. Your spouse wants you to connect and to do it fairly quickly, make it fun. So it's 20 minutes once a week. Here's where we're at. The fighting, by the way, went away immediately when we started doing that. Immediately went away. We were on the same page. And then our habits started changing, partly because I knew that she was looking. I was about to say, we knew each other were looking. Let's call it the way it was. I knew she was looking. But our habits, my habits began to change.

And then I went out and immediately found a CPA who would work with the IRS. And immediately, by the way, you know what's funny? When I stopped not looking at it and I instead turned around Paula and faced the IRS and said, okay, here's where we're at. Do you know how quickly this got taken care of? The IRS was a man. The people we dealt with at the IRS were so compassionate and were so good. And I was on a payment plan like that immediately.

And had I done that two years earlier instead of paying the stupid tax of all this just, I'm not going to look at it and it'll go away and I'll find more money and I'll take care of it. Immediately when I had this woman that goes, nope, we're taking care of this right now. And then I went and I talked to a person at the firm that I was at, at American Express. I went to this manager and I told him. And he immediately went to bat for me that, hey, here's what's going on. Here's where we're at. Here's what Joe's doing. And he and he told me, he said, hey, had you not come to me, you would have been gone. Like if I would have found this out from any other way but you, you'd be God. And I certainly legally didn't have to tell him where I was at. But I just

came clean with everybody. I came clean with everyone. I changed the people that I was learning from. I started taking my own advice that I could see was working for clients. And then that became the game. Let's get out of debt. Oh, and the other thing, too, was instead of avoiding the phone calls from creditors and playing that, I'm going to pay whatever creditor calls me in as meanest, which is, by the way, the game most people play, which is why credit, you know, these credit agency people are so mean. And they are mean. my God, they're so mean. They are so disgusting. And they lie to you to get money because I worked with so many of them. But then when I just stopped taking the call and I was in charge, I was like,

nope, my job is not what I did yesterday. My job is what I'm going to do tomorrow. And the cool thing is I paid everybody back. I paid everybody back. And within five years, I was doing, I had this great foundation. And what's funny is I went from being this guy digging really fast to a guy that was a rocket ship because when I stopped trying to take shortcuts and I instead built the emergency fund, stop using the credit, started having weekly discussions in 20 minute intervals with my spouse about how we're spending money so we're on the same page. Nothing really analytical. You know what I mean? just really truly foundational stuff. And I divorced myself from my income and said,

this is how much we need to spend. This is how much I make. Who cares how much I make? It doesn't matter about how much you make. This is how much I want to spend. All of a sudden, my net worth went from negative to zero to rockin fairly fast. And then later I sold my business and then it got really, really good. Wow.

During that time when you came clean and you started, when you started coming clean and when you started really facing it and addressing it, did you have people? Did you have advisors? Like, I'm thinking like, like was, did you go to an accountant and say, hey, I haven't filed taxes for the last two years or three years or however many? That was the first person I went to. Actually, it's funny. Before that, I trusted a couple of my financial planner friends. I remember because it was specific, I have a great friend, friend Dan. Dan Posdell, who's been on my show and is a great friend. I went to Dan because I really needed a car because that rusted out minivan was horrible. But to do that, I had to come clean about my entire situation. And that was his advice. You need to surround yourself with better people. You need people shining the mirror at you, showing you the mirror. This is what you should be doing. And this is, this is what you're actually doing. How did you, how did you, sorry to cut you off, how did you find those people. I was already going to networking meetings of professionals in different areas, and I knew

a lot of good professionals in the area. So there was a woman named Sue Virgin. Sue, an amazing, still an amazing accountant in Detroit. Hey, Sue, hope you hear this. Sue is incredible. So I went to Sue. And Sue thought, by the way, I'm Joe financial planner, shooter guy. And then I tell her what's going on. And she's like, we're not doing this anymore. Like she literally told me like I was a two-year-old, we're not doing this anymore, which is exactly what I knew was going to happen when I went and told Sue. So I went to the specific person that I thought would, would do what I needed, which was tell me what to do. She goes, we're not doing this anymore.

