Afford Anything - Ask Paula: I’m Worried About My Parent’s Retirement. What Should I Do?

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

#314: Briale opened a Variable Annuity inside a 403b at work when she was 23. She has 17 years to go before retirement. As an elementary school teacher, her pension will be $6,000 per month. Should she stop contributing to the annuity and contribute to a Roth IRA instead? Hunter put a credit freeze on his two children’s credit, which required sending each credit union documentation via mail. Experian and TransUnion confirmed the credit freeze, but Equifax didn’t. Upon calling, the representative gave Hunter a different mailing address for the documents. What should he do? Debi has an extra $1,000 each month and isn’t sure where to save it. She also has $10,000 in a CD which will reach maturity in August 2021. Her goal is to buy a residence in the next five years. Should she save this all for a downpayment? Anonymous is concerned about her parents retirement portfolio. Their advisor charges a fee of 1.5 percent assets under management. Her parents are frugal and they don’t realize how much they’re paying. Should she talk to them, or drop the issue? Sarah isn’t sure whether she should put more of her savings towards a Roth 401k or a 529 fund for her future kids. Which option is best if she wants financial flexibility? My friend and former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy joins me once again to tackle these questions. Enjoy! For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode314  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything, but not everything. Every choice that you make is a trade-off against something else. And that's not just related to your money. That's related to your time, your focus, your energy, your attention, anything in your life. That's a scarce or limited resource. Saying yes to something implicitly means. Saying no to all other alternatives. And that opens up two questions.

First, what matters most? And second, how do you align your decision-making? with that which matters most. Answering those two questions is a lifetime practice, and that is what this podcast is here to explore. My name is Paula Pant. I am the host of the Afford Anything podcast. Every other episode, we answer questions that come from you, the community. And today, former financial planner Joe Saul Seahy joins me to answer these questions.

What's up, Joe? I am so ready to party again with our Afford Anything family. We've got some great questions today. It's going to be great. Yes, absolutely. So let's kick off with a question about variable annuities. That's an open that you never thought you'd hear. For the most exciting thing you've ever heard, variable.

But you know why that's such a boring open is because it focuses on product rather than on end results. Process. Yeah, yeah. Like what we're going for is a great retirement. And when you say, let's open to the question about how to have a great retirement. retirement, a secure retirement, a retirement that you enjoy. All right, now, now we're getting somewhere. Now we've got a much more interesting open. But when we talk about the how, the variable annuities, snooze first. Well, and it's actually funny you say that because if any person in the

financial world starts off talking to you about product versus process, that's how you know you're dealing usually, unless you ask them specifically about a product. But if you bring up that you have X goal. Like, I want to retire someday. And they're like, I got the perfect thing for you. If they start off with product, you know that you're probably shopping in the wrong place. Exactly. Exactly. And if they're not kind of talking about thinking about how to think, like here's how to think through decisions. Here's a framework for decision making. If a person has the heart of a teacher, that's how they're going to be speaking to you. But if they're pushing a product, then they're pushing a product.

Speaking of teachers. Yes. Oh, look at it. that segue. Wow. I think my work here is done. Great segue. Speaking of teachers, our first question comes from Breal. Hi, Paula, this is Breal. I first want to thank you for always giving such thoughtful responses to your listeners. Hearing the questions, sometimes with so many details, is a testament to how much do you afford anything community value your opinion? That being said, I need your wisdom now too. At the young age of 23, I opened up a variable annuity inside a 403B at work. A salesperson came in and the rest is history. It wasn't until much later when I started learning more about my finances that I questioned if this retirement vehicle

was for me. As it stands now, the annuity has an expense ratio of 1.05% and approximately $80,000 in it. I currently contribute $250 a month in this tax-deferred account. This year is my 23rd year in my elementary school as a teacher, which leaves me about 17 years to go, and I will then have 40 years in the teaching system. My pension, assuming it will be intact, will be approximately, give or take, $6,000 a month. So I've made a list of pros and cons. With 17 years left to go before I retire, I feel like I can't afford to make a mistake. Should I keep this account going the way it is, or should I take that $250 and put it towards my Roth IRA? To be honest, I have yet to fully ever fund the Roth IRA on a yearly basis. It currently has approximately $50,000 in it. Although there

are many cons to annuities, the one plus for me is the fact that the money is taken directly out of my paycheck every two weeks before I can squander away on something else. I also pay for Bloom, which is supposed to make sure my money is invested in the lowest fees possible while in the annuity. So what are your thoughts? Just stay the course for the next 17 years or make that drastic change now. Lastly, to add, I'm also in a high tax bracket, which makes me wonder if that tax situation will only go up when I'm in my early 60s. And finally, if you do say I should keep the annuity, please, give me your insight on how you would actually use it when the time comes. Anuitize it? Not exactly sure what that means, by the way, or receive my money in a lump sun and go from there. Again,

thank you for all you do. Breal, fantastic question. I'm going to address one element of it, which was when you said that you're in a high tax bracket and you wonder if that means that your tax situation will only go up when you are in your early 60s when you're in retirement. You're 17 years away from retirement. And you hopefully are planning a long enough life expectancy that not only are you 17 years away, but that retirement, let's hope, will last for at least 30 years. So we're talking about you being 47 years away from the end of your retirement. The major question mark when we think about our tax bracket in retirement is what the government

tax rates will be. And given that we have no way of predicting any decision that the government is going to make even four or five years from now, much less 15 years, 25 years, 35 years, 45 years from now, given that there is absolutely no way to predict any type of government decision making 45 years into the future, there's no way to ever know that. So any time that you find yourself tempted to take today's current tax rates, extrapolate those tax rates or assumptions about those tax rates into the future, and say, well, geez, based on today's tax rates, if the exact same situation were to happen 20 years in the future, then this is what it would be. Throw that idea out the window because we don't know what tax rates are going to be like 20 years

in the future. And if you look at tax rates historically, look at what they were back in the, in the 70s, we had marginal tax rates that were substantially higher than they are today. Now, does that mean that tax rates will go back up to rates that they were at back during the Carter administration? Maybe, maybe not. That's for future administrations to decide. The point is that we have, not only do we have no way of knowing that, anyone who claims that they have some type of forecasting ability is wrong. The more certainty with which people speak about their ability to forecast what future

administrations will do is a poor student of history. A random walk-through history. Isn't there like a random walk? Oh, there's a random walk-through Wall Street. Random walk-down Wall Street. It's a book by Burton-Malkeel. Yeah, but I'm saying this is your next book, a random walk-through history. You could have a book that talks about that.

