Afford Anything - Ask Paula: We’re Saving 72 Percent Of Our Income … and It SUCKS

Episode Date: January 12, 2023

#422: Emily is saving aggressively for financial independence, but it’s hard to enjoy the present. Is it time to increase spending? Monroe wants to stop working. Forever. Which is more important: debt payoff or investing? Another anonymous caller and his spouse dream of building a homestead on an expensive piece of land. How much is too much to spend on housing? Given the high costs of moving, Sarah wonders if buying a starter home is the best decision. Should she and her fiance jump straight to buying their forever home? Former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I tackle these four questions in today’s episode. Enjoy! P.S. Got a question? Leave it here For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode422 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything, but not everything. Every choice that you make is a trade-off against something else, and that doesn't just apply to your money. That applies to your time, your focus, your energy, your attention. Any limited resource that you need to manage. Saying yes to something implicitly carries trade-offs. And that opens up two questions. First, what matters most?

And second, how do you make decisions that align with what you really want? answering those two questions is a lifetime practice. And that's what this podcast is here to explore and facilitate. My name is Paula Pant. I am the host of the Afford Anything podcast. Every other episode, we answer questions that come from you. And today, former financial planner, Joe Sal C-high, joins me to answer these questions. What's up, Joe?

Paula, I come here with big news. What's that? I just started writing my name again in cursory. which I think has become my signature move. Come on, come on. Who's with me? How are you, Paula? You're doing well tonight.

I was. I'm so happy to be here. Oh, fantastic. We've got, as always, four fantastic questions. The questions that we receive tend to center around a specific theme. We never try for this. We don't select our questions in, that way. But today, all of the questions that we're going to answer deal fundamentally with

a trade-off. A trade-off, right, with the question of what do I want most and or what do I not want least? Yeah. So our first question comes from Sarah. Hi, Paula and Joe. I love listening to your podcast, and I can't wait to hear your advice. A bit about me. I'm 29 years old and I currently make $155,000 per year with a 25% target annual bonus. I have $150,000 in cash, $320,000 in taxable brokerage accounts, and $160,000 in retirement funds. I also own two properties, one of which I own or occupy. Both properties are cash flow positive, resulting in $15,000 per year in income, and $210,000 of equity, and I do not plan to sell either of them. So here's the question. My fiancé and I both work fully remote, resulting in the question of, if we can live anywhere in the U.S., where do we want to live?

We finally settled on a place that we love, but while property taxes are low, housing prices are quite high, averaging $300 plus per square foot. Because my fiance and I both work from home and want to start a family, we are looking at fairly large houses in good school districts, which are quite expensive. Couple of this with today's mortgage rates, and you're looking at quite the monthly payment. My fiancé makes $65,000 a year and does not have any significant assets, so you likely pay roughly a quarter of the monthly housing costs, but I will be responsible for the rest. I feel that I am in fairly good place financially, but I don't want to make a decision that will hurt my dreams of financial flexibility. What I mean by this is that I don't know what the future holds, so while I'm not explicitly pursuing fire, I value financial freedom. I've considered a few options. I could purchase a home for the long term, despite the high costs.

I've also considered a house with a basement apartment that could generate some rental income for now, but found that this only modestly offset the cost. I could purchase a smaller home and then upgrade down the road. While this would be a primary residence as opposed to investment, I would use an investment lens and purchase a home that is a good price and would likely need some work. I could rent for now. This is probably a smart decision, but I really do like, the control that comes with owning rather than renting. Or I could wait to move, or I could move

elsewhere. Of these kind of four options, I probably lean towards purchasing a smaller home and upgrading down the road, but I have a couple of concerns, the most obvious of which is there significant costs associated with buying and selling homes as well as moving. While I can estimate these costs to some extent, I have no clue what housing prices will be in the future. This area has also experienced a great deal of appreciation historically. While I recognize that this does not mean that this trend will continue. If it does, I worry I could be priced out of the market when it comes to buying a larger home down the road, which brings me back to the first option of just jumping all in on a long-term home now. How would you balance the financial decisions

against the lifestyle decisions here? Thank you so much. Sarah, thank you for your thoughtful and beautifully worded question. Before I get into the answer, two things that I love about your question. One is the concept of financial flexibility, which is a concept that we don't talk about enough. Oftentimes in the fire community, and for people who are new to this podcast, Fire stands for financial independence retire early, which is an acronym that describes the notion of having enough money coming in through residual income, typically through investment income, that you could support yourself. The notion of fire, at least in the way that it's traditionally described can be binary. You have it or you don't. I disagree with that interpretation

of it, but that's a different topic for a different day. What I like about what you've described, the notion of financial flexibility is that what you're talking about is not some all or nothing zone, but rather the concept of having grace, having wiggle room. I found what's interesting, Paula, is the polarity of the two options. The one that she clearly wants is the bigger house, which is the one that will give her the least flexibility. So when you're talking about a lifestyle decision, that's the most comfortable one,

and I agree with her that the more times that she exchanges properties, the more she's going to ring up additional expenses. But on the other side, if she truly, truly means what she says and she loves financial freedom. You know, you see people get into these houses that are way over their head and they're locked down. They can't do anything. Right. House poor.

Yeah, she's got these polar opposites pulling at her. A few things strike me right away. One is that, Sarah, you have a history or rather a present of owning rental property. You own, as you've stated, two properties, one of which you own or occupy, the other of which is a rental. And the reason that I bring that up is that if you were to buy a property, you own. a smaller home, assuming that you bought a home that is passable as a rental property, it doesn't need to be great. It doesn't need to have some amazing cap rate. We're not looking for that. But if you buy something that is acceptable as a rental property, something that is not

cash flow negative, then moving out of that property wouldn't necessarily mean that you have to sell it. It would have implications as to how much you would be able to borrow for your next property. And if you had a decent amount of equity tied up in it, it would also have implications as to how big of a down payment you could put on your next property. But with some of that financial flexibility that you might hang on to by virtue of having that smaller home, you might be able to use some cash cushioning to offset some of those shortcomings. So that's a very long way of saying you don't necessarily have to sell, although there are advantages to doing so, as well as, of course, transaction cost-related disadvantages.

