Afford Anything - My Brother-in-Law Wants to Buy a Rental in Mexico. Good Idea?

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

#692: Anonymous (02:01) is excited about early retirement and family time but worried about his brother-in-law, who just returned from a vacation in Mexico with a bold plan: sell everything, move there, and buy an Airbnb to live in one unit and rent out the others. He wants to support him without watching him get in over his head. How can he navigate this tricky mix of family loyalty and financial risk? Maryanne (33:41) is retired and living on Social Security. Her IRA has doubled in value in the past year and a half, leaving her unsure whether to sell and live off interest or reinvest in ETFs. How do you manage sudden growth in retirement savings responsibly without taking unnecessary risks? Brandon (48:18) has rolled over two old 401(k)s into IRAs but just learned that 401(k)s are generally better protected from lawsuits than IRAs. Now he’s hesitant to roll over his latest 401(k) from his recent job. Is it ever worth keeping a 401(k) separate, or should all retirement accounts eventually be consolidated? *Note: Timestamps will vary on individual listening devices based on dynamic advertising segments. The provided timestamps are approximate and may be several minutes off due to changing ad lengths. Share this episode with a friend, colleagues, your Ron Weasley: https://affordanything.com/episode692 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe, we're covering a lot of ground today. Of course we are. We are going all the way to Mexico to talk about purchasing a rental property. Wow, margaritas on the beach? Yes. For the tequila, we're going to Mexico. After that, we're talking to someone who is 66, whose IRA has grown tremendously. Ooh, nice.

I mean, if you think about how much equities have grown in the last five years, imagine you're 61 years old. You have a sense of how much money you have going into retirement. going into your 60s. And then, boom, the market goes bonkers and you have all of this growth. And so at 66, you're looking at the last five years and you're going, wow, I've got even more money in retirement than I'd planned for. I could go to Mexico a lot. Right? So we're going to address that today. And we're also going to talk about legal liability, how to protect yourself and your retirement accounts in the event of a lawsuit. All in one episode. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that knows

you can afford anything, not everything. This show covers five pillars, financial psychology, increasing your income, investing, real estate and entrepreneurship, the acronym, Fire with two eyes, double eye fire. I'm your host, Paula Pan, I trained in economic reporting at Columbia, every other episode, ish. I answer questions that come from you, and I do so with my buddy, the former financial planner, Joe Sal C-high. What's up, Joe?

I help Paula put the ish in every other episode, ish. You know, I like to leave some room for flexibility. So normally you are our Tuesday episodes. These listener Q&A is our typical Tuesday episode. But, you know, every now and again, someone goes to a conference or someone goes on vacation or gets sick. And so we will put in an interview on a Tuesday. Plus, you got to keep them guessing. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But the bulk of the Tuesdays, it's with you, Joe. We love Tuesdays. And speaking of Tuesday, that's a terrible segue, but I don't know how else to segue that. Our first question comes from Anonymous. Hey, Paula, hey Joe. Thank you for everything you guys do. I've learned so much from you guys. Really loved this show and I've used it to better lives of everybody in my family.

My wife and I are well on our way to fire and love the idea of using our truly flexible time to spend with our two young kids and help others around our community. I've got the world's best brother-in-law, but he's going through some tough times right now. He has a history of big ideas that are tough to follow through on. In the past, he has hopped from one big idea to the next. He recently split from his about to be ex-wife, went on a beautiful vacation to Mexico, with some friends, stayed in a gorgeous Airbnb, loved the trip, but he's come back with a plan. He is now near certain that he's going to sell everything here, move to Mexico,

buy this Airbnb for $11.5 million, pesos, of course, and live in one of the units while renting out the other two. He's never owned or managed a rental unit before, much less a three-unit place where he's also living in in Mexico, also has an offer from a friend to put up $50,000 with him, who has also never done rentals before. I've got so many questions, so many concerns, and so little time for it. I do want to be the best and most supportive brother-in-law that can be, but I also don't want to watch him jump in over his head. I'm hoping you guys can help.

I know you guys can help. When looking at a rental in Mexico versus U.S., what sort of things need to be considered differently? Borrowing money? I would assume you would have to become a citizen there if he's living there full-time, working remotely for a U.S. company out of Mexico. Please, I don't want to worry as much as I am, and I want to turn it all into support. I know you guys can help, so thanks so much.

