Afford Anything - ChooseFI Interview

Episode Date: September 9, 2019

#214: It’s September! If you’ve been listening to the show for the past few months, then you know that I’m on what I’ve dubbed my September Sabbatical, in which I’m taking a break from podcast production and traveling the globe. In light of that, we’re digging through the archives and airing some of my favorite interviews on the show, in between airing interviews I’ve done on other podcasts. I’m super excited to share an interview I did with Brad and Jonathan of ChooseFI back in December 2018. It was fun to have the tables turned, and Brad and Jonathan left no stone unturned in their interview with me. If you ever wanted to know my origin story, including where my love for travel comes from, where my desire for freedom came from, and how I combined both, then give this interview a listen. We talk about everything from: How travel wasn’t a big part of my life until college How I prefer to travel Why the idea of mini-retirements is so important Making the transition from freelancing to having my own business and giving up that business in favor of focusing on Afford Anything Dealing with imposter syndrome Overcoming and working with a scarcity mindset What financial independence means to me The importance of self-care Brad and Jonathan are two of the most thorough interviewers I’ve ever recorded with, and this interview was a lot of fun. If you want to learn more about them, I returned the favor by interviewing them on this show on this episode https://www.choosefi.com/105-you-can-afford-anything-but-not-everything-paula-pant Thanks to Brad and Jonathan and ChooseFI for giving us permission to air this interview! P.S. - We’ll return to our regular podcast production schedule in October! For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode214 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything but not everything. Every decision that you make is a trade-off against something else, and that doesn't just apply to your money. It applies to your time, your focus, your energy, your attention. It applies to anything in your life that's a scarce or limited resource. And that leads to two questions. Number one, what matters most? And number two, how do you align your day-to-day decisions in accordance? Answering these two questions is a lifetime practice, and that is what this podcast is here to explore.

My name is Paula Pan. I am the host of the Afford Anything podcast. I am recording this from Washington, D.C. I am, you can hear the sound around me. I am in, I am recording this on stage at FinCon, which is a conference for basically money nerds. It's a conference for people who create digital media around personal finance. And it's perfectly fitting that I'm recording this on stage here at FinCon because what I am about to air, the episode that you're about to listen to right now, is an interview that I did on

the Choose FI podcast. Now, FI stands for financial independence, so the Choose FI podcast is a podcast dedicated towards choosing to incorporate financial independence into your life. And in this interview that you're about to hear, the hosts of that podcast, Brad and Jonathan, interview me about my life. We talk about my journey, my first career. Actually, Jonathan is here right now. Jonathan, come join me for two seconds.

Say hi, Jonathan. I am recording the intro to me re-airing the interview that you did with me. Yes, live from FinCon. It's Paula Pant. This is completely unplanned. He happened to be walking by as we're recording this. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. And you know what?

I'm so happy that you asked to share that episode. It is one of my favorite episodes. Your story is so incredible and inspirational. The framework that you look through life, before you even really had a playbook, I think you would maybe say a little bit stumbling, but you are directionally, you are going in the right direction. I don't know if you had you didn't have it all dialed in. Yeah.

But you're heading in the right direction. And I think you can see this shift where things are becoming more clear. And like now, look at where you are now and what those choices have led to. And you've left a playbook for your tens of thousands of hundreds of thousands of people that have been listening to the work that you've been creating and what you've been doing. I just, I love everything about the platform you've created. Wow. Thank you. All right.

Two seconds over. Absolutely. So thank you, Jonathan. And with that amazing introduction, here is the interview. you that Jonathan and Brad recorded with me from the Chooseafi podcast. Enjoy. You're listening to ChooseFI Radio. The blueprint for financial independence lives here. If you're looking to unlock the secrets to financial independence and early retirement,

you're in the right place. Stay tuned and join a community of like-minded people who are getting off the Amsterdam and taking control of their lives in the pursuit of financial. Independence, choose FI, your home for financial independence online. How can we make smarter decisions about our money, time, and life? How can we align our daily behaviors and habits with the lifestyle we value most? You can afford anything, but not everything. It's no surprise today.

We finally, finally so long overdue, are getting a chance to chat with Paula Pant from Afford Anything. And this is going to be an absolutely fantastic conversation. And to help me with this, I have my co-host, Brad, here with me today. How you doing, buddy? Hey, Jonathan, I'm doing quite well. Yeah, this should be a phenomenal, phenomenal conversation. And I say conversation instead of interview because we were actually on Paula show recently. And it just turned into this wonderfully epic conversation where we just didn't want it to end. And I think that's one of the things that I've appreciated so much about Paula as I've gotten to know her.

We spent a lot of time at FinCon together and me just listening to her podcast. I've been a listener since way back in episode one. She's so thoughtful and she asks such interesting questions and it just engages you and you want to just lean in and talk to her more. And that's just such a rare and wonderful gift. And we're just super excited to have her here on the podcast. And with that, Paula, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me on. So, Paula, you're really well known in our community and frankly in the financial independence community at large. You've been talking about this idea of lifestyle design for several years now and your blog and your podcast have incredible depth to them.

But I'm very interested just because there's a little bit of space here between when you initially launched afford anything, I think it would be a wonderful opportunity for us to kind of go back to a little bit of inception and talk about your origin story. My understanding is you were not born with a silver spoon. You didn't immediately know that you were going to be an entrepreneur talking about lifestyle design. That's not where this started. Where did it start?

That's absolutely correct. If we want to go all the way back into the origins, I am the child of immigrants. I was born in Kathmandu, Nepal, and I came to the U.S. when I was still in diapers. So I came here at a very young age. But my parents were, they were new immigrants, and they were starting their professional life in their mid-40s. And so a lot of times when we talk about, it's important to start investing for retirement when you're in your 20s, get that power of compounding interest. You know, my parents were people who didn't even come to the to the U.S. and start working and getting paid in U.S. dollars. until their 40s, they managed to build a middle class life, but in order to do that, they had to be extremely diligent. And so I learned frugality from a very early age by watching my parents and by basically kind of internalizing that immigrant ethos of work hard, be frugal, plan for the future. Paula, what brought them to the United States? So, I mean, it's nearly 8,000 miles from Kathmandu to Las Vegas, where you live now. You just had that. lined up, Brad, 8,000 miles.

Like, that was just in your reservoir of knowledge. That would be a miracle. I think it's 16,000, isn't it? Well, I use so... Is it 16,000 around or is it 32 around? I'm not sure. I'm actually using, so I'm using my travel reward skills here. I went to the Great Circle Mapper and did Catmandu Airport to Las Vegas.