Yeah. Yeah, that there are other options. You know, I want to take exception with something that she said, which was the question at the end, Paula. And how often do we do this where we question the question? All this time. Which the question is, her question was, how do I dovetail, and I'm not going to use the same words, but how do I dovetail these financial decisions or run these financial decisions up against these lifestyle decisions, as if they're two different things, right? It's interesting. I was speaking last week to a gentleman, Dr. Robert Waldinger, who has been exploring happiness in the nature of happiness at Harvard University for a long time. He's worked on one of the longest studies of happiness, the longest running study of happiness that's ever

happened. And his point is, and I think the longer I do this, the more I agree with him, Paula, that good financial decisions are lifestyle decisions, that there isn't a difference between those two things. Because I think we underestimate how finite our lifetime is, and we will put off our happiness far too much in exchange for this, you know, maybe a bigger cash thing now. So when we talk about how do I justify making a lifestyle decision versus a financial

decision, I would think that you don't have to, that there should be a way to be happy and make a good financial decision at the same time. While I'll agree that those two concepts are not mutually exclusive, in the context of Sarah's question, it sounds to me, and Sarah, I hope I'm interpreting your question correctly, but it sounds to me as though she's asking, how do I balance the trade-off between the home I really want and the budgetary reality of that home. No, exactly.

I don't dispute that at all. But given Dr. Waldinger's interpretation, which I like, I think there's a bigger question and a simpler question, which is which one is more important to you, flexibility or the home. What truly would make you happier? My initial gut reaction is if the house makes you happier, the first thing I was like to do when I was a financial planner was take the thing that will make you happiest and see if it will work. Let's forget about modeling 18 different things. Let's model the thing that you really want to do and find a way to do that because the longer we set our brain on this one thing, singularly, the better off we're going to be. Cheryl and I, my spouse and I came up against a situation about a month ago.

And I said to her, I said, well, the cool news is we don't got to know anything for three months and how great is it that we've been given this gift that we have three months given this situation to make a decision. And what's funny is about 10 days later, Paula, my brain came up with an idea that I'd never thought of because our brains are amazing and we come up with these fantastic things. So I think the bigger question is, is what makes you happy? because if that house truly is what's going to make her happy, let's just model that and see if we can get our brain working on that. If it doesn't, then the incremental model is probably the one that we want to model and we go that way. Wow. Okay. Joe, I'm actually, and I will admit, I'm coming into this question with a preference for the smaller house and I'll explain my rationale in a moment. But I like what you've just said, so I'm going to make the argument in favor of what you've just said to.

So I'm going to contradict myself and make arguments in favor of both, the big house and the smaller house. house. Here we go. I can see the smaller house. The smaller house is a more practical thing to do, right? I mean, if we just go from a position of financial discipline, Paula, you nail it. I mean, it's going to be easier. You can playtest it. Plus, she's moving to a new area. Who knows if that first house is really going to be on the property that, you know, in the area and the property, in the part of town, whatever there where she wants to be. So the smaller house is less of a gamble. You and I both talk to Annie Duke. It's an easier hand to play, right, using Annie Duke's poker analogy. It's a much easier hand to play. Play the small house. But if she knows that

that big house is the one that's going to make her happier. Right. Yeah. The small house gives her a chance to hunker down and just gather resources. Like a Game of Thrones, how Kalee just spent some time hunkering down, gathering her resources, building her armies before she goes to Westrose. Of course, her story didn't have a happy ending. But the model of... But besides that. Sorry, should I have spoiler alerted that? You know what? It's been long enough. I think if you haven't seen Game of Thrones yet, it's on you, not us. That's the reason that I like the smaller house.

The ability to hunker down amass assets and gain some strength. And the other thing that I would say, and this goes to one of the other options that Sarah floated, she floated the option of a home with some type of a basement that might offset the cost. That's actually one of the ideas that I like least. And I think a lot of listeners will be surprised to hear that because I'm... I'm surprised to hear that. Yeah, exactly. I'm surprised to hear myself say that.

But this is something that I learned at the very end of the book Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. He talks about how you don't necessarily need to make money in the same way that you spend it. And what he means is the example that he used was he had a home in San Jose, California. And when he started traveling a lot for his work, he no longer needed to live there, but he didn't want to sell it. And most people in that situation would have rented it out. But for some reason, he just didn't want to do that. Even with a property manager, he just didn't want to. And so he felt guilty about it for a long time because why is he paying a mortgage and all these expenses on a home that's just sitting there?

but he eventually realized he doesn't need to earn money in the same way that he spends it. He's going to be paying the mortgage and the bills on that home regardless. So he could earn money from the home to pay for the home, or he could go out there and beat him Ferris and earn money in all of these other ways, and that'll cover the cost of the home. Just because he's spending money on the home doesn't mean he has to earn it in the same way. And so take that model, apply it to what Sarah's talking about. The notion of renting out the basement in order to offset part of the cost of the home is fundamentally, if you zoom out, the notion of making more money.

Essentially what she's talking about is here is one possible pathway to making more money so that I can bear this higher expense. But there are a lot of ways to make more money. It doesn't have to come from the home. Well, and also I'm thinking as you say that, you know, we get into making more money, we become addicted to that income. And what happens when we decide we don't want that income stream anymore? Like I think the safer path in terms of a planning path is to plan without that stream of income. Because if you can handle it without the stream of income, and then later you decide you want to rent out that space for whatever reason.

Right. But modeling it, modeling it means you're much more likely to have to be addicted to it. Right. The income becomes a need rather than a want, which is the opposite of FI. Yeah. I would just have her focus, Paula. I would have her focus on which one really makes her happier. Is it the house? Because I would lock in on that house then. Or is it the flexibility? If it's a flexibility, I go your way. If it's the house, then I begin setting my brain on that. I don't think you and I can answer that. Well, I think we just did answer that. I think we answered it with a framework for how she can make the decision. Yeah, I mean, we can't answer that question that, you know, which end of these polar opposites does she want to be on?

Or, or play the middle, to your point. Do you watch Emily in Paris? I saw the first episode. I didn't really get into it. First episode of season three. I watched last night. And they quote Jean-Paul Sarch, whose, you know, name I probably, sorry, French people. I just butchered that.

Excuse your French? Excuse me for your answer. They talk about Paula that the absence of a decision though is still a decision, which is why I tend to avoid the middle ground. You know, just play the middle, play the easy hand. It's why I might spend a little more time thinking about which one actually makes you happier and forging that path. That's a better decision than not making a decision because at some point she's going to have to decide. What you mean is sometimes the compromise decision is the worst of all worlds? Right. Exactly. Yes. We try to to make everybody happy. In the episode, Emily's trying to make everybody happy and because of that,

she makes nobody happy. In this situation, I think, if she plays the middle ground and chooses the middle, she might not be happy in a house that she doesn't like. She doesn't have as much financial freedom as she has right now, kind of, you know, a seven on a scale of one to ten in both aspects. Okay, well, let's get creative. Could she live? I'm going to use some extreme words just to get the point across. But could she live super miserably for like six months so that she could then cash up a little bit more to get the bigger house? I'm spitballing here with some ideas. Sure. And obviously, the downside of that is, is that life is finite. I mean, I always dislike that strategy because life is finite. And we discount life being finite.