There are so many facets to Breel's question. I want to take them a piece at a time because I think that they're each important to know where you should head. First of all, as a teacher, Breel is given, in my opinion, the worst choice of retirement plans ever, which is a 403B. Now, 403B is a lot like a 401K. There are insignificant differences that we don't need to talk about, but there are slight differences. The biggest difference, though, is that inside of a 403B plan, a school system will often have many different choices for retirement plans, meaning all of these annuity providers, and they're usually annuities. We can get into why that is later, but they're usually annuities. They will offer up their program.

And if they can find X number of teachers, in a lot of cases, it's like 10 people that sign that they want this new provider to come in, they will put it in the system. school system will give you that option. So the first thing that Breal should look at is this question. She said that there was a salesperson who came in, sold her on this annuity. She signed up and she thinks that might have been a mistake. There may be other annuities available and maybe one that's cheaper. And in some cases, there are salespeople who have done the right thing and they're offering a 403B that doesn't involve an annuity, which may be even less expensive. which is another option. So I think that's job one.

See if there's other options that she might not even know about. She may, Paula, be very surprised to find that there are many, many different options available that she can go through. For background, should we explain what is a fixed annuity versus a variable annuity? Oh, boy. Yes. Yeah. First, I had to define the difference between a 403B and an annuity.

And now, well, and a fixed annuity is going to be. going to give you a fixed rate of return. And I'll get to anuitize it or not idea later, but we'll give you a fixed rate of return. A variable annuity is an annuity that looks a lot like a 401k on the inside, which means that it's going to have a lot of different options inside of it. You can invest money in either a guaranteed account like you can in other retirement plans or invested in bond funds, balanced funds, maybe precious metals funds, growth, or value stocks, whatever you want, index funds. Many times they'll have all of these options available.

So to the outside person looking in, they will see something that looks very much like their friend's 401k plan that just has a list of options. The bad news is, is because you don't have economies of scale in the way school districts and other institutions that use 403Bs are organized, they use annuities, partly because of the fact that 401K plans are very expensive to administer. There are many checks and balances. Annuity providers have agreed to handle all of that for these individual participants. And so it's a cost transference, meaning that there are fees in 401K plans. There's fees in 403B plans, but teachers end up paying the fees themselves, where at a company, the company is going to pick up a lot of those record-keeping.

fees, which stinks. Why, why teachers have to carry that fee load is beyond me. And why, by the way, teachers are also given eight different choices or 10 different choices or sometimes 15 different annuity choices versus, you know, you sit down at your job and they go, here's the choices, Paula. And there's one. But even before you get to the choices here, you have to decide which product you want to use, and then every product has its own suite of choices on the inside. So a flexible annuity, a variable annuity will have lots of different choices. A fixed annuity has one choice. It's a fixed interest rate. You get whatever that interest rate is. By the way, that interest rate is guaranteed for X amount of time. You want to find out what that amount of time is.

Well, let's back up. Usually if they say it's a fixed annuity, you just say no. No, thank you. But if for some reason you're going to say yes, because you like the interest rate, the interest rate feels like a CD, but much like a CD, it has an end date that they will pay that guaranteed rate. On that date, the annuity company can change that rate. So you want to find out a second rate, not just what is it paying today, but what's the minimum amount that they're allowed to pay in the contract? So they may say, hey, Paula, we've got this 8% right, 8% that sounds fantastic. That's for the next 12 months. Oh, that's great. What does it go to after that?

Well, we don't know it's based on interest rate. By the way, this is exactly the way the conversation is going to go. Right. But by the way, we don't know what's based interest rate. Okay, let me ask you this then. What's the minimum rate that's allowed in the contract? Oh, yeah. Oh, you know, it never gets there.

So you don't have to worry about that. No, no, no. What is that number? It's 1.4. I can almost guarantee that once they have your money, and by the way, there's these huge surrender charges, we had a recently, you and I covered a question from somebody in the family that had a lot of surrender charges. And they were worried about being able to fight those surrender charges. Right. And should they take their money out?

Once there's a huge surrender charge, they're going to jack that interest rate down as fast as they can. It's kind of like the opposite of, you know, a credit card. that has a teaser interest rates. So there will be these credit cards that have the 0% teaser introductory interest rates to get you into the card. Yeah. And then they jack up the interest rate once you're in. This is the opposite, like a fixed annuity. It has a teaser introductory interest rate that they pay out to you.

And then they jack it all the way down once they've got you in there and there's those high surrender charges. So I would, if you are forced to use an annuity, I would use the very very very. variable annuity. There's a hybrid two called an equity indexed annuity where they'll sell you on this sizzle that you're going to get a percentage of what the S&P 500 does, but it will never go down. Well, if you do the math on any of these products, the interest rate you end up with, you're usually better off going for that fixed one that we talked about. Very frustrating. Sounds great, easy to sell. So easy to sell. Hey, you're going to get the stock market but with no risk, but you're only going to get a portion of the upside with none of the downside.

Insurance companies that run annuities always make sure that they make money. So stick with the flexible annuity if you have to go. Yeah, with a variable annuity. So that's question number one. Check and see if there are other ones available. Number two is she talked about using Bloom without going into Bloom for everybody for a long time. Bloom is just a third-party company that will go in and look at your stuff for a fee, and they will help you organize it. And for people that don't want a lot to do with this, Bloom can be a fantastic product.

I know the CEO. I've met many people in that company. I think they have a fine product for a fair price. That said, there are third-party places you can go, and you can do much of what Bloom does yourself. So there's a place called Morningstar where you morningstar.com. You sign up for Morningstar, but there's a free version of Morningstar. They'll try to push you toward the premium version, but the free version is great. You can look up all the funds in your annuity.

It'll take you a little while, but you can look up those fees yourself, and you can find the low fee options yourself. The other thing Bloom does is Bloom also helps you diversify your portfolio well, much like a robo advisor will. So it's attractive that way too. But once again, you can also do that yourself. So it depends. I'm definitely not going to say anything bad against Bloom.

I like Bloom personally. But I also think that it's not your only option if you want to lower some fees also. The next question was, do I put money in my Roth IRA versus putting money here? Well, the problem here, Paula, you got at earlier, which is pre-tax versus pay the tax. today but have it be tax free in the future. Right. And there's a few questions there that I think you have to answer first. So I don't think we can answer that question, but I do think we can ask some questions.

