Afford Anything - Ask Paula: What Should I Do With $25,000?

Episode Date: April 7, 2021

#310: Greta is tired of financial modesty. She wants to achieve financial independence through diversified income streams, and has her eyes set on owning local duplexes. What should she focus on to make this happen?  Jeannie wants to know: when should you scale back 401k contributions so you can invest in something else, like real estate? Steph and her husband came into $25,000 and aren’t sure what to do with it. Should they pay off their student loans, save it towards a house and starting a family, or purchase her company stock options? J from California is curious: how do you strike a balance between optimization and simplicity in your financial plan?  Dawn has $65,000 in a 403b through Ameriprise and the fees associated with it are outrageous. Should she take the money out and put it elsewhere, or leave it?  My friend and former financial planner, Joe Saul-Sehy, joins me to answer these five questions. Enjoy! For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode310 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 must manage. And that opens up two questions. First, what matters most? And second, how do you align your daily, weekly, monthly, annual decision-making

to reflect that which matters most? Answering those two questions is a lifetime practice, and that's what this podcast is here to explore. My name is Paula Pant. I am the host of the Afford Anything podcast. Every other episode, ish, we answer questions that come from you, the community. And today, former financial planner Joe Saul Seahy and his cat Cooper, join me to answer those questions. What's up, Joe and Cooper? Do you like how Cooper just sits here supervising?

Like, very nice. Yep. Just staring at us, making sure. that we answer all of the questions thoroughly. Look at he sits here like, I love afford anything. Aw. This is my favorite podcast. Well, thank you, Cooper.

These are the questions that we're going to be talking about in today's episode. Greta is currently in a mortgage that she cannot refinance for another eight and a half years. She also can't move out of her current home for another eight and a half years. she would like to expand into owning more homes, specifically duplexes, given that she can't refi or move out of her current primary residence, what should she do? Jeannie wants to achieve financial independence and is wondering if she should scale back on her 401K contributions

in order to invest in more real estate. Steph and her husband came into $25,000, and they don't know what to do with it. Should they pay off their student loans? should they save it towards a home and starting a family, or should they purchase her company stock options? Jay from California is curious. How do you strike a balance between optimization and simplicity when you are financial planning? And Don has $65,000 in a 403B through AmeriPriise, and the fees are rather high.

What should she do? Joe and I and Cooper the Cat are going to answer all of these questions. But before we get into today's show, I've got an announcement. Our premium flagship course, your first rental property, opens for enrollment next week, April 12th, Monday, April 12th at 801 a.m. Eastern, we open for enrollment. This is huge. It only happens twice a year. And if you want all of the details, stick around for the last five minutes of today's show. Or just fast forward to the last five minutes of today's show if you can't wait. So that's the announcement. Won't spend any more time on it than that.

With that said, let's get started on all of these questions, starting with Greta. Hello there, Paula. This is Greta from the Great Lakes. Firstly, I want to say thank you for all the educational resources you put out there for us. I discovered your blog when I was in the process of buying my home and preparing to rent out its extra bedrooms to help cover the mortgage. Your story of having housemates past college age and becoming a landlord was my very first introduction to the concept of house hacking and real estate. investing. I started listening to your podcast shortly thereafter, and I learned something from each episode, no matter how different other people's situations are from my own. My question today is what to

focus on financially over the course of the coming year. Over the past decade, I've had annual mini goals that have allowed me to get myself out from under my student loan debt, start saving for retirement, et cetera. And as a result, I'm no longer scraping by, but I'm not sure how to go from this point of modest stability to feeling like I'm thriving. I'd like to get to the point where I'm financially independent with diversified income streams, including owning two or three local duplexes, but I'm not sure what I should focus on over the course of the next year or so to make the purchase of the first one a reality. Here are my details. I'm 34, single, and brought home about $32,700 after taxes this year. This is $22,000 from my full-time job, $3,500 from various side gigs,

and $7,200 from renting out my two spare bedrooms, though I may still have to pay taxes on that last. In terms of savings, I currently have one year's deductible in my HSA, and I'm working toward having a year's out-of-pocket maximum in there. I max out my Roth IRA each year, and it currently stands at $53,000, in addition to having $5,000 in my 403B, which I contribute enough to to get my maximum employer match. I also have $20,000 in a savings account, which is broken into subaccounts for home repairs and maintenance, a car to replace mine when it becomes unreliable, a small pay-it-forward fund, and half of next year's Roth IRA contribution. My only debt is my mortgage, $76,000 left to go on a house worth approximately $120,000. I've been paying extra each month since I closed on the house a year and a half ago. I'm currently paying $1,060 per month, though the minimum monthly payment is $744. I'm not sure if I should keep pumping extra money into the mortgage, or if I should use those funds

towards something else. My interest rate is fixed at 4.125%. The tricky thing with my house is that I purchased it with the help of a renovation, grant that helps first-time homebuyers purchase houses that need some love. Under the terms of this grant, this house has to be my primary residence for 10 years, or I'll have to pay a prorated portion of the grant back, and I cannot refinance the mortgage during that time. So I have eight and a half more years before that requirement is satisfied. I know that a lot of real estate investors use their first home to enable them to purchase a second, but I'm not sure that's an option for me. So given all of that, what would you suggest as a new mini goal for the next year or so in order to get me closer to purchasing a duplex in the fairly short term and hopefully attaining financial independence in the long run?

Thank you so much, Paula, and I hope this year brings you good health and many wonderful adventures. Greta, first of all, congratulations on everything that you have done so far. You are managing your money very, very well. You're in an excellent spot. You've got your debt-free other than a very reasonable mortgage. I love what you've done. Like, you've found this opportunity for a renovation grant that allows you to add value to the property that you live in. So, yes, it comes with some restrictions, but I think that this is a fantastic grant.

I love that you're in it. And I love the goals that you have moving forward. So let's talk about how you can reach those goals. Because as you said, you can't refinance your mortgage and you can't move out of this home. So what can you do? A couple of things strike me right away. First of all, I love that you're renting out your two spare bedrooms. You said you've made $7,200 this year from renting out those two spare rooms,

so you're doing a great job of monetizing the property that you're in. In order to reach this goal of owning a few more local duplexes, if I were in your shoes, I would do it the old-fashioned way. dedicate a portion of the gap between what you earn and what you spend every month into an account that is specifically dedicated to building up a down payment for that next duplex. It's going to take some time, and it's going to be frustrating to see that money sitting there in cash, particularly as you get closer and closer to the goal, which means the amount of money that you're holding in cash grows larger and larger.