Well, it would have to be a very temporary thing with an extremely clear end date. You'd have to go into it with the mindset of this is an adventure. Sure. And you have to, I think, enjoy that six months of deprivation. You know, it's got to be kind of fun. Right. When we sold her house in Texarkandah the first time, Cheryl and I lived in a three-room apartment over my friend's dad's garage. That was awesome.

Yeah. It was so awesome. It was so fun. It was so fun. It could have sucked. You know what I mean? In some ways, it sucked. It was not the living conditions that I really wanted.

You couldn't open up the windows. It smelled like paint. Fairly certain I was being fumigated to death. Might have lost some brain cells. But just the adventure, the fact that we lived there was pretty neat. $300 a month in rent, by the way. Wow. Nice.

I've seen some gorgeous apartments in New York City. And I look at them and I think, wow. 12 months a year, I wouldn't want to pay that. But I look at these apartments and I think, like, you know, if for three months I just backpacked somewhere and lived super cheap and then lived there for the other nine months, whoa. And you might end up like in both ends of that, right? Yeah. See, and that's the type of thing that once she gets clarity about what she really wants, I think that's the type of stuff your brain begins really honing in on and working. You know, okay, here's how I make this work.

Right, the question of how can I? It's exciting. Far more philosophical than financial. But I love it when philosophy meets money. And Joe, I will say to your point about life is more finite than we think, as I reflect on the last decade and a half of money decisions that I've made, it occurs to me that the biggest money mistakes I've made have all. happened when I've tried to make the frugal choice. Oh, I didn't expect that either. By virtue of making the frugal choice, the practical choice, I ended up choosing the thing

that I didn't really want. And as a result, I was unhappy and then ultimately ended up paying more money down the road to undo that decision. That's really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas if I hadn't chosen the thing I actually wanted rather than the thing that was practical, quote unquote, practical, then ironically, choosing in the long term,

choosing the thing that I really wanted was the most long term practical decision. It's kind of why I love these inspiring stories. I go through, do you go through this a few times a year? I go into this thing where I love hearing these stories. It becomes too much for me. But these stories about people who redefine practical. You just go, nope, that is not it. Like there are three or four times a year when I need that.

There's other times I'm like, no, I can't do that. It's just too, you know, whatever, too much. But, you know, I love these people that go, yeah, no, what you define as practical is not practical for me. I'm defining practical a whole different way. I talked to a woman last week, Candy Valentino, who at age 19, dad was a mechanic. Mom sold stuff door to door.

She grew up in a trailer, decided to start this big spa business at 19. Quit college, started a spa business, now a multi-bigillionaire. I don't know exactly how old she is, but she can't be much more than 30. But she said, no, it's not practical. No. Practical, everything she did along the way was not, quote, practical. Right. Right. Well, yeah, I suppose one of my least practical ideas was deciding to start my own business and deciding to start afford anything.

How about this? Your company's a freight train right now and you decide to take a year off. That's not practical. Like, really? How many people said to you really? Are you kidding me? A freight train bound for a crash. I don't think so. afford anything doing all kinds of great stuff. So much momentum, so many great things happening. Just you're on Netflix at the same time you're going, yeah, I'm going away. Yeah. Like smooth timing there, pant. Smooth timing.

Yeah, that's true. I couldn't be around to promote my own Netflix movie because I was a student. In the book of things not to do in marketing 101. Right. Use that momentum. But yeah. But hey, who cares about practical? It's happy. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's that.

And it's also, I know that if these, it's also an abundance mindset. I know that if these opportunities are here now, then they'll be here a year from now. Sure. Which is why that big house, Paula, is either going to make it really miserable or it's going to be phenomenal. But it all depends on that mindset that you're talking about. It won't be about the house. It'll be about what's more important. Right.

Let the heart lead and the mind execute. Wow. Did you just make that up? No, I heard it somewhere. I know. All right. Well, Sarah, thank you for your question. Best of luck with choosing the thing that you really want,

not the thing that you quote unquote ought to want. 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 servware and cookware. And of course, holiday decor, all the stuff to make your home a great place to host during the holidays. You can get up to 70% off during Wayfair's Black Friday sale.

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one of America's most innovative companies by Fortune magazine. That's what you're 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 of fifth third better. Our next question comes from Monroe. Hey, Paula. I've been listening to your podcast for quite some time. My question revolves around real estate and financial independence. What I'm looking for is to create a passive income flow from a group of properties. I originally had a property.

that I recently sold and netted approximately almost a half a million dollars. I bought seven doors currently all being managed and I net about $4,000 a year. I also have $100,000 in a syndication deal that I'm supposed to get back soon in the next year and I also have $65,000 in the market and I also have a 403B plan with my school with my university that I have about $30,000 that I still save with. My question is, should I start using the $4,000 that I'm getting from my rental income? Or should I go ahead and pay off the lowest mortgage first on my seven doors and then subsequently take that net profit and fold it back in and not touch that $4,000 that we've been tapping into to help with our expenses. I'm looking to create overall passive income, wealth,

and the ability to stop working permanently. I hope my question isn't too long and confusing. I appreciate all your hard work and I really do enjoy your podcast. Thank you for your help. Monroe, thank you for the question and congratulations on everything that you're building. Congratulations on selling the property, netting 500 grand. investing it in all kinds of different ways, buying seven rental units? That's incredible. Do you like that idea, Paula, of taking one property and diversifying it into seven different ones? Because I really do. Yeah. I think from a diversification standpoint, instead of having so much money tied up in one property. Right. Exactly. Now he's got seven doors. So, you know,

a vacancy in one of them means only one seventh of his properties are vacant, not 100%, as it would be in, you know, there's consolidated risk when you only have one door. So, Monroe, your question is, what should you do with this $4,000? Honestly, the idea that I like the least is applying it to one of your mortgages. Oh. Yeah. Right. Am I, like, surprising you with all of my answers today? Just, wow. Well, and here's why. Monroe, when I look at your assets, you have a lot of money in real estate, between the seven doors that you own as well as the syndication deal that you have, you don't have a lot in index funds or in the market. So I'd like to see that get shored up a little bit. You've got $30,000 in a 403B, which is fantastic. You've got $65,000 in the market. So you've