Anonymous, thank you for the question. You are the world's best brother-in-law, the kindness in your voice, the genuine concern, the love. I mean, you have a very expressive voice. I can hear all of that. So your brother-in-law is very lucky to have family like you. We have to give him a name, though, Paula. We can't talk too anonymous. I'm trying to think, are there any famous brother-in-law celebrities

or brother-in-law movie characters or book characters? All right. I'm about to say something that's going to be a Harry Potter spoiler. So for people who have not gotten to the end of Harry Potter, please cover your ears. At the end of Harry Potter, Ron's sister, Ginny, marries Harry, which means Ron and Harry become brother-in-laws. And Ron, of course, is so, you know, Ron and Harry are just like best buddies and Hermione, of course, best buddies all throughout their time, and they really support each other and they mutually get each other out of binds constantly.

And so in honor of being such a great brother-in-law, I'd like to know. name you Ron for Ron Weasley. All right. Okay. Harry Potter spoiler over. You can uncover your ears now for those of you who have not yet had the joy. I think this is dangerous territory, Paula. It is wonderful to be worried about your brother-in-law. It's great to not want to see him fail, but you also can't live his life. I wonder what your relationship is. If you're seen as a trust advisor, then being able to give him advice on this could go a long way. If you're not seen as a trusted advisor and are instead seen as the meddling brother-in-law, this could hurt your relationship. I think you have to really tread lightly. The advice, and this is just from all my

years in the advice industry that you really want to be a little bit on eggshells here about how you handle this. It isn't going to be about what you say. It's about how do you put the right velvet on your hammer? Clearly, it sounds to me, this could be conjecture, but it sounds to me like you're against this move. And he's failed at this type of thing many times. And again, I'm putting words into your mouth because you didn't say that you said he has big ideas and he goes from one big idea to another. So I interpret that as he's failed at different big ideas. You see, this is just the next one.

You think it's crazy. You think he shouldn't do it. That's what I got from your note. So I think that if you have trusted advisor relationship and he asks you, should I do it, I would air all that if he directly asks you. But if he hasn't asked you for anything and you take that to him, you could very well get a completely different reaction from him and not what you're hoping for. Wow, Joe, that was not where I thought your answer was going to go.

Wow, this is why I'm glad we both answer these questions because you went straight to the relationship component. My brain went straight to the real estate component. Which is funny because even before we started recording, we were just talking about a different relationship in our lives and talking about the relationship. but I think for you, that's the most important thing. He's going to be your brother-in-law, whether he succeeds or fails at this, right? So to me, if I've got to be at Thanksgiving dinner and I want to be friends with him, then giving advice where it's asked and then being supportive when it's not asked. But being supportive and being duplicitous are two different things.

I don't think you have to say I'm all for this if you're not. I also think that you can be supportive in a way. Like as an example, here's what I was thinking, Paula. I was thinking, assuming that he hasn't been asked for any of this advice, finding good people at Airbnb's and turning them on to those things, those people, those brains who are good at doing Airbnb and going, oh my God, it's so exciting that you're doing Airbnb. You know, I really like this person.

you could even give him the book. You could go, man, congratulations. I want to do this Airbnb. Here's a great book that I know because I listen to financial podcasts, and this person rocks at it, helping him find resources, Paula. Well, here's, my brain can't even get to the relationship part. I just want to dive straight into the actual scenario. Let me get the scenario off my chest and then maybe I can think through the relationship

piece later. But the scenario, I see so many red flags. First of all, it's very common that people will conflate personal preference with investment choice. It sounds like that's exactly what the brother-in-law is doing here. He personally likes Mexico. He wants to live there. That's great. Love that for him.

Where it becomes problematic is the conflation of personal preference with investment decision because those are two completely separate buckets. Your personal preferences are your personal preferences, whatever they may be. And your investment choices need to be the best risk-adjusted return vehicles that are organized in some type of an asset allocation that fits your timeline and fits your goals. And those two are completely disparate buckets. And what often happens, particularly in real estate, is that people conflate the two because you look at a unit of matter, which is a home. and you conflate the dual purposes of the home, right? Because a home at the personal level has the purpose of personal consumption, but at the investment level has the purpose of being a commodity that you invest. Or depending on how you handle it, it's either if it's long-term rental, it's more like a commodity, if it's a short-term rental, it's hospitality. So whether you see it in the commodity sector or the hospitality sector is dependent on how you handle it. But regardless of how you might attribute it to sector. As an investment, it is a spreadsheet-based decision. And as a personal preference,