You already know you can't be doing this now. First thing we're doing is we're going to call the IRS. She literally, in that first meeting, puts the phone on speaker phone and calls the IRS. Wow. Wow. Here's him. He hasn't paid taxes three years. What are we going to do? And the lady was so nice. Wow. It was not at all what I thought was going to happen. It sounds like it was good to have that person in the room, to have sue the accountant in the room. It was. Well, and what's funny is this is the thing. And this is why I'm such a advocate, as you know, Paula, for advisors. And especially in the fire community, we're so anti-advisor because they might cheat us. And my reply to that is your interview.

skills suck and you got to interview better because mine were. I just took a random recommendation about a guy who knew taxes named Bill. Bill's a fine accountant, but he wasn't for me, right? I needed to interview better. And once I knew all these people and I knew a lot about Sue, I knew specifically who to go to and Sue delivered because it was the right person with the right attitude doing the right thing by me. The advisor, Sue is not emotionally attached to any of this. I'm incredibly intelligent, but to have somebody, in the room who's not emotionally attached to where I'm at, who isn't going to have to go home and fight with a spouse or lie to a spouse or whatever, who's going to have trouble sleeping at

night or the phone's ringing because of, she's not dealing with any of that. She has the same logical problem I have. But because of the fact that I'm emotionally invested in it, she's doing stuff I already knew I should be doing, but she has the guts to actually do it because her emotional involvement is zero. And I think that's who we all need. I have never heard a more compelling case for the importance of surrounding yourself with the right people, having a personal board of directors. I think it's the reason why you and I do these shows too, you know, is to be that for other people. Certainly it's a reason why I do stacking Benjamins is because I know there's a lot of people out there that haven't gotten the memo. And,

it truly is the format of, and my goal here is not to, you know, turn this into an advertisement for stacking Benjamins. But I think that for people that know me and know my brand, that's why my brand is light. It's fun. It's relaxing. It's you can do this. We're not going to yell at you about your money. We're not going to do a Susie or Dave. And don't get me wrong, I think that, you know, for the right audience, they do, they do what they do. That's just not, that's just not me. And I was afraid somebody's going to yell at me about my money. That wasn't going to help me. having people I knew were on my team and had my back that would go, yeah, Joe, you're, you're better than this.

You can do better than this. That's who was going to work for me. So do we want to boil that into an order of operations? Yes. Just briefly. Yes. Let's make that an order of operations. I think the first piece, Paul, in the order of operations is that you have to decide.

You have to, and by the way, when I say decide, it can't be like, yeah, I'm not going to eat ice cream for the next two days. It's not that. It's that there was a switch that flipped in my head. that was like, this is not happening anymore for me. I'm changing it. I'm changing it right now. That is that is a number one, your order of operations. Then number two is look at where your advice channels are coming from and the surround sound you're telling yourself. I need to. I actually have somebody in my life right now who every time I have a discussion with them,

I doubt myself. So I have found myself limiting the amount of time I spend with them and my life has been so much better. I really like them. They're a very nice person. I, I have limited my time with them. And I had to make moves like that at that time because I was spending too much time with spenders and ladder climbers and people that were everything to everybody else. I'd be true to me. So it wasn't just Sue. It was literally the people I surrounded myself with.

And then I had to commit to not using the plastic and communicating about where my expenses were coming from, about what was important and what wasn't important. The one thing I needed to avoid, by the way, I needed to avoid what I call kind of a red beans and rice existence. Because in my, not just with me, but also with clients when we tried to do that, like people would come to me and they would be all excited about paying off their debt. And I certainly was at this point. After I met with Sue and we negotiated with the IRS, I walked out of that office. I hadn't done crap yet except negotiate a payment player with the IRS. And I'm walking out like I own the universe.

I'm so excited and we've done nothing. Everybody gets euphoric, but that euphoria doesn't last. It's like sugar. So you've got to be able to face the down days later when you're not so up. So because of that, you then have to create these, you have to create systems. There have to be systems to make sure that the money goes in the right place. You can't trust yourself. You have to have these systems, which for us,

weekly meeting, put enough money into the emergency fund that we can get through an emergency. Stop using the plastic. Live an all cash lifestyle. I certainly don't live a all cash lifestyle anymore, by the way. But I had to learn the value of a dollar and how expensive interest to somebody else truly is. So if I didn't have the cash, I wouldn't spend the money. You also have to know yourself a little bit during this. not order of operations, but as an aside, there are people out there that say don't use plastic

because of the fact that money spends easier. That's not me, Paula. Because I set up tracking systems, if I used plastic, I knew it was accountable. If I use cash, which studies tell you, you spend less money with cash, I spend more because I know I can blow this money and nobody's ever going to know, right? It's the old liar Joe coming back, right? So, my wallet still today. Wow. Yeah. For those of you watching on YouTube, he's this wallet.