got $95,000 in total, which is wonderful. But you know, you have, I don't know how much equity you have in total between all seven properties, but given that you have $100,000 in a real estate syndication deal plus X amount of money in the seven rental units, and given that all of that started from selling a property that netted almost $500,000, it seems to me as though your balance is heavily tilted towards real estate assets. So I'd rather you put that money in the market, either by virtue of living on it so that you can. put more money into a 403B. In other words, increase your contributions to a 403B

and offset that loss of income by virtue of using the $4,000 or directly put it in the market. I didn't even know that I'd do either one of those, Paula. I mean, the first thing that I wrote down was not much liquidity. So I agree with you. Oh, I didn't think of that. Paying down the mortgage definitely buys him security. So I like the thought of doing it.

But I'm also with you. I think it's a great idea. It's not a great idea for Monroe, which is why I really love the fact that this personal finance thing is so personal. Because for him, I didn't even know if he has an emergency fund. Yeah, I was operating on the assumption that he had an unstated emergency. I just kind of assumed it. My brain went directly to his investments. And maybe he does.

Right. With $65,000 in the market, I get worried. If that's his only money in the market, you know, let's say that he had that money a year and a half ago. And then we do the Dr. Phil now like, how's that working out for you now? Right. I mean, it's horrible. He's looking at his statement and he's lost tons of money on that money. He might have had $80,000 before.

And now he's at $65,000 or even more than that if he's the average investor. So an emergency fund is what I want to hear about. If he's got one, if you're right, Paula and he's got one, then yes. I'm on board with what you said. If he's not, I think he needs more liquidity, way heavy into real estate. Yeah. Yeah. Again, I was operating on the assumption that he has that cash cushion and that he was sharing just his investment numbers. But yeah, I agree. Monroe, if you don't have an emergency fund, if you don't have a cash cushion, that is definitely the first priority. And let me say, for the sake of everyone listening, I know a lot of people right now are wary of keeping. money in cash, as you should be. Inflation, Steve, bleep this out, but I'm going to say it. Inflation's a b-h.

So I absolutely understand why people, and Monroe, I'm not talking about you specifically, why anyone listening to this show might be reticent to put money in a savings account right now where it's going to lose purchasing power. but think of it as a fee that you pay for the sake of being able to sleep at night. It's the fee you pay for that added security. And let's talk about how much money that actually is. Let's say that your emergency fund is $40,000. Let's say that over the next 12 months, we have 7% inflation and that your savings account pays.

Cho, do you know what the average savings account pays right now? Or what a decent one does? Many of the top ones right now, high yield savings accounts, let's be clear, between three and a half and four percent. So let's say three and a half percent. Okay, all right. Let's say inflation is 7% and your money is in a high-yield savings account that's paying out 3.5%, right? So the money that you're losing in purchasing power over the next year with that set of assumptions is 3.5%. So if you've got an emergency fund of $40,000, then over the span of a year, you lose $1,400, which is, to be clear, that is a significant amount of money. It's essentially a fee of $116,000. a month that you pay in order to know that you have a runway. Paula, I completely agree. I think that when it comes to emergency funds, people look for the return on investment in that yield, in that, you know, we talked about 3.9% whether it's 3, 4, 1, whatever

it is. We think that that is not the yield on your emergency fund. Like, to your point, it's that you can be more aggressive with your investments and not worry about it. You can lose your job for a few months and not have to buy short. term disability covered. So you save that premium. You may be able to, if you choose to, raise the deductible on your homeowners policies on your car insurance. You might be able to do that. You can rely on fewer people for insurances because of the fact that you are to some degree

self-insuring. You can be more aggressive. And I know I already said this a little bit, but in just his stock portion of his portfolio can be more aggressive because I see people that don't have emergency funds like, well, it's a waste of money, who will leave some money in a kind of halfway house just in case things get weird, you know. We also don't have to worry about credit. We don't have to think about credit because I know people will say, well, I have all this credit. Well, remember 2007? Paul, that credit goes away in a hurry. All of a sudden the bank goes, yeah, you have half that credit or you have none of that credit. Like, we're taking it away. So this absence of fear and this ability to invest more aggressively, I think is the true ROI and

the premiums you don't pay, the premiums you avoid is the return on investment on that money. That's a pretty big return on investment. Right, right. So even if you do have $40,000 in savings and you lose $1,400 a year, $116 per month in purchasing power, you know, that same $1.16 per month, over the long term, you might, I mean, you can never guarantee returns, but you might make back by being more heavily invested in equities or by He might save that in deductibles. Right.

There it is. It's so, I don't know, it's so simple. I feel like sometimes the professors online think too much about the ROI and an emergency fund. You know, it's really, it's an issue of excessive compartmentalization and excessive line itemization. Totally agree. And not looking at things holistically. It kind of goes back to what we were talking about with Sarah's question. You don't have to make money in the same way that you spend it.

Right. The Tim Ferriss example. Tim Ferriss didn't. have to make money on his San Jose property just because he was spending money on that property. And I should add, he wrote this example. When he wrote the book, he was not the famous person that he is today. You know, he was successful, but with fewer zeros at the end than what he has now. His decimal points were in different places back then. Yeah. Hadn't had a TV show yet. So he was at a point in his life where he was thinking about, hey, should I get a renter in there to cover the mortgage?

And that conclusion, I don't have to make it in the same way I spend it. You know, you take that framework and apply it to emergency funds as well. You're quote-unquote spending the money in that decline in purchasing power, but then you're, quote-unquote, making the money in all of these other different ways. So thank you, Monroe, for asking that question. Our next question comes from an anonymous caller. Paula, we have a tradition here at Afford Anything where you, since you began your sabbatical and your work at Columbia, of assigning an anonymous caller a name that is either a famous journalist, journalist of note, some name from the field of journalism, some journalistic name. Well, the legendary broadcaster Barbara Walters recently passed away. Oh, yeah.