But that old-fashioned tried-and-true method of save money, build the down payment, and then take out an investor loan or a seller finance loan in order to buy that next property. I think that is, it's the tried and true classic for a reason. You know, it's a great opportunity to be able to pick up that next home when you're ready to do so. I also, first of all, Greta, I love the fact that you're from the Great Lakes. I think the most brilliant people on earth they're from the Great Lakes. Just amazing. Something in the water. I don't know.

Joe, I take it you're from the Great Lakes. How did you know? How did you know? Yes. Which lake did you grow up near? They don't call it the pretty good lakes. They call it the Great Lakes, Paula. Great.

Yes. Close to Lake Michigan. I'm from Kalamazoo. So maybe hour and a half away. Well, you know, I've heard very good things about the rental market in Kalamazoo, actually. It is definitely rebounded from when I left. And no correlation there, by the way, me leaving, things coming back. Joe's gone.

This city can thrive again. Look at the rents going up. Actually, it is a great rebound story because when I was there, my mom worked for Upjohn, which is now Pfizer. My dad worked for General Motors, which left town, left a lot of towns. And so those were the two main businesses in Kalamazoo. And then, man, they rallied around everything, just around the community and smaller businesses and the college and university that are there, or colleges and university that are there. And now it's a great place for microbears.

Some of the best microbears are in Kalamazoo and a lot of the nice community neighborhoods. Just a great place, but much, much different than when I live there. But I want to widen this, not for Greta, because I just want to have a little bit of a philosophical. discussion, which is that when Greta talks about her goals and what should she do next, I wonder if buying a duplex is a goal or is it a vehicle? Like, which one is it? Is it an investment or is it a goal? Or can an investment be a goal? Where are you going with this? Are you saying that it is a means to an end? Yeah, I mean, for most of us, right? The reason we put money in an investment isn't, hey, I'm going to index because love me some index. No, you, you

index because you know that it is a low cost, very boring way to beat the pants off inflation over long periods of time, right? Don't have to think about it. It's pretty easy. And if a company's not doing well, it's self-cleaning. I don't even have to clean up after myself. The index will do it for me. A company doesn't do well.

It gets kicked out and they put in another one. So it's even going to continue to pick to some degree who the survivors are, if not the winners. So buying the index is not my goal. Retirement's my goal. Or buying another house for myself as a goal or vacations or the ability to just do what I want to kind of coast is my goal. You know what I mean? Flexibility may be my goal. So sometimes I just hear people get fixated on an investment instead of thinking about the goals. Well, and in Greta's case, you know, she opens the question by saying that she wants to transition from modest financial stability, which is where she is right now, to financial independence with diversified income streams.

Exactly. And that's the main reason I bring this up is because I was on board with that part of the question. I'm like, oh, cool. There's multiple ways to do that. And then she goes, so I really want to own a duplex. And maybe she's already done that homework. And so that's why this isn't so much for Greta, as it is for other people, that there's more. than one way to reach a goal. The cool thing I like is that once Greta gets that goal in place that she has, it narrows the field of investment options. You and I hear these questions all the time about, oh, there's so many different investment options, which one do I choose? Well, I start with what my goal is, and that immediately takes this huge field of investments down to this little tiny patch of investments

historically have gotten me there. So then I don't have to know everything about everything. I just got to know a lot about just a few things. And certainly a duplex. will do that. So maybe she's gotten there already. I just thought we needed to kind of philosophically go there. Right, right, exactly. I mean, in Greta's particular case, so she maxes out her Roth IRA, she contributes enough to get the employer match in her 403B. She's got an emergency fund in a savings account, which she's subdivided into different sub-accounts. She's got her a deductible, a full-year health deductible in her HSA. So in terms of both savings and market investments, She seems very well set up in all of those accounts.

I think in her particular case, she can get diversification as well as investments that are biased in favor of cap rate and in favor of cash flow by picking up a few duplexes, particularly if she does live. We know she lives in the Great Lakes. We don't know exactly where. If she does live in Kalamazoo, that could be an excellent, from what I hear. and I have not looked into that market very well, but I have many investor friends who I know have recently texted me speaking high praise of Kalamazoo. It's a great place to be from. Yeah, I agree with all that.

And I love going through that process and going, you know what? Duplex is the thing that gets me there. So I thought that need to be said. But, you know, the second thing, my only other thought is there is no, I can't think of any reason why she puts extra money into that mortgage with the contingencies that she has. There is no reason to do that. Put that money toward her independence goals. Yep.

Exactly 100%. I agree with you entirely. So, Greta, I would not continue to pay any extra on your mortgage. Make the minimum payment on your mortgage and put the rest of your money towards investing. Should we talk about why that is just briefly? Sure. I think it's because putting money, Greta, directly into that mortgage is diametrically opposed to what you told us, which is that I'm going to need flexibility and money that grows.

And if I put money toward the mortgage, you're going to live in this house either way, right? So either I live in the house and the mortgage is paid down by 4.125% and it appreciates or I pay off the house and it appreciates. But now I have all this money in the house that I can't get at for these other things that will help me reach my goal more quickly. So when I look at that 4.125% interest, that's the interest rate you're going to get unless you're lucky enough to also get a tax break on that money. That number over an eight and a half year period is, I won't say easily beatable, but it definitely is in the realm of beatable.

And if she wants to go get that money, her only choice to get that money is to sell the property, which she can't do, or to take out a loan against it again. Which she can't do, right. And with interest rates going up, I don't think, I think that window is closing for people anyway. So I can very confidently say take that money and put it toward your duplex down payment. Yeah, exactly. I would absolutely do that. And Greta, I would be a fan of you doing anything with that money other than paying extra towards your mortgage. So if you wanted to beef up your savings account, which I don't think you need to do.

But if you wanted to for any reason, I'd be a fan of that. If you wanted to put more money into a taxable brokerage account or put more into index funds, I'd totally be a fan of that. Personally, if I were in your shoes and I was excited about owning a couple more duplexes, personally, I would go that route. But I say that just to emphasize that any of those options are ones that I would thumbs up. The other thing that we haven't talked about is Greta, you said that you made $3,500 from your side gigs and you make 22,000 from your full-time job.