it's a personal preference. And where people really get into trouble is when they mix the two. Logically, if the goal is to have adequate money such that that money could support brother-in-law's lifestyle in Mexico, logically, it makes sense to buy whatever property, in a completely geography agnostic manner, buy whatever property is going to provide the best risk-adjusted return, and then use that money to support his life in Mexico. I mean, the whole point of money is that it's fungible. It doesn't need to be geographically co-located with where you are, right? I looked up 11.5 million pesos, and as of the day that we're recording this, I know currency conversion can vary, but as of the day that we're recording this, that's the equivalent to $659,000 U.S. dollars, $659,45646 U.S. dollars.

All right, so we're talking about round up $660,000. That is not a small amount of money. If this had been like 50 grand, 100 grand, I recognize. that is also a lot of money, but if this had been a relatively smaller amount in the context of what a person in the U.S. might pay for housing, cool, go, go try your 50 grand flyer. No problem. Well, this is my problem because I hadn't done the conversion and you did. The second that you said the conversion, the very first thing I thought about is if this is two units or three units, I'm looking at I think, I just look at what the rent's going to be. Right. Can you rent those units for enough money

in any even touristy destination to cover what the mortgage cost would be on that type of a property. Well, it's not just the mortgage cost. It's maintenance, repairs, major capital expenditures, vacancies. But even without all that, Paula, the very first thing I thought was mortgage on nearly $700,000, two or three units. How? And then we've got all the cap. stuff. Right. Exactly. There are a couple of things that your brother-in-law or that any real estate investor would need to understand before they buy their first rental property, because that's what this is. It's a house hack rental property with the added complexity of it being in a foreign international location. The first thing that they need to understand is how to calculate the cap rate

stated very simply. The cap rate, first you start with the total amount of revenue that that property can collect. So rent plus pet fees, if there's on-site washer dryer, if there's parking, if there's storage, start with the total amount of money that the property could theoretically collect if it had 100% occupancy. You start with that number. Then once you have that number established, you subtract out a reasonable estimate for vacancies, maintenance, repairs, major capital expenditures. We're talking roofs, windows, flooring. In order to really do those numbers, to run those numbers, you need to know how long do those components last in the location that you want to buy in, because that's going to be very location dependent. The average length of time that

a roof lasts in Mongolia is going to be very different from the average amount of time that a roof lasts in the Philippines because they're subject to very different weather conditions and the roofing materials are often built from very different base material. Right? They're probably not both going to be asphalt shingle roofs. What is the depreciation schedule on every single one of these components, major CAPEX components? How quickly do they depreciate? What is the replacement cost, right? And how do you calendar all of that out so that you know exactly the schedule of roof, window, flooring, siding, water heater, AC unit? So to go back to CAPEX. So you subtract out vacancies, maintenance, repairs, capex, you should subtract out some amount of money

for management, even though he plans on managing it himself. He should still subtract that out so that he can pay himself for his efforts. That way, if he ever decides to move on, which it sounds like he has a history of coming up with the next big idea, like when he wants to pursue the next big idea, if he decides to move on, he has the flexibility to do so and the number stay the same. Right. So then you subtract out the management costs as well. And what you're left with at the end is a number that's called your net operating income. And that net operating income divided by the total acquisition cost of the property, that translated into a percentage. That is your cap rate. And then that cap rate plus some reasonable appreciation estimate is your unleveraged total return. And that's the first number

that you, at anyone, I don't care where you're buying a property, whether it's Kansas city or Mongolia or the Philippines or Mexico. No matter where you buy that property, that is the very, very first number that you need to calculate. That will tell you what that unleveraged total return, unleveraged meaning the return that you get without financing getting involved, because you want to understand the strength of the underlying asset before you start borrowing money for it. Because if the underlying asset is a sucky investment, you don't want to borrow money in order to justify buying an investment that sucks, right? And that's unfortunately what a lot of real estate, the quote-unquote gurus who would just harp on cash on cash return all day long.