So in honor of her, this next anonymous caller will be named Barbara. You know, Paula, before we get to the caller, Barbara Walters wrote a book that was one of my favorite books when I first began interviewing people when I had my first radio show for American Express. And the book released way back in 1970. is called How to Talk with Practically Anybody about Practically Anything. And while some of the stories Paula may not hold up today, I will tell you that that book made me feel so much more comfortable at dinner parties, so much more comfortable with

people I didn't know, maybe way more comfortable on the microphone like Barbara Walters in that book was a big piece of me kind of figuring out. how to do an interview, or at least how to work a room, you know? Wow. We will link to that book in the show notes. You can subscribe to the show notes for free at afford anything.com slash show notes. Oh, and you'll see even from Barbara's, Barbara's hairstyle and the font they use, which is like a 70 show font.

It's pretty amazing. Nice. But here comes Barbara. Hi, Paula and Joe. This is Anonymous Calling with a. question about entrepreneurship and FI. My husband co-owns a business, and we've been going back and forth on whether, or how, to include the possible lump sum payout from a sale in our financial planning.

He has the option to sell to a partner once they reach a predetermined volume, which we expect will be in about three years. The multiple has already been agreed to on the after-tax payout, with over a decade of blood, sweat, and tears, I'll add, will greatly exceed our general fine number, and will mean that we'll be able to not only take a well-deserved break, but also help our family out, which is a priority for both of us. We prefer to be conservative in our plans, which is why we haven't included it in our numbers, but we're also having a hard time enjoying the present since we know we have close to a decade to go if the sale doesn't go through. We bring in around 250K per year

combined, spend around 70, and aggressively invest and save the rest. What are your thoughts on our situation? Should we be less conservative today with the possibility of this sale on the horizon? Should we stay at a course? Or maybe there's an alternative perspective you can offer. Thanks so much. Barbara, thank you so much for your question. I have a question back to you. I want you to throw out everything that you just said about money,

about this company, about the potential sale, about the 10-year horizon to FI. Let's get rid of all of those details. My question to you is, when you reach FI, what will you do? And I want you to get very granular with the answer. What time in the morning do you wake up? Do you wake up to an alarm or do you wake up naturally? What do you do first thing when you wake up?

And be honest, if the answer is like, pick up my phone and play Wordle, cool, great. You pick up your phone, you play Wordle. You scroll Instagram stories for a, little while. What's the next thing you do? And then what's the thing after that? What's your morning routine? When do you eat breakfast? Where do you eat it? Are you standing up in the kitchen? Are you on the porch? Get extremely granular with what the day to day of what you want your life to look like when your FI looks like. And have that conversation with your spouse. Because chances are when you get that granular, chances are some of those details are going to be a little bit different. Oftentimes,

big picture, it's easy for two people to want the same things. But at the granular level, one person wants to wake up at 6 a.m. and the other wants to sleep in until 9. So make that a joint conversation. The reason that I ask that is because you're sacrificing a lot right now to be able to reach the goal of FI. And so fundamentally my question is, to what end? FI is not a goal. FI is a tool. So what are you going to use that tool for? And once you've identified that, then my follow-up question is, are there ways to bring that into the present? My question is on something altogether different, another aspect of her question, Paula. My question... I'm glad the two of us answer these. Well, my question back to her is why at this point wouldn't we use the business?

And I'm very curious because if the paperwork's been signed, which to me was the big thing I was waiting for, right? I had this whole diatribe lined up about getting a good valuation for the business and making sure that the business is built to sell. But she's already done that. That stuff is already done. So if all the conditions of the business being sold have been met, what could go wrong? And I honestly don't know what could go wrong. But if nothing could go wrong. And even if he passed away today, the partner takes over the business.

If that has all been legally decided, everything is done, then why wouldn't you include that money? That is, that's my number one question. I don't understand why you wouldn't include them. I would, don't be wrong. There's still things that could go wrong. Like they could fail to hit their numbers. She said they have to hit certain numbers over the next three years to trigger the sale. What if that doesn't happen?

I think I must have missed that part because if that is the case, the next three years have to go well, then okay, then I get it. Then I still wouldn't count it. Because that is the whole point is what could go wrong. And if it is, to your point, Paula, in the next three years and I just completely missed it that that could go wrong, then there's my answer. And do not include it. Period. Full stop. Do not include it. Well, okay, but if she doesn't include it, here's the thing.

I have no objection. In fact, I have applause for a couple who makes $250,000 but lives on $70,000, if that couple is super happy doing so. But what she clearly expressed in her question is that they are not, that this is miserable too strong of a word? I mean that this is not the life they want to be living. And they are faced with living like this. If the sale doesn't go through for 10 years and if it does go through for the next three years. I guess that's where I'm going with what could go wrong.

Because is there a way then to sign up to get some paperwork, to get some clarity, where he sells it for a lower number if they don't meet the number? You know what I mean? Like, is there a way to get that tied up? Because I don't want to include it until it's tied up until we know that this is truly going to happen. If there's a way to go to the partner and say, hey, let's say that we get 60% of the goal. We get 80% of the goal. Here are the alternate numbers.

But here's the deal. Three years from now, I'm out. I'm out. I want A, B, and C. I'm wondering if there might be some renegotiation there then. Right. so that the sale isn't so all or nothing. I just don't think you can include it.

Like I get what you're saying about happiness. I'll just go back to my diatribe to the Sarah's question at the beginning. I'm all about being happy, but I still can't include that number if things can go wrong. And a non-public small business is the epitome of things can go wrong. Yeah. Joe, I'm in agreement with you that I would not include that number. because things can go wrong, my inclination is to take the, I'll believe it when I see it,

I'll believe it when the cash is in the bank approach. But I also don't support anyone, forget about the potential sale of the business. Even if that wasn't the case, if she called and said, we make 250, we live on 70, there's no inherent problem in those numbers. the problem is we're unhappy, but we're 10 years to FI, right? Imagine there was no sale, but she called and said that and said, here's the situation, what do we do? I'd say, stop doing it.

And your only way to do that in my thought process, given the fact she gave us, is to keep the high end, but also tie up all these other loose ends about how he might not get out, how there might not be equity. Yeah, maybe. Because if we know that we can rely on 65% of that number, Paula, we then can infuse a bunch of other cash. The thing that I think, if they're miserable now, the thing I know they can't do, and this needs to be stated,

the thing they can't do is talk about saving more money to do it quicker because they're miserable now. That's going to make them even more miserable. Exactly. And saving money can be a joyous thing, but if they already feel pinched, it's going to make it worse. I mean, there are some things you could do on the expense side of the equation.

She didn't give us any of her expenses. You know, you can look at food. Yeah, I don't think they have a spending problem. Home. Well, I don't think they do either. But if they need to save more, what other path is there besides getting rid of any loopholes where we don't know what the cash is in terms of that business? I don't think they need to save more.