So as a proportion of your income, your side gigs is actually a decent proportion of the total active income that you make. I don't know how much time your side gigs take you as compared with your full-time job, but if it is the case that if you were to break this all down as an hourly rate, you're making more on an hourly basis from your side gigs than you are from your full-time job, then it may be worthwhile to invest money into growing that side gig. And I say that not knowing what the side gig is. If you drive for Uber, then there's not a whole lot of money that you would really need to

invest in something like that. There's the initial setup of having a car. Besides that, you don't have to put any more into it. But if your side gig is, for example, an online business that you could put some money into growing, the fact that you are making a proportionately decent chunk of your total income from that side gig tells me that there might be something there. There may be some legs there that you can power. I smell some business planning coming maybe. Yeah. I was trying to come up with a good analogy after saying there may be legs there, like legs there that you can run with,

legs there that you can use to climb a hill. Climb? Climb? Sure. Yeah. But I mean, I say that because I was once in that position where I made my starting salary was $21,000 a year. But then on the side during the evenings and weekends, I was making, I mean, a variable amount, but at my peak I was making up to $75 an hour. So my day job, I was making, you know, $21,000 a year with 2,000 working hours a year, that's the equivalent of making $11.50 an hour. So in my day job, I'm making $11.

and 50 cents an hour. In my side gig, I'm making $75 an hour. You don't need to be a math major to be like, duh. Clearly, the side gig was where the opportunity was. When you talk to a lot of people to do what you and I do that have bootstrapped it from the beginning, they get to that inflection point. I'll present the other side of that, which is I spoke with artist. He kind of bridges being an artist and business, Austin Cleon, and did talk about though, Paula, there is. There is, value in having your side gig stay your sidekick. And there also is value in not monetizing. Because, you know, the first thing, and this is a great, I'm directly quoting Austin Cleon, who wrote a book called Steele like an artist, so I should just say it. I'm joking.

He also talks about don't plagiarize. So Austin's wonderful. But he said, you know, we bring cupcakes to a party and they're pretty damn good cupcakes. And you know, the first compliment everybody he gives is you should sell these. Right. And you and I know that when you go from making cupcakes because it's fun to cupcakes for sale, it changes the game. Yeah, the fun kind of gets sucked out of it for some people. Now for me, I'd rather do nothing other than what I do and I definitely don't want to work for anybody else anymore. Except Cooper here. So Cooper the cat. Yeah. So again, I think for Greta, look at your goal first, you know, Why do you work where you work and ask some of those philosophical questions?

But I'm with you. If she's making that much and doing it as a side gig and she's thought about leaving, permission granted to look more at it. Right. Well, I would not leave right away. I would not leave while she's currently earning at the 3,500 stage. But I wouldn't be afraid to take the 3,500 that she's made from those side gigs and reinvest it back into those side gigs to see if it can grow.

Well, and I also think that this is where she starts doing some math and some math that I didn't even think about. This is horrible, but I had been working for myself for two years before a mentor said to me or asked me the question, what does it cost to turn on the lights every morning? And I said, what do you mean? He goes, what does it cost? Like, what's the minimal amount of money you need to make today just to turn on the lights? Not reinvest, not grow, not anything. What's that minimal? I didn't even know that number.

And so I think there's a lot of math that you need to apply before you even. begin the process, right? What do I need to live on minimum? What's the ramp to get there? Really, what are the processes I need to get there? And there's a wonderful book called the E-Mith. And the E-Mith is a great book, not because, you know, the book is the E-Meth why most businesses fail and what to do about it. And I'll give you a little of the spoiler here, which is most businesses don't fail because they stink at what they do. It's because they're really good at what they do, but as they grow, they have no systems. And they get overwhelmed by the fact that they have no systems.

And now this greatness that I had, so many people want a piece of that greatness. There's not enough to go around. And because you never built an assembly line, you can't replicate it. Right. I think going in and reading some of that stuff, doing some of that work ahead of time is also great planning. Yeah, business planning, not business jumping. Right, right. And we will link to both of those books, Steele like an Arborch,

artist and the e-myth, we'll link to both of those in the show notes, which will be available at Affordanything.com slash episode 310. You can also subscribe to the show notes for free at Affordanithing.com slash show notes. That's a crazy title. I know. Where did I come up with that? Crazy you are. Wait, Aaron. Hold on. So, Greta, those are our thoughts. It's one of those rare instances where Joe and I are in agreement. Do not continue to pay extra on your mortgage, do literally anything else with that money other than that. You've got a lot of great opportunities at your fingertips. So whether you decide to focus on duplexes or focus on the side gig or a combination of the two,

you've got a lot of big things ahead. You've got a lot of good things ahead. So thank you, Greta, for asking that question. We'll come back to this episode after this word from our sponsors. The holidays are right around the corner and if you're hosting, you're going to need to get prepared. Maybe you need bedding, sheets, linens, maybe you need serveware and cookware. And of course, holiday decor,

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That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com. Sale ends December 7th. Fifth Third Bank's commercial payments are fast and efficient, but they're not just fast and efficient. They're also powered by the latest in-payments technology, built to evolve with your business. Fifth Third Bank has the big bank muscle to handle payments for businesses of any size. But they also have the FinTech hustle that got them named one of America's most innovative companies by Fortune magazine. That's what being a fifth-third better is all about. It's about not being just one thing, but many things for our customers. Big Bank muscle, fintech hustle. That's your commercial payments of fifth-third better. Our next question comes from Jay. Hi, Paula. This is Jay in California.

I've been thinking a lot about optimization versus simplicity when it comes to financial planning, and how do I find the right balance? You know, I've heard you and Joe say that when we feel uncomfortable with an idea, sometimes it's a good thing to listen to that little voice. You know, take it as a legitimate sign of a path we shouldn't take. But on the other hand, sometimes it's good to push through that and educate ourselves and overcome that discomfort. For example, I used to fear investing because it felt safer to keep all my money in the bank, and that's a place where education has really helped. Now I'm investing so much each year that financial planners and FI bloggers are recommending strategies like the mega backdoor Roth IRA.

And that's what's driving my question. The process is so convoluted that I'm feeling a lot of resistance about it. I'd have to redesign my husband's solo 401k and hire a good CPA and fill out lots of forms and move all kinds of money around. And the thing is, it's just such a weird legal loophole that I'm just annoyed that it exists at all. Like our tax code is such a mess. It's full of special interests and bizarre incentives. And I just don't like playing that game. But still, with early retirement in mind, I know there's value in optimization, and that's why I'm paying attention to expense ratios and tax-advantaged accounts in the first place. So it's not like I'm not playing the game, but some of the strategies in the FI world just feel super squirly. So in particular,

what are your thoughts about the mega backdoor Roth? And in general, how do I weigh my resistance to complexity against potential opportunity cost? Thanks so much for your thoughts on this. Jay, thank you so much for that question. I love the ideas that this question brings up, and I have a number of thoughts. First, to answer your question directly, specifically around the mega backdoor Roth. What I am curious about is the source of the resistance. Is the resistance born of fear and intimidation about learning something that seems complex? or is the resistance born of a moral or ethical objection to the mega backdoor Roth?

