Afford Anything - LIVE EVENT Q&A: Episode 500, Part 2, with ChooseFI’s Brad Barrett

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

Enjoy Part 2 of our two-part Episode 500 special, recorded live at a comedy club in Brooklyn. Host Paula Pant and special guest Brad Barrett from ChooseFI answer questions from the audience, live on stage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to episode 500, part two. We recorded this live in front of a sold-out crowd in Brooklyn. And what you are about to hear coming up ahead are questions, Q&A, that we took from the audience live on stage at a comedy club in Brooklyn. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast. You can afford anything, but not everything. Every choice carries a trade-off. This is a show about optimizing your limited resources,

including your money, time, focus, and attention. I'm your host, Paula Pant. I trained in economic reporting at Columbia University, and I'm here to help you focus on what matters. Now, what you're about to hear is episode 500, part two. We aired part one just the other day. Have a listen to part one if you haven't heard it yet. What you're about to hear in this episode is part two of episode 500, featuring special guest Brad Barrett, host of the ChooseFI podcast. Now, for those of you who may be tuning in for the first time, choose FI stands for Choose

Financial Independence, which is the point at which you have sufficient investments such that work becomes optional. And the thing about FI is the journey to FI, the pursuit of FI, is a path that will improve your life, regardless of whether or not you actually reach FI. Or I should say regardless of how long it takes you to reach it, because a dedicated pursuit over a long enough time span, barring any type of black swan calamity, is likely to lead to FI. In any event, in this upcoming episode, myself and Brad Barrett, the host of the Choose FI podcast, take live audience questions. This is the second part of our special episode 500

two-part series. Enjoy. Let's open it up to you all. Hello, everyone. So we have an appointment tomorrow at 10 a.m. at the city clerk's office to get married. Congratulations. Congratulations. So this is our Bachelorette. Wow. Oh, my gosh.

So I know we got Bachelorette, honeymoon. We got everything. What a night. So I was just wondering, you know, between, you know, like you said, a thousand plus episodes, what was the most impactful thing that you've learned since starting the podcast? So, like, through your journeys, you decided to start the podcast, or really hit you sideways. It's interesting. We just had an episode talking about getting married and safeguarding yourselves. I'll have to get the exact episode number. It might have been 480 or thereabouts with a woman named Amy whose husband actually tragically passed away. And it was it was such a poignant episode about making sure your loved ones are safeguarded. And I think a lot of us, myself very much included, say, oh, I can put beneficiaries on later or, oh, it'll be fine.

Even if I get hit by a bus, like, it's all going to go to my wife or whatever. Or, oh, I'll wait for that term life insurance. Or, oh, I'll wait to get a will. My wife's the CPA. I mean, she's very capable. But as much as I'd like to believe, I have everything. eyes dotted, tees crossed, and she would be able to pick up and run with it. I don't know if that's actually true.

So this particular episode just kind of opened my eyes to bad things can happen. And you need to safeguard your loved ones in whatever way and whatever your situation is. Like the age old tale with our podcast is you have to take action. I think that if there's one through line of almost 650 episodes of Choose a Vi, it is you have to get up off the couch and take action. And it's easy to listen to podcasts. It's easy to read books. It's all well and good. If you have it, you know, you have this knowledge, but it doesn't mean anything unless you do it.

And listen, I am as much to blame as anybody on this. Like there are times where I have the best intentions and I sometimes just don't do it. So it's overcome that inertia and just and. and take action in essence. So in this particular case, but really in every case. And I think that is what separates our community, I think, from most. Wow. I had a totally different answer.

Well, I mean, my tongue-in-cheek answer is what I've learned is if Susie Orman ever calls you. Always, always get on the phone with her. You might have to tell the story real quick. Susie Ormond was on in, what was that, 2018 or 2019? That was a while back. And my very opening question was, Susie, what do you, what do you think of the fire movement? And she said, quote, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. And then we went from there.

Yeah, that had legs. But the thing that I've learned as a podcaster, what I love about podcast. as a medium is that you can go long form. You can go deep. And in the age of TikTok, when everything is, you know, 10 seconds and you're on a screen and you're scrolling and it's the age of distraction, there are a lot of people who say, like, we live in the age of TikTok, you need to be quick and you need to be snappy. And I don't believe that for a second. I believe that there is room for long form.

There's room for depth. There's room for thoughtfulness. There's room for nuance. And I've stayed really committed to producing long episodes. I mean, in the age of short form content, I think you can really gain the most from an audiobook, from a podcast, from a book, from a long blog post or newsletter. Yeah. And I think there's something especially intimate about podcasting also, right? like, I know I listen to a ton of podcast and you feel like you, you know those people.

