Afford Anything - Ask Paula: The Hidden Costs of Leverage

Episode Date: July 12, 2023

#451: Rachel’s car is nearing its end of life and she’s short on cash. Should she sell before she’s hit with a major repair? Cam wants to arbitrage a hefty low-interest loan with a three-year payback period. Is this the opportunity of a lifetime or a disaster waiting to happen? Kris has tried all the budgeting apps but they’re cumbersome and time-consuming. Is there a better way to track his monthly expenses? An anonymous caller feels stretched thin with a high mortgage on a single income. Should she sell off some stocks to lower her monthly payments? Former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I tackle these four questions in today’s episode. Enjoy! P.S. Got a question? Leave it at https://affordanything.com/voicemail For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode451 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe, what do you drive? You know what's funny? I rarely drive. So what, like the Batmobile? You laughed as soon as I asked the question. Because, you know, I work from my mom's basement and I'm barely out of the basement. So when I do drive, I have a, I think it's a 16-year-old Chevy Equinox paid off a long, long, long, long, long, long, time ago.

And then Cheryl drives Volkswagen Tiguane, which is a nice ride. And her car is much newer because she drives frequently and we just need one car that's reliable. Oh, fantastic. Fantastic. My car is imaginary. Oh, it can be whatever you want. Yes, exactly. I actually, okay, fun fact.

So I got an email from Tesla. Apparently, in 2016, I put down a deposit on a Tesla Model 3. This was before the Model 3 was released. I got an email from Tesla saying that, you know, you have a deposit on your Model 3. Your reservation number is such and such. You put down this deposit in 2016. It is now 2023. We've held your deposit.

It's a $1,000 deposit. They've held it for seven years. And they're like, if you don't order a car by next week, we're going to refund the deposit. And when I saw the email, I genuinely thought, I was like, should I get it? a Tesla? Or should I get the refund? And I like contemplated it for a while. And? No, I decided to get the refund because I, I mean, I live in the center of Manhattan. I have no need for a car. Which I should have known when you said your car is imaginary. I'm lucky that she bought the imaginary Tesla and let them keep the refund. That's right. Look at me giving away the ending. But today, you know, we're going to answer a question from a woman named Rachel. Was that a lead in, Paula?

Oh, it was. It was a lead-in. It was a lead-in. I guess I should intro the show first, though, right? What is the show, Paula? This is the Afford Anything Podcast. The show that understands you can afford anything, but not everything. Every choice that you make is a trade-off against something else, and that applies not just to your money, but to any limited resource that you need to manage, your time, your focus, your energy, your attention. And that opens up two questions. What matters most? And how do you make decisions accordingly? My name is Paula Pan. I'm the host. This is former financial. planner Joe Saul C-high, joining me to answer questions that come from you. And we're going to kick it off

by hearing from Rachel. Hi, Paula and Joe. My name is Rachel, and I am 27 years old. I'm calling to ask a question about buying a car. I feel like it's been a little while since you've answered one of these questions. And with the crazy new car used car market, I thought I would call in. So my situation is this. I've had my current vehicle, which is a 2011 Mazda 3 sedan for more than 10 years, and I own it completely outright. I've been really good about regular maintenance, and I've had to do almost zero major repairs to it. It's been a really awesome car. But now it has just over 200,000 miles on it, so I'm starting to kind of brace myself for something to go really wrong. And so here's my dilemma.

I don't know whether I should sell it now before something big happens and I'm in for a major repair or if I should hang on to it and just drive it into the ground, keep it until the bitter end, and then I don't know, either sell it for whatever I could get for it or donate it and get a tax credit. I know the Kelly Blue Book Valley right now is in the $3,000 ballpark, and if I sell it now, I could put that money towards my next vehicle. But at the same time, like, if I don't have to spend the money on a new vehicle, which, of course, it would be a new to me vehicle, I would get a used car. But that's, you know, that's money that I don't really have right now. I think I would look for something in the $15,000 range and I would definitely

need a car payment. So I don't know. I just can't wrap my head around the smartest thing to do. I definitely want to keep the car until it's, until it makes sense. But I don't know. I would love your advice. Thank you for everything you do. And congratulations, Paula, on finishing your fellowship. Aw. That's so nice. Yeah, that's sweet. Rachel, thank you. Thank you so much for that congratulations. And let's talk about this car question, because this is a fascinating topic, and it's not one that we discuss enough. It isn't. She's right. We haven't talked about this in a long time. Yeah, exactly. No one's asked a car question in a while. My brain is going in a couple of different. directions here. And some of the things I'm going to say are for you specifically, and some of the

things I'm going to say are for everyone else listening broadly. First of all, as I see it, your car is worth $3,000 right now, Kelly Blue Book value, resale value. It's not going to go down significantly from there. theoretically, let's assume that nothing happens to it and you drive it for another two years or three years. I mean, it'll be worth what? 2000 at the time, maybe $1,500? Basically, you no longer have any more depreciation left on the car. Although, I will say for the record, the cheapest car I ever bought was $400. So I guess theoretically it could go down to that. That was a 23-year-old car that I purchased. But even if it does, how long is it going to take her to get to $400?

Yeah, because she's had this car for 10 years. So if she drove it for another 13 years, then it would go down to $400. Right. Yeah. So, yeah. So basically, you no longer are going to be bearing the cost of depreciation on the car. And that's that's the good news. Now, you know that you're going to have to pay for a major repair. You don't know when, but you know that you will. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to start making a car payment to yourself.

So take whatever amount of money you would make on a car payment. Let's say it's, if you were to buy a new car, let's say your car payment would be 400 a month, right? Or 500 a month. Take the amount of money that you would make on that car payment. make that payment to yourself and accumulate that in a specific savings account that is purely your car payment to yourself. That way, if you have to make a major repair, it can come out of that. And eventually, when you do go to buy your next car, you might have one year, two years,

three years, who knows, maybe even all five years worth of car payments to yourself that have accumulated over that time. One last thing I'll say before I kick it to you, Joe, don't forget that when it comes to buying a new car, new to you car, given that the car is going to be financed, that means you're going to have to have full coverage insurance on it. And I'm guessing you probably don't have full coverage insurance on your current car, and that's an additional cost savings.