It'll help her answer her own question. When she talks about tax brackets and that she's in a high tax bracket, pulling out money tax free later on could be exciting, but also being in a high tax bracket right now, that pre-tax option that actually allows her to save a higher percentages is also pretty exciting today. Yeah, I mean, the one question that I would ask her is, if she's putting this $250 towards her Roth IRA, if she is making a $250 contribution, option A, she contributes $250 pre-tax to a pre-tax account, her 403B. Option B, she contributes the same $250 after taxes to a Roth IRA, meaning,

The chunk of her paycheck that is dedicated towards retirement investing is larger because in order for her to put $250 after taxes into a Roth IRA today, she has to make $250 plus tax in order to put that 250 in. To put that away. Yeah, right. So if she makes that contribution to a Roth IRA, she is effectively contributing more money. If it's the same 250 either way, she's effectively contributing more money.

money if she puts that into a Roth. And that, to me, would be the argument for taking the Roth route. It sort of tricks her into making higher contributions, and higher contributions are going to be the biggest determinant of her success. The next piece of the question that I'd like to tackle is, and it actually wasn't a question. She said the upside of the annuity is that it gets taken out of her paycheck. And I love, I'm a spender, Paula.

I love having money hidden from me. I've been able to save lots of money because I hide it for myself. It is fantastic. Setting up automatic deposits is the best way to get to your financial goals. She may be able to do that into the Roth as well. And here is how you do it. If you only have one checking account, open up a separate account. And you have to be able to have direct deposit into two different accounts.

accounts or have the ability to move money automatically the day your paycheck comes. It's easier if you can just direct deposit to two different accounts. Because if you can direct deposit to two different places, direct deposit the money that you need into your checking. And actually, I still don't think that that's the most effective thing for most people. There's another way I like to do this. But put the money she's spending there and then direct deposit the rest into another account that Vanguard or Fidelity or whoever goes and gets.

And so using a quick two-step process, she's still doing the same exact thing she's doing through work. She's hiding the money from herself. She's making sure it doesn't get commingled with the pot of money that goes for groceries. And she's effectively saving that money. But a question I'd have there is, can she direct deposit to two different places? Right. And if she can't, then the workaround would be to have an automatic transfer from her checking into the account that holds her Roth IRA, the custodian that holds her Roth IRA, set up an automatic monthly transfer that happens,

or biweekly transfer that happens every payday. So that on that same day that her paychecks get deposited, that $250 gets taken out or that amount of money per paycheck gets taken out. Yeah. So if she can do that, she's doing the same thing, which is fantastic. I mentioned earlier that, and this is, you know, for people that aren't teachers and aren't worried about 403B problems and these workarounds. I also just generally don't like direct deposit into a checking account.

I prefer direct deposit into a savings account first. Decide how much money you're going to pay yourself from that savings account and then take that money and give yourself a paycheck every whatever time frame you want it to be. I would have clients come into my office and they'd say, well, I got this problem. I only get paid once a month. Well, have you tried paying yourself once a week instead? I can't do that. My company only pays me once a month.

How about we do this? We move the money once a month into the savings account. And then once a week, we have an automatic deposit into your checking account. And that's the amount you're allowed to spend. You're not allowed to touch that money in the savings account. Now, if you can't trust yourself, you can't do this. But if you can trust yourself, you can do these automatic deposits at whatever stream makes sense for you and your budget.

So it's different. But the big thing this does is that when people have trouble controlling, their expenses, it's often just getting it out of sight, Paula. If I can take the money that I need to save and have it over there in that savings account instead of in the account that I have a debit card checking and all my bills hooked up to, money will automatically grow in that account. And I don't even worry about it. All I worry about is, hey, I get my paycheck from myself. The second thing I love about it is it divorces the amount of money that you're making from your business from your spending because most of us, right, we get a pay raise. We go, man, all of a sudden

there's more money in the checking account and I get used to that very quickly. But if that extra money goes into the savings account and I'm not spending money from that savings account, I'm spending money from the checking account. I can make more and more and more money and my spending only goes up intentionally when I say that it will. Right. And what I think makes this even more effective, if I can iterate on this a bit, is to have those two accounts at separate institutions so that you don't see the buildup in your savings account. So what I love about the direct deposit into a savings account strategy is that you are putting savings at the top, you're putting savings as step one. It's the anti-budget, right? You decide how much money you're going

to hold in savings, hold that there, and then whatever is left over after you've saved first is what's left to spend. And if you direct deposit into savings and then siphon out a portion of that to put into what is essentially the spending bucket, which is your checking account, and if they're at separate institutions, so you don't even see the savings that are getting built that's really out of sight, out of mind. That's another way of hiding that money from yourself. It worked with so many people.

Yeah. I'll tell you who it also works great for. people that live on a commission or they work for themselves and they get paychecks at random times because people that are paid not the same amount all the time tend to live this boom bust lifestyle right i'm not making any money so it's ramen noodle ramen noodle romanoodle romanoodle and then i get this huge amount of money it's steak dinner big screen tv i'm going to buy all the stuff that i want and you get this boom bust thing which is ugly and instead if to some degree you can budget a number that's less than you know you'll take in,

and you can build up just a little bit of money and saving so that you can start paying yourself a paycheck that's the same amount. It makes it so much easier to avoid that because it's that boom-buss cycle that kills your budget. Right. Exactly. So to go back to Breal's question, the root of her question is this $250 a month, should she put it towards a Roth IRA or should she put it

her 403B. I think what we've established is that predicting what her tax rate is going to be in retirement is impossible. So let's take that as a consideration off the table. Beyond that, there are arguments on both sides. Certainly, as she herself said, the argument for the 403B is the behavioral component of the fact that it's taken directly out of her paycheck. That said, there are other ways to mimic that same benefit. So if she does want to put this money towards a Roth IRA, she can take it directly out of her quote-unquote paycheck by virtue of setting up one of these structures that we've just discussed.

But I also think the homework she needs to do is to look and see what other options are really there. Because she had one salesman talked to her and sign her up for that option. I will bet Paula that there are other salespeople and other options inside of her school system that she might be able to transfer to that might not have as high a fee structure as the one that she's worried about. Breal, I'll also end this by recommending that you listen to two episodes.

One is the episode that we did called What the Heck Are Innuities. And the other is an interview that we did with a tax advisor by the name of Ed Slot, where he makes a case for Roth accounts. We will link to both of those episodes in our show notes, and the show notes are available at afford anything.com slash episode 314. So thank you, Breal, for asking that question. We'll come back to this episode after this word from our sponsors. The holidays are right around the corner, and if you're hosting, you're going to need to get prepared. Maybe you need bedding, sheets, linens.

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Our next question comes from Anonymous and Joe, we give every anonymous caller a name. I was not ready. I should have been ready. We do this every time and I'm not ready. All right, hold on, hold on. Wait, we've thrown some like big questions at you today about annuities and retirement planning and expected returns and interest rates. And the question you're not for is make up a name? You didn't expect me to be on top of it the whole hour, did you? Come on. You know what?