I think whatever it is that they want in FI, they need to bring that into their life now. And I don't know what it is that they want. It is it, I'll just throw out some hypotheticals. Maybe she doesn't like the specific job that she's in. Sometimes people think that they, Barbara, I'm not talking about you right now, I'm spitballing some general things that I've heard from members in the community. Sometimes there are cases where people think that they want to retire early when in fact, they simply dislike their boss. Or they just like their boss. Or they just, dislike their commute, or they dislike the office politics and the dress code. Those things are changeable. Or maybe they dislike their entire career. Maybe they want to go back to school and become

something completely different, in which case, that doesn't require FI. People retrain mid-career all the time. Or maybe, maybe the goal for FI isn't job-related. Maybe the goal for FI is to have more time to actively pursue scuba diving or tennis or ice hockey. I don't know, whatever it is that they want to do. Maybe that's how she answered that question. When I said, you wake up what's the very first thing you do. Go play ice hockey. Yeah. Maybe that's her answer. And if that's the case, all right, let's build that in now. That tells me you got to move out of Arizona. So whatever it is that they're looking for in FI, if it's a career change, a lot of people are drawn to FI because they want a well-funded career change.

If that's the compelling reason, you don't need FI to do that. And if it's a hobby or an interest or even travel, in this era of remote work, all of those things are within reach without needing FI. So what is it that they're after and how do they bring that in now? So Barbara, I hope that was helpful. and I'm curious to hear what your answers are. Call back, leave a voicemail, share with us any thoughts, any follow-ups that you have related to these questions. I would love to hear it.

I think this community would love to hear it. So thank you, Barbara. We'll return to the show in just a moment. This Giving Tuesday, Cam H is counting on your support. Together, we can forge a better path for mental health by creating a future where Canadians can get the help they need, when they need it, no matter who or where they are. From November 25th to December 2nd, your donation will be doubled. That means every dollar goes twice as far to help build a future where no one's seeking help is left behind. Donate today at camh.ca slash giving Tuesday. Black Friday is here at IKEA and the clock is

ticking on savings you won't want to miss. Join IKEA family for free today and unlock deals on everything from holiday must-haves to cozy at-home essentials, all the little and big things you need to make this season shine. But don't wait. Like leftovers at midnight, our Black Friday offers won't last. Shop now at IKEA.ca.ca.combe-friety. Ikea. Bring home to life. Hack the holidays with the PC Holiday Insiders Report. Try this PC Porcetta. Crackling, craveworthy. You gonna eat that? Who are you? I'm the voice for the next ad. Car commercial. But I noticed that show-stopping roast and...

Help yourself. Mmm, designed for indulgence. Precision crafted to navigate every corner of my mouth. All for just $18. Okay, okay. Try the season's hottest flavors from the PC Holiday Insiders Report. Please feast responsibly. Our final question today also comes from an anonymous caller.

Hey, Paul, I'm Joe. Thanks for all the great information you guys put out there. I've learned so much already. My name's Anonymous, so I look forward to an awesomely lame name from Joe. My question is about doing a luxury house hack in a high cost of living area, basically the prices of LA. Some background, we're both 30. We have a combined gross income of $375,000,

which is likely to go up to about $450,000 in the next month, and maybe more in the following years. There is an imbalance. I make $95, and my wife makes $280, as far as if one of us lost our jobs. We have no debt, $350,000 a net worth, most of that in retirement accounts, and we save about 60% of our income. We are very fortunate to have excellent salaries that actually permit us to live comfortably in this high cost of living area,

which means buying a house here is actually feasible, although the price tag is still eye-watering. I'll comment that one of the reasons I'm interested in owning a home is to do small-scale farming or homestead, so lots of garden beds, a small orchard, recycled water, native bird habitat, all that kind of stuff. So I'm thinking on the 10-year timeline for the land, and our goal is more tuned to actually buying a land and buying a house than the typical person, perhaps, who just wants a house to live in, in which case renting might actually be more sense. We're not interested in a McMansion, but all of the properties that are in good locations that we might want, or most of them, have a little McMansion on it.

So we're keen on the idea of buying land, putting up two tiny houses on it to live in the meantime while we build a larger, awesomer house over a year and a half, two years. Eventually, we want to use the two tiny houses as an ADU and rent them out together as one unit or separately as two units as part of our house hack and maybe even rent out a bedroom and our house, a large building on Airbnb for weekend's days. If the land is 800,000 and we assume another 800,000 to build a roughly 1,500 square foot house, we're looking at 1.6 million, which is really difficult to grapple with. So my questions are these. with very high incomes, we are still in sticker shock at the absolute dollar amount of our potential housing. How do you recommend thinking about that from the psychological perspective? With respect to the dollars, or my other question, various calculators I've seen suggest we could buy a house for around $1.9 million, or up to $2,000 based on our salaries.

Of course, you want to keep in mind property taxes, insurance, all that. What's your take? Is this a fool's errand to be buying a very expensive base of land? building a house on it? Is it appropriate for our circumstances? Any thoughts that you guys have to share would be much appreciated. Thanks so much. Take care. Well, Joe, you heard what he said. He's looking forward to getting an anonymous name from you. He specifically said from Joe. But Paula, that violates our convention that we have going. No, no, we give the people what they want. Besides, I gave the last caller, Barbara, I gave Barbara a name.

All right. All right. Let's do this. What movie are you watching? No, no, no, no. Let's stick with journalism. I'm going to go that route. And I won't go a true journalism.

I'm going to go with a columnist because one thing I've loved about this, quote, change of career that I've had from financial planner to being on the media side is that some of my old heroes when I was a financial planner, Paula, the same people that I would read are now people that are friends of mine. And I just love that, like these people that I respect so much. And a guy that I remember sharing his columns with my clients when I was a financial planner is a guy who has a podcast of his own, Chuck Jaffe. Chuck Jaffe. As soon as you said columnist, I thought you were going to say Chuck Jaffe. Chuck Jaffe is a guy that. You and I met Chuck Jaffe together.

Yeah. And I was reading him in the 1990s. And I was so honored when in Boston, he MCF, my book event. Like it was just, and to call Chuck Jaffe a friend, I think is a real honor for me. So not so much, I think Chuck would even argue with being a journalist, but he was, he was the head of one of the most respected college papers in all of collegiate papers, University of Michigan.