Like, they're your friends. And there's just something really unique and special about it. And you learn people's little eccentricities and ins and outs. And you learn something like Paula, as evidenced by tonight, is like just such a pro when it comes to asking questions. I mean, she is a true journalist at heart. And like, it's obvious from the first second you meet her, right? It's remarkable.

And I think that's what's so special about this medium in particular. Hi, my name is Delia. I listen to his podcast and I have heard about you many times in the podcast. My question is about guilt because you mentioned to give ourselves some grace. But personally, I feel guilt in the sense like I'm trying to pursue my personal finance journey because I'm from Colombia. I never heard about money. and I came here and like, oh my God, I don't have savings and stuff.

So I like to travel. I like experiences. So every time, like, I want to travel, I do it because that's what I love the most. But then I feel guilty because I don't have the emergency fund that I think I need. So my question is, how do you, at the very beginning, you know, when we don't even have like 100K, because after 100K, everything compounds and, you know, it accelerates. In your journey at the beginning, how did you give yourself some grace without like, taking care of your personal finance journey, but without feeling guilt for value and doing the things that you, that you want to do.

I would say a few things. Number one, and I know that there are a lot of YouTube headlines that are like, the first 100K is the hardest and after that again. But really, things compound with the first dollar. So you're already in the compounding cycle. You're already getting that growth. But to the guilt question, what I would recommend is have a super. amount, whether it's a specific raw dollar amount or a percentage, have a very specific amount that you're like, this is the amount that I'm dedicating towards savings.

And whatever that is, do that first. And once you've done that, then in order to be firm about the amount that you're committing to savings, you then also have to be equally firm about the amount that you're committing to spending. You're like, I've committed to spending this money because only by committing to spending this amount, can I be equally as committed to saving this other amount? Right? So the the strength and the commitment has to be equal on both sides. So if you're really strong in your commitment to save X, then you're equally as strong in your commitment to spend Y. Yeah, I think often it's these

little psychological shifts. And we have to understand we are human and we have a operating system running and you sometimes have to trick yourself and that's okay that's part of being human so like paul is saying this is if you really parse it it's a distinction without a difference but it is a difference and it means everything so in this case it's guilt-free spending and you have to be okay with that right like have you taken action to make your life better yes you're nodding significantly of course you have doesn't that feel amazing? Of course it does. So you have to focus on the positive there about just how different your life is now. And like Paul is saying, the positive starts compounding from the very first action you take to make your life better. It just does. And compounding has a way

of seeming slow at first and then all of a sudden, boom. And you will see that on your path. But I understand at the beginning, it feels slow. It feels like you want to be there, right? Like you've made up this number 100K because you've heard it, right? And I'm not talking negatively about that. But you've heard that number as if it's some magical thing. Is it any different than 99K, 98K, 97?

You could just, no. It's just some random round number. And you're beating yourself up because of some random round number. number. That doesn't make any sense, right? Like, your life is dramatically better than before you found fine. And you should be really, really proud of yourself. Yes, it's much better. I actually open my BTSAX phone and like it's minimum 3K and I was like, I don't have 3K. I will never have like a bump sum 3K. So what I is like I started saving $100 every month and then when I had my 3000, like I was so happy and I look at my app every day and like right now have like 5k.

Yeah. And also like I, you know, I want to live my life and tomorrow is no guarantee. So even if I have a million, I don't know if I'm going to live tomorrow, you know. So yeah, thank you for the podcast. I'm much better today. My biggest concern is time constraints. So between, you know, two kids, sports. just, you know, working 40 plus hours a week.

This is a little embarrassing, but I have not finished your first rental property class. And I got about halfway through it about three years ago. And then it just, you know, life becomes overwhelming. Yeah. You're a turtle. Yeah, exactly. Very, very slow turtle. So how in the beginning did you, you know, before you had the fire where, you know, where you had the time, how did you deal with that in the beginning?

A couple of things. One is to just give yourself grace. Like, all right, so you said, hey, this is a little embarrassing, but I haven't finished your first rental property. There's absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about with that at all. The fact that you've enrolled in a course and more broadly, the fact that you've decided that you want to learn about how to invest in rental properties and that that is on your mind, it's something that you're incrementally moving towards.

Like that is something to be celebrated. You know, rather than the script of like, oh, I'm embarrassed because I haven't finished it yet, flip that to like, hey, I'm excited because I decided that this is something that I want to pursue. And step by step, piece by piece, I am working my way there. I am gradually moving in that direction. There's direction and then there's accessibility. Right. And I think so many people get caught up in rate of acceleration that they don't stop and think about the fact that you're in the right direction for you. And that's the single most important piece of it. So I would give yourself a lot of grace for that. The whole reason, by the way, that we came up with the framework of a turtle. And so just so everyone knows. So one of the things that we were dealing with in your first rental property is it's a cohort based course. And so in theory, you're supposed to kind of go through it as a team.