I just watched, this is really good, Paula, and I think a lot of people like this. I've been watching a chef's table, and I know a lot of people have already watched that documentary series about great chefs. I love watching artists create, and these people are artists with food. And I watched the episode just recently again for the third time about the woman who is is the first three Michelin star, which is the top level you can reach, chef in America. She's the first female three star Michelin chef in the USA, Dominique Cren. So we're going to cook up a good answer today.

So I thought maybe we'll call her Dominique. Cook up a good answer. Perfect. Well, then our next question comes from Dominique. Hi, Paula. My parents are frugal people and I'm sure have saved appropriately their entire careers. They have been using the same financial advisor as my grandparents. Just judging from what I've seen online, I believe their fee is 1.5% assets under management. I know that the advisor manages their IRAs, brokerage accounts, and also includes an annuity and a whole life insurance policy and their portfolio.

Outside of the advisor, they have work retirement plans, a small union pension, and a home that still has a more. They have about 10 years until they plan to retire, so we'll probably have 40 or 50 more years where this money will be invested. I'm not sure the exact details of their portfolio, but I know they're very hands-off, and I don't think they feel confident to switch to entirely controlling their portfolio, because the advisor makes the asset allocation seem so complicated. I'm fairly confident that without my intervention, they will have a good retirement, but I feel like, since I know how frugal they are, it's hard for me to grapple with how hands-off they are to the point where they don't know how much they're paying for the service or how much drag that one-point-point-frew they are. But I feel like, since I know how frugal they are, it's hard for me to grapple with how hands-off they are to the point where they don't know how much they're paying for the service or how much drag that 1.5% has. On one hand, personal finance is personal, but on the other, I don't know if my parents

have any understanding of different types of fee structures available. It's talking to my parents about this, something I should approach. How do I articulate my concerns and the alternatives they have, such as moving to a fee-based advisor, using a lower-cost-managed account at Vanguard, or simplifying their plans with target retirement funds to reduce their fees. Or should I just drop this entirely and not get involved since it is not my money? Thank you. Dominique, first of all, thank you for calling in and asking that question. This is an important question to ask. And I think there are probably a lot of people who are listening to this who are in similar situations. It is difficult to be an adult

and realize that to a certain extent, we have the ability and perhaps are, arguably the responsibility to parent our parents in certain regards, you know, where we see areas of life in which our experiences and wisdom can help guide them. To your question, and I'm curious, Joe and I have not discussed our answers beforehand, so I'm curious to know what Joe thinks, but here's my take. I do think that there is value to sharing your wisdom with your wisdom. parents. In the same way that parents guide us when we're kids, teach us how to tie our shoelaces and not to run out in front of traffic, I do think that there's a lot of value in us

repaying them with the wisdom that we've accumulated when we see that they are doing things that might harm their future. That being said, these conversations need to be handled delicately. And so there are a few resources that I would recommend. First, listen to our podcast interview with Aaron Lowry. She is the author of a book series called The Broke Millennial Series. And her most recent book specifically is about conversations about money that you can have with friends and family. So her guidance on how to navigate awkward money conversations with people in your life. You know, you listen to our interview. with her. And if you want to dive deeper into it, her book is a very good resource about how to

approach financial conversations in a way that won't trigger people to become defensive or cause people to shut down. The second thing that I would say is that whenever approaching a conversation like this, I find it very helpful to send people articles, particularly, you know, not just blog articles that could be written by any random person on the internet, but articles that come from reputable research-based sources, such as Morning Star. So any articles that you can find, even articles that have been published by Vanguard that illustrate, and they have a lot of fantastic articles on their website, where they illustrate the importance of a lower fee structure. And they show the impact of a 1.5% fee, the kind of drag that that has, those articles from reputable resources

like Vanguard, like Schwab, like Morning Star, sending your parents those and having that be the lead-in to the conversation establishes a degree of credibility. Now it's not you who's conveying this information. Now it's these researchers, these financial experts who are conveying that information and they're doing so in a data-based, research-based manner. Those are the entry points that I would use as I began that conversation with your parents. Vanguard themselves, Paula, published a piece back in 2017. They may have published one since then about how much return an advisor adds to your portfolio. and they found that the upside of having an advisor to be 3%.

And we can question the way that they quantify that. So the first thing that I think of when I think of Dominique's question is to watch out for unintended consequences. I think that it's awesome that she can, to your point, convey her wisdom and help her parents. But when she talks about how they're using the same advisor that her grandparents also used and this person's been with the family for a long time. There is a certainly on one hand, it could be somebody who has just gotten into the family. They overlook the fact that this leech has made it through and now the leech is slowly bleeding them, right?

I mean, there's this joke, horrible broker joke about, you know, the worst thing to do would be to kill the host. So you just take as much as you can to stay alive. but you don't want to kill the host. Could be that that's the case. But on the other hand, and I'm going to stick up for the advisor here, I look at this vanguard data and the value of that relationship, having a third-party individual on your team who isn't related to you,

what is that adding to the equation that she may not be quantifying? She can certainly quantify the one and a half percent expense, right? We can quantify that. And we can look at Jack Bogle's argument that, man, you would have been at $18 million. Instead, you're at $11 million, and you can count how much money that was that you wasted and fees that was this huge drag. So I get all that. But there are a bunch of people who would always do the wrong thing if they didn't have somebody telling them not to. Or who would worry incessantly about am I doing the right thing unless they had that professional who can help them steer.

Now, maybe, maybe Dominique's their new advisor. Maybe that's the case. I would argue that it makes sense to have somebody who's not emotional about their situation who is in their corner. It doesn't have to be a licensed financial planner, but somebody who's sitting at that table who's not emotional about their money. Right. It does also open up the topic.

Should they be with this specific advisor or could they switch to a fee-based financial planner? Well, and this is what I don't know. And the thing that would be frustrating to me is that you've got this advisor who knows the family, who's been around for a long time, who let's say, and this is not a popular thing to say online. The popular thing for us to say online, the last decade that I've been with this, is that this dude is ripping them off and that we should switch to somebody that has a different fee structure. I know plenty of commission advisors, not my favorite way for people to be paid, by the way. I get why you don't want to pay people that way. but are so awesome at their job and have these clients that have stuck with them for years and years,

not because of the fact that they're leaching off the host, but because they continually do the right thing. So before we throw the advisor under the bus for a fee-only advisor, who, by the way, I've, and this is also going to be horrible to say, I've met a bunch of fee-only advisors who I think are just idiots. And they're paid the right way, but I don't want that person in my corner, but because of the fact that they're paid the way that we love

and the person who might be doing the right thing that's paid the way we don't want them to be paid, right? Because of what we hear on the internet, we're going to change up this relationship that might be working. Right. I did not hear anything here. I did not hear anything from her that said that this relationship doesn't work. There was one thing that made me think that this relationship doesn't work.