And at least on the Great Circle route, it's 7,846 miles. To our audience, you need to understand Brad prides himself on. precision. So I knew there was zero chance that that was an inaccurate number, or at least there was a small chance. So I was like, wait a second, you didn't prepare for that coming into this interview. How did you have that handy? This is staying in the show. Oh, my goodness. Okay. So with that whole aside, what brought them here? That's not a simple move. It's not a simple move. So I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. I don't know what the mileage between Kathmandu and Ohio is. I'll check. I'll check. Nepal is a beautiful country, gorgeous mountains, gorgeous culture, but we have no jobs, no infrastructure, no rule of law. We had a civil insurrection. Granted, this was after my parents immigrated, but we had a civil insurrection that lasted for a decade that caused 13,000 civilian casualties. Nepal is not a country where you would be able to find not just job opportunities, but the chance of a good life.

the time that my dad was born, my dad was born in 1941, and at the time of his birth, the average life expectancy for a male in Nepal was in his 40s. And the average life expectancy for a female was in her early 50s. Now, granted, that stat is skewed by high, high infant mortality, but that does give you an idea of what life there is like. Paul, that's really striking to me, because a big part of your story is the love of travel and the desire to see the world. And kind of when you would think that maybe if you had just laid that out in a vacuum, you would say, okay, well, I left a, you know, potential, a situation that was suboptimal. And I found this kind of safe, stable environment where I can just work the numbers and it'll be

okay. But you left all that. And now your life encompasses massive amounts of travel. Like, have you kind of thought about that at all? Yeah, that's a very good question. I'm glad you picked up on that because actually until I was 18, almost 19, I had zero interest in travel whatsoever. Growing up, I was very much identified through my Nepali's origin.

So I was the only brown kid. I was the only person of color in my elementary and middle school. And I was one of very, very few in my high school. And so everybody knew me as the foreign girl. That was my overriding identity beyond any other aspect of my personality. And I resented that, to be perfectly honest. I didn't like being identified purely by my ethnicity alone because there's so much more to me than just that. And so in an to maybe distance myself from it, and I'm sure this, you know, this played out at a, we're talking about at a subconscious level of a person who's under the age of 18.

I just didn't care that much about the rest of the world. I wasn't interested in traveling. I wasn't interested in anything outside of the boundaries of the U.S. to me, this was my home. And I think I needed to double down on my like love foreign commitment to the U.S. I think in order to prove to the rest of the world and to myself, I'm an American, even if not everybody else sees me that way. So Paul, you came here at a very young age. Did you say two? Did I hear that? Oh, no, no, less than that. I was, yeah, I was a baby. I was drooling and not talking. Oh, wow. So right. So in diapers, right? You were an American. You were here your entire life, but yet you were categorized as the foreign girl. I can see that as the natural reaction to want to prove yourself. And I wonder, have you gotten over that? So aside from the

travel, how does one get over that when they've lived, like you're describing to 18 or 19, with this thought process, how do you get over that? You know, there's a bit of a boomerang effect, I think, where when I was in my teens, I tried to distance myself from it, almost like a form of rebellion. I wanted to find my own identity by not living in this anthropological museum that I felt like some people were trying to put me in by avoiding doing things that I knew would make me an obvious stereotype. You used a term there. You said it was almost an act of rebellion. And that is really striking me just because I've gotten so much value from your free ebook that you give away on your site called Escape. And in that ebook, you very pointedly use the, you very pointedly use the

word rebel as something to emulate. And I'm curious about that. Yeah, I suppose in that regard, rebellion to me is a seeking of identity. When I was younger, I was very much seeking identity. So this was under age 18, before I learned my love for travel. I was very much trying to seek out and find my own identity as something beyond what I felt like other people expected me to be. there was this idea that because I'm Nepalese, I'm supposed to behave in certain ways. And I always resented that. Like, why should my ethnicity cause me, essentially impose a sentence upon me to like certain foods or like certain music or behave in any given ways? Why should I fit into this narrow little box of what I felt like people wanted me to be?

And so rebellion was, to me, was finding my identity for myself absent of social expectations. And so now, when I talk about that on my blog or in my e-book, and I apply that more broadly to getting out of the nine to five, escaping the cubicle, figuring out your life and your work on your own terms, I guess you can see the parallels there in that I use that same word rebellion. to describe forming an identity and a life for yourself outside of the social narrative. Paula, I have always viewed travel as kind of like the great equalizer, where you realize that people are people or people, no matter where they are, everybody has the same hopes and dreams and aspirations for themselves and their kids and their families. I'm curious, like, what was it like that first time that you traveled?

Did the bug hit you right away? Was it a cultural thing? Was it a connection with people? Talk us through because this has become such a part of your identity publicly is world travel. To put this in context, when I was growing up, I would go back and forth between Cincinnati, Ohio, and Kathmandu, Nepal. And I realized when I say that, that might give the impression that I was worldly, but really I had this incredibly narrow worldview that the earth was no bigger than Cincinnati and Kathmandu. So I quote unquote traveled in the sense that during the, I'd spend my school years in Cincinnati and then I would go to Kathmandu for the summers, not every summer, but every other summer or every third summer I would go and spend the whole summers there. And I hated it.

I had no friends my age. There was nothing to do. And I wanted to be in Ohio jumping into swimming pools, riding my bicycle, eating popsicles. like I wanted to be doing normal kid stuff, and instead I had to go to this place where I didn't know anybody that I was quote unquote supposed to enjoy. So I never had any interest in travel, and the whole experience of it really came about by accident.

I was on campus one day. I was my freshman year of college, and I spotted this flyer that was offering a completely free summer study abroad program in Japan. Even though I wasn't interested in travel, I love free stuff. So I decided to apply for it on a lark. And I got in.

And since I can't say no to free, I went to Japan for a month in between my freshman and sophomore year of college. That was the first time, as silly as the sounds, it was a first time that I went to a country that was not Nepal. And that was what opened my eyes to the notion that the world is bigger than just these two places. and that travel didn't have to be my parents dragging me to a whole bunch of auntie and uncle's houses so that they can pinch my cheeks and then like make me sit in a corner doing nothing for the next six hours. Travel could be something where I had my own autonomy and could explore it on my own without the pressures of family.

And that was what ignited the travel bug for me, seeing that there was so much more out there and that, yeah, I'd taken many, many transit. Atlantic flights or trans-Pacific flights, but I didn't know that it could be as expansive as it was. So I know that you have visited upwards of 40 countries, and in your mind, actually having visited a country, constitutes being there for an entire week, which is very impressive, not just dipping a toe into a country and then walking away. But that wasn't always the case. This is kind of, you're looking back on this now. But I'm remembering a part of your e-book, and basically this really stood out to me. You've reached the point in your life where you're silently screaming, Something needs to change.

You're broke. You're in debt. You're bored at work. Your retirement and your savings accounts are nearly empty, but your bills are sky high. You want to travel, but you think you can't afford to. And anyways, your boss only gives you two weeks off. Is this you? Not entirely.

I was never in debt. But the boss giving you two weeks off and wanting to travel, but you think you can't afford it, yes, that was 100% me. So where were you at this point in time? How old are you? And what's the situation you found yourself in when you kind of walked away from the normal path? After that study abroad in Japan, the summer study abroad that was between my freshman and sophomore year of college, that ignited the travel bug. And from that moment forward, I really wanted to travel. And I think that there was a big part of a self-discovery and identity exploration that I knew was going to come out of that as well.

Being a college student, naturally, my thoughts went to, well, maybe I could do another study abroad. But when I looked at the prices, remember the one that I did in Japan was all expenses paid. it was completely free. But when I looked at the prices of semester-long study abroad programs at my college, they were $15,000 minimum just for a single semester. That was a ridiculous amount of money. There was no way that I was going to be able to pay for that. I remember at first feeling conflicted about it, like, oh, I'm feeling the travel bug. I really want to travel, but I can't afford these study abroad programs. What do I do? And then it occurred to me that I didn't actually want to study. I just wanted to go abroad. At that point, I realized, all right, I can graduate from college,

work for a few years, save up some money, and then go travel. So even as a college student, that was always my plan. I never wanted to launch a career. I mean, I did eventually, but my overriding immediate plan was just save up some money so that you can go backpack around the world. And then when I graduated, I went to work at a newspaper, and my boss gave me two weeks off per year. And that was a shockingly tiny amount of time off. And it occurred to me thinking about it. I was like, wow, I'm going to be facing 40 years of having a two-week vacation, maybe three or four week if I'm lucky. I'm going to be facing that for the next 40 years of my life.