Only you can answer that question. And I think that at the root of your question, you may not yet know the answer to that. Because what I hear in your question are objections related to both of those. On one hand, you talk about how it's complicated. On the other hand, you talk about how it feels kind of squirrely and icky. what is driving the resistance? Is it the complexity or is it the ick factor? In order to answer that, what I would recommend that you do is learn how to execute a mega backdoor Roth. Like learn it so well that you could teach somebody else how to do it. And once you've learned it to that degree,

the resistance that's born of complication goes away. And once you're, Once that justification for resistance goes away, then you'll know whether or not resistance remains as a result of feeling that this is squirrely or having an ethical objection to it. The reason that I bring this up is because I've noticed myself if I'm, you know, I took a, I enrolled a couple of months ago. I enrolled in a fairly expensive online course about how to be better at Instagram. Feel free to laugh at me, but, you know, I found an Instagram influencer that I absolutely love. She teaches an excellent online course. I've learned so much. But I noticed that she had this module where she was talking about taking photos with an iPhone

versus taking photos with a real, very complicated, professional camera. And I immediately wanted to skip over that. lesson and just say, nah, I'm just going to use an iPhone. It's cool. And the reason that I felt that fear is not because I have an objection to a real camera. It's because I felt immediately intimidated by the prospect of going through that learning curve and needing to be a complete beginner and figure out how to use this technology for the first time. Once I recognized that that was the source of my resistance, I could then sit with that and say, you know what? I am capable of doing hard things.

I am capable of learning hard things. And I will build confidence if I don't let intimidation of hard things hold me back. And so that was when I recognized the source of the resistance and made a decision accordingly. And that's very different from feeling like cameras are squirrely. So that's the reason that I want you to answer that question, because one will be character building. and the other will be soul-crushing. I think I have an aversion to social media, but as I tell everyone, you know, for my job,

I have to be on social media. So it goes back to Greta. I've taken social media classes too. I wouldn't laugh at you at all, Paula, if it's part of your job, you have to get good at it. You have to be good at it. And I'm very intimidated by Instagram and by social media, and I'm taking classes all the time and learning a ton daily

from these great people. And yeah, it's this familiarity. There's a new platform that I'm starting to experiment with that actually isn't out yet. That's really cool. I can't really talk more about it. But I'm just going to play with it tomorrow. Tomorrow I'm just going to play around with it. And yeah, we're going to do a show where nobody listens. Nobody's there. And we'll see how it goes. But it's that same thing. You know, there is, I'm quoting books today. I'm a book quoting person today. The War of Art, Stephen Pressfield, which is... Art, you're the second person who's talked about it with me today within the past few hours. Stephen Pressfield talks about resistance with a capital R is your enemy.

And sometimes the reason it feels squirly is it's that capital R resistance that doesn't want you to do the thing. And to your point, Paul, if we look at why the thing is complicated, you have to go through the justifications of how the rules got the way they are. And so we start off with the Roth IRA was meant to, for better or worse, this is not a political discussion. But the agreement was that the Roth IRA, if you're going to be able to contribute, it was made for people who make under a set amount or less. It is a way to make sure that people that make a lot of money pay more tax, right? Whether it's now or in the future. So the Roth IRA has an income limit that phases out.

That was the rationale behind them creating it. Once again, no judgment on what it is. That's just how it came around. But there is a way to get around it that everybody can take advantage of. I don't know what the political, maybe this is part of the political middle ground. That's the Roth conversion. The Roth conversion allows anybody to do it. The cool thing that the government likes about that is that, hey, we'll be open to taking no money later on if you let us to Ching the cash register today.

Let us go ahead and take your tax money today and then we'll give you the future growth. That's also feels to me kind of like a middle ground. So you have these two things and then you have the fact that there are 401K plans that will allow you to do what's called an in-service withdrawal. Independent of all that, there's this third rule out there called an in-service withdrawal where you can still be working at a company and you're allowed to take the money out and roll it over. to an IRA while you're still working there. Most companies won't let you do that. I generally don't encourage people to do that. If you've got great 401k options at your work,

just leave it there. Don't mess with all this stuff. To Jay's point, it gets complicated. But if you can, and you're in a spot where you cannot put money in a Roth IRA, and you're also in a spot where you want to put lots of money in a Roth IRA, all the sudden taking this Roth IRA rule and combining it with, With this other rule that's existed for a long time, this in-service withdrawal rule creates this backdoor Roth IRA loophole,

which just by the way it was created means it's going to be messy. It just is what it is. And also, there aren't a ton of people that can do it. But if you can do it, it frankly is just a three-step process. Do the inservice withdrawal out of your 401K plan into an IRA, then do the Roth conversion, pay the tax. Right. And so mega backdoor Roth IRA sounds way more flipping intimidating to me than what I just said, right?

What I just said in service withdrawal, like take money for 401K, put it in IRA. Okay, yeah, people do that. And then changing in order to a Roth IRA, yeah, okay, that's one move. Not that intimidating. Exactly. But although in the course of executing that, you want to make sure all of the eyes are dotted and all of the T's are crossed. And there can be that intimidation factor there.

Sure. So Jay kind of, she touches on some different philosophical questions within her question. This is my favorite part of the entire question. Yeah. Like in addition to the where is the resistance born of, there's also the other aspect of her question, which is simplicity versus optimization. The reality is that a mega backdoor Roth is more complex. complicated than simply leaving your money in your company retirement plan, which to your point,

Joe, that's precisely why for the majority of people that you talk to, you say, you know what, if you've got a good company 401K, just leave it there, don't worry about it. Similarly, you and I on this podcast many times before when somebody has asked about the self-directed IRA as a tool for funding real estate investments, we've both said, like, oh, don't bother with that unless you absolutely have to, because it's just so complicated to set up a self-directed IRA and then to try to buy real estate out of it. You can do it. It's an option.

But another example is the SEPP 72T rule. Again, it's an option. And if you're retiring early, you've got that as a tool at your disposal. But if you can avoid doing that, that would be better, simply for the sake of simplicity. Yeah. And so I see multiple aspects to Jay's question. There's the question of where is the resistance born of? Is it born of complexity or is it born of integrity and ethics?