When you're over-fixated on cash on cash return, which is a formula that calculates the return that you get relative to the cash that you yourself put into the deal, that's a formula that can often lead to borrowing money to justify a bad underlying asset. That's why I take the kind of contrarian philosophy of always starting with cap rate. So you want to start with that equation, figure out what the cap rate is on the property. And then when it comes to Mexico specifically, a couple of things I'd be looking at, what are the landlord tenant laws in that area? How easy is it to evict somebody for non-payment? What are the financing arrangements in that area? Will a U.S. financial institution even lend on a project like that? Do you need a bank account in Mexico? Will you have

to get financing from there? What are their requirements? What are their interest rates? What are are the property protection laws? You know, what are your property rights? What are the legal rights that you are entitled to or not entitled to? And how are they similar to or different from owning property in the United States? I don't know the answers to any of that. Those are all things that you're going to have to find out. And who knows, maybe you'll do the research and you'll come back and say, guess what? Property rights in Mexico are way better. I don't know. maybe that's the answer. But at a minimum, that is something, that is an answer that you will need to find or that the person who, you know, your brother-in-law will need to find. Same thing with, you know, landlord-tenant laws in the U.S. very based on state. So landlord-tenant laws are not national. They're state-based. So much of this might also depend on the specific location in Mexico and what the laws are in that particular geographic locality. Okay, we talked financing, we talked legal issues, related both to property protection and to landlord-tenant dispute. And then depreciation is major

capex depreciation and replacement costs. That's the other major variable because the cost of everything, you know, in the U.S., we know roughly we can estimate the cost of drywall and lumber and asphalt shingle and copper. We have a pretty good idea of what those prices are here locally. But those prices very country by country. To really get a good understanding of what your renovation costs, your maintenance repair cap-ex costs are going to be, you're going to have to deep dive into what those costs are over there, as well as labor costs, of course. So it's going to require a lot of up-front research to math all of that out to be able to come up with a really good estimated cap rate. And I think this is where the two of us meet, Paula, right here. No, because I think if he's able to get

his brother-in-law excited about the research angle and about that area, then A, if he follows through on the research, then he's going to either lead to this is a good investment or it's not a good investment, but he'll have a depth of knowledge behind him. And it will be easier for him to be supportive of that decision. The thing that always strikes me about people with big ideas who move from one thing to another to another, and this is a gross generalization, but I've seen it enough that I think it applies. It is when it's a big idea that it's sensational and fantastic. And once I have to get down to the minutia, and I have to get down to the boring people, which is where you actually make money, that's when this big idea often goes away because of the

fact that, you know what, this is like any other idea. It's going to take some work. But getting excited about the research to do this the right way on a big investment. I mean, that could be positioned as a lot of fun. And if it was meant to be, then brother-in-law is going to get behind it and will be excited. If it's not meant to be, you'll see, you know, him quickly get bored and move on to the next thing. Yeah. Often success hinges on your willingness to be bored for incredibly long periods of time. Yeah. Be bored and focused for excruciatingly long periods of time. I mean, there's a big moat. You look at most successful entrepreneurs. They had to swim a big moat. And often that moat was filled with all these unenviable things that most people won't do.

Success would be more frequently found if there weren't so many obstacles in the way. I just realized I didn't even mention taxes because in my head I was thinking, all right, if he sells the property, what are the transaction costs going to be? In the U.S. generally, when you sell a property, there's about a 6% transaction cost in addition to closing costs. What is that in Mexico? I don't know. But in the U.S., you can also use a 1031 exchange in order to defer capital gains tax. Does Mexico have an equivalent? I don't know, maybe. Maybe not. And then, of course, what kind of taxes will he have to pay on the property during the time that he's holding it? In the U.S., when you're collecting money on a rental property, that money

is considered a passive gain. I know the phrase passive income is controversial. It's an incendiary term when it's used colloquially, but when I am using the term passive right now, I'm using it in the IRS context. The IRS considers rental income to be passive income. And so rental income is what the IRS refers to as a passive gain. And what that means is the only passive losses can be deducted from passive gains. So if he has losses in other areas, those losses, those losses. will not offset passive gains. And so that's something to consider when you're thinking about the tax implications of, you know, what are the taxes going to be on the revenue? What is the depreciation schedule? Like I talked about the actual in real life depreciation of every major component. Separate from that, there's also the tax depreciation on every major component.