And then I would talk to all of these grownups about my travel plans. And all of them would say the same thing, which was, oh, yeah, you know, yeah, do it while you're young and you still. can. That was always the refrain that I heard because pretty soon you're going to have a mortgage and a family and then you're never going to be able to do anything fun ever again for the rest of your life. They made adulthood sound so dismal and I had this impression that anything fun or good that could ever happen to me in my life would have to happen under the age of 25. And so I felt this time pressure. I was 21 when I graduated from college. I felt this like incredible time. time pressure to save up some money and go travel and get this all done and over with while I

still could because eventually the Grim Reaper would come and I would turn 30 and then life as we knew it would be over. Oh, man. It's amazing how that conversation is always tinged with regret, right? The older people look back and say, oh, do it while you're young, which to me means they probably did not do it at all and they really regret that. And now it's funny listening to the words, I almost use the same words as you verbatim. It's having that realization when you first started work that, oh, you mean if I'm lucky, I can take maybe one week off in a row, right, with two weekends surrounding it. That's nine calendar days. That's the extent of my vacation time, maybe two of those a year for the next 40 plus years. It seemed to me like there just had to be

a better life. When I look back on those inflection points and like maybe where I chose the five path before I even knew about it, that was one of those points for me. Exactly. I felt exactly the same way. If I had to put my finger on any one thing that completely repelled me, repulsed me, whatever the word would be, from a nine to five lifestyle, it was the limited vacation time. And sometimes when I tell people that, you know, people will respond with, oh, my work gives me five weeks off or six weeks off. And that's great, but the premise of somebody else telling you how much time you can, quote unquote, take off, the premise that somebody else would prescribe for you, no, you can't go to South Africa or Croatia or Japan, whatever you want for as long as you

want, there was something about that that just didn't sit right with me. And maybe that was because when I was a kid, I would go spend the entire summer in Kathmandu. So the concept of going and living in a foreign country for three months was very familiar to me. And I didn't really understand an adulthood in which that wouldn't be possible. You're speaking to my soul right now. It's crazy. I remember thinking the same thing. Is this normal? Is this what adulthood is? You just have to accept the fact that your own decisions, your free time, the time you would use to spend with the people that you love that you value the most, you have to fit that into a two-week period of time where people with more seniority haven't already asked it off. That's not okay.

Yeah. And you're telling me that if I work for another five years, I get an extra three days. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, and you're okay with that. This is a 40-year sentence. It's not cool. Exactly. I felt exactly the same way. And that more than anything was what kept me out of the traditional workforce. But the crazy thing is you did. You know, there's so many people, you want to quit. your job, but you're afraid you'll never get another one. You want to launch a business, but you're afraid you're going to fail. You want to travel the world, but you don't know if it's safe out there. Like all these things really resonate with me. What's even more powerful is that while in this show,

we've talked about tons of different ways to pursue a fully funded lifestyle change and do all this from a strong financial footing. Like, I think you just did it, right? Yeah, I just did it. And that's the, exactly as you said, you talk about fully funded lifestyle change. I made a lifestyle change and then on the other side of it was like scratching my head going, huh, how do I fund this? Right. I think that's the story, right? Let's explore. How did you do this? Well, the three years that I was in the workforce, I graduated from college in 2005 and I worked from 2005 to 2008. Those were my only three years ever in my life working for somebody else. High paying job? Oh, no. My starting salary was $21,000. That's in 2005 dollars.

That's got to be like a million today, right? I actually ran an inflation calculator on it once, and I think it's like $26,000 in today's dollars, something like that. But my starting salary was $21,000. And my ending salary at the time that I quit was $31,000. So that's the most I've ever earned from working for somebody else. Okay. So you made between $21,000 and $31,000 over those first three years.

So we're not talking big bucks here, right? under 80,000 total, but yet you managed to save up enough money to take this future travel that extended, as I understand it, for a really significant period of time. Like, how do you save money on $20,000 to $30,000 a year? Ah, the question that you have just asked is the origin of afford anything, or the origin premise, I should say, the origin concept. While I was at that newspaper, I would go to journalism conferences. And the way that journalism conferences work is you go to these sessions and each session is broken out based on television, radio, newspaper, magazine, you know, the type of industry that you're in. And then they had this

one track that was referred to as freelance. And I had no idea what that meant. I was like, that's not a television or a newspaper. What is, what's that? And I started at conferences just dropping in on these freelance track sessions. And that was my introduction to the concept that it was possible to make money outside of being employed by an employer. And that concept was completely new to me. I was 23 years old at this point and had no idea that that was even a possibility. So A, I learned that that existed. B, I started talking to a few freelance writers who lived in the area. I just called up a few and I invited them out for coffee and asked if I could pick their brain. And then step three was I started freelancing while I was still working full time at the newspaper.

So this is those years between 2005 and 2008. What that did for me was two things. Number one, it allowed me to save money. So I lived on what I made at the newspaper. And I actually, even at the $21,000 salary, I put 15% into a 401k. And granted, 15% of 21,000 is like nothing, but I still put 15% into a 401k. And I was saving as much as I could in my retirement accounts at that time. I was maxing out my full retirement match.

In addition to that, I would freelance during the evenings and weekends. And every single penny of that freelance income I saved in a travel fund, every penny after taxes. That did two things. It allowed me to save money, but it also gave me the confidence to know that I could pick up freelance assignments. And that was probably the more valuable between those two, the confidence. was far more valuable. So at some point with this freelance money, you decided, okay, I'm done. I'm leaving my nine to five.

I'm just going to do this. And I'm curious, did you get criticism from people that said, you're leaving, you're leaving this traditional nine to five. It's not a responsible thing to do. How can you afford to go do all this travel? Are you rich? I mean, like, I can just kind of, you know, see those different threads. Did people make value judgments based on your choice?

Tons, tons and tons and tons. So first of all, if you think about quitting it, a newspaper in 2008, there are two huge red flags there. Number one, it's 2008. We're starting the Great Recession. Everybody is getting laid off. Everybody's losing their jobs. To have a job and voluntarily quit during the Great Recession, that in and of itself is nuts. And then in addition to that, to work at a newspaper, at a time when newspapers were in decline, the Seattle Post Intelligence are shut down, the Rocky Mountain News shut down, all of these major newspapers around the country were closing up shop, journalism was clearly a declining industry, especially print

journalism. To quit a newspaper was, as everybody said, rightfully so, they were like, this is career suicide and you are never going to be able to get a job again. And in hindsight, they were right. I never did get a job again. You're unemployable. Not exactly what they're expecting, right? When you quit that job, did you have intention to go back and be a newspaper reporter or work for a newspaper ever again? I did. Yes. When I quit that job, a big part of what I was thinking about is how am I going to explain this gap on my resume? Because I anticipated coming back to the United States and circulating resumes around. And I was like, all right, how do I explain this? Well, my thought process was, as long as I keep my, in journalism, they're called, clips, which are clippings of recent articles that you've written. So I was thinking, well,

as long as I write maybe like one freelance article a month while I'm traveling, I can have current clips. And when you submit a resume, you'll submit maybe between three to five recent clips. So I was thinking, well, if I can produce three to five recent clips, then I can basically explain that gap by saying, well, I was freelancing during this time without specifying that that freelancing was so very, very part-time. So that was how I was thinking about it in my head. I was already gaming out how to explain this in future job interviews, having at the time no concept that I would never again go on a job interview.