I don't even need a wallet. It is, it is always empty. If there's any money in here, I will guarantee you it's still at 56 years old and I'm way different person now. It's gone in the next two days. It's gone. Every time I have cash,

it's gone. I just blow cash. So I don't carry cash. So there's a little bit of this know yourself too. But then once, once I was all cash all the time and I built that emergency fund and we had those meetings, everything changed. I think that's your order of operations. But I think it starts sooner than just the, you know, most financial experts will say it

starts with with $1,000 in a savings account. It starts with the decision. That is such a mic drop that I, it starts with the decision. That's your mic drop moment. I have heard elements of your story, Joe, but I have never, I've never heard it like that in how many years have I known you? Twelve? A long, a long time. Yeah, I think, I think we met. Yeah, 12 or 13 years. I think we met in 2012. So yeah, I've, I've heard those elements. I'd heard about running out of gas. I'd heard about the 85 cents. Wow, I've never heard it told like that. That, I mean, that sounds truly transformative. That sounds harder. Wait, I have to ask, actually, were any drugs or alcohol involved in all of this? Were you, were you drinking? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah,

drugs, no. Alcohol, sure. Yeah. Was that contributing to the problem? No. Nope. No. I probably drink as much now as I did then. But, but, but there were nights, there were nights then that, um, that certainly using, using, uh, beer, wine as a, I've never been a hard alcohol drinker, but using beer wine as a, as a, is a, as an escape valve. Like, uh, you know, um, like a lot of people will after a 40 hour week. Right. Like, you know, working for the weekend and you have a beer to relax. There were sometimes when I would just use alcohol to calm myself down. All right. But it doesn't sound as though that was amplifying the problem.

No, not at all. Just my addiction to the dopamine hit, I think like a lot of people, I had a bunch of crap that I didn't need own, just stupid stuff, buying things on payments. Yeah. And then the IRS was truly the big kick. like the credit card debt was was already was already bad enough but when the IRS problem hit like then it was just then it was rough it was interesting to hear you use the word compassionate to when you were describing the IRS agent that you spoke with I've never heard the word IRS and the word

compassionate in the same sentence before after that day I started calling the IRS for my clients and Tina on my team who you know who also worked for me when I was an advisor. She will also tell you about us calling the IRS. And I have rarely found the IRS representatives to not be compassionate. Yeah, it is, it is for the people. There's anybody listening here that's an IRS, one of those phone people. God bless you, because you're here in all kinds of crap all the time, I'm sure. And the way that, the way that the experience I've had working with the IRS on a personal level. Of course, that was a long time ago. But luckily, I haven't talked to the IRS about almost 20 years. But back then, just amazing, Paula.

Wow. Thank you to all of the frontline IRS agents who do their job with compassion and heart and humility and grace. And thank you, Joe, for sharing. We're going to take a break right now to hear from the sponsors who make this show possible. And when we come back, we got some great feedback from many of you after we aired that behind the scenes episode that we recorded in Boise, Idaho. Oh, that was so fun. That was amazing. Oh, that was great.

And so we will follow up on that and share some more behind the scenes. That's coming up next. Get you and your crew to the big shows with Go Transit. Go connects to all the main concert venues like TD Coliseum and Hamilton and Scotia Bank Arena in Toronto, and Go makes it affordable with special e-ticket fares. A one-day weekend pass offers unlimited travel across the network on any weekend day or holiday for just $10. And a weekday group pass offers the same weekday travel flexibility from $30 for two people

and up to $60 for five by yours at go transit.com slash tickets. Welcome back. Joe, let's talk a little bit about some of our decision-making processes, how the sausage gets made. I love that. You know, this is my favorite thing to talk about. No, let's talk about my debt problem more. Aw. Well, you know, the thing is when you take the factory tour, when you take the M&M's factory tour or the Guinness Factory Tour, and you understand what really goes into developing a product, I think it helps you understand that that pint of Guinness or that bag of M&Ms with greater depth. And so for people, I guess, who are aspiring beer makers or candy manufacturers, you know, that. that resonates.