And by the way, it wasn't the annuity. And it wasn't the whole life insurance that made me think this isn't working. You know what it was? It was that the advisor makes the asset allocation so complex, they don't understand it. That's the part to me that says maybe it doesn't work. That's the red flag because it indicates the lack of financial education and financial empowerment. Yeah, a good financial planner is going to have a heart of a teacher.

I remember when I was a planner that I would have clients come to me and I knew Paula, they were never going to understand this stuff. I could teach them all day how to understand. And I would, by the way. And they'd be so annoyed. They would be so annoyed because I would teach them. And they'd tell me they're like, Joe, I love the fact that you teach us this. But I kept telling them, if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, you need to be better off.

You can't just take your money and hand it to me. And then I put together this very complex thing that you can never understand. To some degree, you've got to. So I don't know if it's really that complex. Again, I don't know if it's that complex. or if mom and dad just don't want to understand. You mentioned Ed Slot before. Ed Slot reminds me a lot of, and I don't know why, of Ben Stein.

Maybe it's just the way that they talk and the fact that both those guys crack me up and how intelligent they are, just very smart, quirky, older men. But Ben Stein talks about his parents in annuities. How many people are smarter than Ben Stein? Ben Stein talks about how his parents used annuities and they would have been screwed without it because there was no way they were ever going to know this stuff. And to have something that was a pension that they were going to get forever was the best thing for them, right? It was a paycheck in the mailbox that they could not outlive. For his parents, it was what for him.

And he clearly says this. For him, it would have been horrible. For them, it was absolutely perfect, which is why I heard annuity and I went. okay, but hear me correctly here. When I hear annuity and then I hear complex asset allocation, it could be one of two things. It could be number one, mom and dad are being sold this bill of goods by a horrible financial planner. Number two is mom and dad don't understand this stuff. It really isn't that complex, but the advisor supplementing it with annuity so they have this insurance provision.

that they know they're going to be okay, which means, I think here's the first thing I might do, if I'm Dominique. I might just ask mom and dad if it's okay to go to another professional and get a second opinion about their stuff. Now, the problem that's going to happen,

and this is something Dominique needs to watch out for it, anybody that does this, there's a thing in the professional business that I just hate, and it's called, it's got a great name. You know what it's called? Well, I don't know what it is. I'm trying to think of what it might be called.

Can you give me a hint? It's called Pissing Match. Ah, yes. And even if I'm a fee-only advisor, I want that business. So here's what I would actually watch out for. I would watch out for a fee-only advisor who completely throws the current advisor under the bus. Oh, my God, all this stuff sucks. Right.

This is all absolutely horrible. I would not trust that person for a second. But if they can parse the, this is good, this is good, this is good, this doesn't work, this doesn't work, this doesn't work, then I might think we have a case. And then I also then look for another relationship. So maybe the first thing to do, and I love the fact that you mentioned Aaron Lowry, go listen back to that episode, figure out how best to approach this topic. send them to somebody that can give them a second opinion. Right. And if the second opinion comes back that they're throwing them under the bus,

I think you're probably okay with your current advisor. Or if it comes out that things are largely going the right way, but yeah, you can make a switch and it'll be marginally better. They might be okay. I just, I don't get the feeling mom and dad are as bad off as Dominique does. Well, so there are a couple of things stand out to me from your answer. First of all, I love the idea of a second opinion. Second, what you said earlier about how you know a bunch of fee-only advisors who are absolute idiots,

I think that the root of that is this distinction between qualitative and quantitative. We quantitatively understand the expense that we pay for a given service. In this particular case, 1.5% of assets under management. Qualitatively, however, to distinguish between who has good judgment versus bad judgment, Who has wisdom versus not? Who has original thoughts versus not? But before you and I started recording this episode, we were talking about writers and how writing is an expertise that is so sometimes can be very difficult to convey the depth of expertise that goes into good writing. First, because when you read good writing, it is so clear that it looks easy.

And second, because anyone who's literate believes that they're a writer. But the distinction between even a mediocre writer versus a great one is massive, although it is hard to quantify. Similarly, judgment, wisdom, perspective, framework. You know, I was texting with a friend yesterday. We were talking about crypto. She was like, why haven't you done an episode on crypto yet? And I'm like, man, I would love to, but I want to go deep, deep, deep into a real. research cave and learn as much as I can about it before I produce an episode on that because

that's very important to me. And she was like, well, why don't you just interview somebody about it? And I was like, to be able to have such a level of expertise that I can distinguish a good subject from a bad one, a good interview subject from a bad one. And then to have enough expertise that I can not only identify who the good one is, but also facilitate a great line of questioning with them. That alone requires a week of going deep into a research cave and learning as much as I could on this. And that was something that hadn't occurred to her.

You know, the flippant, like, why don't you just bring on an expert and just have them to time? You know, that's the level of unconscious incompetence, like where you don't know what you don't know. And you know so little that you can't even distinguish good advice from bad advice. And to bring this back to Dominique, I'm not saying that that's necessarily what's happening here. I'm simply making a point that to your point, Joe, that when we talk about financial advisors, we can see the expense ratio, but it is so much harder to describe those who have wisdom from those who do not. absolutely and you know that vanguard knows that that really the kings and queens of low-cost investing know that when they publish a piece that says that you had 3% and is the number 3% I don't

think vanguard even believes that number 3% yeah I think the vanguard when they shot that across everybody's bow in 2017 it surprised the hell out of all of us said listen your point exactly about qualitative. This isn't all about low fees. Low fees is incredibly important, but if you never save a dime or if you mix up your strategy all the time, if you flail in the wind, you're going to lose a hell of a lot more than one and a half percent to this advisor. Right. Yeah, 3% is unduly specific. There's a distinction between precision and accuracy. But I think this is a great discussion, the discussion of surrounding yourself with a team of people who exercise judgment and have great wisdom. Essentially, it's the challenge of being incredibly

cautious as to who your mentors are. You know, because that's what an advisor is, an advisor advises. So fundamentally, the question is, is this person wise enough to be dispensing advice? That, to me, is the root question. So thank you, Dominique, for asking that question and for asking such a thought-provoking question that it facilitated this discussion that just took place. Absolutely. Our next question comes from Debbie. Hi, Paula and MayboG. I'm a 31-year-old government employee.

I currently have $100,000 in a Roth IRA, $40,000 in Vanguard ETFs, and contribute my maximum to my government thrift savings plan. I have $10,000 in a savings account and $10,000 in Robin Hood to play around with. I also have $10,000 in a CD. that will reach maturity in August of 2021. My goal is to buy a house or a condo in the next five years and hope to one day start buying additional rental properties. I have about $1,000 a month that I can save. And I was wondering where you think I should put the money that I'm saving for this.