That's one element of the question. And then the other element of the question is how to decide upon that balance between simplicity and optimization. And to that element of the question, my response is, what's the opportunity cost? What could you be doing with that time, that energy, that attention? if you were not optimizing, because for every hour that you spend trying to set up a self-directed IRA or trying to execute a mega backdoor Roth or trying to establish SEPP 72T withdrawal strategy, you know, for every hour that you spend doing that, that's an hour that you're not building a side hustle. That's an hour that you're not training to run a marathon. It's an hour that you're

not learning French or learning how to play chess. There's an opportunity cost to spending that time and that energy and that attention in that way. And that's how I would decide how complicated you want to make it. At what point are you giving up too much in order to do it? I was just speaking with a few months ago with Ashley Willens from Harvard Business School. And she has done a lot of study like Laura Vandercom has on time and on time management. And she had a great point, Paula, that most of us, especially in this community, we do a great job of optimizing our money. And we can look at the ROI on money. But when it comes to optimization of our time to do the things, we're we want to do, we're poor at that. Because we always turn into a money equation. So what's the

ROI of doing the thing? How much money is that going to make me? Now how much time is it going to make me or how much happiness is it going to make me? It's just how much money is that going to make me? And she said that part of that is that, you know, we don't like to look at our own mortality. It's much easier to go, well, what's the money equation here? How much money would I make by making that move? Not how much life do I get by doing that? Exactly. Exactly. And the irony is the root of the financial independence movement is to get our time back, to stop trading time for money. And yet, in order to get there, it's so tempting and so easy, and I think such a big part of the culture, to suboptimally use our time. And I'm not just talking about something like this.

Like, in fact, I would argue that executing complicated financial maneuvers is arguably a much better use of time than installing your own baseboard or clipping coupons for seven hours a week. I would argue that the things that you do in the financial markets are, for many people, a much better use of time than making your own gatorade or gathering together all of the scraps of soap in your house so that you can put them together into one giant piece of soap. That's an actual example from an actual blog post, by the way. Remember the blog post, a mutual friend of yours and mine used to talk about all the time, was the blogger that would talk about unscrewing the oven life.

Right, yes. Oh, or he talked about ripping dryer sheets in half so that you can get twice as much use out of it, which a mutual friend of ours started referring to as bisecting dryer sheets. Oh, that's too much. Which is such a great phrase that has never left me. Too much. Yeah, so when you get to the point where you are chasing frugality to such an extent that you're bisecting dryer sheets, Not good.

Exactly. I will say that Jay brings up an interesting philosophical discussion that I had to kind of look inwardly at. And, you know, there are growth investors and value investors, right? And everybody always, not everybody always asks. Everybody. Everybody. Everywhere I go. I get stopped on the street, nonstop.

Which one's better, Joe? Doesn't happen. But people wonder. which one's better? Is it better? Do growth investors get further ahead or do value investors get further ahead? And it's neither here nor there for this argument, but over long periods of time, they end up at about the same place. So if you can buy the market when it's low, sell it when it's high, growth investors usually going to win, value investors catch up over these long stretches. My point, though, is that my bent when it comes to investing is growth at a reasonable price,

which when you talk to a lot of money managers, that's the, place where they end up at. I want a growth bent, but I don't want to pay the moon for it, which is why I've never invested in Tesla and I never invested in Amazon. Those went by because the price always seemed just exorbitant to me. Like, are you kidding me? And clearly I lost out on both of those. But when it comes to this, it's optimization with reasonable flexibility. That's how I realized when I was thinking about Jay's question, that's always been my bent toward this. Optimized with reasonable flexibility. I do not want to optimize to the point that I'm locked in.

Right. Which is another way of saying that there is a cost to liquidity. And oftentimes that is a price worth paying. Yeah. But as I think about that, I also think, Paula, that it's not the opposite for me. It isn't flexibility with a bent toward optimization. It's optimization with a bent toward flexibility. What would be an example of flexibility with a bent towards optimization?

What would be an example of that not? I'm going to hold back a lot of money from my IRA contributions or my 401K contributions because I'm not sure what's going to happen. I will generally try to fill them first, but then I'll look at the overall pot of money and go, yeah, I'm going to have to hold some back because I need the blend toward flexibility versus I want to stay flexible, but I'm going to throw a few bucks into my Roth. Right, right, right, exactly. So don't let the fact that that money is going to be tied up in a tax advantaged account.

Don't let that hold you back from use of tax advantaged accounts. Right. I will start with tax advantage account and then I'll go, whoa, buster, that's enough. Yeah, exactly. Optimization and then the bent towards flexibility. And then the whoa buster. Where did that come from? All right.

Well, thank you, Jay, for asking that question. And best of luck with whatever decision you make. We'll return to the show in just a moment. Our next question comes from Dawn. Hi, Paula. Thank you so much for your leadership in all of our lives and helping us find paths to financial independence as well as success, period. I was a high school teacher and was duped into a 403B through AmeriPrize, and I broke up my financial advisor.

About four years ago, I tried to take the money out of my 403B only to find out that I've been paying many, many fees over the years and had little as 5% return from 2010 to 2017. It's been quite shaming and upsetting for me because I'm a smart person but had no idea until I started listening to your podcast about managing your own money through index funds. I took all of my money out except for the River Source 403B that I still have. My main question is, what do I do now? Just leave it. It's $65,000 in River Source through Ameriprise. and it's conservative and most likely earning around 4% with all of the fees.

Or simply take the money out and pay the surrender charges of about $2,500 and put it into a Fidelity F-H-FX 2035 retirement index fund. I'm at a loss what to do. I've read many, many articles. Some say take a portion out. some say all of it out, some just say leave it. And I think you are a financial steadfast mentor in many of our lives and just hoping for your response and thoughts on this topic.

Thanks so much. I appreciate all of your help. Hey, Don, thanks for the question. Good job of saving and to paying attention to the fees in your portfolio and to getting smart. And by the way, when I heard personally your question, there are a few. things that I'm going to dispute where I think you made some really smart moves either because of the advisor or not because of the advisor. But I would say putting money into a 403B,

that's not being duped. I think if you're a teacher putting money in a 403B, which generally for most teachers is the only tax shelter available is a fantastic move. And I know, and by the way, and I can't figure out why this is a problem, and I'm feeling myself getting on my soapbox, so I'm going to try not to. But why the heck, Paula, teachers end up with these high fee annuity-based instruments that we don't have in other companies or in government entities for most of the time. And some of them have annuities at the heart of them. But teachers almost always do. Right. Drives me crazy.

Teachers and nonprofit workers, too. Yeah. And I just don't understand. why we make these people go through all of this, this garbage. But that said, that said, that whole field is kind of garbage. The 403B field? The 403B field is not great. There's a few good ones, but you can point them out probably on one hand, maybe two hands, but not much more than that when there's hundreds of different things. I would bet, Don, that you could look at all the 403B options and that AmeriPrize option probably has similar fees to all the other options

that are out there. So I don't think that was bad. I also think that the reason that you don't reach your goals is not because of fees. I understand that you want to pay fewer fees. I get that it's less friction toward your goal, but I still think only because I've seen a lot of people do it. people use the wrong instruments to get where they're going and they still make it. People don't make it in very low fee instruments, not saving money. Saving money, putting it into the tax shelter, fantastic. Going with a high fee thing, you're right. That's something that you can try to correct.