And so we heard from a lot of you after we did our behind the scenes in Boise, particularly from those of you who are interested in starting digital footprints of your own, that you enjoyed hearing some of the behind the scenes discussion. I used to think myself, by the way, before we had podcast, before I had a podcast, I was already consuming a lot of podcasts and enjoyed the format. But I was thought people just kind of turn on the microphone. go like the amount of the amount of behind the scenes there is in the first blows me away still today. Yeah, exactly. There's so much behind the scenes. Like, but when we actually show up at the

microphone, the amount that of work that's already been done just to get to turn on the microphone is not at all what I thought it was. Yeah, exactly. It's, it's, it's an enormous workload. You got a question about, as an example, the ad reads. Yeah. So I got this question. This came in on Instagram earlier today. And it was a great question. So I wanted to share it with all of you. So wonderful. She wrote to me this morning and said, could I ask you a question about your sponsors? Something has been feeling off about some of the ad spots. And I wrote back and said, of course. Yes, I would love to hear feedback. Please ask what have you been noticing. She wrote back and said, thanks so much for your openness to discussing this. I was curious if you

personally use and like every single sponsor or only some of them. I find it very competitive. telling when a podcaster shares products and tools that they personally have vetted and like, and it makes them feel trustworthy to me. You also seem, as the person with the highest integrity I have ever, ever, ever experienced, while three ever. Wow. No pressure there. No one is more deserving of public trust than you.

Wow. That's very flattering. Thank you. I love the ads that you mentioned about Monarch Money and Quince. I've learned about these from you and definitely consider these to be valuable resources. However, there are other product ads that sound like very stock scripts, and I don't have confidence that these are honest endorsements in the same way, and it makes me feel hesitant. That's an excellent question. So I want to walk you behind the scenes through our vetting process as we vet sponsors because there are an enormous number of sponsors that we turn down.

And there are sponsors where we really do a lot of back-and-forth negotiation. on whether or not I will give a personal endorsement to the sponsor. Basically, this is our process. So here is our process. There are three types of sponsor ad reads that you are going to hear on the Afford Anything podcast. And Joe, I'm curious to know if you have the same process in stacking Benjamin's. Okay. Number one, there are the products, the obvious home runs that I use and I love and I'm actually

kind of obsessed with to the point where it's a problem. Quince? Oh my, I legit have a spending problem on quince. Um, like it's, it's ridiculous. My closet is slowly as, as old clothes leave and get replaced by newer clothes, my closet is slowly turning into just the Quince Depot. It is, it's, I mean, so, like somebody needs to be able to. block that website from me. So that's, that's a, for me, a no-brainer. And I actually learned about quince when they came and they asked if they could sponsor the show. I had never heard of them before. And so I, they sent me a complimentary, two complimentary sweaters. And when I wore those, I was like, damn, this is good. So then I bought two more. And then that started what turned,

what really has turned into like a buying spree that just needs to stop. because it's getting out of hand. Quint, it'll mess up your money. That's the best endorsement on a money show. So good. So good, you'll blow your budget. It's true. That's how much I like it.

I like it to the point where it really is. It's just it's kind of blowing the clothing. budget. So quince.com slash paula if you too want a spending problem. That's the best. So that's a no-brainer. Monarch money. Same thing. We had a whole episode. We answered a listener question about how Monarch money can be kind of addictive. It's like, okay, I've removed TikTok from my phone, but I still have Monarch. And it becomes one of those addictive apps that you're checking all the time. And you're like, I got to take this off my phone.

Okay. You know? So, yeah, so those are the home runs. So, okay, that's one of three categories of sponsors. Another category of sponsor are products that I use personally, but their team wants me to read the script verbatim. So I either have zero leeway to go off script based on the terms and conditions of the contract, or there's an enormously defined one or two sentences where I'm allowed to freestyle, but the rest of it has to be verbatim script.