Oh, Michigan Daily. Yes. He was their editor-in-chief. Ah, that is the best college paper in the country. And he was the guy running it. So Chuck has a nice long history. He knows everybody in finance. So we're going to call him Chuck. Nice. Well, all right. So we've established his name, Chuck. By the way, Chuck Jaffe was a guest on the Afford Anything podcast. If anyone wants to hear that, he was a guest on episode 393 at afford anything.com slash episode 393. We'll also drop a link to that in the show notes. I totally encourage you to some. subscribe to the show notes. It's free. You get a synopsis of every episode. You get timestamps. You get cool links. You get all the fun stuff. So, oh, and I'm seeing here, Chuck Jaffe, not only writes a nationally syndicated financial column, he also regularly writes for the Wall Street Journal. So, yeah, I think we can call him a journalist. Michigan Daily in the Wall Street Journal. Yeah. Yeah, he's been a columnist, though, much more than a straight journalist. He's been a columnist for a long time writing his opinion, which is a very well-respected opinion. and his, at least I respect his opinion a lot.

I know I'm not the only one. Chuck's podcast, which is five days a week and follows much more the daily heartbeat of what's going on on Wall Street is the money life with Chuck Jaffe. So now that we've concluded our Chuck Jaffe worship session. I know, right. On to this caller's question. Chuck's going to have fun with that. Let's talk to this Chuck now, though.

Yes. Can I ask you a question, Paula? Yeah. Do you like this plan? Yes. Yes, I do. Here's a thing. That number 800,000 to build a 1,500 square foot dwelling, that doesn't make any sense to me. Because that $800,000 is not the cost of the underlying land. That's purely construction cost. 800,000 for a 1,500 square foot dwelling comes to construction costs $5333 per square foot. I do not understand how construction costs can add up to $533 per square foot.

Even if you had the highest level finishes. Absolutely. I mean, certainly there are going to be variations in permitting, in labor. Perhaps I'm just going to run with the assumption that the land that he's buying doesn't have any utilities running out to it. Like, you're going to have to do all of that from scratch. Even still, 533 per square foot is such an enormous construction cost. When you're not including the underlying land, I don't understand where that number is coming from. And I wonder if he went to a general contractor or if he went to architects,

if you went to any planners and had blueprints drawn up and got a price quote on this. The only thing that I can come up with, did that figure come from the cost of the 1,500 square foot dwelling, the construction costs, plus also construction costs on the 280Us, which are not included in that 1,500 square foot dwelling? If that's the case, then that's not $800,000 for one dwelling. It's $800,000 for three dwellings, in which case I don't have any sticker shock over $800,000 for three dwellings. And so that would be my answer. If we're talking about a total of $1.6 million all in to have a total of three separate dwellings, that's actually a pretty good deal, especially in that location. and to the psychological point of it, he asked about how to overcome sticker shock.

I mean, psychologically, I would just keep reminding myself that this is not the cost of one home. It's the cost of three homes. And I also think planning and modeling gets rid of sticker shock. Also, once you come up with a strategy, it's just more zeros, you know. If you've got a strategy to meet those zeros, you talked about Tim Ferriss. Right. Tim Ferriss thinking about buying some stuff today that he wouldn't have thought about back then. It's just more zeros.

Same planning, different number of zeros. I guess that's true really with all of us. All of us buy things today that we never would have imagined buying when we were 12 spending our babysitting money. We've all had to get used to more zeros. Yeah, I guess the only comment I have, he was talking about online calculators that talk about how much mortgage he can afford. I would caution him strongly against those. Yep. Banks exist to get you into trouble.

I feel like sometimes. With these mortgage calculators, I'd never get it. Like, why would a bank loan you that much money? There's only one reason. And I remember talking to a gentleman that worked for one of the credit card companies one time, Paula. And he was telling me, he was in the room, in the room with Citibank, when they were planning out like exactly how their offers were going to work. And what they wanted was somebody

for their credit card that would have enough money to pay the minimum payment, but never enough to pay it off. They were looking at that little, that little hairline between somebody that was going to go bankrupt and somebody that was just barely making. Because you were just barely making it, you were going to do the 28% interest, no questions asked. You were going to go and ahead and make the minimum payment, you were going to always owe Citibank a bunch of money, and they were going to cash in on you. He said, they're not solving to be your buddy. They're solving to make themselves a big profit. So I wouldn't use the bank number on what you can afford. I would put together your own strategy of how much you think you can afford when it

comes to that mortgage. Yeah, you know, one of my pet peeves is that if you Google the question, how much home can I afford, the search results that you'll get are articles about how much home you will qualify for. How much do I qualify for is very different than how much can I afford. Whole different question. Yeah. Right? They conflate the questions. The questions are asked interchangeably when in fact they're completely separate concepts. So I agree. Lending criteria is not made for the purpose of your financial wellness. Lending criteria is made such that the lending can identify risk and then create a set of criteria that optimizes the risk level to the lender, which is why how much do I qualify for is a question that relates to truly the lender's financial

wellness, not to your own. I gave that answer once in an interview. It was an interview that I did for CNBC, and the interviewer asked me, well, what percentage of someone one's income should they spend on housing? And I was like, it's not one size fits all for a number of reasons, internal and external, right? Internally, you yourself are going to have a variety of priorities. And some of those priorities will be necessities. Maybe you're an immigrant and you're sending money back to your home country. That's a priority and that's going to influence how much money you want to spend on housing. Maybe you're an aspiring ice hockey playing scuba diver, and that's going to influence your housing choices. So sometimes the internal drives come from a combination of

obligations and or desires. Those are both sources of that the reason that every person's internal money script is different. On top of that, externally, to a question like, what percentage for my income can I spend on housing? Well, you know what? If you're making $30,000 a year, 20% of your income or 30% of your income is a very different experience than if you're making $700,000 a year. That's because of the percentage of your income that ultimately ends up being discretionary. You know, it's because of the declining marginal utility of money as you make bigger amounts. And that is a factor that is not included in a one-size-fits-all question of what percentage of my income should I spend on housing. There's a bigger issue here, Paula, that I have,

which is that just generally using rules of thumb, because, you know, the percentage number is a rule of thumb that we use. Rules of thumb, I think, suck all the fun out of the planning, which I think your plan is going to be stickier and it's going to be more useful if you use actual numbers that fit your situation. You know, I've had people that are big rules of thumb advocates come back at me and say, well, you know, rules of thumb are great places to start. And I think they're not. They're not because it makes it seem so prescriptive and boring when, you know, if he actually spends time thinking about how he's going to get this property, listen to how excited he sounded when he was talking about this property and the things that he was going to do with it. Like if you put real numbers,

to that versus just some rules of thumb. I don't think it's going to scare him off. I think it's going to make him even more interested going, okay, I think I can do this because of this, this and this. It's not a, it's not just this generic pie in the sky thing. So I don't know. I always think people are smart enough to use the real numbers. The planning is actually easier than we think.