So the cost of a new car is not just the sticker price plus the interest on the loan. It's also going to be having that much higher. insurance rate. So for all of those reasons, I say stick with your current car for as long as you can swing it. Stick with your current car is always, always the best financial advice, like period, always. Because a car is a depreciating asset, because of the fact that, you know, unless it's one of a small subset of antique cars, which she's not going to be driving around to work all day, you're not going to see the price tag go up. The smartest advice financially. Now, that's not always the smartest advice though. Like if you're somebody who takes clients around in your car all day,

maybe your car represents an office and it's a status symbol that people that people need want, there could be some career reasons. But for the vast majority of people, I think the smartest advice is always hold on to the car. So your advice to price out the car today, that would be the car that she wants, figure out on one of a bajillion websites what that would cost and begin this fund into it is the advice. I mean, that's great. It's going to decrease the amount of that car payment later that she has to make. She's also going to get used to having that in her budget every month. So she's going to feel the tightness, but in a way that she can get out of it if she wants and go, oh, maybe that's too much car. I can't afford that much. Yeah, exactly. That's a really

good point, Joe. By virtue of making a car payment to yourself, you are test driving, pardon the fun. Test driving the experience of having that car payment. Like, clearly, because you believe that you have it within your budget to finance a new to you car, you believe that that's something your budget can accommodate. So yeah, take that change to your budget on a test drive by making a car payment to yourself. You know, I just have one more thing, and this is not for Rachel. She did not say this. But when I would talk to clients all the time and they were buying a card, this is a phrase people would say over and over, and I'm sure nearly everybody has heard this before. They're like, well, I had to buy a new car because my current car is, quote, nickel and diming me.

Nichols and dimes are a lot less, a lot less than a new car payment. Exactly. You know, and that's interesting because it goes to human psychology, right? It goes to the psychology of certainty versus uncertainty. When you know, with certainty that you have a $400 monthly payment and it's due on the fifth of the month, period, end of story. It becomes part of your budget. It maybe is a bill that's paid automatically. And you don't feel, like, viscerally feel the pain of it because it's simply digital moves

that take place on a ledger. So it's invisible, right? Versus you're driving down the road and you start to start to start to start. smell something really funky and then since the smoke is coming out from under the hood and you pull over onto the shoulder and it's like it's a hassle, it's inconvenient, and it's an unknown number, right? But that unknown number, let's say that unknown number is like $900, but it only happens once every six months. You don't have to be a math major to figure out that the cost of repairs is going to be significantly less than the cost of the car.

Even if you were to take that $400 monthly payment and subtract out what you could get back from selling the car, you know, if you were to weigh that 400 only in terms of the depreciation, the interest, the delta in insurance premiums, right? You can math that out. And it's still going to be a heck of a lot more expensive. But human psychology is not a spreadsheet. And that's not to say that there's not other outside circumstances that we shouldn't be thinking about. I mean, you know, I mentioned that there might be career reasons to want or need a new car.

If you have a job where you cannot, cannot be late, cannot have uncertainty in your transportation, well, then okay, then maybe that pulling over on the side of the road thing that can't happen or with a high degree of certainty you'd really don't want to have happen, I can then see, okay, I need a more reliable ride. Even for that, if you can Uber, I mean, if like, if that's going to happen once every six months, but your job is a reasonable Ubering distance away and you live in a city that's big enough to have lots of Uber's available or lifts, even still, that would be a lot cheaper. Sure, but you still may have the time. I mean, I remember a job I had early in my career where if I was 15 minutes late, my boss was on fire. And I really needed that job. things were very, very tight for me.

And I had an unreliable ride. And I kept thinking, baby, I hope we make it today. I just totally kept hoping and praying that things would go great. And so I can just see these outside reasons sometimes that they can convince me that maybe I need a more reliable ride. But once again, I think to your point, Paula, that is the vast majority of situations. And also to your point, you know, often the laziest solution is we throw money at it, which is I buy a new car. You know, it's a much lazier solution and much less creative than I go, you know, get on my phone and get the Uber app and call the tow truck from work once I get there. Yeah, yeah.

One thing that I want everyone who's listening to this to be familiar with is a notion called the total cost of ownership. Just search for it online. There's a lot of information about this notion, but the total cost of ownership takes into account when you're buying a new car or a new to you car. the age of the car, the condition of the car, the reliability, the depreciation, it takes the big picture into account so you can see what that car will actually cost you. For me, the sweet spot, I love Honda Civics or Toyota Camry's and Corolla's. I've had a couple of Nissan's as well. The newest car I ever bought, was it four years old?

Four or five? It was either four. I definitely have never bought anything that's newer than four years. That I can say with absolute certainty. Yeah, even when I bought that four-year-old car, I remember I was podcasting at the time. And I remember I talked about it on this show where I was like, geez, I feel like Paris Hilton, like four years. Who needs a car that's that new? I recently did an Instagram live with a guy named Carl Brower, who is one of the chief researchers at a website called Icars.com.

And they do all this analysis on new and use cars. do you know a great indicator that a car's total cost of ownership is low is if you are renting a car from a major place at an airport and they have a lot of them in the fleet because a place like avis or herds or enterprise they've already done that work right and so they talked about how a chevi impella while it's not the best priced car it's not the most reliable core the total cost of ownership is actually less on a Chevy Impala than any other car. That makes so much sense because if you run a car rental business, you are experiencing total cost of ownership at scale.

Law of large numbers. Almost like a life insurance actuary, right? Yeah, exactly. And so even minor variation in the total cost of ownership, multiplied by tens of thousands of cars within your fleet, would have a massive impact in your bottom line. And so, yeah, you bet your bottom there massing up the math out of that. Although, I guess the one distinction then between a car rental fleet versus an ordinary individual, a car rental service, a major car rental service needs newer cars, right?

Sure. Yes. They can't rent out cars that are six, seven, eight years old. It's an indicator. It shouldn't be your final event. It's like, oh, Avis owns it, so I should. You should use that. But it's a good indicator that that's a place to look.

By the way, cars most likely to go over 250,000 miles, the brand, Toyota, bar now. Toyotas will drive longer, according to Carl Brower at Icacars.com, will drive longer than any other cars by any other manufacturer. The car, my $400 car that was 23 years old at the time of purchase, that was a Toyota. That was a Toyota, Corolla. Is Corolla the small one? We'll say it was a Corolla. We'll say it was a Toyota. It was definitely a Toyota.

I'm going to try to find. I'm going to see if I can pull up some pictures of it. And I don't know how to put pictures on YouTube, but I will figure it out. A Camry. It was a Camry. No, no, it was smaller than a Camry. I think it was a Corolla. Anyway, speaking of professional, I was part of the Society of Professional journalists.

I was on the board of directors. Not to brag or anything. I mean, it's a volunteer position. It's like you just sign up for the board and they'll take you. Or at least that's how it was at the time. And SPJ would put on these events at the Denver Press Club where we would invite journalists from across the country to fly in to do a talk. This one day, this guy, at the time he was a reporter at the Rocky Mountain News, and he was also part of the board. And he was like, Paula, can you pick up our guest?

from the airport. And I was like, you know, you do not want me to do that. You know, and I explained, I was like, my car is not appropriate for that. And he was like, it's okay. You're, you know, they'll understand. You're like, you're 22 and you're a journalist. No one expects you to have a fancy car. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's not having a fancy car. And then there's having a car that is so rusted out that you can actually stick your hand through the body of the car. I had that. Yeah. I was like, that's what I have.