Hey there. We're going to take a break for a word from our sponsors. But before we do, I just want to make a little note that the ad revenue, the sponsor revenue that comes in from today's episode is going to be donated to the Choose FI International Foundation. So here's the backstory on this. Choose FI and Afford Anything, co-sponsored and co-hosted a fundraiser party

for the Choose FI International Foundation at this recent FinCon conference. When we did that, I agreed to make matching donations of $200 for every $200 VIP ticket that we sold to this event up to a maximum of $2,000. Well, sure enough, we put out 10 VIP tickets.

We sold out, and we actually had so much demand that we issued another run of VIP tickets and sold out of those as well. And so I am matching the donations that were raised by the VIP tickets. And that money is coming from the ad revenue that you hear from today's episode. So just wanted to say that before we go into our sponsor spots. And with that being said, enjoy. Have you ever wondered where your family comes from? Well, now you can discover more about them and learn more about your story and your history by combining the Ancestry DNA test with billions of historical family records. So Ancestry gives you the ability to connect you to the places in the world where your story started.

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So looking at your work now, obviously, you're a huge fan of multiple income streams. And I think, I mean, I would love to actually by the end of this episode, track down all the different ones that you have been able to follow through on. But at this point, you are someone that was able to save 15% of their income and pre-tax accounts, probably had some amount of money saved up as well, if not enough to cover all of your expenses. And then you just hit the road. And you have, is it just one or two articles a month that you're writing? I mean, walk us through the economics of that choice. Sure. By the time that I quit my job, I had saved $25,000. And again, that was making as a full-time salary between 21 to 31 during those three years. So if you actually math that out, that averages out to about a savings rate of about $800 a month over the course of those three years. And again, all of it came from freelancing. That was my total net worth at the time I quit my job. And I was like, 25 grand. That's a year. salary. I'm rich. I'm ready to quit. I also flew to countries where the dollar exchange rate really worked in my favor. So I spent six weeks in Egypt, for example. And I spent a lot of time in Cambodia, Lao, Vietnam, India, Malaysia, Singapore's expensive. So I wasn't there for very long. But I spent a lot of time in places where the U.S. dollars stretched a lot further. So I based on that, budgeted $1,000 per month in living expenses. This is so awesome.

I'm curious as you look back on those journeys, I'm sure some of the different locations blend together. What's memorable for you now looking back at it? Oh, lots of places are. Myanmar was very, very special because it was completely off of the normal tourist path. Not a lot of people go there, especially back then, especially in 2009. A lot of people didn't travel there. And so there were some places that I would visit where I felt a little bit like I was on a tourist conveyor belt.

You know, you go see the Taj Mahal or you go see the great pyramids of Giza. I mean, those are tourist attractions, right? And the area surrounding it is set up accordingly. But you go to Myanmar and ride a bicycle around the temples of Bagan or go to a water festival in Mandalay. Not many people do that. And so that was very special for me because I felt like that was where. I got a much more meaningful experience. Paul, you talk about meaningful experiences, but connection matters, right?

And I know it matters in your life. And I'm curious, do you make friends when you're traveling? Like, is that something that you seek out? There are so many people listening to this podcast who want to travel the world. And I think many people, I know if I could speak for myself, they're a little bit frightened of it because they're not sure they're going to be able to connect with people or is it just going to be this solitary experience. Do you have any tips on how to make friends, make your community and I guess further that experience other than just seeing the pyramids of Giza and things like

that? Oh, yes, absolutely. So number one, and this is actually a case where the frugal option is also the best option for socializing is whenever possible, stay at a hostel rather than, you know, rather than getting a, if you get a hotel room or if you get an Airbnb, number one, those are going to be more expensive. And number two, you have much more privacy, which means that you're not meeting a lot of people. You know, you've got that space to yourself. If you stay in a hostel where you're sharing a dorm bunk bed with a room full of strangers, well, then you're going to meet a whole bunch of people because there's somebody on the top bunk. And if that's a little bit too extreme for you, then at a minimum, stay at a hostel where you or if you're traveling with

a spouse or a partner, you guys can have a room to yourself, but there are common areas where everybody hangs out. That's a great, great place to meet people. Like, I remember being in Costa Rica and meeting this girl. I was a little bit shy at that time, and I wasn't quite sure what to say. And so I just, I, like, smiled very, like, just a huge smile on my face. And I'd heard that she was from Boston. So I was like, hey, are you my roommate from Boston? And that was what kicked it off. And we ended up traveling together for the next week after that. So basically just smiling and saying hi. Brad, I legitimately want to travel more just as a result of this conversation. Like, I feel like I need to get out there and go see something. And smile and say hi, like Paula said.

Paula, that's such a neat little takeaway. I love that. And it's something that can be as simple as that, right? just be friendly. You know, in my limiting, limiting beliefs in my own past, I probably would have been the person who would have been worried about smiling and saying hi. And luckily, I've overcome that, but it can be that simple. So yeah, that's a great tip. And do you have any stories or tips of ways that you've met people actually in the local communities? I know even maybe going back to your study abroad time, did you live with a host family? Were there any experiences that jump out to you with actual community members. What I found was that meeting locals organically or spontaneously was in many places a little bit

more difficult because there are the locals who work the tourist circuit. Yeah, they sell trinkets to tourists from roadside stalls. And they're happy to talk and engage and hang out. And they typically speak the best English because their work involves talking to tourists. But there's always a little bit of this level of commerce. around the interaction so it didn't feel as genuine or as authentic. Getting involved in some type of organization or activity that actually happens in country, I found that that was a much better way to meet locals outside of the typical selling trinkets to tourists' route.

No, that's cool. Are any tips of how someone would find an organization, anything that jumps out to you that was especially impactful or I'm assuming with all your travels, you've contacted many of these organizations, like were there one or two that jumped out as ones you would recommend people go for? If you're traveling in Kathmandu, there's an orphanage called Balmundir that is amazing. We've done a lot of work with them and they're great. But I would say just follow your interests. I mean, there are many, many nonprofits all around the world that are looking for volunteers.