And I think there's some math that you can apply here. So you mentioned the surrender charge. You also know what the difference is in internal fees. you have the prospectus from the Ameriprise, the River Source thing. River Source is just a subsidiary of AmeriPrize, so I'm going to use them interchangeably. The fidelity thing, you know what the internal fee is there. So assuming apples to apples comparison of the funds that you have is just an easy computation, Paula, to find out how long it's going to take to make that $2,000 back to make that fee back. The $2,500, yeah, the surrender charge. So that is a computation and then you sit back and you go, do I have that kind of time? There actually is another route, which these funds, when it comes to your 5% return, I look at even in other high fee fund families or higher fund fee families. Boy, that's a tough one to say.

Higher fund fee families. Yeah, say that a few times. I look at even higher fee places and it often still comes down to asset allocation, not the fees, meaning she may have been able to get 10% the last few years and maybe she would have only gotten eight and a half because she had these bologna fees, right? So inside of that river source product, my next question is if that time comparison doesn't look favorable, can she move money around inside of it? because usually inside of these things, there's 30 different options.

Many, many different places she can go without paying that fee as well. So let me just take a step back and recap. First of all, the good news for Dawn is that she probably didn't get duped. She's just in a situation where the reality is that teachers are presented and nonprofit workers are presented with 403Bs. And 403Bs as an instrument in general often tend to have not great choices. So it might be the case, and we don't know exactly what her offerings were, but it might be the case that, like most teachers, she has to pick from an assortment of bad choices. And she may not have gotten duped. We just set up the system in a way that is really bad for teachers.

Yeah. Well, in Don's defense, a couple things. Ameriprise advisors are often fee-based advisors, not fee-only advisors. and when they can, because they also receive a commission on their stuff, they will sell their stuff. So I'm not saying the Ameriprise thing was the right thing. I'm saying that working with a lot of teachers in 403Bs looking at the range of choices that were available, there probably was as much harm done as she thinks, even if there was

some harm done, which I think should be great for her to think of that. So, yes, she probably worked with a salesperson who was selling. their thing, but I've bought great shoes from salespeople. I know that's not an apple-stapples analogy, but the salesperson sold me something that was great on my feet, looked great on me, was amazing. She still saved $65,000. Right. And she did it in a product that largely when you go to places, third parties like Morningstar,

competitive, but to her point, fees aren't wonderful, not the worst, but not wonderful. Right. And so that's the first piece to address. You know, Don mentioned that it's a sort of. of shame. And I think both of us are trying to relay the message, go easy on yourself. Absolutely. Because you still saved money. And also, you may not have had great options to begin with. So you made the best, or at least you made good out of what was...

Not great. Yeah, out of what was already a bad situation. So go easy on yourself. So that's the first piece. And then the second piece is the root of her question, should she pay $2,500 in surrender charges in order to take her money, her 65,000, out of the River Source 403B. And your answer to that, Joe, is to do the math on how much money she would save in fees and what that crossover point is. So at what point would the savings from fees in a fidelity fund exceed the $2,500 in surrender charges? And once she knows when the savings exceed the cost of entry, once she knows what that crossover point is, she can then make an informed decision as to whether or not it's worthwhile.

And then the third piece, if it turns out that that's not a great option, I think she still has options. Inside of that annuity that she has now, there's usually a lot of different choices. And I would guess that if she's gotten a 5% return, she's probably not in the right funds inside of that product. And so asset allocation may be the tactic that she takes if she elects to stay inside of the River Source 403B. Correct. It very much in that regard almost sounds to me like a conversation around should I refinance a mortgage, you know, where there's that $2,500 in closing costs on the refi. And so then the question is, well, what are the savings that result from the refinance? And at what point do I reach that crossover point where the savings from the refi exceeds the cost of going into it?

It feels to me very much like a similar question. For a lot of people, they'll just look at that number, $2,500. And they'll go, man, I don't want to pay that. And so they continue to pay this hidden fee that they don't see all the time, which is this, you know, management fee that's higher, maybe mortality and expense ratio that's higher. And so they continue paying higher fees just because they don't see them. So getting those fees out in the open and looking at them all, I think is great. A mortgage also sometimes has hidden fees, which is why you get the closing documents ahead

of time and you also get the truth and lending disclosure ahead of time to see what all the fees are. And I love companies that will show you on a mortgage, by the way, these fees are negotiable. These fees are not negotiable. Right. I love that. In this case, none of those fees are. I know enough about these. You can't call AmeriPrize and say, I want to renegotiate those fees.

Ain't going to go well for you. But I think she's got options either way. And definitely, I don't think you should beat yourself up. Yeah. If there's one main takeaway from this is please don't let it be a source of shame, as you indicated, because I think that you've done well and you've saved. You know, one thing we talk about often on this podcast is that at the end of the day, your contributions are the single biggest determinant of your success. So regardless of your asset allocation, regardless of your fee structure, the fact that you are making contributions, that's what matters. And that is the single biggest determinant of your long-term success.

So thank you, Dawn, for asking that question. And best of luck with whatever decision you make, whether you stay inside of this river source 403B or whether you go to fidelity. Our next question comes from Steph. Hi, Paula. My name is Steph. I've been listening to your podcast for a few years and really appreciate all the practical, thoughtful behavioral advice in where to put money and what to do with it. I'm 37 years old. My husband and I recently came into some money about 25. thousand dollars, which was a combination of sort of the net take home pay from a bonus that I received, a one-time bonus, as well as an inheritance. I make $125,000 a year and he makes $90,000 a year. We've spent the last couple of years building up our emergency fund. So we've reached about $20,000. We carry $50,000 of student debt ranging in interest rates from 2.5 to 4% interest. We'd like to own a home

in the next three to five years. And now that we've hit our emergency fund goal, we're putting about $1,000 a month away into a down payment fund. We currently live in the Bay Area, but we are moving to a lower cost of living place, such as Denver or the Washington area, at which point I do expect our incomes to go down to probably around $100,000 a year for myself. In the meantime, we would like to start a family, but I'm also a little bit older. And so that may or may not. happen and we're just sort of trying to figure out what to do with this extra money while we're figuring out our next choices. I do have the option to buy, I do have stock options, not stock, but I have stock options that are available through my company. And I'm just wondering,

with this extra money, do we save it, do we invest it, do we put it towards debt, do we put it towards a house down payment, or do we use it to purchase my stock options, which would total roughly $30,000 in total? So I would love to hear your thoughts or feelings on what to consider, what to weigh when making that decision, because this is the first time we've ever had that kind of money. Thanks so much. I love your show. Steph, thank you so much for calling in. Thank you for asking that question, and congratulations on everything that you're doing. You and your husband both make good incomes. You've got a great emergency fund. You have reasonable interest rates on your student loans. You have a fantastic three to five year plan of moving to a lower cost of living area.