What do you think I should do with the $10,000 and the CD once it reaches maturity? The down payment will be fairly significant if I live in a pretty high cost of living area on the East Coast. Thanks for the show. Thank you for asking that question. Fantastic question. First of all, congratulations on everything that you've saved so far. And now to your question, your question is you've got $1,000 per month to save. So where do you save it? What do you do with it? You've stated that your goal is to buy a house or a condo in the next five years and that your long-term plan is to buy rental properties. So I'm assuming that means that your plan is to buy multiple properties in the next 10 years, the next 15 years. But That aside, short term, you're buying at least that first property and you're buying that first property within the next five years. And so my recommendation would be assuming that you don't have any high interest credit card debt, nothing with a double digit interest rate, and assuming that you have an adequate emergency fund, I would save this money in a savings account to build your down payment fund. You've stated that this down payment is going to be significant. So given that this is a short-term goal, a goal that you want to achieve in less than five years,

it should not be subject to equity risk or market risk. You don't want to put money in Robin Hood and then invest that in stocks if you're going to need that money in the next five years. The market is fantastic for a long-term time horizon. but if there's money that you're going to spend in the short term, leave it in cash or leave it in very, very conservative cash equivalence. You can put it into CDs that have a maturity of fewer than five years. You can put it into a money market account. You can put it into a high-yield savings account.

You can put it into tips, treasury inflation protected securities if you wanted to do that. But you want to leave it relatively liquid because of the fact that the timeline to the goal is so short. So I would continue, once that $10,000 that you've got in that CD reaches maturity, which is going to happen in August, take that money, move it into savings. You've got the 10,000 from the CD, you've got another 10,000 in a savings account. I don't know if that 10,000 in the savings account is your emergency fund or if that's also part of your down payment fund, but take whatever money is specifically earmarked towards a down payment and put it into one account that you have mentally earmarked as these are my down payment savings and leave those down payment

savings relatively liquid. So if it were me, I would just, I would go the old fashioned drought, put it in a high-ield savings account, let it accumulate until you're ready to buy, make that down payment on that first property. This isn't about interest rates as much as it is about having the money when you find the right deal. And often, the more you chase interest rates, the more your money might be in the wrong spot when you need it. So realizing that you're going to want to have great rates return later means looking at flexibility first with your money. Exactly. It's the liquidity flexibility trade-offs. Yeah. And I really like to just tack on to one point you made, Paula. I would really emphasize one thing you said, which is segregating those two

accounts. Got my emergency fund over here, and I've got my money for the house purchase over here. And to do that as an example with a recent move that we made, we had our emergency fund at Ally Bank. They allow you to bucket your money, like inside of one account. So, and lots of different accounts do this. But we've also done it in the past where you have two different amounts. I have an account at TD Ameritrade, and I opened up a Ginny May for something that I knew was a four-year goal at Ginnie Mae, and I was putting money into that Ginny May fund that whole four-year period of time. But I had the two accounts segregated from each other. One was for the goal, and I didn't overspend on the goal because especially when it comes to real estate, don't you

think it's easy to say, I'm just going to put a little more. Right. Just going to go a little further. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You never want to mix the emergency fund with the down payment fund. So, you know, again, that's why I say that she mentioned she's got 10,000 in a savings account, and I don't know if she means that that 10,000 is her emergency fund, or if that means that she has 10,000 in a savings account that's earmarked for this property purchase that she's talking about, and that's in addition to any emergency fund that she has. That part is unclear, but whatever emergency fund she has, it needs to be completely separate, out of sight, out of mind, not mixed in with this amorphous other savings.

I guess the crux of the answer is having labels on all of your money. Even if it's not literally labeled, even if you don't have the capacity to give an account a particular name, some institutions will allow you to do that, some will not, but you need to mentally have every account earmarked for its purpose so that you know exactly what dollars are being spent on what goal. Giving every dollar a job. Exactly. So thank you, Debbie, for asking that question.

Best of luck with the purchase of your first property in the next five years, that's huge. And with all of the properties, including the rental properties that you plan on buying down the road. We'll come back to this episode in just a minute. But first, our next question comes from Sarah. Hi, Paula and Joe. I'm trying to determine whether I should increase my 401k contribution. Here's a little background. I'm 27 years old and I make a little over $100,000 per year.

My job is in high demand and I expect my income to grow fairly significantly over the next five years. I currently contribute 6% of my income to my 401k. My employer contributes 10%. Additionally, I max out my Roth IRA and my employer maxes out my HSI. My only debt is a health hack which more than pays for itself, even with maintenance and cap. I'm currently on the hunt for another rental property, which should leave me with reserves for the property is an emergency fund, but not much else. I love my job, and so my goal is financial flexibility rather than fire. My question is what my next saving goal should be.

I would like to purchase a single family home in the next two to five years, so part of my savings will go towards that. However, I'm considering using the remainder of my savings for Roth 401K contributions, with the idea that this would allow me to contribute less towards my 401k in the future, when I expect my expenses to be significantly higher. In my mind, this would give me the tax benefits of retirement vehicle, but I would still have flexibility by way of reducing future 401k contributions down to the employer match. I've not heard of anyone implementing the strategy, so I was wondering what your thoughts are. Alternatively, I've considered contributing to a 529 fund since I plan to have kids the next five years or so. And in theory, I could touch these funds much sooner than a 401K.

Thank you for your help. Sarah, thank you for that question. a few thoughts come to mind immediately. First of all, you stated that your goal is to buy a house within the next two to five years. But there's a big difference between two years versus five years. If you want to buy a home in the next... She said three? No, there's three years difference between two and five.

You said there's a big difference. It's three. Three is big. I was just telling you exactly how big. For people who are wondering what's going on, we're recording this on. Skype and Joe just held up the number three on his fingers at the camera. Sorry. There's a big difference.

Yes, there is, Paula, three. To be specific. There's a 36 month difference. Oh. Well, if the goal is two years out, if she wants to buy this home within the next two years, she's got a fire hose savings towards that goal. years that goes by in the blink of an eye. So if she wants to buy this home two years from now, 24 months from now, then, all right, time to point all of the momentum in this direction.