And sometimes, often, the tax depreciation and the actual real life depreciation are nowhere near the same. Fassely different. Yeah. Sometimes you get lucky and they're close. Most of the time, they're nowhere near the same. In order to calculate CAPEX, you want the actual real life reality depreciation. But in order to understand the tax consequences, you're also going to want to know what

the tax depreciation schedule is. And the reason that that matters kind of to zoom out is because everything that we're talking about is how you build wealth through a piece of real estate. You build that wealth through a combination of forced depreciation, market-based appreciation, tax advantages. Holding real estate confers certain tax advantages that you don't get with other asset classes. Then there's the cash flow from the property itself, right? And when you combine all of those, you come up with this particular asset that behaves in a manner and that produces wealth in a manner that is characteristically very, different from index funds. A well-diversified portfolio, in my view, has a combination of

index funds and rental properties, largely because rental properties have all of these characteristics that make them unique from index funds. And so by virtue of having both, you have better portfolio diversification. Now, the question then becomes, how do those attributes change when the governance changes. Because what are we talking about when we talk about going to Mexico? We're talking about a change in governance, which implies a change around a set of policies that influence the way that that asset is treated. I've dealt with this own thing with members of my family who have said, oh, you know, I'd love to have some kind of an investment in Nepal. What Nepal, I don't know if they still do, but for many years, they had these rules around inheritance

in which if you were a U.S. citizen, your heirs could not inherit your property. Wow. Because they don't want property, you know, they want to keep that property in the Nepali citizenry. There were actually investors. Nepal has some of the greatest hydroelectric potential in the world because we have these big, big mountains, which means we have big waterfalls. And when you have big waterfalls, you have huge hydroelectric potential. And Joe's laughing at me.

You know what they say? Big waterfalls. Big hydro potential, if you know what I mean. And so you have all of these investors who are like, they want to develop energy, but they can't own a majority stake in that company because the government's position, I don't know if this is still the case, but at least at the time, the government's position was you can hold a stake, but your heirs cannot inherit it. And that, of course, was enough to scare investors away

and thus leave much of Nepal's hydroelectric potential untapped because there is this set of policies that no rational person would agree to in a world in which capital can flow freely to wherever it is most invited. What are the inheritance laws in Mexico? I don't know. I mean, that's also going to be part of the due diligence, right? You don't want to hold a $700,000 asset in a country in which you don't even know how inheritance works, how estate planning works.

Again, I'm not saying that it's a bad idea. I'm saying it's a, I don't know. I don't know how estate planning works there. I don't know how taxes work there. I don't know the cost of roofing and drywall and flooring and. subfloor, concrete. I don't know what the permitting process is like. I don't know what landlord-tenant laws are like. I don't know how much building has happened. In the specific, this is more location-specific, but in that specific location, is there oversupply? Is there

a lot of building? Is there not a lot of building? How many new permits have been pulled for new construction or how many renovations permits have been pulled? Is it the type of place where there is a relatively transparent and straightforward permitting process? Or do you need a know someone who knows someone in order to get a permit approved in a timely manner. Again, that doesn't mean it's a bad idea. That means these are all questions that would need to be answered before a decision can be made. The good news is it might be the case that you or your brother-in-law does due diligence into every single one of these factors. And the conclusion is that this is actually a fantastic idea.

Which is great. Yeah, that's entirely on the table. Which is wonderful. I would love to see that. Yeah, just be cautious that it's not confirmation bias. In fact, in order to keep it from being confirmation bias, I would compare it to, you know, in negotiation there's this concept called Batna, your best alternative to a negotiated agreement, kind of a fancy way of saying your second best choice. I would compare this to some second best choice. So let's say that second best was taking that same amount of money, $670,000 and buying a triplex in some location in the United States. I would not aim for a high cost of living area. There are many locations across the U.S. that are mid-tier cities with middle cost of living. What would it look like to take that same $670,000 and buy a triplex in Cincinnati? And then how would those two compare? Because when you're

making an investment choice, you're comparing these different options. And if the Cincinnati option is the better choice, financially speaking, if it produces better returns, then again, money is fungible. He can use that money and use the wealth that's built from that investment to live wherever he wants. But the relationship part, that's all you, Joe. I don't know how to deal with that. I can talk to you about the real estate, not the relationships. Good teamwork. Thank you, Ron, for asking that question. And thank you for being such a good brother-in-law. We're going to take a moment to hear from the sponsors who make this show possible. And when we come back, we're going to hear from Mary Ann, age 66, whose IRA has exploded in value, and now she has the wonderful question of what next.