You're already saving up for a down payment, even though that goal is three to five years away. You're doing a lot of things right. You're setting yourself up on a great track. There's a lot going for you. So congratulations on all of that. You mentioned that you are 37 years old and you are interested in starting a family, but you're concerned about whether or not you'll be able to do that. I would strongly consider leaving this money aside for IVF, IUI, or adoption fees if those end up being paths that you decide to take. I don't know what type of insurance you have and if it would cover any IVF or IUI, but oftentimes if insurance covers it at all, there are going to be some fairly serious limitations. And so any type of fertility treatments, I think you need to go into

that with the assumption that you'll be paying for most of it out of pocket. Similarly, adoption fees. Adoption can be very expensive and you very well may need to come up with the majority of that from savings. And so I don't know how strongly you want to start a family. I I don't know how many children you want to have. I don't know if you're even going to need this or if you are able to get pregnant the old-fashioned way. But if that does end up being something that you need, you'll want to have this cash on hand to be able to get you through that. So behind the scenes, Joe and I just had a conversation right now about my own story with this. And I want to keep the focus on you.

I'm not going to make this about me, but I will say that I've had. quite a bit of experience in the world of paying for fertility treatments. And again, without while keeping the focus on you, what I have learned from that is that you will want to have more money on hand than you think you'll need. To put it mildly. I know, right? Do you know what it cost to go to Disney World? They didn't even validate parking. It's true, they didn't.

There were no rides, no cat candy. So, yeah, you're just going to want to keep more money on hand than you think you'll need because it gets very, very expensive and it takes many, many rounds. That, Paula, is the crux. crux of what I was thinking when Steph was talking. She said, what do I do to invest this money while I'm figuring out my choices? There is clearly a hierarchy here, unfortunately, which is you have to figure out the choices first so that you make sure you don't put the money in the wrong place. And it's better. It is better to sit the money in a place, not doing the right.

right thing, full well knowing that you're not in specifically the right place, but it's flexible enough that you give yourself the time to walk through these options. And I would, by the way, put them on a whiteboard or put them on paper, make it visual. I found that when I make these all these different short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals visual, and I compare the cost against each other, our brains are wonderful things. Like our brain will bring up, I have this problem, I don't know what to do, and then our brain will solve it if you put it out in front of yourself. And I think as you look at the choices and have some discussions, the two of you, you'll

then begin to hammer out which of those choices are the ones you're going to go after and which ones are you not. And at that point, then you make the decision. I don't think there's any reason you have to make a decision about the money first. Right. Lead with your life and let the money follow. Absolutely. This is probably not the answer that Steph was expecting.

She's like, do we invest the money? Do we use it to pay off our debt? Do we put it towards a down payment? Do we buy some stock options? I'm like, you're adopting a baby from Cat Vandu. Congratulations. You're adopting a full-grown woman for, Catmandu.

Congratulations. You're adopting a podcast host from Catmandu. I'm also 37. I'm on my way. Yeah, exactly. But I think that's the right answer. I mean, the right answer, listen, a lot of the time, you know, my favorite answer from people is I don't know.

But it's I don't know couched in a reply of how I would think about this. And I think there is no right answer. And I think somebody, if she walks into, you know, going back, to what Don talked about, which is she felt like she was duped. If you walk into a bank and go to that person in the office that just sells mutual funds over in the corner and you tell them, I got $25,000, they won't even ask you what the goals are, but they'll have a home for it, you know? And I'm not ripping all those people.

I know there's good people that work in banks that do, you know, that thing. but the commissioned salesperson will often just say, oh, you've got this issue? I know something that solves everything in annuity or whatever it might be. Right, right, exactly. I like the idea of leading with process, not with product. Right. And step one of this process needs to be to determine the end goal. Yeah, among all those wonderful choices you have.

Right. Whereas if the answer were something as simple as, oh, get the company stock options because they're, you know, likely to go up. I mean, that's an example of leading with product. Yeah. Right. Or like we talked about earlier, leading with tax shelter, right? Right. Exactly.

Yeah. Steph, you ever think about a megaback door on the IRA? Steph's like, what? Steph, you could put the money in a self-directed IRA and then you could use that self-directed IRA. It's perfect. To purchase a house hack in Denver, Washington. Why not? Right.

In Kalamazoo. In Kalamazoo, there we go. Yes. Right, right. But if they're not aligned with what you want out of life, then what's it all for? And that's the root of the question is what's it all for? This is often, by the way, and I know hearing even in her voice that Steph wants to do the right thing because, quote, she hasn't had this kind of money just suddenly show up. Whenever anyone came to me with what we call it.

in the business, sudden money, Paula, often in inheritance, sometimes the lottery, but whatever it might be, if I have the sudden money I didn't expect, the first thing, 99% of the time is to do nothing. That is number one, because even if you think you're not, you're emotional about it. Right. And then the second thing to do is to figure out what the priorities are and then do something. A great thing to do over the short run is find a high-yield FDIC insured savings account and put it there in a safe place where you can get it out tomorrow. You can go through a lot of them.

Mine is through Ally. I'm not endorsed by Ally. I don't have a... Oh, Radius Bank is a sponsor of the show. Radius Bank is another good one, though. Seriously, I mean, my sponsor, as you know, Paul, has magnified money and Radius Bank is always up there at the top. So, Radies Bank and Ally both up there.

But anyway, just find one. Set it there so you're not losing too much opportunity cost with that, or at least, you know, getting smoked by inflation by a ton and keep it flexible and decide what you want to do. Exactly. One very good piece of advice that I read once, this specifically related to inheritances, but the advice that I read was that anytime you receive an inheritance, you're going to be clouded by grief. And so during that first year, don't make any decisions.