My car, there is like no distinction between the indoors and the outdoors. When it snows, it snows inside the car. Even with the door closed and the windows rolled up. I had to wear. I had to wear boots because right underneath my feet where the pedals were, it rusted out right there. So I had to wear heavy boots in the winter because of Michigan. and all the snow would come up off of the wheels and hit my legs. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And this was Colorado. I was like, I would bundle up to drive. I was like, freezing. But so no matter how much I insisted, no, I can't pick this person up from the airport, they were like, look, nobody else can do it? Can you just go? Here you go. So I did.

You imagine this journalist has just boarded a plane. and flown across the country to come do a talk, and they're like, you'll have an airport pick up, you know, and then I show up in this rust bucket where the seatbelt had frayed, so there was no seatbelt. It had completely frayed through. They're sure they're going to die. Yeah. Well, they loved it. They did.

Loved it. Because they're like, I'm a storyteller, and this car is a story. You're like, I'm not sure I want to be the topic of your story. I don't want to be the subject of this story. Yeah, no, they're like, the writer in me is in love with this. Tell me more. What is the history of this? I was like, wow.

So, yeah, so that was one instance in which I actually used that car for professional purposes, and it went well. And Paula's like, yes, in the story, you can spell my name, S-A-M-A-N-T-H-H-A. Samantha. Because you don't want to use your real name. Oh, no, I totally do. Why wouldn't I? I'm proud of that car. I am so proud of that car.

You're like, wait a minute. At the beginning of this story, you're like, you think you're offending them. So you don't want to pick them up. And now you're completely proud of it. Well, hey. Now you're changing it. No, no, no. I didn't want to pick them up.

But if I'm going to go. If you do it, do it fully. Right? If you can't live it down, play it up. You're going to own it. Yeah. If you're going to do it, then own it. You don't like my car.

Shut up. Like you've got two choices. Either stay home and don't pick them up or pick them up and own it. Right. Those are the two options. Literally it's go big or go home. Rachel's like, what does this have to do with me? But I, okay, I guess that's, if I, we want to make that a lesson, that's my message to

anyone who believes that they need a car, a fancy car for professional purposes. There it is. If your car is not fancy, and hopefully it's at least a little bit safer than the one that I was driving. but if your car is not fancy, own it. Like, just own that. Own that game. You're welcome, Rachel. I, man.

I was really thinking about that Tesla, though. I was like, if only I needed to drive ever. Ever. Yeah. I could do it in a Tesla. Right. Yeah. I'd take it out twice a year.

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. But that's like my. equinox, I never drive. Like I literally once a week, maybe, maybe once a week. All right. Well, Rachel, thank you for the question. I hope that car lasts you for another 13 years.

And then I hope you sell it to somebody like me, the next version of me. 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. Maybe you need serveware and cookware. And of course, holiday decor, all the stuff to make your home a great place to host during the holidays.

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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. What do you reckon, Joe? Should we do another question? Okay, well, as long as we're here. All right, well...

What do I reckon? That's what I reckon. All right. Well, our next question is going to come from Chris. Hi, Paula. This is Chris from Dallas, Texas. My question is about tracking monthly expenses. I have tried web-based software from consolidators like Mint and Quicken.

They can download data from my credit cards and bank accounts. However, the process is incomplete and cumbersome. Number one, not all credit or purchase card companies allow downloading of data. Number two, I use two-factor authentication for most of my credit cards. And this can cause challenges for certain card issuers. Number three, the categorization of expenses is very time-consuming. For example, purchases made at Costco or Target or Amazon can be a combination of groceries, household items, etc.

These expenses have to be reviewed and categorized manually. I like using store-specific cars like Costco Target and Amazon since I get additional discounts. Also, bank credit cards will periodically offer zero percent financing which I like to take advantage of. Is there a simpler way to automate and keep track of expenses? Any direction you can provide is appreciated. Chris, thank you so much for the question. One of my eternal frustrations with the way that traditional budgeting software programs work, such as Mint and many others, and I'm not picking on Mint,

is exactly the issue that you described, that they need to be manually separated out. This is the percentage of that target receipt that went to food versus went to toiletries versus went to books. No wonder most people can't stick with a budget. It's unduly cumbersome. And so what I would recommend with regard to that is one of two things. Either you within your budget have a catch-all category that is tariffel. target Amazon Costco, right? And that is just your target Amazon Costco category within your budget.

You don't segment it. That's that category. The other way to do it is even broader. Rather than line itemizing into umpteenth innumerable categories, instead just have a budget with three categories or two categories. So a budget with three categories, would be savings, needs, wants. That's it. And everything goes into one of those three buckets. Is it this money that you've saved? And by save, I mean anything that contributes to your net worth could be literal savings in a savings account. It could be retirement contributions. It could be additional payments on a debt above and beyond the minimum required. So anything that builds your net worth is what I mean by savings. All of that goes into the savings bucket.

needs would be your mortgage, your utilities, grocery store, like that's all needs. Wants would be, actually, honestly, even as I say this, target Amazon Costco, half of that's probably needs and half of that's probably wants. But just pick one of the two, throw it in there, and call it done. Like, I think the problem with budgeting, and it's an issue that a lot of the design of the software programs really exacerbate, is. that they want us to have an uncapped number of categories. They want us to divide our budget into seven, eight, nine, ten, fifteen different categories. So we know with precision,

with undue precision, precisely how much we're spending on home and gardening, versus how much we're spending on clothing and apparel. Who cares, right? Who cares? The point of a budget is to make sure that you're saving enough. I can see Joe shake in his head, he disagrees. I say the point of a budget is to make sure that you are saving enough. So start with the end in mind and design a budget with the fewest possible number of categories so that you can pay attention to what really matters, which is how much am I saving versus how much am I spending. I agree with that statement. And actually, when you were just there, I was with you and then you lost me halfway. I think beginning with why am I budgeting in the first place makes a ton of sense

because if you're overly granular and there's no reason to do it besides your own OCD, which I know a bunch of those people, then you just have to put the OCD aside because Chris is going to totally frustrate you forever. The frustration comes from the fact that these companies can't look inside of your target pill. I mean, if they could get access inside of your target account or get access inside of your Amazon account. I'm sure they'd be happy to do that. But that, just think about the technology that goes into that. I think we might get there at some point, but we're not. But the place where you lost me, Paula, was that there was a time when I truly needed to know where every dime was going out the window and the contemplative and almost

meditative aspect of taking that Costco bill and contemplating, is this truly something that I needed or not. Now, I don't need that anymore, but there was definitely a time when I needed to learn that I needed a bigger appreciation for a dollar and that tracking line by line made so much sense to me. But I would say to Chris, if you need that, I wouldn't complain about the time that you spend because the time that you spend is a time where your conscious and subconscious brain are going to work through the issues that you're having, making your budget balance. Sometimes it is, I'm spending way too much money on this category. I'm not thinking enough about expenses. Sometimes you find out it's an income problem.