If by contrast, she wants to buy this home 60 months from now, right? That's the difference we're talking about, 24 months versus 60 months. And that, would you like me to break this down into weeks? Fortnights? I just derailed this entire thing. think. Pay periods. Which doesn't happen often, people. It's hard to derail Paula Pant, but I just did it. I feel so good. From a planning perspective, that to me is the difference between in two years, she's pointing all the momentum towards this goal because that's a very short-term goal. If it's five years, she's got some time, which means that her alternate strategy of essentially front-loading that Roth 401K, piling a bunch of contributions into that first and foremost and taking her time when it comes

to saving up for this property purchase, okay, if the goal is to not buy the property for another five years, then there's more time to pile more money into that Roth 401K. And so I think that the decision that she needs to make is how soon does she want to buy this property and why? The reason that I can't make that decision for her is because the decision is going to hinge on factors that include her assumptions about what kind of returns she's going to get from the type of property she purchases. And that's going to depend on the risk profile, the location and the risk profile of the type

of property she purchases. I mean, there's no such thing as like, oh, real estate, your returns are going to be X, right? That X is so broad that it's meaningless. because all real estate is local. And so the type of property that she wants, the location of that property, the risk profile of that property, the age and the condition of that property, all of that are her assumptions about what that's going to mean for the next five, ten years, 15 years of owning that property, of holding it, all of that's going to play into the assumptions she makes, the projection

she makes about that property. And that's going to inform whether that property is a better, worse, or similar choice. to putting money into a Roth 401k. So given that there's such a wide range of what buying up property could mean, there's no straight and easy answer for when she, quote, unquote, should do it. But regardless of what conclusion she comes to about when she wants to do it, whether it's in two years versus five years, that decision, that two year versus five year decision, that's going to inform everything else that she does, including her 401K strategy.

and the 529 strategy, although frankly, 529 is, in my view, the least attractive of the options that she named. I think there's an option that she didn't name that I may pursue because even the Roth with her goal of flexibility, I don't think gives her enough flexibility. With the Roth 401K, especially versus a Roth IRA. With a Roth IRA, you can take out money much more liberally than with the Roth 401K. So I really think this is a great place for a non-qualified brokerage account. Just opening up a brokerage account buying things that have low dividends.

So she's not getting hammered every year with taxes on the dividend income that's coming in. Even if you reinvest it, and a lot of people forget this or don't know it, even if you reinvest those dividends, you have to pay tax on them when they're issued. So buy things that don't have big dividends. and that money's available whenever she wants it. So I think that's a great middle ground once she gets past this short-term house goal. Whether it's two or five years, don't do what I'm talking about for that two- or five-year goal. But I think I like the brokerage account, Paula, better than the Roth. So my understanding of the Roth strategy that she was laying out was that if she piles far more contributions into her Roth 401K now,

she can ease up on making 401K contributions in the future, meaning that she will have additional cash flow from future paychecks. So essentially, the Sarah of the year 2025 will be able to put less money into her retirement accounts because she put so much in in the year 2021. But companies talk about, and I don't know anything about where she works, but companies talk about culture. We had a great gentleman on my podcast, Ashley Goodall, who wrote this wonderful piece. He and Marcus Buckingham. They wrote a book. but it was after a great piece that appeared in the Harvard Business Review about culture, largely saying that culture is baloney.

You know who culture is? Culture is the people that you have lunch with every day and your boss. That is culture. So somebody that works for Microsoft, let's say, might have great culture, but the people that work one hall over have horrible culture. What if those conditions that Sarah loves today change and she's made all this money and she has to now use all of these methods of extracting money from Roths to get out of that. I think a non-qualified brokerage account gives her the ability versus the Roth to say

later on when conditions that work change, if they change, that she can change her mind, that she can do something different without having to worry about where the income comes from or the tax loophole to get out this money that she's putting into a qualified position. Maybe we're having different understandings of her question, but I don't hear her question as I'm going to put money into an account with the expectation that I might be able to withdraw it later. She said she said she's after financial flexibility. Right. A Roth is going to give her some flexibility, but doesn't give her what to me is the linchpin of all flexibility, which is to later decide to pull the shoot. Right, right, right.

But flexibility also comes from having. having a well-stocked portfolio, you know, having a portfolio that's so healthy that even at a young age, you can abandon it and just let it ride and not have to make new contributions. So there's a degree of flexibility that comes from being so aggressive about your retirement savings at a young age that five years in the future, you can say, all right, cool, I'm done contributing for retirement. If I never contribute another dollar, or if I only contribute up to my employer, your match and no more, I'll still be set. And that gives you greater flexibility with your

future earnings. She could be in that same spot, though, with a non-qualified account that doesn't have big dividends. Right. I mean, the drag, there's still, there may be a little drag, right? If the index has some turnover, which they will from time to time, she's going to pay, she will pay a little more in tax using my strategy. But I think she gets additional flexibility. that she doesn't get when she uses the tax shelter. Right. Well, she'll pay just a little bit more in tax right now,

not enough to write home about. Where she'll really pay that tax is if she hangs on to that taxable brokerage account until she's 65. And then she just missed out on the opportunity to use a tax shelter because she diverted money into a taxable brokerage account instead. Yeah, but she still has the cash. I mean, okay, she missed out on the shelter, but she still has the money.

The money's all still sitting there, right? Except for whatever the drag was, the little tax drag that I agree with you, isn't that money? So she missed out an opportunity cost to shelter money in a way that, and no, because it's a Roth, never mind. Yeah, she basically would have missed the opportunity cost to put money into a tax advantaged account that allowed her to enjoy all of those gains tax exempt. And the longer she holds on to that money, the greater the opportunity cost. So if she hangs on to that money for only a few years and then uses it to buy some properties or something. Yeah, agreed. But if she hangs on to that money for 40 years, then that's a lot of opportunity cost in terms of the tax exemption of all of those gains that she could have had.

Yeah, then there can be a much bigger tax hit when she takes that money if it just sits there and builds and builds and builds and builds. Right. Which means we're answering her question with a question. Right. Right. It goes back to that two to five year thing. How long do you plan to have this money? Yeah. And what does flexibility really mean?

Right. Is it flexibility in the form of like security? Is she using flexibility as interchangeable with security, meaning portfolio size, or is she using flexibility to mean liquidity? Yeah. And maybe the answer isn't even one or the other. Right. Maybe it is both. Right. Yeah. On the liquidity through stability spectrum, where are you? Yeah. So that's a creative way for us of not answering the question. That's what I love about this podcast. I think a lot of what we do is try to get to the root of the answer, and it does bring up

these philosophical questions of, all right, what do you mean by flexibility? Do you mean security or do you mean liquidity? Because those are two distinct concepts, and flexibility could be used as a synonym for either one, but they are conceptually very different. They're different goals that we're designing for. One thing I will say, Joe, and I assume that you and I both agree on this. The 529 plan is, I think, for both of us, our least favorite. Yeah, it's out.

It's just out. So thank you, Sarah, for asking that question. Best of luck with that purchase of a home in two to five years. Which is roughly a three-year difference, Paula. That's 36 months. Our final question comes from Hunter. Hi, Paula. I've heard you advise that one should place credit freezes on their credit with the three major credit bureaus.