But even beyond that, I remember rock climbing in Thailand. and just kind of hanging out with the climbing, and I'm not a good climber by any stretch. When you start hanging out with other rock climbers, there are people who are very good and very obsessed with the sport. And I'm, you know, I'm just a top roper, which is nothing fancy. But just hanging out with them, like going to the climbing shops to rent gear and then talking to the store owner,

you start to meet the American or British or Australian expats who are living in that country. Then you start to meet their friends. often locals. So you end up making friends of friends who are locals. And that happens in the niches. It happens when you start hanging out with a group of rock climbers or a group of scuba divers or a group of volunteers. And it strikes me that this works because it is slow travel in many cases. It's not going there for 48 hours and bouncing out because what you're describing is in a transaction. It's a relationship. Exactly. Imagine going to the same coffee shop every day for a week

and a half before eventually the owner of the coffee shop starts noticing you and takes more of an interest in you and then invites you to join him or her after their shift is over. It's that sort of a thing that happens when you're there for weeks or months. And again, it's the most social option is the most frugal. Being in one location for weeks or months is much more frugal than moving around all the time because A, you're not paying for the cost of the actual transit itself, that bus ticket, that train ticket, that flight. B, you start to learn where to buy things more cheaply. Like instead of going to a restaurant because it's the obvious choice, you'll learn the street carts or you'll learn the local markets. There are just efficiencies that happen

when you're in one place for a long time. And that's also simultaneously the best way to meet people. And Paula, speaking of these frugal options, you had the this budgeted idea of about $1,000 a month. So as I'm understanding it, you roughly figured this would be a two-year trip. How long did it end up being and how accurate were you? When you came home, did you have any money or did you literally come home because you ran out of money? The total trip ended up being 27 months, so just a little over two years.

I came home with just a couple of thousand dollars, not much. I came home and had enough money to pay $200 in rent. I found this apartment on Craigslist, and there were a total of five people living in a three-bedroom apartment, and my share of that rent was $200 a month, my personal share. So I had enough money to pay my $200 a month rent, and I had a $1,500 car, and then maybe a couple thousand, and that was it. I remember I was also freelancing just a little bit, not a lot, but. But I was working maybe five hours a week or so while I was traveling. Okay. So over those 27 months, you were freelancing, but it was just a tiny little bit.

And you're back in the U.S. You had $25,000 saved up. You had this epic 27 month experience. And you're back. What does that look like now? You only have a couple thousand dollars in the bank. How do you get from here to where you are today? Like what's that first step?

Yeah, and you're unemployable. Yes. So I knew that I didn't want to go back into the 9 to 5 workforce. I felt very strongly about that. I didn't want to commute. You know what it was? I didn't want to buy an iron and an ironing board. That just seemed so stupid.

Why should I own one of those? And if I had to get some sort of a job where I had to wear clothes that needed to be ironed, ugh, no, I just, oh. That might have been the clincher for me. This also speaks to my soul. I never want to iron anything. I want to design a life that doesn't require me to iron anything. I'm with you.

I'm with you. I'm taking a stand on this. Exactly. Exactly. All of this is like an extremely elaborate ironing avoidance maneuver. What an awkward machine. Why would anybody create this? Like, it's just the worst thing ever.

That's so funny. So, okay, so we're moving beyond the anti-ironing coalition here. So, you know, I get that. I totally get it. Like you don't want this conventional life anymore, but it's still, it has to start somewhere. Was it was it freelancing? Was that what you hit on? It was. So because I knew that I didn't want to work for somebody else, then that left freelancing. And because I had some experience freelancing for the past at that point, it had

been very, very part time for the last five years. That gave me some contacts in the industry. You know, it gave me some editors, some people I could talk to. But really, again, More importantly than anything else, it gave me the confidence to know that I could. Nothing is better proof of concept than actual proof of concept. So after I had those first handful of freelance paychecks, I knew this is a way, a viable way that I can make money. And in the beginning, this is terrible. And I've never admitted this, but I'm going to break the news here on the ChoosefI podcast. So in the beginning, I was so desperate that I was writing these articles for ehow.com.

EHOW is one of those churn websites where they were just landing search traffic based on sheer volume and they would hire anybody to write for them. I feel very comfortable throwing them under the bus because I don't think what I'm saying is controversial at all. So they paid $15 an article. And the articles that I wrote, I was trying, I was going for speed. So I would set a timer and I would see if I could finish three articles in an hour if I was doing really well to make a $45 an hour rate. usually I couldn't go that fast and it would end up being two articles an hour, but sometimes I would make it to three. And I wrote all of them under a pseudonym because they were just so bad that I didn't want my name to be attached to them. I literally just tried to Google Paula Pan at EHow.

And the article it served me up is where is the outseam of the pants measured? That's the one that EHOW gave me. I don't think that's it. I'm so very embarrassingly going to it. Should I do? Yeah, okay, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. So my pseudonym on EHAL.

Well, as Kennedy Rose. Kennedy with an I, K-E-N-N-E-D-I. I'm so excited right now. We will track it down. Let's not spoil it for anybody else. There will be a link to the articles if I can find it in the show notes. We're moving on. $15 an article, three articles an hour.

This is what you get. Enjoy. Exactly. That's amazing. So how do you move beyond E-HOW? This isn't the dream client to work for it. How do you move beyond? $15 per article.

Like for the freelancers out there, they'd love to know. How did you get from here to there? Well, somebody gave me the advice to write about what I love to read the most. I knew that in order to be able to gain clients, I had to niche down. Because if I write about everything, then I write about nothing. It's not enough to just say, hi, I'm a writer. Or hi, I'm a former newspaper reporter. I'm a journalist.

I needed to specialize in a given topic. But I didn't know what that would be. And so I played with a few ideas. I thought it would be really cool to be a wine writer. But then actually, in order to be a wine writer, you have to learn a lot of chemistry. There's a lot of chemistry and winemaking. And I just didn't want to learn that much chemistry. So I was like, all right, that idea's out.

So I went through a few different ideas like that. And eventually somebody gave me the advice to write about what you love to read the most. And as nerdy as this sounds, and you guys will appreciate this, I've always loved to read about personal finance. even back in high school. I loved reading Money Magazine and Kiplinger magazine. And so I thought, well, if I naturally enjoy reading about it, then I guess I'll start to write about this. And so I niched myself down into the category of personal finance writer. And once I did that, then it was much easier to gain clients. So I started writing for About.com. That was my first major client. I was there budgeting and personal finance expert. And once I had that under my belt, like getting that first client was tough. But once I had that, brand name, then it was much easier to find more clients. Hey there, we're going to take one more break for this word from our sponsors. Once again, before we go into this break, I just want to remind you that all of the money

that we raise from today's episode will be given as a donation to the Choose FI International Foundation. It is a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to spreading the message of financial independence to underserved communities. So the money that we raise from these spots will go towards this amazing nonprofit that I am so happy to throw my support behind and contribute. And very, very happy that so many of you in this community have also chosen to show your support for the foundation as well. If you want to learn more about the ChooseFI International Foundation, you can do so at choosefifoundation.org. Now, with that being said, we're going to take this one more break for our next sponsor spots. And after that, back to our interview already in progress.