And what we saw is that the people who were moving through it a little bit more slowly were often having a hard time forgiving themselves for that. And so we created this framework where in any healthy ecosystem, there are cheetahs who just like zoom through everything fast. There are wolves who run in a pack. And then there are turtles who move slowly. It's great to be a turtle. Turtles are an important part of the ecosystem.

I have a pet turtle. There's teenage mutant ninja turtles. Any healthy ecosystem needs turtles. There's mentality and then there's tactics, right? The mentality I think is the most important part and that's the part that I've just been addressing. Then tactically, you can fit it in the margins. But I think the tactics are less important than just I'm okay with the fact that I'm directionally pointed in the right place, and I'm moving step by step to get there.

The last thing I'll say is oftentimes the muddled middle feels like the slowest part. And when you get to the end, it actually feels fast in hindsight. So let's just say, for example, that two years from now, you buy your first rental property. Let's say three years ago is when you started thinking about it. to go from thinking about buying a rental to actually buying one in the span of five years is actually really quick. You know, there are a lot of people who take 15, 20 years. They started thinking about it 20 years before they actually made a move, right?

Five years in the span of a human life is actually not that much time if we're lucky, you know. And so even if it takes another two years, that's actually. relatively quick. So, so zoom out and think of it like that. So my question for the two personal finance experts here is, um, what money mistakes or regrets have you made in the last 12 months? Oh, me betty. In the last 12 months is a good twist on that. That's great. Oh, wow. It's funny. We, I feel like we all have our stock answers to every question. Like I was going to go on my autopilot. Actually, I've talked about my real estate adventurers. Actually, my buddy who I went in on that real estate when it's literally in the back.

So two poor suckers. But last 12 months. Okay. I need to think about that. Wow. Last 12. Okay. Honestly, it's like just not really paying attention.

And that's a mistake. Not that's a chronic mistake. It's not like a single event. It's just a chronic state of not really paying that much attention. that is still ongoing. If I'm honest, I just, I've kind of tuned out of my finances, and that's not a good thing. Like, I used to be really on top of reading my statements every single month. I used to be really on top of, like, I would manually compile a net worth spreadsheet.

And, you know, I have all of these apps and, you know, programs and, like, I've tried every app and I've tried every piece of software. And there are many that I use. but I also do think that there's value to periodically manually updating a spreadsheet. So I used to have this practice where I would physically log into every single account and transcribe it. You know, a process that can easily be automated, but there's a like a moving meditation that comes with doing it manually. But it's been years since I've done that. I stopped during the pandemic when my, you know, I think all our brains broke during the pandemic. and humpty dumpy is still like putting the pieces back together again, you know.

On a month by month basis, I, you know, I'll like check an app and I'll be like, oh, that's interesting. But like I'm not, I'm just not that in it anymore. There are things that I know that I want to do every year, like that I espouse and I have a checklist even. but sometimes they just falls by the wayside. So I think, yeah, being less involved, maybe caring a little bit less. And it's not like a, oh, because I've reached fat five or something.

It's just, it's more just apathy on some level. Even going through something simple, like going through my credit card bill and just looking at, are there things that have outlived their usefulness? And like I would say we should probably all do that, once a year at least because things have a way of just appearing and not like oh i'm paying for hulu and i haven't watched hulu in 12 months right and not that it's it's big dollars but just it's an easy change and i think those little easy changes they feel really good when you when you make

those decisions or you know even something simple like okay i think realistically every year we should all look at our insurance policies and get a new quote or something. And like, sometimes it feels like a real hassle to do that even once a year. The real honest answer when it comes to personal finance is you should get your silly little human brain out of it and make it so that you can't really make that many mistakes. Just get your brain out of it. Automate everything. So you don't have to think about it. My perfect personal finance life is my silly little. Reptillion brand to not be involved at all. And therefore, I can't make mistakes.

So maybe I've succeeded. I don't know. Yeah. I'd like to take a moment to thank the sponsors who have allowed my team and I to bring you 500 episodes and counting at no cost to you. Please join me in supporting this show

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Hi. Thanks so much for being here. So many books reiterate the fundamentals. You mentioned how Die Wood Zero uniquely affected your perspective. Are there other books that uniquely affected your perspectives? One of the early books that informed me that a millionaire is not necessarily what a person thinks of with the popular mythology of what is a millionaire. Or these days that would be a billionaire, right? But there's no billionaire next door.

But the millionaire next door was eye-opening in that the person next door who owns a pest control company and drives a Ford Focus could very well have a net worth of $5 million. So that was pretty influential. for me early on. Atomic Habits by James Clear, I think, is a very good book in terms of habit development. Mark Manson, the subtle art of not giving an F is a great one. The thesis of that book is essentially, there are very, very few things in this world that actually merit giving an F, you know?