And we do know that ahead of time. Yeah, we do. We know that's what we're getting into. And usually these happen in industries that are heavily regulated. And if we say the wrong thing, then they get a monster fine. And I could actually give you an example. We have Peter Malook on. He co-wrote a book with Tony Robbins.

about money a few years ago. Peter Malook, one of the biggest financial planners in the United States. Paula, he had a radio guy locally who was a client of his who during the ad read just said, and I use him personally and I love him. That is a personal endorsement not allowed. Peter Malook got a monster fine. And Peter Malook didn't even do anything wrong. The DJ on the local Kansas City radio station just had this glowing experience and wanted to share it, he didn't know that there were laws against that. So there, in some industries, there are very clear fences where they're like, you can't say anything but these words. Right. You have to say these words. There was one particular sponsor and I probably can't say

who it is, but it's a sponsor that's currently running that you're hearing that I went one word off script. And it was one of those inconsequential words like even or only. It's one of those kind of filler words that you sometimes throw into a sentence. I fortunately, their team wanted to review the ad spot before it went out. They reviewed the spot. They sent it back

to me for a re-record. Yeah, just for literally a filler word that doesn't change the meaning of the set. I think it was like just or even. or it was just one of those, maybe it was like, I don't know, it was one of those filler words that has no impact on the meaning whatsoever, but they were that strict about the script being read verbatim. So that's the second category that you hear. And if it sounds like a stock script, it's because it has to be. Can I, it's, it is funny. So one sponsor that we have, I've heard this

sponsor on a comedian's show. And what's interesting that I'm going to start experimenting with, because, as you know, Paula, we have a lot of comedy on stacking Benjamins. He says the exact words, but he applies some annunciation that makes it pretty funny. Ah. And it's, and it's so good. It is so good. And I don't think I can, I don't know that I can say who the sponsor is, but, but I think we're going to do that. The feedback that we got, uh, when we inquired about that was, yeah, they love it. Yeah. But because it isn't the brand managers that don't want you to not venture off. It's the lawyers. The lawyers say you have to say these exact words. So for this one heavy regulated sponsor, this comedian does some hilarious stuff. So I'm thinking, will you text me right now

and tell me who that is? Look, Joe is texting me while we're in the middle of recording this show. that that's that's where we've gotten to. I'm going to tell you right now not only who the sponsor is, but who the comedian is. Oh. Yeah. How about that? Wow. That's funny.

I was, I was, yeah. And you know that sponsor's pretty strict. Yeah, I know that sponsor very well. Yes. Anyway, I did something on a recording we did yesterday, just a little bit playing around with that or a couple days ago when we did our roundtable. you heard me kind of play around with just a little bit of it. Ah, okay. All right. I may do, I may do more of that.

But I might get, I might get a little creative on that one then. All right. But let me tell you about some others. Like, you know, because I know you did this too, Paula, we have some pushback. The biggest sponsor, and I know they're going to be A.O.K. with this. The biggest sponsor that we have at stacking Benjamins, one of the, or two biggest sponsors, is Navy Federal Credit Union.

And I'm very excited about Navy Federal because we have a lot of military members. O.G was in the military, as I mentioned earlier, I went to military college. Man, if we can support good organizations that support our military, then yes, I love Navy Federal. But Navy Federal has had us do reads about their credit card, which has, you know, reward points. And, hey, you can reward yourself by using our credit card. You just heard my story, Paul. Yeah. Like the last thing I want to do is get people in trouble.

I also know it's a good credit card. So we just pushed back on Navy Federal. I said, I will talk about credit cards and rewards if I say, hey, there was a time of my life when I couldn't pay off the bill in full every month. You will mess yourself up if you try to go after Navy Federal's rewards. You will mess yourself up. But if you're good with money like I learned to be over time, then why not? They let me put that in the ads.

And once they let me put that in their ads. to ignore the rewards, don't do something stupid with your money, maybe like Navy Federal even better because of that exchange. So like, heck yeah. Right. Yes, please. Nice. Nice. Yeah. And that actually, that segues perfectly into the third category of sponsor we have. Well, can I say one, one other thing? Because I was just talking to the, we affectionately call them the overlords. We love these people at Westwood Ward. Yeah. But we affectionately call them the overlords. Teresa laughs about it. Every time she hears me say, well, I got to talk to my overlord boss about this. They are the, they're the network that exclusively represent us for ads. Yeah, that we're both on. Yeah, that we're both on.