And maybe there's other ways for me to make money that I'm not making. But either way, I think you do one of two things, Paula. You either shrink the categories so it doesn't drive you a, flipping crazy or you just become okay with the fact that I need to spend this time. So, Joe, it sounds to me as though the distinction is the time spent. Is it a meditative practice or is it a chore? Yes. That's the distinction.

Because I do, actually, I haven't done it recently, but you know how there's software that helps you figure out that tracks your net worth? So for example, personal capital, right? It automatically tracks your net worth. those are great, but I had a practice and I stopped doing it. I don't think I've done it since the pandemic, but I did it for years and years and years, and I intend to pick it up again, in which manually, twice a year, I would manually go through and calculate my net worth.

I would manually log in to every single account and find the balance in that account and input it on a spreadsheet. I mean, it took maybe four hours, right? Like to log into every different account, it took a very long time. That's why I only did it twice a year. But I bet it was a great use of time. Yeah, because that was meditative. Because as I logged in to Vanguard, to Schwab, to TD Ameritrade, I was able to think about

the investments that I was making. What's the purpose? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so doing it with the intention of this is, my Tibetan sand mandala. If you wanted to create a work of art, there are more efficient ways to do it than like dropping little grains of sand, you know, but the reason that Tibetan sand mandala's exist is because the very act of creating it is a meditative practice in and of itself. So if for you, this is your

sand mandala, this is your woodworking in your woodshop, this is your making pesto from scratch, starting with growing the basal in your window sill. It's something that you do because it's very meditative. It's, it's you're using a mortar and pastel to grind the pine nuts, right? If that's the reason that you're doing it, great. But the mood that I got from hearing Chris's question was that to him, this is just a chore, a checkmark. Like, man, I got to do this. Yeah. Then I got to clean the gutters. That I got to buy some toilet paper. Yeah. And the answer is that technology doesn't yet exist. I think it will at some point, but I don't know of any, I don't know if any technology does what he wants to do. The closest one, if we're going to go

right after the technology question, it's a bear to set up. There's a monthly fee, but... You need a budget? Well, no, Tiller HQ. Oh, I thought you're going to say you need a budget. The cool thing about Tiller HQ's is based on spreadsheets and there's a lot of great financial nerds that have created these different budgeting programs inside a Tiller. It's kind of open AI. What's neat about it, what's great is it embraces open banking, which the cool thing about open banking is, is it's the safest thing. So he talks about how a lot of systems don't play nicely with this two-factor authentication. Open banking does play nice with those. And because of the fact that spreadsheets come with shortcuts, it's a pain in the butt to set it up. But once you get it

set up, you can go line by line very, very quickly and pop them in the right place. Because when I was using mint, it would always just put it in the wrong place. And I'd have to then go scan. Well, and Tiller, you're looking at every single transaction you are putting into yourself, but I can just press the K-key and it'll automatically come up with this thing that it is every time. And boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, I go through all my daily transactions in a very short amount of time. And so I think Tiller's the closest. The cool thing about Tiller, by the way, is this small fee that you pay because as Peter Pulse and the CEO says, if it's free, you are the product that's being sold, right? And with Mint, I think what a lot of people don't realize is, you know, they're scraping your data.

I don't mind them scraping my data. If they want to watch my target, that's fine. That's whatever. But I do like the fact that I know that that fee means that my stuff is, I'm not being marketed in a different way. Right, right. I haven't checked out Tiller. You need a budget is another piece of It's also, it's kind of a pain to set up and there's a monthly fee, but it's very well loved inside of the fire community. And I've recommended it to a couple of personal friends here in New York who have been struggling with budgeting. The thing I love about you need a budget is it's kind of the other side. I think Tiller, for me, is better at tracking your expenses, seeing where you've been. And it's great at that.

You need a budget is really a philosophy of life that you're going to. give every dollar a job before you earn it. So with you need a budget, you're actually, before you get paid, it's almost like you're creating this electronic envelope system of what envelope my dollars in. And when those dollars are gone, you're not going out to eat anymore because of that. Cube money does that pretty well as well, where you're setting up this electronic budget system. And Cube is Q-U-B-E. Yeah. And I see those, I see those programs is a little bit different than Tiller, where it really is a master just tracking where you've been already. Yeah.

Speaking of apps that begin with the letter Q, this is not a budgeting app per se, but one that I really like is capital, which also starts with the Q. With the Q. Yeah. I don't know why. Why? Why do people name it? It's like they're trying to be cute, but it only creates friction around adoption.

I think it's also because the domain price was probably pretty cheap. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure there's got, anyway, I'm not their marketing consultant. But capital with a queue is an app in which you can designate a certain goal. So, for example, maybe you want to buy your next car in cash. You designate a certain goal. You designate a particular amount of money.

There are various ways that you can make contributions into that goal. So you could do recurring contributions, you know, and just make it like a weekly, biweekly, monthly thing. Or there are also kind of fun games that you can set up. So you could do $1 in week one, $2 in week two, you know, all the way up to like $52 in week 52, right? Yeah. There's all kinds of like cute, fun little ways. You can either automate it or you can make it a game.

I love some of the gamification that's out there. It's so when they do it for the right reasons, I think gamification is awesome. And Acorns is basically the investing version of that where Acorns, every purchase that you make, it rounds up. I love acorns. I continue to use it. I've been using it for years and years and years. Every time that I swipe my credit card, it just rounds up my purchase to the nearest dollar. And then those remaining cents, you know, if I'm buying something for $7.42, right? It just rounds it up to eight. It takes those remaining cents and it deposits it into an investment account. And so my acorns balance just from those little roundups is, I think maybe around eight or not. thousand right now. And you can even set that so it rounds to the five, the $5 instead of to the dollar or to the $10 so you can even play with what you rounded up to on Acorns, which is interesting. What's funny with me in Acorns is that you never feel it. You don't feel it in your budget. Yeah, you just don't notice it at all. The friction is so little. It's great. By the way,

just briefly before we leave budgeting apps, I did do on the Stacky Benjamin's YouTube channel, Paula, I did do a walkthrough of Cube just so people can see what it's all about. So if they go to the Stackin Benjamin's YouTube channel, they can see the program in action if they're interested in looking at that. Nice. Very cool. Very cool. But yeah, to get back to Chris, to your question, fundamentally your question is about friction. Joe and I are discussing, you know, what we like about an app like Acorns is that it removes the friction around investing because it's invisible. it's automated, it's invisible, you don't feel it. And what you're discussing is, is friction, right? When you have to manually go through all your transactions, when you have to, when it's a chore rather than a meditation, then it is friction. And any time that there's high friction to something, you're just less likely to do it. And so to the question of what are the lowest friction ways to adhere to a budget, my workaround has always been to reduce your budget to as few categories as possible.