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because you'd been reading Money Magazine your entire life. Talk the audience through that because I know I feel imposter syndrome sometimes. I think lots of people do, and it's something that we all have to work to get over. My thinking on this came straight from the practice of journalism, where in journalism, reporters at newspapers are often assigned to what's referred to as a beat. So you might cover the cops and crimes beat, or you might cover the education beat. And a beat is essentially the topic that you cover. for your paper. And it's not something that you're an expert in. You know, most people at

newspapers, at least anecdotally, whom I spoke to, are journalism school graduates who never specifically studied these topics, but they got a job at a paper, and that paper happened to have an opening for XYZ beat. And so then that became their beat. And they became an expert in it by virtue of the fact that they were reading and writing about it every day. I fortunately did not have imposter syndrome when it came to becoming a personal finance writer because in my mind I conceptualized it as, well, I'm a journalist on the personal finance beat. It would be no different as if I'd gotten a job at the Denver Post and they assigned me this beat. When I did feel a huge amount of imposter syndrome was when I started investing in real estate

because my best friend said to me, and this stuck with me ever since, she said, there are all sorts of real estate agents and contractors. What makes you think that you could do better than them? Like, she said that to me before I ever bought my first property. And that stayed with me for a long time. Can I actually pause on this? Just pause the fact that we've been talking for well over a half hour now. And up to this point, we're really just mentioning real estate. And I know that many people in our community think of you as a real estate.

real estate expert. Now, we're going to talk about this imposter syndrome and kind of work through that in just a second here. But you designed a lifestyle that had nothing to do with real estate and made these choices first. And then really as a function of, I want more autonomy over my life. What levers do I have available multiple income streams added real estate. And so really, I just wanted to point out that it seems like you've actually done everything. And real estate became a piece of that puzzle later on, Right. Exactly. You nailed it. You nailed it perfectly. And that's why it surprised me that I became known for real estate because it's, I don't want to say it's the least of what I've done, but it's only a very small piece of the pie. And I don't just mean a financial pie. I mean like in terms of the tapestry of my life, I'm totally mixing metaphors here. I love mixing metaphors. It's one pie slice on a big tapestry. The illustrations write themselves.

So yeah, it did surprise me, and it still does surprise me when people think of me as a real estate person, because I really, what I've done is, you know, people talk about lean fire and fat fire and all of that. If I can coin a new term, I was like dirt bag unfire. Like tender fire. I was just not fire. I was water, is what I was. Okay. Well, let's sift it because let's talk about real estate.

So obviously, it sounds like your friend basically threw down the gauntlet. And you're like, all right, challenge accepted. Well, so where that came from was when I looked at my expenses, I saw that housing was my single biggest expense. And I say that as somebody who was paying $200 a month in rent. So at $200 a month in rent, housing was my biggest expense. And it occurred to me, one day I just kind of ran. back of the envelope numbers on what our landlord was getting. Because, you know, you could look up a property on Zillow and you could see what it sold for.

And you could run a calculator and try to reverse engineer what the monthly payment would be. And then you could add up the rents from all of the units in that property. And so I did that. Let me just point out you could. Nobody does that. You did that. And it makes sense to me. But not the normal response.

Maybe for the budget and personal finance expert at About.com. Yeah, so it was my general interest in personal finance that led me to do that initial back of the envelope calculation on, wait a minute, what is my landlord making? And when I ran those numbers, and actually as those numbers panned out, it didn't really look like my landlord is doing that well. I kind of thought, yeah, oh, that's interesting. That was an interesting intellectual exercise. And then I moved on with my life. And a few weeks or months later, I noticed that the triplex that was across the street, from where I was renting was for sale.

And again, I ran these incredibly rudimentary back of the envelope numbers. I thought, you know, if I bought that and I moved my roommates in with me to one of the units and then rented out the other two, then instead of paying $200 a month in rent, I think I could get my own rent down to zero. And that was as big as I was thinking at the time. Like I was not planning on being an investor. I wasn't planning on any of this. I was just trying to get my own single biggest expense, which was rent, down to nothing.

And I didn't know the term house hacking. And I didn't know how to analyze the property. Like, I didn't know anything. Mine is a case study of how not to buy a house because I did everything wrong. It was sheer naivete that led me into it. But house hacking nonetheless, which is really cool, that that was just the impetus to just save this $200, which sounds quaint today. to think that someone would go to these lengths just to save $200 a month, right? It's kind of crazy.

But obviously, it's worked out for you. But I still want to dive into this here. So, okay, you're back, right? You have a couple thousand dollars in the bank. You're freelancing, but, you know, you're working for ehow and about.com. And I assume you're not rolling in money here, but obviously there must be some significant savings rate. And there must be some money to purchase as it. like a down payment for this place.

How did this actually come about? Sure. My partner Will and I bought it together. Again, we weren't being intentional. We didn't have any concept of FI. We were just trying to live as cheaply as possible. So that was really what it came down to. And that, again, is not the way that I would recommend doing it.

Because what I've just said is that we were not doing it with intention. And I would not ever recommend to somebody to go in blind and to do this without intention. You know, I do think that there's something. something now with the benefit of hindsight, I do think that there's something to be said for thinking carefully about what percentage do I want to save versus what percentage do I want to spend. But in the way that when people are blind and they're not paying attention to their money, a lot of people default to spending too much, we just defaulted to saving. So then we ended up having this high savings rate because, really quite honestly, because spending gave me a lot

of anxiety. I know it sounds as though I'm disciplined. Really, I'm just a basket case. And spending money gives me anxiety, and so I don't enjoy it. Spending money gives me anxiety. That's not a normal societal thing. Have you ever delved into why that is? Does that come from childhood? Was there ever a period of time where spending money led to issues with either you or your family?

Like, have you ever really analyzed that? You know, I think going back to our conversation at the beginning of this interview about having parents who started their life in the U.S. in their 40s. in their 40s and didn't have compounding interest on their side and had to, in their early 40s, rent their first apartment and buy their first car and safe for retirement and safe for their kid to go to college. They had to do, they had to live an entire life compressed into a 20-year time span. So essentially, they had to have the same type of life that a person pursuing fire would experience, except theirs was in the latter.

half of their working life. And theirs was because of the fact that they just didn't start until their 40s, didn't come to America until their 40s. And so I think I grew up seeing that and I grew up seeing a lot of frugality. Like we were very comfortable. We had, you know, it was a very nice life, but my parents were very deliberate, very conscientious, very frugal. And I think that just got deeply, deeply ingrained in me. And so yeah, I think that was part of why I didn't enjoy spending money. And to be honest, I think the other part of it was. And I think the other part of of it was a lack of self-confidence. I've brought up confidence a couple of times during this conversation, but in saying that writing freelance articles gave me confidence to know that I could write more,

but I also lacked confidence in really believing in my ability to earn and believing in my ability to make money. And so you've got two levers that you can pull. And if you don't believe that you can earn, then the only lever that you think you can pull is to save. And so, that was another reason why spending gave me so much anxiety. It felt as though this might be my, I don't want to say last pile of money on earth, that's so dramatic. But, you know, it just felt to me as though replenishing my money would be harder than preserving it. We really haven't talked about the financial independence concept yet. Maybe we've kind of danced around it with a few other ideas of wanting control. But I'm curious, when it came to

having the lexicon, having the language, having the community, how did you feel? find out about financial independence? Before I found out about financial independence, I found out about passive income. And that was another inflection point, as you both call it. It was another aha moment similar to when I was 22 or 23. And for the first time in my life, I realized freelancing was possible. And it was possible to make money outside of traditional employment. That was an inflection point. And then later, realizing that you could make money passively, was that other inflection point. And when I figured that out,

by virtue of running these back of the envelope numbers on where I was renting, that to me was very powerful because I thought, you know, if I can build multiple streams of passive income,

then that money can be flowing in even when all of my time and energy and attention is spent trying to get new clients, trying to build out my freelance career. And so I, I would say I was financially independent before I really knew about the concept of financial independence or maybe right around that same time.