No matter what's happening, during that first year, you will be unable to make a decision that is absent of grief and don't make decisions while you're grieving. I've seen it. It's horrible and it's hard for a lot of people because we're action-oriented, right? We have this bias toward action and we think that we're lazy or we're going to lose out or miss out or and and and you're not you're not right and and even again there's the difference between process and result you know I spoke to somebody exactly a year ago at this time when the markets crashed in March of 2020 who had several hundred thousand dollars in cash and said hey should I put my

money into the market right now to buy low based on this person's age and their goals and their timeline. I said, you know, no, that's, that's not appropriate for you. You know, this money based on all of these other factors in your life should remain in cash or in something much more conservative. It shouldn't be inequities. And so, you know, fast forward a year, the result of if he had put that money into equities would have been enormous growth. And so it's tempting to look back on that and say, oh, that was the wrong decision because of the alternative result that would have formed. But the thing is there's a distinction between the result and the decision-making process. And the decision-making process was still sound, you know, it was still the right decision. The result happened to not

be so attractive. The result is that this money remains in cash today, and therefore the money did not grow 40%, like the way the markets did over the course of the past year. But that was still the right decision based on this particular person's goals, age, timeline. And so again, that goes back to leading with process rather than focusing on product and then evaluating decisions in hindsight based on process rather than based on result. So thank you, Steph, for asking that question. Best of luck with whatever decision you make. Our final question today comes from Jeannie. Hi, Paula. My name's Jeannie. I'm 33 years old, and I love your podcast. You're an awesome voice in the FI community, not quite as focused on just cutting expenses to absolutely nothing, but being smart with your

investments, being creative, and that is definitely what stokes my fire. So my question is, I'm lucky enough to have a pretty well-paying job. I make about $150,000 a year, and I currently have about $300,000 saved in retirement accounts. The first five less than that, I'm a lot of money. I'm I learned was maxing out my 401k, and I'm wondering with my goal of not working at a standard job until I'm 59 and a half, if that actually makes sense at this point. Doing some basic calculations, if I put nothing else into that, that $300,000 would have a ton of opportunity to grow until I'm 59 and a half and could withdraw it. So I'm wondering if it makes sense to actually scale back to just my company match, which is 6%, and funnel more of that money into

my real estate investments. Thanks so much. Jeannie, nice job of saving. And it's got to feel great that you put money in early to your 401k and doing the math that you've made it. You can now coast on that. And that's the way, and this genie isn't for you. This is for everyone else. I love that approach with planning. Make sure my later years are taken care of when I know I can't work and then work my way forward. And now you've got covered until 59.5. There's also a cool thing here, by the way, which is some companies will allow you to get at your 401k money. If you don't roll it to an IRA before 59.5.

So you may have till 57 covered, may be able to get that a couple of years earlier than 59.5. But to your question, I might just double check the number, make sure that you've thought about inflation appropriately and if something happens to Social Security. And if you're still sure, then absolutely, why would you put more money into a spot that you can't get at it? As we mentioned earlier in the show, my bent is optimization with enough flexibility to make sure I can make it. And I would turn from the tax shelter of a 401k toward things that I can get at earlier.

Depending on your income, you might be able to still put that money in a Roth IRA. The problem is you won't be able to take out the interest until 59 a half. But the principal you can take out early if you're eligible for that. But beyond that, I think your best option may be making sure that you have funds in a brokerage account or in real estate based on the different time frame. So I would start looking at that time up until 59.5 or 57, you know, depending on your company, whatever that date is, that you can get at that money. Start thinking about those earlier years in buckets and then fill those separate buckets with the appropriate investment

that meets that time frame. I agree. I'm with you, Joe. If you think of a two-pronged strategy where you're trying to fill up two different buckets, right? One is that bucket of 59 and a half plus, age 59 and a half plus. And if you feel like that bucket is adequately full now, then the focus shifts to filling the bucket of money that you need from the point at which you retire early to the point at which you turn 59 and a half. And so, you know, when one bucket is full, then switch your focus, fill the other one. It's a great spot to be. Exactly. Exactly, exactly. So huge congratulations on everything that you've saved in retirement accounts already. And the fact that you're planning to contribute enough to get your full employer match, of course, is a fantastic idea. I would never suggest anything else. So definitely continue to do that. Make sure you have enough in your emergency fund. Make sure that you have enough in money set aside in a health savings account if you're eligible for one. Beyond that, filling that pre-59.5.

bucket seems like the way to go. That's that's the next step on the agenda. So thank you, Jeannie, for asking that question. And congrats again. Joe, we did it. Well, we kind of did it, but before we end, can I file a little grievance? Sure. Because we opened up this show saying that it was going to be you, me, and our buddy Cooper the cat that you can see is sitting here next to me, but he's sleeping. He's sleeping on the job. He was supposed to supervise us this whole recording. You and I did all the work and Cooper did nothing. So I'm not happy. I mean, we, I feel like we brought it and he did nothing.

But Cooper's, Cooper's a cat so Cooper can do whatever he wants. It isn't the Cooper can do whatever he wants. It's a Cooper will do whatever he wants. Yes. And you don't tell him any differently. In fact, it's funny, I was telling a friend of mine, I said, this cat is so amazing. he's it's it's like he's trained i know i know when he wants to go outside like i know when he you were commenting about how he's in and out of the room because we had somebody in the other

room doing some stuff and he's checking that out you know when he wants food and my buddy looks at me and goes dude he's not trained there's somebody else who's trained and it's not Cooper. I was, you know how people always talk about how they work hard to put food on the table? Yeah. I always tell my cat's like, look, I work so hard just to put cat food on the floor. And still, they just look at you. No idea.

Yeah. Cooper the cat has been right here with us, sleeping on the job, supervising this recording. Horrible. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. Yes. By horrible, I mean, excellent.

I will take no criticism of Cooper. Joe, where can people find you if they would like to hear more of your thoughts? You can find me and sometimes Paula and the rest of our three-ring circus, the greatest money show on Earth, the Stacky Benjamin show, every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, where you are listening to us now. Excellent. We will link to that in the show notes. And, hey, Joe, guess what? What? I have a course on rental property investing.

No way. I sure do. Say it ain't so. It is so. That's incredible. How do we get in? Well, I'm glad you asked because enrollment is open April 12th through April 19th, 2021. And that will be the very last time ever in recorded human history when you will be able to get in at our current tuition rates. We've added a lot of support, a lot of additional support to the course. Our team has grown, and we have to raise our rates. And so in the fall of 2021 is when we're going to raise our rates, which means if you want to get in at our current tuition, you've got to do it in April. You've got April 12th through 19th to get in before the price goes up forever.

To get the details, go to afford anything.com slash VIP list. We also, we have a free ebook. In fact, it's about seven expensive mistakes that rental property investors make. Wait a minute. Yeah. Wait a minute. Before you did that, you should have said, but wait, there's more. But wait, there's more.

It ain't so. It is so. Are you sitting down? In fact, I am sitting down as well. Free ebook. Wow, I've dropped my pen. That's how excited I am. A free ebook called Seven Expensive Mistakes Rental Property Investors make.

Download it at Affordainthing.com slash mistakes. That'll also put you on the VIP list. So best of both worlds there. Either one of those links, you can go to either one and you will get tons of information about rental property investing generally. And you'll also get all of the details when our course opens up for enrollment on April 12th, 2021. Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with a friend or a family member, and I will catch you in the next episode. See you there. Here is an important disclaimer. There's a distinction between financial media and financial advice. Financial media includes everything that you read on the internet, hear on a podcast,

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