And for those few things, we should really care. and for everything else, just don't worry about it. The four most influential personal finance-related books that I've read are Millionaire Next Door, also. There was a book way back when by an author named David Bach called Smart Couples Finish Rich. And that was very, very tactical. And I think that book helped us in our marriage very early on more than essentially anything. So those two simple path to wealth clearly was a total game changer. And yeah, and Die was Zero is the most recent version.

And yeah, I mean, again, I've already talked endlessly about that. But it's just understanding seasons of life. So, I mean, I think you even see an evolution in those books, right? From very tactical, smart couples finish rich to this simple path to wealth of understanding finance and understanding investing and feeling confident, the beginning stages of FI to, all right, look, there's a, there's a life when you get to FI. And that almost by definition is going to look very different than the very early days of FI. So yeah, it's been, I've never thought about it like that until this very moment. But, but yeah, I mean, those would be really the three

or four most influential. Thank you. Very philosophical episode. far, so I'm afraid I'm going to be a bit prosaic. Throughout both of your podcasts, the 4% rule has been discussed ad nauseum. I was just wondering your thoughts on fixed percentage withdrawals, because to my mind, you take your 4% every year without adjusting for inflation based on your fund balance. As long as you can deal with income volatility, you remove sequence of return risk, and you mathematically at least never run out of money. Rather than adjusting your amount for inflation, you're adjusting it for market returns. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think it's the easiest way of putting it. But the 4% is based on the balance at year one, correct? And then that is adjusted in line with inflation from that point forward. That is, that has always been my understanding as well. So if you were to essentially, to me, repeat that process every year. I see what he's asking. All right. You're seeing us work through this in real time.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so what he's saying is you've got 500,000, you draw down 20,000 in year one. You can't screw it up, in essence, is what you're, is the subtext. If the market did very badly, you would, mathematically, you would never run out money, but you would get to a stage where your income was so low that it was unsustainable. Right. However, as long as you can handle that volatility in your income, you potentially have higher gains in the future and higher income as a consequence. Okay, yeah, so I see what you're, okay. So the original study was you draw down 20,000 in year one and then 20,000 adjusted for inflation every subsequent year, right? And so what he's proposing is you draw down based on the account balance rather than based on the $20,000.

So it's a reset every single year. Exactly, yeah. I don't know if that's ever been studied. Like intuitively it makes sense, but I don't, I haven't modeled it out on a computer screen to know what that would look like. What I do know is we interviewed Bill Bankin, who is the guy who published the original study of the 4% rule. And what he found was that it was slightly over 4%. It was 4.2%. In most scenarios, you still, even with a timeline of infinity, you still had a significant chance of not running out of money. I guess that answers why it's not been discussed.

Thank you. Well, it's funny because my reflexive answer is, oh, I need to get big earn on this. So, I mean, I think that, what you actually are getting at here is we have an incredible community. and I think this is what I actually value most about the community is like there is no world where I have that expertise just off the top of my head. There's just simply no world. Like I could BS some answer. I'm not going to do that. But the cool part is we can model that, right? Like I can literally take this question and I'm going to and I'm going to email Carston when I get back home and we're going to play around with it. And that's wonderful. I think that's the power of community. So sorry to bring it.

it theoretical again, which is expressly opposite of your question. But I think that is what we're doing here. We're trying to all get better. So that's something that, as you can tell from us flailing around up here trying to answer that question, we can't possibly answer that question, right? It's inconceivable that we can like model it in our heads, right? That doesn't take away from the beauty of the question. It's a wonderful question. There's no world where we can answer it. But we have experts who can, who can help us. And I think that is the power of the five community. And that's how I've always viewed it.

It's like, I don't need to be the world-class expert at this stuff. But what I think that I do reasonably well is I package information so that people can understand it. So I can get Karsen on and he's going to talk in his PhD language about this. And I'm going to keep asking questions and keep clarifying and simplifying. so that our entire community understands a little bit better. And we might find out that this worked wonderfully, or he might just say in his very Carson way, like, this makes no sense.

So, you know, he's going to come up with something, right? But we're going to come out with an answer at the end of it. And we're all going to come out with a little more knowledge. So I think that's how I've always viewed my role in this community is I am not the world-class expert at parsing the numbers. I don't need to be because I have friends who are. And I think that's wonderful. Thank you. So don't feel too bad about taking your first rental property and not finishing it.

I finished it and then decided I didn't want to invest in real estate. Excellent. Good. You know. Exactly. Yeah. I'm glad I took it. Yeah.

But my question is you're both quite well-traveled and my girlfriend and I are digital nomads. What are places that you've traveled to around the world? world that you would recommend that all of us go to. Ooh. That's a great question. So first of all, I want to comment on, so I want to applaud you for taking your first rental property and then realizing through that that you don't want to invest in rentals. Rental property investing is not for everybody.