Like the entire time that I was what in hindsight turned out to be building financial independence, in my mind, I was just setting up additional streams of passive income as a safeguard against having to go back into the nine to five workforce. So, Paula, to me, this is the heart of it. This is the inflection point that you're describing this anxiety over spending money and having this scarcity mindset of can I ever earn money again. But yet, then you get to a point where you have multiple streams of income or potentially passive income. When did you get to that point where you said, even just subconsciously, I'm over that scarcity of how can I make money in the future? Like, did it come from

your blog, did it come from a point where you could cover your bills? Have you ever put any thought into that? In some ways, this question is almost like, how did you know when you were FI? And to riff on that infamous answer, like, I don't know, but I know it when I see it. It was a little bit like that. Unlike a lot of people in the fire community, I didn't have a number set out for myself in advance because FI wasn't a goal in advance. My first thought when I bought that first triplex was just get my own housing costs down to zero. And then once I did that, that gave me enough confidence to buy my second. And when I bought the second, my thinking was just build some extra passive income so that you'll

have an extra few hundred a month coming in so that in case of a freelance client or two dries up, you will not have any problem paying your bills. And so that was my thinking when I bought the second property. And then when I bought the third, it was just a few hundred more. And I remember at one point Will said to me, he was like, you know, based, on the money that we have coming in, the passive income that we have coming in right now, he was like, we could just go live in Thailand on this money. And to him, that was the point at which he thought that we had reached financial independence. And to me, it wasn't.

Because I maybe, and maybe this goes back to the whole being an immigrant thing, I was like, no, I haven't, I haven't achieved it until I can do it in the U.S. We went through all the trouble of coming here. I'm not just going to like turn around and leave. So I just want to set up a little compare and contrast, just kind of for our audience. So the way that I'm hearing what you're saying, while maybe we would talk about financial independence as being a little bit more numerical or mathematical, 25X, you looked more at your expenses and just said when my passive income, regardless of whether or not we're talking about investments, but in your case, it was mostly from business ventures or real estate,

when my passive income exceeds my expenses and then in light of this last conversation, in this last sentence, inside the United States. Exactly. And I feel good about life. Exactly. I tell the story about, you know, how Will and I, we were a couple with joint finances, and yet we had different barometers of when we reached FI. And I think that speaks to the subjectivity of when do you reach it.

I mean, in part, that's when you feel as though you've reached it. Let's talk about building and scaling. So, you know, in your case, you're mostly using passive. income as opposed to just pure net worth and investments, at least at this particular point in time, with the goal of exceeding your expenses. So it sounds to me like you pursued a real estate path and one, then two, then three. How many properties do you have currently? I have a total of seven units across five buildings. So I've got one triplex and four single family homes. You still have the original triplex. I do. Yes. And I don't know if you're supposed to have a favorite house,

like having a favorite kid, but that's my favorite house. Okay. What about? What about passive income from the other, from the other angle? So like afford anything, freelance writing. What else have you done to implement this idea of things that just work behind the scenes? Oh, I would not consider anything related to afford anything to be passive income because it's just, it's so much work, man. So much work. You know, I make right now good money from the blog and the podcast and afford anything. but I consider that to be extremely active income.

And granted, it's true that it's not a straight time for money exchange. It's not punching a clock, but it requires so much work that to me, that's the activest of active income. Can I make one point and actually tie it back to your book, Escape, and to me what really stood out, and I think it comes back to basically, I want more than 14 days off a year. And I want time off when I want it off. So basically what I want is I want to control my schedule and align my time with activities and experiences and people that bring value into my life.

And while afford anything and analogous to that, choose FI, are by no means passive. I have traded in a 40 hour a week gig to work 80 for myself. I do control my schedule. And is that ultimately what lights you up as well? Absolutely. And I think when you were on my podcast, Brad, you talked about how, humans love mastery, right? And there's that research that shows that autonomy, mastery, and purpose are three things that humans crave in a working situation. And what's great about

both afford anything and choose FI, and the type of work that we have chosen to do is we have autonomy, we have purpose, and we have the opportunity for greater and greater mastery within these fields. Yeah, I totally agree. It's amazing how we don't look at the number of hours. This is almost like a calling at this point because it does fit those requirements, right? And to me, it's, yeah, that mastery aspect of just different components of your life. Like if you're not moving forward in something, then almost like what's not, it sounds terrible to say like what's the point, but it just can't be that hamster wheel day in and day out. And you come out on the other side 50 years from now and say that's a successful life, right?

Because to me, I know I look back at my work career and especially as an accountant where we have deadlines, April 15th, October 15th, September 15th, like all these things. And it's just, it was the ultimate hamster wheel. And I can't differentiate any of those years at this point because it was just the same thing over and over and over again. Whereas now I get to pursue passions outside of Truzify or like you say, the most active of active work. but also with this passion project that we're doing here and trying to grow the fire movement, right? Like we see that on a daily basis. We see growth.

And that, to me, it's just such a wonderful part of a life well lived. Yeah. And Paula, I just wanted to point out, you said, it gave me the confidence to prove I could. This was way earlier in the conversation, but there were a couple threads attached to that. You had someone tell you, how could you possibly do real estate and compete with contractors and real estate agents? You know what? you are now a real estate expert because you did it.

You took action on something. You're a podcaster because you podcast it and you're a writer because you write. It's one thing to just hear all this stuff passing you by. But if an interest is calling to you and you want to exert autonomy, mastery, and purpose, at some point you just have to take action and do something. And to me, that's what is highlighted by your story and all these different inflection points. You never got to the edge and said, I don't think I want to try that because I might fail. Right. As I've grown older, the thing that I've realized is that there are very few things that you actually need somebody else's permission to do.

If you want to be a heart surgeon, yes, there's certain training that you have to get. But if you want to be a writer or you want to own some rental properties, you don't need somebody else's permission for that. Just do it. All right, guys, this episode was not sponsored by Nike, but I'm sure there is much of a fan as Paul Pant as I am. So with that, Paul, on Moshe's, that would be the end of the episode. show, we would love to give you the chance to tackle the hot seat. Are you ready for this? Absolutely. In a world, drowning in debt and rampant consumption, trapped by the chains of lifestyle

inflation. These questions highlight the secrets of those who are broken free. Welcome to the Choose FI Hot Seat. All right, Paula, question number one, your favorite blog that's not your your own. So if this has nothing to do with money or financial independence, but the blog, wait, but why, I'm obsessed with it. So the title is like, wait, but why? And every article is an incredibly in-depth exploration of a certain topic. Did you read the latest article on all the reasons that going to a bar is like the worst idea ever? Oh, yeah. That's actually an older article that he's been recycling some of his older stuff. So he wrote that many years ago. But yeah,

secret, like the reasons why you secretly hate cool bars. I love that one. I thought it was just me. I was like, oh, this is the way that everybody feels? Oh. Yeah. We'll have that link in the show notes for this episode. All right.