And number three is that it just makes the plan stickier because it's your stuff. It's actually your life that you're talking about instead of some rule. You're laughing at me. I'm laughing because I've counted at least six times that you use the phrase rules of thumb. And I know someone is going to reach out to me on Twitter about this because it happens every time we use that phrase on this show. There's a, Joe, I'll just let you Google it. There's some history to that phrase. You got to be kidding.

I'm not going to cut it from the show. I'm just going to say Google it. And send your tweets to Joe. All right. We hit pause and I looked it up the stuff that I did know. And I stand by it, Paula. Do not use rules of thumb. Number one, the entomology of that phrase is absolutely horrible.

I thought it's etymology. Entomology is insects. Yes. The insects in that phrase are horrible. And the etymology of that phrase is horrible, too. The whole thing is horrible. So don't do it. It makes me double down on this.

Do not use rules of thumb. Do not. It's horrible. It's rotten. It's, in fact, from now on, when people tell me that it's helpful, I'm going to point them to do a Bing search. Oh, a Bing search. Why don't you just point them to ask Jeeves? Easy.

Bing, by the way. Have you seen that Bing is integrating chat GDP into their search functionality? Oh, chat GPT, yeah. Yes. Oh, that's cool. And Google's freaking out because my favorite search engine is clearly winning, clearly winning with like 2% of the audience. All right.

Well, let me go to my earthlink.net account and check it out on Dogpile. But that's not the point, Bala. The point is... I'm down letting music on Napster. I'm checking my MySpace account. You are so getting out of my top eight. I'm returning all these AOL discs. That's way back now.

Yeah. I'm so happy I look that up because it gives me even more reason to tell people that it's dumb. Don't do it. Don't do it. I'm happy I look that up. That's great. Thank you. All right.

Well, I think we answered that question and discovered the etymology of entomology. So Chuck on that crescendo, Chuck's like, what does that do with me? Time to get out the pen and paper, though, follow or the spreadsheet, whatever. Time to run some real numbers. And to get some better building quotes. Yeah, I have to assume the 800,000 figures for all three. That's the only way it makes sense. But those two tiny houses are what, like 12 bucks each?

You know, they can be surprisingly expensive. I looked into a few. Yeah, they cost more than you think they would, which makes sense. sense because there's a certain base cost to building something. And after you begin the build, additional square footage has additional marginal cost, but some of the biggest expenses are associated with just creating a structure inherently. That, you know, that doesn't go away. But Chuck, you're getting three houses on one piece of land. So I love this dream.

Can't wait to see it. Yeah. Maybe Chuck Jaffe will interview you about it. Ooh. Full circle. Heaven. Heaven. All right, Joe, I think we've done it.

I think we got a little slapstick in that last question, but I think we've done it. Maybe slightly. Joe, where can people find you if they want to hear more slapstick comedy? Yeah, if they want to hear more about insects, inadvertent insects, that appear in my phraseology. Phrasiology. You head to the Staggy Benjamin's show every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. We've had some great guests on lately.

I mentioned a couple of them during the show. Dr. Robert Waldinger and Happiness made an appearance today. But also, I just interviewed Dr. Myra Strober from Stanford. You know how we always talk about. the difference between love and money. People that go, I really want to do this, but this pays a lot better. So I think I'm going to chase the money instead of love. So which one do we do? Do we chase love? Do we chase money? And she thinks there's a way. There's a way to do both. So that was a really fun discussion. You're talking about love of career, right? Passion. Well, and sometimes it's love of people,

right? I have this person who I love and they need to move to, in this particular case, I'm thinking about, told a story about a potential spouse wanted to move to Atlanta for their career and she needs to move to San Francisco. What hell do we do there? I'm in love with this person and we both want to chase our careers and the money behind our careers. Like, what do we do? And she is a roadmap that solves a lot of those, a lot of those questions. It's good stuff. So anyway, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, stacking Benjamin show. Meet me over there. That's excellent. You can find it on Bing. Now you're just going after me. I got to tell you something about Bing.

Let me tell you something about Bing. Oh, Grandpa Joe's talking Bing again. You get paid. You get paid a search all day long. I get about $40 a year in Amazon money just from my searches on Bing. And if you've done the little taste test thing, my Bing searches give me a better reply than a Google search does too. And Microsoft doesn't pay me any money for any of this. I just, I like it.

So Joe, Joe, you don't have to pay. The electricity that you use to power your laptop does not have to be made back. You're searching anyway. Why would you give up the 40 bucks? Why would you do that? I don't know why you would do that. And now that they're using some of the cool AI tools out there as well. And people laugh.

And I'm like, I don't, I just, I don't get it. I do have to say chat GPT is revolutionary. I think Microsoft is a company that the last 10 years, maybe 12, 15 years has really done a great job of reversing course. It really makes a, you know, you can see it in the stock price. It's done a lot of good stuff. So laugh at me all you want. It works.

Go Bing. Go Bing it. Oh, geez. All right. Well, on that note, thank you for tuning in. This is the Afford Anything podcast. If you enjoy today's episode, please subscribe to the show notes, Affordainthing.com slash show notes. Share this episode with a friend or a family member.

And leave us a review. Open up your favorite podcast playing app. Give us a rating. Give us a review. These are super helpful in allowing us to book amazing guests on the show. And you can hang out with other members of the community at afford anything.com slash community, where we have breakout groups that talk about specific topics of interest, whether that's debt payoff, retirement planning, whatever's your jam.

You can find it. It's all free. Affordanything.com slash community. Thanks so much for tuning in. I'm Paula Pant. That guy is Josal Seahai. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm Joe Saul Seahy.

I'm binging my name. And we will catch you in the next episode. Here is an important. 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. Hey, Joe, did you hear about the guy who invented the, uh, Knock-knock joke? No.

He won the Nobel Prize. Oh, my God. Did you hear about the... Did you hear... Knock knock. Who's there? Nazi interrogator. Nazi interrogator.

Feeville asked the questions. Oh. Except if you're standing next to somebody, you'd like slap them. People ask the questions. It's very startling. Anyway, sorry.