With some other fine brands, the ladies at Brown Ambition on our network. Yeah, bigger pockets is on the network. Bigger pockets on our network. Yeah. Yeah. But there is a brand that I have been negotiating hard with. And when I had my meeting with the Westwood One team a few days ago, they said a, Brittany on their team said, this is funny because I was having the exact same conversation with you, with your pushback that Paula was giving me. She's like, you and Paula were giving me the exact same pushback on this potential sponsor for both of our shows. Wow.

Text me again, Joe. This one. Yeah. Yep. Yep. I thought it might be that one. I was like, I don't. And hey, I will do this.

I'm not doing that. Yeah. Anyway. I don't know if they're going to be a sponsor or not. They're still talking about it. Same. Same. We haven't approved them yet.

Yeah, you and I kind of had the same thing. We're like, I will talk about this. Yeah. Right. Anyway. Right. That's funny because Joe, you and I have never discussed this particular sponsor. It's funny.

Independently, we had exactly the same objections and now we are having exactly the same to go. We literally, prior to this recording that you all are hearing right now, Now, we have never discussed this. So that's funny that we both came. It's telling that we both came to precisely the same mode of action on that. For some of these ad reads that we have, they are products that I haven't used or they don't apply to me. But that's the third category.

But I have fully vetted the crap out of them. And I'm like, if I was in the market for this, I can stand behind reading this ad. I can't do a personal endorsement because it doesn't apply to me. But you know what? I'm 100% behind you. Joe, you just stole my third category, right? You're welcome. So yeah, category one are the companies like Monarch Money and Quince that I not only use, but I'm obsessed with.

And I will be heartbroken if they ever leave me. Quince, please, I love you. category number two are companies that I also use but I'm not allowed to deviate from the script. So it's going to sound like a stock script because that is the contractual requirement and that's usually due to legal regulation. And then category number three are products that I personally don't have a need to use, but I've vetted the heck out of them. I stand by them. I would use them if I ever had the need to. And I refuse to do a personal endorsement.

And that's a big part of the negotiation that goes on because I, when they bring those brands to me, I will say, I'm only willing to do this if I do not have to give it a personal endorsement. So for you as the audience, as the listener, if you hear an ad read, if I'm doing a person, if I'm doing a personal. endorsement, it's because I've actually used it. If I'm not doing a personal endorsement, it's because I have not personally used it. And I'll give you an example actually of a former sponsor. We have a former sponsor, which is a language learning app called Babel. Through Babel, there are 14 languages that you could learn. I have not personally used Babel. And so when my ad agency, and I think this was before I was represented by Westwood One, when they came to me and said, are you willing to have Babel as a sponsor? I said, you know what? First, let me vet them, give me some

time. And then I vetted them, read a lot of the reviews, talked to people who had used it, had conversations with people who had used it. I spent some time really digging into it. They seemed fantastic for anyone who wants to learn one of the 14 languages that they have on offer. And so I went back to my agency and said, I've personally never used it so I can't give them a personal endorsement. What I can say is that Aaron, who used to be the chief sanity officer of Afford Anything, she was the very first W-2 full-time employee of Afford Anything. with health insurance, right, our very, very first W-2 employee. Aaron used Babel when she wanted to learn Dutch because she had just married a man who lived in the Netherlands. And Aaron used it and she wrote me.

I was like, Aaron, can you please write me, do a write-up of your experience and send it to me? Aaron sent me a three-page write-up detailing her experience. And so in that ad spot, I couldn't talk about my experience. because I'm not learning a language, so I haven't used it. But what I said in that ad spot was Aaron, who works on our team, here is her experience. And then I talked about Aaron's experience. So that's the third category. I actually, on Stacky Benjamin's, and you may not do this, Paula, but for people that listen to other shows, there is yet another category.

And that is an area that in the business they call Remna advertising, and I'm not sure if you do this. or not. Oh, you're talking about non-host red ads. Yeah, if there are slots that are open for whatever reason from time to time on a show, there may be some ads that appear on our show that on stacking Benjamins anyway, I don't have any affiliation with this company. I know nothing about them. The way those ads work is companies will apply for these ad spots.