Question number two, your favorite article of all time. Now, this can be one that you wrote or somebody else's. So actually, this is also from Wait, But Why. It's how and why SpaceX will colonize Mars. It completely opened my eyes to the future of humanity and how we might. become a multi-planetary species. And I realize that any time you start talking about that, automatically kind of makes you sound a little crazy. But it's incredible to think of all the things that are happening. And what we might be able to see in our lifetime. And if not our

lifetime, then our kids' lifetime, we might have an entire city on another planet. Like it really took me out of my day to day and puts everything that's going on in perspective. And it made me understand what an incredible era of history we're living in. Wow, that's really interesting, Paul. I have not read that article, but I'm definitely going to. And I agree with you about wait, but why just generally. I know I'm constantly reviewing the article called the tail end, which basically puts your life in perspective and especially put your life in perspective in terms of time. It's really very sobering, especially as a father of two young daughters, to think that I'm going to spend some crazy percentage of the ultimate time I'm going to spend with them by the time they're 18.

It's something like 90%. Right, 90%. Yes. And I don't mean this to be a downer. It's actually the opposite. It's enjoy the time and maximize the time, right? We only get X number of decades on this planet if we're lucky. Or maybe if they terraform Mars, then we'll have two planets. But.

Or if cryogenic freezing is a thing, which I've been exposed to. I can turn all this on its head, man. You never know. But yeah, wonderful website. And yeah, hopefully everyone out there is hearing this and saying, all right, I got to spend some time at Wait But Why. You know what? Jumping in real fast, you know what unexpected benefit I got from reading Wait But

Why? And particularly from reading about SpaceX and cryonics and Neurilink and AI and all of the topics that they discussed there. It actually motivated me to be healthier because the, the next hundred years are going to be so cool. I want to be around to see it. What an interesting reaction, Paula. I love that. And yeah, you're right. You never know where technology and science can take us. So you want to be nice and healthy for when that technology actually occurs. Like I've had that thought too. It sounds, it's funny. Like when you say it out

loud, it sounds a little nuts. But it's so true. Like we don't know where those next 50 or 100 years are going to take us as humanity. And it's really. exciting to be on the cusp of this. Exactly. Exactly. All right, guys, these podcast episode is going in a different direction. That's awesome.

All right. Let's move on. Let's reel it back in. Question number three, your favorite life hack. To work for yourself. And particularly to work for yourself online. It brings you that autonomy.

It brings you location independence. Really, a lot of the benefits that people are looking for with FI, and we talked about this a little bit, the paradox of FI, once you've got a decent savings rate, once you've got a good runway, and if you can transition your work in such a way that you also are location independent and you work for yourself, I mean, that gives you before you reach financial independence, it gives you many of the

same lifestyle benefits. Well, obviously, I agree. Question number four. Your biggest financial mistake. We've alluded to this in this interview, but not believing in myself. has been my biggest and most expensive financial mistake. Can you quantify that? Can I quantify it?

No, I wouldn't know how to estimate the opportunities lost, the cost of the opportunities lost. But I can cite multiple examples of as a high school student when I was looking at colleges and I didn't feel confident in where I could get into or what kind of scholarships I could get or as a college student, like looking for internships or looking for career opportunities,

later as a freelancer, not being confident enough to approach bigger paying publications, thinking that I need to earn my chops competing for these smaller clients, even though that's who everybody else is competing for as well. Can I run something by you?

Just kind of, it's something that it struck me as well. It seems like it's probably a financial mistake, but not a life mistake. And what I want to point out is, what if you had gotten the perfect journalism job? What if they had given you four weeks of vacation right out the gate and they had paid you double what your peers were making and you were satisfied. I probably would have never left and none of this would have ever happened.

And I think about that a lot actually that my $31,000 a year salary was a blessing in disguise in that it was an easy salary to walk away from. If I had been making $70,000 or $100,000, that would have been a lot harder. But to walk away from a job that pays $30,000 a year, that is not absolutely. is hard. Paula, question number five, the advice you would give your younger self. There are two pieces of advice. One is to value yourself and value your time.

You're worth more than minimum wage. And so don't dismiss yourself. And especially, I'd say this to my younger self and I'm saying this to anybody who's listening who it was not interested in a STEM science, tech, engineering, math profession or major, I very much felt like, because I have. a liberal arts undergraduate degree from a state college, what am I going to do with my life? And I would tell my younger self, that's okay. You can be a liberal arts major and still have a great life and be wealthy. The two are not mutually exclusive. So that's one major thing that I

would tell my younger self. And the second thing is I would also tell my younger self-care is business care. So drink water, sleep eight hours a night, practice yoga, work out. Like, none of those things are a distraction from work. In fact, they are part of the most important work that you can do. I always get excited when good sleep patterns fall into like a self-help list. Like it's like, oh, yes, I can do that one. Hop into icy cold water or take cold showers. Eh, not so much. But solid sleep, yes, I got that one. Exactly. Exactly. I'm a big believer in sleep. All right. Now, we do have a bonus question for you. And I think this is particularly valuable because I realize that I'm talking to someone that got into a real estate for the sole purpose of reducing her $200 a month rent.

We spend a lot of time talking about things that you didn't purchase. But all of us do make purchases based on value. You can afford anything, but not everything. What is one purchase that you made over the past 12 months that has brought the most value to your life? So the most value to my life is definitely my laptop. I bought a 15-inch MacBook Pro. I got it refurbished. I got it from the Apple Refurb Store,

but it's an expensive laptop, and I absolutely love it, and I use it all day every day. So I have zero regrets about it. Paula, we covered so much ground today, and I'm sure people are going to have follow-up questions. If someone is interested maybe in the e-book escape that we mentioned during this podcast,

or they want to find out more about what you're doing, what is the best way for someone to connect with your content? To download the ebook, you can go to afford anything.com slash escape and download that ebook for free. I also have a podcast, the Afford Anything podcast, and you can find it on your favorite podcast player. So just search for that. Or you can also go to Afford Anything.com. That's where you'll find me blogging. Paula, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Thank you so much for inviting me on. I hope you enjoyed that interview. Brad and Jonathan are two of my favorite people. They're amazing podcasters. They have an incredible dedication to the world of personal finance and financial independence, and I'm honored to be friends with them. I'm honored to be on their show. I'm recording this from Washington, D.C.

We're at a conference together called FinCon. As of the time of this recording, tomorrow night, afford anything, and ChooseFI will be co-hosting a party together. And this party is a fundraiser for the ChooseFI International Foundation, which is a 501-C3 nonprofit Foundation that I serve on the Board of Directors of, and this foundation is dedicated towards spreading the message of financial independence to communities that could benefit from hearing it, including K-12 and military financial education. So I'm very honored to be friends with them, honored to be serving on the Board of Directors for their foundation, honored to be co-hosting

a party with them. If you go on social media, check out Instagram, follow me at Paula P-A-U-L-A-P-A-N-T. You can see in my stories or on the stories that are saved on my profile, photos and videos from this awesome party that we're all throwing together. So I'm so thrilled that the financial independence community is growing and so thrilled to play a role in that. As a quick reminder, during the month of September 2019, I am on what I'm calling the September sabbatical, which means that I'm taking the month off.

I'm traveling. So I was in Croatia for a week, then Slovenia for a week. Now I'm here in Washington, D.C. for a week, which is where I'm recording this. And then for the next two weeks, I'm traveling to Japan. So from Washington, D.C., I'll be in Japan, be there for the following two weeks. So during the month of September, I will be replaying some of my favorite interviews from the archives of this show, as well as interviews that I have done on other podcasts. This being an example of that.

Thank you again for tuning in. My name is Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast, and I will catch you next week. You know,