Because the work really happens in the segmentation, in the line itemization. And so the simplest budget, which I refer to as the anti-budget, and I've written about the anti-budget. I've even made speeches about it on stage. I spoke about it at the economy conference. The anti-budget is a two-category budget. What you save, what you spend. End of story.

And again, we're defining save as anything that improves your net worth. So if you were to make additional payments towards a debt, for example, extra payments on a credit card or a car loan or towards a mortgage, that would be considered savings, right? Any net worth improvement falls under the save bucket and any spending falls under the spend bucket. And that's the anti-budget. It is a two-category budget. You can make it as simple as that, or you can make it save wants, needs, or heck, do a four

category, save, wants, needs, and then want need combo, which would be the Amazon Target Costco. I mean, that could be your four category budget right there. What you save, what you want, what you need, Amazon Target Costco. But you get there, Paula, by starting off with, why am I doing this in the first place? Yeah. Yeah. That's true. How am I using this information? Yeah. No matter how you slice it, a budget is supposed to help you be consciously. of how you are spending your money, be conscious of how much you are saving, and reshuffle accordingly. It's there to make sure that you are saving as much as you intend to be saving. So thank you for that question, Chris.

That was a fun one. Discussing cars and discussing budgeting. We haven't talked about either of those. No. It's a whole new world today. Yeah, this is fun. We'll come back to this episode in just a minute. But first.

I think our next question comes from somebody who's anonymous, which means we get to give her a name. We get to name her. We get the naming rights to this caller. The naming rights. Wow. Yes. And if we pivoted back to movies, are we back on movies?

No, you know what? I think I want to do something a little bit more on brand. Oh, we're going to shake it up. Ooh. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ma'am C.J. Walker is the first female. self-made millionaire in the United States. And if you want to give it a movie tie-in, apparently she will also be honored in Barbie's line of inspiring women dolls.

That's fabulous. Yeah. So Madame C.J. Walker, first female self-made millionaire. Self-made is kind of a loaded term. People rightfully point out, like, nobody is ever truly, no man is an island. But first-generation millionaire or millionaire. through effort rather than through...

Inherence. Yeah, inheritance or gift. Yeah. So I think first generation millionaire is maybe the most accurate. I don't know what alternate term people can use besides self-made, knowing how loaded that term is. But there's got to be a better one. Yeah, exactly. You know, actually, you know where how people, why people like really reacted badly to the phrase self-made was when Forbes referred to highly

Jenner as a self-made billionaire. Oh, I remember that. Yeah, like, there is no comparison between Kylie Jenner versus someone like Sarah Blakely. Sarah Blakely is truly self-made. She started out with nothing and sold boxes. You know, she had, like, a stack of boxes in an apartment in Atlanta where she worked from her kitchen table to sell, like, the first prototypes of Spanx. You know, she is genuinely self-made versus, like, Kylie Jenner.

on. Sisters already paving the way for her from a family that has a ton of money already. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It doesn't mean she didn't work hard, though, because one thing that drives me crazy is when somebody put some stank on somebody who does have some privilege and they had a pedestal and they go, well, they had this. But then you actually look at what that person does with that privilege. Right. And they still work their ass off.

Right. We had that at American Express. We had a woman who was a fantastic advisor. She was in Seattle, Washington, and her dad was a Boeing executive. And so all I heard over and over was, well, you know, her dad was a Boeing executive. And as these people retired, she would get them all his clients and she'd roll over the big pension and the 401K money. But then I met her. Her systems were amazing, Paula.

The way she treated her clients was amazing. The referrals she got was amazing. So yeah, maybe her dad was a Boeing exec who worked with all these other people. But she actually took that and made it her own thing. Right. Because sometimes you see the opposite happen. You see people squander what they have. I think more often you see people squander it.

And you see them squander it quickly. It's like a gym that does kettlebell workouts. I'm out. And it's $30 a class. That's expensive. That is freaking expensive. But I was thinking about it. And I was like, if you see, because the instructors are like super fit.

And I'm like, if you see somebody who is that fit, do you say, wow, they have the money to pay for a kettlebell class? Or do you say, wow, they showed up for the class and swung some kettlebells? Yeah. Right? Yeah, because the easy thing to say is I can go buy a kettlebell and avoid the 30 bucks. Well, no, where I'm going with that is it is true that there are people who do. not have the money to take a kettlebell class. But that does not negate the effort of the people who have the money but chose to spend it on that kettlebell class rather than sleeping in.

That was also my point is that there are people I know who will buy the weight set, but they never use it. They will buy the whatever. I mean, this is the problem I have when people talk about, you know, my big platform is surround yourself with smart people. Right. Get the thing. Take the class. Take the course. Be around the people. Do whatever. And I will meet people all the time who go, I don't really need to spend that money. Before I had money, I had to find ways to still get in those rooms. But being in those rooms is the key to my success. And now I will pay to be in those rooms because without being in that room, Paula, I know I won't do the kettlebell workout.

I could buy all the kettlebells I wanted to. I wanted to fill my house with kettlebells and I won't lift one. But if I got to show up at 6 a.m. on a random Tuesday for the workout, you better believe I'll be there. I will be there. Right. Exactly. There's a quote from Oscar Wilde. A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Yes. That's good. So, with that lengthy intro, here's CJ. Here's CJ. Yes. Named for the first female self-made millionaire in America. Hi, Paula and Joe. Thank you so much for taking my call. And thank you so much for everything that you do for this community. I have learned so much from listening to this podcast. So my question is, I'm currently in the market to buy my very first home. I'm in Southern California. So it's definitely been challenging being one income. And just the market has been.

crazy, but I'm finally in escrow. The house is $510,000 and I plan to put in 5% down so I can have more money towards repairs because it's a fixer-upper. I currently have some money in a brokerage account. I have approximately $300,000 in it, and I'm wondering, should I sell some of those assets so I can put towards the mortgage. Just because my monthly payment for the mortgage with property taxes and all the fees will run me approximately almost $4,000, which is the max that I can really afford. I can continue to contribute to my 401k, but aside from any other savings, I probably won't be able to do it because of such a high mortgage. So if you were me, would, you would, you. you let the funds continue to grow in the brokerage account out in the market or would you

put it towards your mortgage so you can have a little bit more free money every month. Thanks, looking forward to your advice. CJ, thanks so much for that question. And Paula, this is where I think another one of our broadening out of the questions happens because here's the thing, CJ, from where I sit. and I'd love Paula to hear your take on this, but just the realization that no goal that you have exists in a vacuum, what she decides here is going to affect another goal.