And recently, I did this for two minors for my two children. And as you may know, requesting a credit freeze for a minor requires that you mail in documentation. I did this, and shortly after doing this, I received confirmation back in the mail from TransUnion and Experian saying that the credit freezes had been placed for both children. but I didn't receive anything from Equifax. When I called Equifax and called their customer service line, they gave me a different address to mail everything into than the address that I got from their website, from Equifax.com. And the representative didn't have much of an explanation for that.

I'm feeling a little nervous since my trust in Equifax is already low, given the data breach some years ago and the fact that they're a credit bureau. would you advise me resending the documentation to this new address or is it almost less risky to just say, I've got the credit frozen at two of the three. I'll just stop dealing or sending information to any address that's supposedly affiliated with Equifax. Just wondering if you or someone in your network has some good experience or perspective on dealing with this credit bureau. Thanks so much. Hunter, that is a fantastic question.

First of all, congratulations to you for being proactive and for protecting the credit of your children. Second, that is totally shady. And I would definitely, I think your instincts are correct to not mail this paperwork to an address that was given to you over the phone that is not published on the website. I agree 100% with your instincts. And I would not do that as well. I think there's a, I think there's one caveat there, Paula. if you go to your friendly browser and you put the address in that they sent to you and you find that that is an address that's affiliated with Equifax and other correspondence at other places

like on their website, then I think you're... But then it is on their website. He's saying it's not on their website. No, but there's a place that they have just general correspondence come into. I don't know if they have a separate spot, a separate, quote, loading dock for this type of specific question. As an example, when I deal with the IRS, I will send stuff sometimes to Austin. I'll send it sometimes to North Carolina, depending on who I'm dealing with and where I'm dealing with. I've had this happen with companies before where they're sending it someplace else.

All I'm saying is there's one thing I'd look at before I don't trust it. Because Equifax is so bad the month after their data breach. If you called Experian, Experian's voice message before you got to a person said, we're not Equifax. Yeah. So with regard to address, this website is the website, is the address on the website question. The easy way to search for that is to do what's called a Google site search. And I'm sure Hunter, you've probably done this, but to anyone who's listening, in your web browser, in the space where the URL goes, type in site, S-I-T-E, colon, you can do this on a Google

Chrome browser, type in site, sitee, colon, and then you type in that URL, so you type in equifax.com, and then you type in the address that you're searching for, or whatever search firm you're searching for, and you can search specifically for those words on that particular website. And so if you've searched the Experian website, and this address is not printed on there, there is no way in hell I would ever mail documents to that address. Because if it's not in writing, it doesn't exist. So it might be the case that the address is not on the homepage above the fold. Sure, it might be the case that the address is buried somewhere on that website.

Fine, that's fair. But if you've searched the site and you can't find the address written anywhere on the website, I would absolutely never mail any documents there. Agreed. So thank you, Hunter, for asking that question. And once again, I applaud you for protecting your children's credit. And the fact that you've done it with two out of the three major bureaus, if I were in your shoes, and I couldn't find this address on the Equifax website, I'd leave it there.

Two out of three, good enough. You've done your job. And I applaud you for doing that. Joe, we've done it. I can't believe we did it. And we got to do some heavy math, too. I know, right? the difference between two years and five years.

Mind-blowing. It's a big difference. I want to see a five-star review from somebody that says they explained the difference between two and five. That's the kind of math we teach on the Afford Anything podcast. You're not going to get that on Tim Ferriss or Mark Marin. Speaking of five-star reviews, make sure that you open whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast and leave us a five-star review. There it is. Yes, absolutely.

And hit subscribe or follow in that app. And while you're in that app, head on over to Stacking Benjamins, where you can hear the Greatest Money Show on Earth, which airs three days a week. Joe, I don't know how you produce a show that airs three days a week. I can barely produce these episodes on time. And by barely, I mean I can't produce these episodes on time. And we're mostly a once a week show where we're 64 episodes a year. Well, I've got great help.

We have Pull a Pant on almost every Friday, and that makes it very easy. Oh, well, thank you. Tell us a little bit more about the stacking Benjamin's podcast. That's it. We call it the greatest money show on Earth because it's a circus. That's exactly why. You don't know what you're going to get. We've had some great conversations lately.

I was telling you earlier before we started recording about how much I love talking to Lisa Napoli, who's a great writer. She wrote about Ray and Joan Crock recently. She wrote about the history of CNN. but I talked to her about the four women who were at the beginning of NPR. And I love NPR. And Koki Roberts, who I was a big fan of and was so sad when she passed away, Susan Stamberg, Linda Wertheimer, and Nina Totenberg, the stories of these four women are just amazing stories.

So we talk to all kinds of just fun, interesting people, but many of them are financial. adjacent topics, meaning we're not hitting it straight on. We're trying to talk about earning more, saving more and spending more. And you can listen to the stacking Benjamin's podcast, wherever finer podcasts are found, but only the finest. Only the finest. Only the finest. And we can count to three there too. Oh, wow. But wait, there's more. Well, thank you so much for tuning in. If you'd enjoy today's episode, please subscribe to our show. notes so that you can get synopsies of all of these episodes. If you go to afford anything.com slash show notes, you will get our show notes along with the synopsis of the questions, the

timestamps associated with the questions, write-ups of the interviews that we do. You'll get all of that delivered straight to your inbox for free every time we release an episode. So afford anything.com slash show notes is the place to go. Thank you again for tuning in. If you enjoy this podcast, please share it with a friend or a family member. That's a single most important thing that you can do to spread the message of financial independence and good financial health. My name is Paula Pamp. Here with Joe Saul-Sehigh. This is the Afford- Anything podcast, and I will catch you in the next episode. Here is an important disclaimer. There's a distinction between financial media and financial advice. Financial media includes

everything that you read on the internet, hear on a podcast, see on social media, that relates to finance, all of this is financial media. That includes the Afford Anything podcast, this podcast, as well as everything Afford Anything produces. And financial media is not a regulated industry. There are no licensure requirements. There are no mandatory credentials. There's no oversight board or review board. The financial media, including this show, is fundamentally part of the media. And the media is never a substitute for professional advice. That means anytime you make a financial decision or a tax decision or a business decision, anytime you make any type of decision, you should be consulting with licensed credential experts,

including but not limited to attorneys, tax professionals, certified financial planners or certified financial advisors, always, always, always consult with them before you make any decision. Never use anything in the financial media. And that includes this show, and that includes everything that I say and do. never use the financial media as a substitute for actual professional advice. All right, there's your disclaimer. Have a great day. My name is Paula Pant.

This is Josal Seahy. This is the stacking Benjamin's. No, it's not. Wow. All right. It's like OG is here.