And what hosts do through the people that create them is there are categories. that I say, you can't do this category, you can't do this category, you can't do this category. And it's not specific brands, it's only categories. Right. And I found that when we first signed up for those at stacking Benjamins, I was not careful enough. I thought I was careful. And here's something funny now, not funny at the time. But we, OG and I fully endorsed that neither one of us can stand Robin Hood.

We rail on Robin Hood nonstop. We talk about how we dislike this company so much. We talk about why we dislike it right at the end of that ad, Paula. I see right at the end of that segment and ad for Robin Hood. That's funny. It was horrible. I was so embarrassed. So there is another category where, you know, you're like every once in a while, I would say about twice a year, some advertiser.

I get somebody text me and goes, hey, I didn't know so-and-so was an advertiser on your show. I'm like, yeah, they're not. Yeah. So to clarify, the three categories that I just talked about, those are all referring to what are known as host red ads, which means the host, me or Joe, you know, one of the two of us does the ad read. And that's different from this other category that are essentially commercials. But I think the audience is smart enough to understand. If you are watching... Oh, mine wasn't.

I think the word somebody used was, it seems disingenuous. When you rip Robin Hood and then you take their money. But it's a commercial. It's like, if you're watching, what's the, name a television show. I can't think of one that's running right now. Like a, you know, like a show that's on TV that has the, okay, the Simpsons. The Simpsons, right? If you're watching The Simpsons and then it breaks for commercial, you know that the Simpsons aren't affiliated with the commercial, right?

If you're watching- Man, I hope so. Right. So, yeah, so the three categories that I've described, those are categories of ad reads that I do where you hear my voice. And that's different from commercials that run where you're not hearing my voice at all, which, yeah, which the network handles. But you know what, we, Joe, made the opposite mistake as you. We locked down way too many categories, far too many categories. So we basically just took that whole list and made every category by default a no. And then we went through and then manually said yes to just a couple choice few categories.

and the end result was that we basically weren't running any programmatic ads. And so then we would have episodes where I would say we're going to break for commercial. You know, we're going to take a break to hear from the sponsors. And then you'd hear the musical outro and then it would go right back into the show again. Right? So there would be no ads that ran at all. And then we would get our statement at the end of the month. And I was like, this is not even enough.

to make payroll. How am I going to make payroll? Yeah. Like I've got, you know, we at afford anything, we take pride in making sure that our team is really well compensated. We offer health, we offer health benefits. We offer retirement, right? We offer like health and retirement. How am I going to cover that if programmatic is that locked down? So we had to go through and manually, we still kept everything at default no, but we opened up a lot more. Because, yeah, because we made the opposite mistake and it, like, put us into a payroll bind. Wow. And this, by the way, that happened when I was at Columbia, which was a time when we weren't launching the course.

Because usually any gaps that we have in our budget, the enrollment for the course, the revenue that comes in from that can cover our payroll expenses. It can fill the gap. But while in that year that I took off to go to grad school, that was no longer the case. We weren't launching the course because I wasn't going to be able to give it my time and attention. So we no longer had the course to fill the gap. And then we no longer could make payroll. So, whoops. So welcome to the behind the scenes of running a podcast.

Oh, Joe, last thing that I want to say, because we've talked for quite a while about ads. But the last thing that I want to say before we wrap is, as you might have noticed, there is an election coming up. Oh, really? Yeah. I believe it's sometime this fall. If you're voting the way I like, it's November 6th. If you're not, it's November 7th.

Wait, I thought it was a, wait, genuinely I thought it was the fifth. Because I thought it was Guy Fox Day. Remember, remember the 5th of November. That's a shout out to all of our British audience. I did that off the top of my head. So I probably missed it for everybody. Wait, wait, okay. When I'm Googling, when is election day?

Yeah. It is, remember, remember the 5th of November. It is Guy Fox Day. That's so funny. I was making everybody. Yeah, you're making everyone. Joe is the, what's the opposite of the get out the vote campaign? Get in.

Get in the vote. Get away from the vote. Stop taking yourself so seriously. Nobody wants your vote. Do you think anybody wants your vote? Joe is the opposite of a voter turnout campaign, voter turn in campaign. I can't figure out why nobody's voting. All right. Well, I've gotten questions from several people saying, are you going to talk about this? Are you going to endorse anyone? The answer is no. We very intentionally do not address politics on the Afford Anything podcast. And here's the reason why. I love House of the Dragon, that show on HBO, the Game of Thrones prequel.