If she takes the money out of that brokerage account, that money was ostensibly slated for some other goal, and now it's going into the house. And so then it transforms the nature of that money. So my first question is always, before she does anything, if she takes the money out of the brokerage account, which sounds like what she wants to do, and maybe what she probably should do, how does that affect the goal of what that money was already there for? And will she need to find a strategy then to

somehow replace that money if it creates a shortfall in an area she really cares about later? So the real answer might be a two-step. It might be take the money out, but then adopt a side hustle that's going to earn X amount of money that she knows based on compounding is going to still get her to a goal that she was on track for and now is behind two. Do you see what I mean? Essentially, you're saying that money's got to come from somewhere. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of the Stephen Covey. If you pick up one end of a stick, there's another end that you pick up with it. So my initial thought process is what's on the other end of that stick?

Well, there's another goal at the end of that stick. And if she takes the money out, like as an example. A different example. When people decide, well, I'm going to put 5% of my money into my 401k. I used to ask when I would go to companies, I'd say, how'd you decide I'm 5%? And you know what they'd always say, it's what I can afford. And my question was, well, that's great today because it meets your goal today. But the other end of that stick is, where is 5% going to get you later? You may very comfortably be not reaching any goal. You're super comfortable today. And you're not getting there. So the first question is, what do I need to do? And then can I afford to do it? And if I can't

afford to do it, then what's the thing I need to do instead? So my advice probably is, because it sounds like it's going to be so tight at $4,000 a month. She didn't tell us about her entire budget. But I'm assuming that $4,000 is a big chunk of money for her budget. And if that is the case, then taking the money out of the brokerage account makes sense. But I would then ask myself, what's on the other end of that that now isn't being funded. Right, right. Like the thing that I'm most curious about, is that brokerage account meant to be a supplemental retirement account?

Yeah. Because if it is, then I would very much hesitate to take money out of it. I'm firmly of the belief that if there is money that you are specifically setting aside, and when I say retirement, what I mean is money for future you. you at age 65 or older, which is distinct from your occupational status. So when I say retirement, I'm not referring to an occupational status. That's just a shorthand term for once you are over the age of 65, when you are more likely to have, speaking frankly, you're more likely to have health problems that might preclude you from being able to work even if you wanted to. And so you want to

create some type of a safety net for the septagenarian version of yourself. I'm very much of the mind that if you have money that is meant for age 65 plus you, you shouldn't touch that. And often, people will put money in a brokerage account as a supplement to what they've put into a 401k or an IRA. If that's the purpose of the brokerage account, I wouldn't touch it. But if the brokerage account doesn't have a purpose or if it was going to be like a travel fund. Yeah. One of my favorite things to do, Paul, is to run what if scenarios. What if?

What if? What if, what if? What if that money has always been meant for above age 65 after age 65. So it is in that pot of money. But she's invested it over the last 10 years. It did really well until last year. So she made a bunch of money. but that didn't set her back the whole 10 years.

How do you know she didn't bet it all on NVIDIA? Like in January. Then take it out now. Please take it on now. She did it two years ago. Take it out now. But assuming it's, you're right, assuming it's broadly diversified

in a stock-based index kind of portfolio, if that's the case, she might be, even if she takes that money out, Paula, let's say that the what if scenario shows she could take out $40,000. and she's still going to be okay after age 65. Does that change your thinking?

Man, I would need to see it in the context of the entire retirement plan. There's the math of it and there's the principle of it. And as a principle, if money is designated for 65 plus you, future you, as a principle, I don't like touching it. Because it's so easy to be flippant about the age 65 plus. version of ourselves to think that that day is so far into the future that we don't need to worry about it. And then you turn 50 or you turn 55 and you're like, oh, that's around the corner. So as a principle, I'm not a fan of it. In practice, though, in mathematical practice, of course, when you're gaming out how much you're going to have for retirement, as you know,

Joe, there isn't one scenario. There's a range of scenarios. If she really, runs a range of scenarios and in the most conservative range where she gets hit with sequence of returns risk and she gets hit with like, we have Japan's economy from now until she retires. And then at that point, she gets hit with sequence of returns risk. And she's still okay. All right, fine. At that point, you've modeled such a worst case scenario that there's room to spare. Yeah, the frustration that I always had was that there's two different types of people. There are people that aren't saving anywhere near enough money. And there are people that are saving gobs and gobs and gobs of money for a future that they will never experience.

They're over-saving. For those people in principle, I always wanted to lighten them up. Let's get used to flexing this spend muscle a little bit. And I've told the story here before about the gentleman that thought that he had a terminal disease. So he all of a sudden decided he was going to take these wonderful trips. And then he got a second opinion and he found out that he didn't have a terminal disease and he immediately went back to work, even though he didn't need the money. And his family's going to be okay. And I felt so bad for his spouse who was so excited that he was finally going to loosen up. But it's so hard for us to change somebody who's been a saver their whole life, as you know, isn't going to turn into a spender overnight. Right. And for him,

just seeing the fact that's, oh, I can make more money, just this thing in his head was very frustrating. So for me, the principle is not as strong because I've seen too many those people that are going to have way more money than they'll have life. And I'd love for them to have more life. But to your point about sequence of returns to Japan's economy, which people don't know, has been like a zero percent return forever. Yeah. The thing that you always want to do when you're doing these what if scenarios, these models is divide it by two or sometimes even by three, meaning if I'm going to be okay using a regular scenario, let's say I get six or seven percent on my money, and I'm going to be okay and I've got $40,000 left over.

I may then take $20,000 of the $40 and put it toward the mortgage and leave the other $20, or take a third, take a half or a third of what is going to be excess money toward that goal. So it's money that I'm sure that if I do need it, it's way at the end of my life. and it's only half of what's my projected surplus. You know the other thing to bear in mind? And of course, I'm going to caveat this. Always run the numbers with the interest rates that exist, not with what you hope future interest rates might be.

But that said, if, let's say two years from now or three years from now, once we are firmly out of the inflation danger zone, if at that point inflation rates go down, C.J, at that point, you can refinance that property, lower your interest rate, and substantially lower your monthly payments. So that 4,000 payment that you're making, the good news actually is that the current high interest rate environment is, in some ways, forcing you to buy less house than you otherwise would have if you'd bought like to you. A good point. And what that means is, is that two or three years from now, hopefully, if interest rates decline and you refinance,

you'll have a much more doable monthly payment, like a much easier monthly payment. And you'll already be in the habit of having a higher monthly payment. So you refinance the monthly payment drops and you're like, woo, look at all this cash. Yeah. Go to Canada, you know. Well, and what you're seeing too, to your point, Paula, you're also seeing banks and credit unions are coming up with devices again in a higher interest rate market to try to get you to either do a refinance, which could be an awful idea, or to buy the new home because people are going,

oh, interest rates are high, I probably don't want to. And there is a cool product that I'm finally seeing again. I saw it at the beginning of my career and I'm starting to see it again, which is you pay a small fee and instead of refinancing your house, it just readjust the rest of the mortgage and the rest of the table with the remaining years on your mortgage to the lower interest rate. That is a fit. We used to call it a rate and term mortgage, different companies have different terms for it now. Yes, you're going to pay a fee for that.