And unfortunately, a lot of people figure that out the hard way. And the hard way is you buy a rental property. and then six months later or eight months later, you're like, this sucks. This is not for me. And so I think one of the beauties of like take a class, immerse yourself in it, and from just taking a class really figure out, do I want, is this right for me or not? And by virtue of doing that, you spare yourself tens of thousands of dollars and huge headaches on the other side. you know, doing it the like F around and find out kind of way.

Yeah. Naked land speculation. Also not a good idea. So yeah, like a huge applause to you for really being thoughtful about is this for me and taking the time to dive into that question and then coming out with an informed answer. So I think that's amazing. Now to your actual question. All right.

So I just came back from Mongolia, China, and Egypt in the last, it was a it was a whirlwind two-week trip. But Mongolia, so I, like, I'd been to Egypt before. It was my second time there. Egypt is great. China is great. Mongolia, I really fell in love with. It's huge. And it has a total population of, I believe, around 3 million.

So it's incredibly sparsely populated. So, you know, it's just, it's nature. It's just, it's the Gobi Desert. It's these huge mountains, beautiful culture, beautiful, just beautiful scenery. Mongolia is incredible. Yeah. So, yeah, I think anybody who listens to my show knows what my answer is going to be is Japan. It's my absolute favorite place I've ever visited.

It's a remarkable, remarkable place. It's a remarkable culture. The people are just incredible. And it's just such an odd mix of like, you know, you have Japanese game shows on the one hand, which are just these wild, like, things you could never imagine what these crazy people are doing to just like the majesty of like, of history and the grand sumo competitions and just seeing Kyoto and just all the temples. It's such a fascinating place. even though I was such a foreigner there, and I stuck out like a sore thumb, but I felt at home there. And it just was a really, really special time. So, yeah, if I were to ever live anywhere else, they would unquestionably be Japan.

Yeah. I also advocate for, you know, just go to a lot of places, but also travel slowly. At least this is my personal opinion, take it or leave it. I'm a big proponent of what I call slow travel where you take your time and stay there for a while. I don't count myself as having been to a country unless I've spent at least a week there. And it can be a cumulative week across like I went to Singapore for three days. And I'm going to go back again this fall because I've got a friend who just moved there. So the last time I was there, I was there for three days. I'm going to go back again.

I'll be there for probably like four days, five days. So, okay, cumulatively, that's a week. I'll count that. But the reason that I've implemented that rule for myself when it comes to my own personal sense of how many countries I've traveled to is I want to make sure that I'm not just like popping in, spending a day or two, leaving and then being like, check. If I've only kind of grazed the surface of a place, then I want to give myself some type of a message. sense of that being incomplete in order to motivate myself to go back and to go back and to give it the time that it deserves. And one week is really even not that long, but I've set that for myself as a minimum. Yeah. We're going to take one more moment to thank the sponsors who

make it possible for our team to bring you information about financial literacy and financial independence available at no cost to you. Please join me in thanking our sponsors. Hi, guys. Huge fan since of both podcasts since 2018. It's been really fun.

To piggyback on the recommendation question, when I'm going to talk about travel, you both mention you love books, podcasts, and other content in the fire community. What are some of your favorites that are not based out of

North America? It could be a podcast, it could be a fire book, something fire related. Fire I don't know fire content that's not North American based I do know a guy who's based out of Australia

who talks about dating who's great Will Hitchens on Instagram He's fantastic Yeah I mean That is a really good question I do not follow any Fire podcast or blogs

That are not in the US I think there's also like A FI Europe or Fire Europe podcast that I listen to a couple times and, you know, it's good. I think it might be maybe a similar issue from what I occasionally, and I suspect this is, you know, maybe where the question comes from also is like get emails from people, oh, I live in Germany. I love your podcast, but I wish you could have an episode about Germany. I'm like, yeah, I, you know, it's hard. It is genuinely

I think in fairness we could do a better job. But am I realistically going to have a Phi Germany, a Phi Malaysia episode, a Phi Uganda episode? Like, I think and I hope those voices come from their particular countries. And I would love to see, and I think this is why, again, with our Chuzafi local groups, we've tried, I think at last count there are 30 different countries where we have local groups. And it seems to be adding slowly but surely. I hope that those people become podcasters and bloggers. Like, because they're intimately familiar, obviously, with their country.

They're by definition going to do a better job than I can. So it doesn't really answer your question, unfortunately. You know, you got the essence of what it came from. Because I'm originally from Cameroon, and I have family living in France, and I tell them they know how excited I am about fire. But they always tell me, oh, it only works because you're in the U.S. now. And so I'm always trying to find a way like, okay, are they actual famous podcasters, bloggers outside that I can share with them? So it would be nice to have those resources. Does anyone in the audience?