Did you say you like a TV show? I do. Yeah. I love House of the Dragon. And I listen to House of the Dragon podcasts and I watch House of the Dragon YouTube channels. And what I enjoy about being in those communities is that it is a place where red and blue come together. Where I don't know if the people that I'm interacting with are Democrats or Republicans. I don't know what their political leanings are. All I know are their feelings about. Westeros and dragons. And it is in a time that is so polarized where there is dehumanization that happens between people on different sides of the spectrum.

There are very few places that you can go to both geographically as well as online spaces, both physical spaces and online spaces. there are very few spaces that you can go to that truly are politically blended. And I want afford anything to be that community. The one in which your neighbors, your community members, your fellow comrades are every stripe of the political aisle. Because that's how people on opposite sides of the political spectrum can see one another as human. And that is a crucial, crucial element. That unification is such a crucial element of keeping America, America, you know, of keeping us united. We don't do it either on stacking benjamins. And my take is congruent but different, which is that I feel like the role of financial planning

is not to deal with prognostication or what you want to happen next. I think that's what elections are all about. I think that's what election coverage is about. I think we should definitely vote so you have a say in getting your way what you think would be best for the country. But that's not what financial planning is. And too often when I was a financial planner, Paula, I would end up in these conversations. Well, if so-and-so gets elected, you know what's going to happen. This is going to happen. We should. No, you don't do crap with your portfolio. You don't react. You don't react to the news. You don't react to current events. that never works out. You set your game plan, you respond in a way when things change,

when the law actually changes, you then respond appropriately. And I think there's a big difference between respond and react. And so for us to get involved in where an election, you know, in election stuff and to endorse candidates isn't our true mission. It's dealing with what the reality is, is our real mission. So your position is stay inside of your immediate circle of control. Yeah. And there are so many of us that are so excited. We're on social media all day right now, and we've got so many things we can control that we're letting go just so we can scream and yell at people we don't know. Yeah. Take the reins and do the thing that will affect your life. Right. That's what I hope people do. Certainly go vote. And I'm not telling people not to vote. I'm just saying

You kind of are with your November 6, November 7. I was so close. So close. To be clear, it's November 5th. Remember, remember the 5th of November. November 5th, probably a better day. But I'm sorry, Joe, I cut you off. You're not telling people not to vote.

Yes. I'm not telling people not to vote. Please, please go vote. Just you're not going to hear us endorsing candidates or one political affiliation. Right. Rather than get into a social media shouting match, take that time to sharpen your skills so you can start a side hustle. Take that time to review your budget and find the subscription that you're paying for that you can cut. Take that time to do something that will

improve your life. And participate in the process also. Definitely, definitely do so. But don't dehumanize people who don't think like you do. I find it so sad when people say, I don't talk to that family member anymore because that family. member votes in a different way or votes for the other party. So I won't afford anything to be the place where we are truly unified. All right, Joe, we have done it one more time. Where can, I think people know where they can find you. The stacking Benjamin's podcast. I'll do the shout out for your show, which is amazing. I do have an episode for you, though, Polo. Which one? Because on November 5th of last year, we did a special episode.

Oh, what an amazing date. It was a special episode with a financial planner who's with Fidelity Investments. She's a rep from Fidelity Investments, big name company, financial analyst from T.Rowe Price, and behavioral economist Bradley Clonts. We had a special roundtable, which was called Investing in an Election Year. And that is episode number 1435. And what's funny is I was listening to episode 1435 just the other day. And I swear it sounds like we could have made it today because these people's advice is so spot on about what to do and what not to do when it comes to investing in an election year.

So if anybody's having this trip, no, I really need to do something. Go listen to Stack & Benjamin's 1435. It's a great discussion from people, obviously big name companies and big name behavioral economists who know and have looked at the history. of what historically has been what you should do and shouldn't do. All right. Well, thank you so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with a friend or a family member. Subscribe to our newsletter, afford anything.com slash newsletter.

And come check us out on YouTube. YouTube.com slash afford anything. Thank you so much for being part of this community. I'm Paula Pant. I'm Joe Solcihai. And we will meet you in the next episode.