But the good thing is, if you know anything about how amortization tables work, that's where the win is. Right. You don't have to restart that clock. Yeah. If you've got a 30-year loan and you refinance your loan after the first 10 years, you didn't pay 8% or whatever it was. You paid like 40% or 35 or, you know,

some monster number. Here, you still get to keep the same mortgage, but lower the rest of the interest you're going to pay, which could be tons and tons of money. So look for those if you can find them. Right. Well, and also that's going to depend on how long you've held the mortgage. Because if you've held the mortgage for two years, you're not that deep into the amortization clock. So it would make less of a difference. But yeah, absolutely, if you've held that mortgage for eight years, you don't want to restart the clock. No way. No. And you see people do that all the time. I saved 2%. No, you didn't. You spent a bunch.

You spent a bunch. So what's our answer for Siege? What's our final answer? It's maybe take money out of the brokerage account, but only if you first clarify what the goal of that brokerage account money is and how that goal will be met. As we do with a lot of our answers, we're answering CJ's question with a question. What was that money for and what happens to that goal if you do it? assuming then that you've run those numbers incredibly conservatively and you can get away with it, maybe take half of the surplus and apply it toward the mortgage and then I'm good with it myself.

Thank you, CJ, for the question. And congratulations on buying this property and future congratulations on when you refi it and that interest rate drops. Then you're going to be even happier. Cha-ching. All right, Joe, we've got one more question today. It comes from Cam. Hi, Paul and Joe. I'm an American working in the Middle East. I try to save and invest as much as I can with the goal of retiring early in about three years. I recently learned that expats working from my company are eligible to take a loan of up to $200,000 from a local bank at about 1.75% interest with a three-year payback period.

Many of my colleagues have taken these loans and sent the money back to the states, either to buy a house, or just invest. Theoretically, I could just put it in my savings account that is currently earning 4.1% and come out ahead or do something with a bigger upside. My question is, is this a good idea? If not, why not? And if so, what might be some good ways to use it that aren't overly risky? Thank you so much.

Okay, before we answer his question, Paula, I've got a very serious question. Okay. Why aren't the Middle East and the Midwest like right next to each other? I've never understood that. Oh, my God, Joe. Like the Middle East, the Middle East is on one side of the globe. The Midwest is on a whole different side of the globe. Really?

And I just don't get it. I just don't. For those of you who can't see me on YouTube right now, I'm literally, I literally have my face in my hands. I can't believe. Who named these places, Paula? I want a refund. So the Midwest are the former Northwest Territory states.

It was before Manifest Destiny, before the United States was coast to coast. But the Middle East was not the Northeast territory? of the world? Middle East is the prime trading route. If you think of Eurasia, right? The Middle East is like that prime prime trading route. So, yeah. Anyway, just always wondered that before you, my bad. Let's continue. What do you think about Cam, Paul? Do you have any commentary on Middle Earth as well while we're at it? How come Middle Earth is in somebody's fantasy and Middle East is over there and Midwest is oversaw? somewhere else. And why are we so northern hemisphere-centric, right? The phrase, the phrase Middle East is so Eurocentric. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Absolutely. I won't go on my rant about how I think that all of

Asia being one continent from Mongolia to Sri Lanka, that's kind of a Eurocentric concept as well. But that's a different conversation for a different day. A whole different deal. Yeah, exactly. At any rate, Cam, how are you doing? How are you doing? How are you doing? Cam. I'm so curious as to what country he's in right now. But wherever you are, Cam, that sounds like an amazing deal. If I were in your shoes, I would absolutely do it. But I have a couple of questions for you. First of all, what is your experience as an investor? When you are investing, especially when you are investing borrowed money, you want to be incredibly cognizant of risk. As an individual investor, who is not subject,

to a board of directors who does not have to justify their choices in a deck, a slide deck, who does not have the checks and balances that a team of investors who work for an institution have, right, as an individual investor who's able to do whatever he wants, the biggest risk that you face is the risk that you pose to yourself because it can be very easy to go down a couple of internet rabbit holes and all of a sudden you're buying GameStop stock or AMC theaters or bedbath and beyond.

Even if you know better, it can be very easy to get carried away. So how much experience do you have as an investor? What types of checks and balances are you putting on yourself? what external board of directors, quote unquote, do you answer to, those are my questions to you. Those are all various ways of saying, knowing that, and not you, Cam, but knowing that the human tendency is for one to become one's worst obstacle. How do you put safeguards in place that protect you from your own whims? such that you know that you will invest this conservatively.

I liked what you said about, theoretically, you could just put it in a CD, put it in a savings account, you could put it in a CD. I mean, you could put it in a money market account. You could put it in T bills. Man, of all of those options, T bills are probably the best because a money market account, as our mutual friend Lenn Penzo pointed out, in theory, if a bank collapses, you might not be able to get the money out of the money market account. But even in the event of a bank collapse, you can get your money out of T bills. So in theory, you can buy a bunch of T bills and call it a day. I like that plan. When you find these arbitrage situations, always take advantage of them.

And you'll see people online. Think about the, you know, in the past, you saw these people that would buy things off of Alibaba and they would resell them on Etsy or Amazon and just use the arbitrage. in their favor. Arbitrage works. And when you can find it, it is fleeting, usually. So grab onto it because you have this situation. And I know these exist out there because I know some other people who get preferential

treatment from banking organizations because of the specific work that they do. And they know that they're a great risk. So the bank is decided to give these people that type of a loan. But I still, Paula, I still think, Cam has to watch out for a few things before he even gets into this because you definitely got to know what you're getting into and that this is as good a deal as you think it is. Number one is, is there a prepayment penalty if you decide to pay it off early? That could wreck everything. If you get into a situation where something happens to the money for who knows what reason and now

you want to pay it off right away and you can't, there's going to be monster penalties, that's a big thing. other gotchas like fees for the loan on the front end side. They might not call it an interest rate. There might just be a big fee slapped on the front end that can make the effective interest rate much, much bigger. So I would have somebody, preferably somebody in the lending industry, look at the loan paperwork with you, look at that fine print very carefully. Because while I don't think this is too good to be true, you don't want to find out

after you've signed the paperwork. But then afterwards, Paula, you know, when you do these strategies, the question is, is what is the repayment term going to look like when you have to start repaying the loan? If he has to start paying it right away as an example, you know, you talked about T bills, fantastic opportunity, but we're going to lock up the money for some amount of time. So I'm going to have to leave some money in a spot where I can make the payment while the rest of the money sits in the T bill. So you want to be careful there.

if it's a long time of repayment like 30 years, that he's, that he's repaying this over? Did he say, he said three years, didn't he? Or something? It's a very short term, relatively short term loan. Three year payback period. Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry.