No. Oh, Alan and Katie Donagan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I shouldn't. I forgot. Yeah. Oh, Barney, the escape artist. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, definitely. Okay. So, yeah, we completely forgot our friends in the UK. Sorry, guys. Alan and Katie are, like, some of my best friends in the whole world. And I literally forget them. I am going to Vegas with them next week, and I forgot them. That's incredible.

So, yeah, you can see how hard it is to answer questions live. Oh, no, no, that's going to stay. We're keeping that in. We're keeping that in. I also wanted to add, there's this awards thing called the Plutus Awards. The Plutus Awards honors, like, best personal finance content. They have a category for best Canadian personal finance content. If you just Google Plutus Awards, you can look through every year, because they have the awards listed by year.

and you can see not just the winners but also all of the nominees and so then you can check that for Best Canadian Personal Finance blogs so that's a good way like anytime that someone from the audience reaches out to me and says

hey you know what are the good Canadian personal finance blogs out there or podcasts or you know content creators I just check the Plutus Awards website I just want to say that I think this is better than Swift is concerts because this is like I mean it. I mean it. I'm geeking out big time. I've been feeling like literally high for the last several weeks since I bought the tickets because I just saw it on your Facebook and this is like amazing. So I love you both and you've changed my life and so many lives in an amazing way. And I do have questions, but I just wanted you. I wanted to be able to tell you this. You've opened like the doors into so many books and libraries and podcasts for me to get educated on things that I didn't, I would have not known. I'm an

immigrant. I'm from Russia. So like my family, you know, all they told me is just pay off your credit card every month. That's it. So question for you is, I want to know what you're feeling about the real estate is. I know the market is crazy and all that stuff. I'm a cheater and he's a very slow turtle. So I want to buy all the houses today and tomorrow. And he keeps saying the market is best. So we have conversations. And we also have a 14-year-old. daughter. What if there's any like classes that I could sign her up for with other like 14 year olds? You know, because it's different when you like, this is amazing. Like I'll never forget this. The energy, the everything. Like I want her to experience that. And also for both of you,

is there any like master classes or camps you are doing where people can get together and just geek out for like three days like solid in whatever way? Like Finn Khan, I used to, I know I haven't done it in a while with like anything that you're planning or doing or no off. That third question, I'll start there because that's, that to me is, is the easiest of the bunch. So there are a ton actually of these Phi community gatherings and which is wonderful. So I just got back from the economy conference in Cincinnati,

which doesn't sound like a Phi community event. But it is, it is the largest Phi event in the world. And it is, yeah, basically a three-day weekend of geeking out. And you obviously, you learn a lot. And there are mainstage speakers and breakout rooms. But it's the enjoyment for me, and I think for a lot of the attendees, is the time in between.

It's the time to, you use the word master class. And I think it's important to learn. Obviously, knowledge is wonderful. nobody's saying otherwise but like it for me these events are about being amongst this energy and about seeing that you're not the only person pursuing phi because right in your life there's a reasonable chance that you are the only person that you know who is pursuing phi and you right like you right yeah her friends are sick of her and i think a lot of us you can ask my friends in the back like You know, am I like the weird?

So I think that's, that's normal for us. But I think when you're amidst and amongst like-minded people, it's just very energizing. So, yeah, economy. So that's M.E. at the end, not M.Y. Economy conference, there's Camp FI. I think a lot of people get caught up in the camp as if you're, like, roughing it. It's a three-day weekend basically at like a retreat center.

So there's no roughing involved. There's an event that I'm going to this year in Bali, actually. So this is, Amy Minkley has something called the Five Freedom Retreat. And that's obviously a much more involved event to fly across the world and stay there for a week or two. But that's much more immersive. It's akin to the Chautauquas, which don't really exist anymore, unfortunately. Yeah, so and then little events pop up. You know, something like this.

The Chusify Local groups hopefully are having more events on a regular basis and not just, hey, we're getting together at a brewery. But we're going to have a case study where someone is brave enough to stand up and talk about their own personal finances and get help from the group. because I think it really is about this community. And it's just really neat to see, I've seen like a little, little like green sprouts of these like case studies popping up. And I think at last check, it was a couple dozen of our local groups now.

I've had people, again, being brave enough. And could you imagine standing up for most people, standing up in front of friends and neighbors and talking about your actual numbers? Like that's a really scary. thing, but I think what we've seen is once you get that first person in your local group who's brave enough to do it, almost invariably a handful of other people jump up and say, I want to do that.