Well, I missed that. That answers it. But for other people listening, if you've got a long repayment term, then you can go into some long term assets with a three year time frame. You don't want to go into anything with any type of very year. So the T-Bill answer is a fine answer. Find the highest fixed interest rate you can get and from a reliable institution like the U.S. government, which would be a T-Bill. Yeah.

Don't have any risk of downside. Yeah. Don't get T-bills from the Nepalese government. Might not be the same risk profile. Is that what you're saying? Exactly. Exactly. But just the rule of thumb, if it's under five years, you're even gambling if you go to any type of bond, right? Yeah. So under five years, you're gambling into bonds.

Under 10 years, you're gambling if you're going into real estate or stocks. So real estate stocks and bonds that vary on the open market out of the equation with a three-year, yep, a three-year time frame. Exactly. I think T-bills are the way to go. Or if you need some amount of money in order to be able to make that payment, you know, if there's like a monthly payment or a quarterly payment that's associated with it, laddered CDs for that portion, the portion that you set aside for repayment purposes. What's nice about laddered CDs is that then you can, you know, with the longest duration CDs, you can get the highest

interest rate repayment, but you can get the highest yield. But with the shorter term CDs, you can preserve some of that liquidity so that you would be able to make payments on it at whatever periodic payment needs to be made. A combo of T-bills and laddered CDs is specifically what I would choose. But beyond that, I think, again, your biggest risk is it's going to be so tempting when you have this money in hand to be like, free money. But look at AI and look at the potential and do you really think three years from now, all of these AI companies are going to be worth less? Certainly they're going to be worth more.

Duh. It's so, so tempting when you have the money in hand. to then take a look at more speculative assets and mistake potential returns for yield. And I think the way to frame that in your brain so you don't even think about gambling is just realize that every dollar you make on this is already free money. Don't F it up by gambling it away. You're getting free guaranteed money. Right. Don't mess up that strategy.

Yeah, exactly. Don't mess with the risk for your turn. All right. Well, thank you, Cam, for asking that question. I apologize for Joe's little Middle East, Midwest. I just wonder. I'm not allowed to wonder. Is that the deal?

Boy, boy. That's all I can say. But thank you, Cam, for asking that question. Have fun with your work, with wherever it is that you're living, and with this opportunity. Joe, we did it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it's over already. Yeah, it's happened. And how weird is it? We had so many questions we haven't answered in a long time. Yeah, I loved it. I've not talked about either cars or budgeting in in a long time. You know, we do talk about though nearly free returns

from the Middle East all the time. So that was kind of boring. We even talked about that either. You know, I saw this headline in the Financial Times today that Dubai is now more high-priced homes, luxury homes, are sold in Dubai than in any other location worldwide. More than Hong Kong, more than London, more than New York. Dubai is now, like, if you're looking for a $10 million plus home, that's where it's at. I'm in the market for one, so I should probably. You're like, this is my Texarkana home and this is my home in Dubai. They're so similar. They're both hot.

Middle East, Midwest, you know. They are both hot. But in Dubai, at least, it's a dry heat. In Texarkana right now, it's 95 degrees and 140% humidity, I think. In Fahrenheit. Good point. Good point. Celsius.

It would be a bad deal. Dead. Dead. Joe, where can people find you if they'd like to hear the weather in Texarkana? Yeah. Yeah. that and much more. You will find me at the Stacking Benjamin show every Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

On most Fridays, you'll also find one, Paula Panther with us competing while we're, I mean, we talk about great stuff. Like lately we were debating a great piece from Ryan Holiday about lessons that we've wanted ourselves to learn when we were younger. That was a great episode. We talked about how to roll over 401Ks recently. That was a fun episode, Paula, that we did. and the dangers that come with that.

But in the middle of those episodes, we have this completely ridiculous year-long trivia competition. And Paula Pant, one of the smallest, smartest, I almost said one of the smallest people. Maybe both. That's also true. Yeah, five-foot-one. Probably both.

Five-foot one year. One of the smallest and smartest people I know, always is perennially last in our trivia competition, mostly because the questions are just nonsensical. But you're not losing this year. Yes. I am in second place, second out of a total of three.

And you're beating the two-time champion. I remember actually when I came back into the contest, Joe told me, he was like, Paula, you're in a three-way tie for first. I was like, wait a second. There are only three-way tie for last? Are you saying I'm in a three-way tie for last? Yeah, that means I'm also in a three-way tie for last. And I'm in a three-way tie for middle. So anyway, we've broken out of the three-way tie.

I am now in second place out of three. It is so amazing. It's so thrilling. Yes. Yeah. And just to give people a little more carrot, we gave Paula some hometown trivia. I know. botched it.

And. Wot-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w. Is that a spoiler alert? Do we need to put a spoiler alert? We probably should have been the, well, you know, people worry about that. Like, oh, you just spoiled the trivia. I'm the ridiculous question this week. I'm sure people are completely bothered by that.

I was watching a YouTube video recently, and this woman was, she was talking about lessons from King Lear. She was talking about the link between King Lear and Succession. I love that play. And so she then spoke about some stuff that happened at the end of King Lear. And then she kind of stopped herself and she was like, wait a second, spoiler alert? Do I need to put a spoiler alert on King Lear? You've had 400 years to read it. If you don't know what happens at King Lear.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think it's on you, probably on you. So anyway, so yeah, now I'm, now I'm, brain is tuned to spoiler alerts. There it is. Stacky Benjamin's every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. It's a lot of fun. All right, well, thank you so much for joining us.

This is the Afford Anything podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe to the show notes, Affordainthing.com slash show notes. And please open up your favorite podcast playing app and make sure that you are following this podcast in that app. And check us out on YouTube. YouTube.com slash afford anything. We are putting video on YouTube with our faces. You can see it's a much more animated conversation.

You can see what we look like as we talk. And you can see how often I'm rolling my eyes or clapping or doing a little dance or, you know. Oh, and all the I'm holding command strips right now for some reason. They're on my desk. So you can see how I fidget. You can see the way, you can, you can watch it all. You can see Joffrey doing laps. Yeah, my turtle, my pet turtle, he's in the background.

Oh, and if I can figure out how to put it on screen, or really if my trusty team can help me figure it out, if they can figure it out, my car, my 23-year-old $400 car. If I can find those photos, that's going to be on YouTube. YouTube.com slash afford anything. There's a carrot right there. I'm sure the car has more nutritional value than a carrot. In the business people, they call that a lead magnet. A lead magnet.

You get to see Paula's car and you get the YouTube channel. No extra fee. Yes, exactly, exactly. All right, well, thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Paula Pan. I'm Joe Saul Cuyai. And we will catch you in the next episode. Here is an important disclaimer.

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