Because I know in our local Richmond group, we had one, and it was great. And then somebody else said, okay, three weeks from now, I want to do a presentation. And that couple literally realized they reached financial independence and they put in their notice at their job, like from a case study. And that was just one of those really wild things. So anyway, very long story short, there are lots of these events. They really are. And I think more and more of them are popping up. I think, and somebody could correct me, there's Fin Talks, I think is another one. Is it? Oh, there's a cruise, right? Amber Lee Grant has a cruise. So yeah, there's like a lot of these things that are popping up. We'll try to get like a better

resource on our website. Yeah. One thing that we at afford anything we are. planning on doing it like broadly planning on doing but we don't have specifics yet so we're not ready to like announce it but we're planning on having online one day workshops for that are digital so anybody across the nation can attend as well as in person events here in New York so we don't have specifics yet but like that's very high on our our list we also really want to do like a one week, you know, in the absence of Chautauqua, because both you and I have been to many of the Chautauquas, and they've been great. And in the absence of that, one of the things that we've been talking about doing as afford anything is planning a one week retreat. We've been discussing

doing it in Peru. Nothing is set in stone yet. That's just behind, it's behind the scenes. These are the conversations that our team is having internally to see what we can do. So yeah, the wheels are turning there. You heard it in here first. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, again, a lot of these things, I think, and I heard somebody say this earlier, I think a lot of us, especially after the, you know, the horrible COVID years, we want to get out and about. And we want to meet people. We want to have more of this. And I think you're seeing these, you know, these sprouts of it.

So I'm actually, again, I'm going to Vegas next week with the Donagans. With Alan Donigan. Yeah, sorry, Al. And we just opened this event. this was essentially a last minute plan where like Alan came to me and said do you want to do something awesome i'm like how do you say no to that right like so yes and he had this idea for let's do a five event in the least five place in the world Vegas right so so we basically just put this together and Alan and Katie so this is not like you know total fly by the cedar pants thing

they have long experience with Chautauqua and such. So, but anyway, I mean, we put this together and within 10 days, we open it up to the public and it's sold out in a day. We sold 80 tickets to this thing. And it was proof of concept. And I think we're planning on doing more of these. And we're like, oh, wouldn't Hawaii be cool? We're going to do it in Vegas again because that's just, okay, where are there easy places for

people to get to? So very long, story short, I think. you're going to see a lot more of these pop-up because it's just it's super energizing. So rental property in the world of residential real estate, residential real estate, there is unfortunately a huge shortage of housing. And what that means is that there is market pressure for home prices to continue to rise. And that's that is going to be true until more housing supply is created, and we are, unfortunately, a very, very long way from new housing supply, insufficient housing supply being created. And so because of the imbalance between supply and

demand, we just simply do not have enough homes to meet the demand. Because of that, that is a fundamental market pressure that's going to keep home prices rising. Now, I'll asterisk this with obviously every market is local. And so, you know, what's true in, you know, what's true in broadly as a nationwide aggregate may not apply to, you know, Youngstown, Ohio. There are going to be isolated local pockets that have unique real estate circumstances, but speaking broadly nationwide, residential home prices are going to continue to, likely going to continue to rise. And so I'm very bullish on investing in properties.

I think that in particular, if you're going to continue to, you know, you can invest in properties and then increase housing supply, you know, like be part of the solution. If you can buy a single family home and turn it into a duplex, you then do two things. You number one, contribute to the solution of increasing housing supply because now you've taken what was once one property and you've turned it into two. And you also make more money by virtue of doing that because now you're collecting two different incomes rather than just one, right? So the style of real estate investing that earns you the most amount of money is also the thing that actually helps solve the problem. And that comes from increasing supply, either by creating

new units or by increasing density by increasing the number of bedrooms per unit. Right. So if you can do either of those two things. That in particular is good for you and good for the market in general. Cheetah all the way. All right. We've, let's make this the last question. I got a quick one. Rental properties are great, in our opinion. And then there's the market. What do you or anybody in the room have for ideas of other ways to invest money? Oh, so many. One thing that I think we don't talk about enough is making money through the ownership of businesses.

And that can either come from starting a business yourself, which is typically done by starting a side hustle and then growing it on the side until it has, you know, enough momentum that you can quit your job and do it full time. Very much like we did, you know. So either by starting a business or by buying a business. And I don't think that we talk about the buying a business portion of it enough. There's a lot of opportunity there. But the ownership of private businesses, whether it's one that you have created or whether it's one that you've purchased is a huge opportunity. And in particular, purchasing businesses right now and over the span of the next decade,

as, you know, there's going to be a huge number of baby boomers who are retiring. This is a trend that's already begun. And as baby boomers retire, a lot of them are small business owners who they need a successor. And their children don't necessarily want to take over the family business. I mean, you know, logically, just because you have an HVAC company doesn't necessarily mean that your kids have a dream of running that. HVAC company, right? So if you're a small business owner, your kids don't want the business. Well, you have to sell it if you ever want to retire. And so there's going to be a, and this is already starting, a lot of small businesses that are coming on the market that are very like healthy,

long-term, viable businesses that the owners just want to exit out of because they're, they're 60 or they're 65 and it's time to do something different. Yeah, it's funny. I literally just got a pitch from somebody about this. It was a they used an acronym I never heard me so ETA so entrepreneurship through acquisition and I'm sure both of us get hundreds of these random people sending us emails all the time but something about that one just really stuck out to me so that's an episode we're going to have in the future I think that's really really interesting another person Cody Sanchez you've had her on right she hasn't been on yet she hasn't been on okay she's another person to follow in that in that sphere I found her especially interesting she's you can

find her if you just Google Cody Sanchez podcast. You can listen to a number of episodes. She's been on, you know, various podcasts. I asked this of Joe Sal Cahy high a couple years ago at the book signing. And I'm actually curious of Paul his answer first. So if you would answer second, as a board gamer, I'm fine. That's a board game question. So nothing too hard. You're kickstarting tomorrow, your dream board game you've been working on. What type of mechanics is it? What's the theme? What's it like? Ooh. Wow. Okay.

A dream board game. The first thing that's popping into my head is like some combination of clue with shoots and ladders. All right. I'm just brainstorming out loud here. If I were to come up with a board game, of course, it would have to have some type of money-related lesson. There are two board games that I know of. that teach about money. One is, was created by Robert Kiyosaki.

It's cash flow. Yeah, the rat race one, yeah. The other is Franklin's, I think it's called Franklin's Folly. Yeah. Franklin's Folly. So the reason that Clue comes to mind is that I like the, I like the structure of assembling a little bit of a whodunit. And I would, I would somehow try to find a way.

to create like a murder mystery who done it sort of a theme into finance concepts. I don't know exactly how that would happen. But that would be like the ultimate board game. Who killed somebody over the will or something?

Yeah. I can see this actually turning into an escape room. You know what? This would be maybe better as an escape room than it would be as a board game. You know? Yeah, I like that a lot. Oh, and you have to solve personal finance questions to find the clues to get out of the escape room.

Yeah. The total market just went down. Total adjustable market. So we're a big board game family. Our favorite mechanism, I guess, is deck building. So Dominion is our all-time favorite. Dominion is also the game that ruin board games for us, actually. Like, we wound up.

So we probably played this at the beginning of the pandemic maybe a thousand times, like not hyperbole, probably a thousand times. And the four of us loved it. And then we made the cardinal sin of playing online. And we actually learned like how deep the strategy went. And it was like once you've seen it, you can't unsee it essentially. So it more or less ruined board gaming for us. But that said, this would still be my choice. I would come up with, I have not been able to find another deck building game on par with Dominion.

So maybe we could talk afterwards if you have any options. So yeah, I don't have any like cute answer, personal finance or not, but I would love to build a deck building game that has the replayability of Dominion, but doesn't ruin board gaming for us forever. All right. Well, thank you for coming to episode 500. I hope you enjoyed this live audience Q&A featuring special guest Brad Barrett from the ChooseFI podcast as well as myself recorded live on stage in Brooklyn in celebration of episode 500. So what you've just heard is part two of episode 500. I want to thank everyone who has been part of this community,

whether you've been listening for eight years or whether you've been listening for eight days or any amount of time in between. I want to thank everyone who is part of this afford-anything community and who's part of the Choose FI community because this community broadly, this community of people who are interested in financial literacy, financial independence,

in a devotion to the person, suit of healthy personal finance habits, this is a lifetime practice. And this type of lifestyle is made more fun with friends. And these digital communities, these online spaces are how we form the connections that keep us motivated. Whether we're trying to earn more or spend less or invest more wisely, these are pursuits that are best done. with the camaraderie and support of others. So a big thanks to all of you. In fact, Steve, can I get a round of applause?

For you, for you who are listening right now. I want all of you who are part of this community to be really, really proud of yourself, for being proactive about bettering your life, for not accepting the default, for not accepting the status quo, and for being thoughtful about focusing on what matters most to you. Whatever you choose that to be, because it is your choice.

The way that you spend your money, your time, your focus, your energy, this is your choice. And this show exists to empower you to make conscious, deliberate choices. If you've gotten value from listening to the Afford Anything podcast, there are a few ways that you could help support this show. Number one, please open your favorite podcast playing app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and leave us a review. These reviews are instrumental in helping us spread the message of good financial health. Number two, please follow us on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube. If you haven't seen our YouTube channel yet, we're there at YouTube.com anything. Please follow us there. Please watch some of our videos, share it with your friends.

And finally, please subscribe to the show notes, which are available at no cost to you. You can find the show notes at afford anything.com slash show notes. Once you've subscribed, please hit reply to absolutely any of the show notes that you receive and tell us what you'd like to hear more of on this show. What topics do you want us to cover? Remember, if you want to talk to other members of this community, you can find one another and form common connection at afford anything.com slash community, all completely no cost. Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Paula Pan. This is the Afford Anything podcast, and I'll meet you in the next episode.