Welcome back. Our next question comes from Marianne. Hello, my name's Marianne. I am retired 66 years old, living off of Social Security and my investments. I haven't touched any of my investments, I only live off of the dividends and the interest. I have an IRA that has grown substantially. It's doubled within the last year and a half. Should I sell those ETFs that I have and either leave it in cash and live off of interest or should I reinvest into other ETFs? I just don't know how to deal with this massive gross of income. Thank you. these are my favorite questions Paula yeah i'm making so much money i don't know what to do yeah yeah exactly what a wonderful problem to have this is great marianne the first question that comes to my mind is what are you

invested in because if it has doubled in a year and a half that means it has certainly outpaced the s and p five hundred it's outpaced all major broad market indices what is that investment in And the reason that I ask that is because I want to know how much concentration you have in any given asset class. What's on my mind right now is asset allocation, which is a fancy way of saying, how is the pie split up between all of these different asset classes? Well, what I think about Paula is if we're talking about taking income from a position and it has grown that quickly, I think about volatility. is this something that's appropriate if we're going to try to skim money off it every month? Generally, high return, something that doubles that quickly will not be an asset class

that is appropriate for a consistent income strategy. And the reason is because even though it's growing great now, if it goes through a trough, which volatility is a two-way street, you're going to end up with a situation where you're taking money from an asset class that later on is down as well. And we want to prevent against that as much as we possibly can too. Yeah. Well, and if this growth has happened in the last year and a half, I'm at a loss to think of any ETF. I can think of one. Like, I can imagine that kind of growth happening in an individual stock, or I should say that kind of growth does happen in individual stocks, I am at a loss to think of any ETF that would see that kind of growth. GLD.

But I don't think that's what it would be. But it's interesting. I mean, we can speculate. But here's the big thing. Just to generally answer the question, we clearly, Marian, need more information. But we can answer this, which is should I sell this position and move it to cash and live off the interest? And the answer is the reason you have so much cash, is because of the fact that you were in an investment that at least kept up with inflation, right? It did way better than that, but at least kept up with inflation. If you move the money to cash, it's much like that old parable about the person with the golden goose. What's the thing you don't want to do with the golden goose?

Slay it. You don't want to kill the golden goose. That parable's so old, right? So we've known this forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. And yet when you see people make the mistake, they make the mistake over and over and over, they slay the golden goose. And the golden goose is your ability to keep up with inflation. If you move it to cash, you will lose your ability to keep up with inflation. So I would not do that unless you're comfortable that you have enough money that even with a loss of buying power,

you have more than enough for you and you want freedom from worry about anything and you're comfortable with the fact that you'll lose buying power for the rest of your life and your financial plan says that's fine, then do it. But that's not most people. Most people need at least to try to keep up with inflation. So the one thing I wouldn't do would be to sell it to cash. I think what we need to start is we need to start with an asset allocation plan for her entire portfolio. How much do you want to have invested in? And I think the way the way that play starts is, Marian, how much money do you need your portfolio to generate? What do you need for it to generate now and what do you need it to generate later?

There's many different ways to make money, right? Specifically three. But you're talking, there's asset appreciation, there's dividends and interest. And there's interest. Which is only definitionally different than dividends. So a lot of people say there's two, but interest and dividends being really different things. There's three. So for your long-term money, capital appreciation is generally the way that you will make money faster,

but you need long periods of time historically for that to occur. So for money that you don't need for the next 15 years, for 10 years, it's going to be better to chase capital appreciation, which would mean, leave the fund in an appropriately invested thing for money you need 10 years from now. If not, if you need the money sooner, then move it to something where you can reliably have it return you money through dividends. But I think that whole argument, Paula, starts with when do you need the money? Which is why it's very difficult for us to be more specific.

Right. I'm thinking about, you know, we had calls. Colin Roche on the podcast recently, and he talked about how most people think about their portfolio with regard to purely to asset classes, but he echoed you, Joe, that people really need to think about their portfolio with regard to timeline. And then very much like you often say, you just match the investment to the timeline. What's challenging about that in retirement is that you don't necessarily know what expenses you're planning for because you don't know what the costs of aging will be.

Necessarily, there will be expenses that come up in your 80s that you will not have in your 60s as a result of health-related limitations. But it's difficult to say what those expenses are going to be, when they'll kick in, how drastic they'll be. I think that's the challenge of planning for those later, particularly the 80s and beyond, because that's when things can change very rapidly. And that's when increases in spending are not discretionary. You know, in your 60s, many of your expenses beyond a certain baseline are discretionary. You want to take a trip.

You want to buy some nice items. There are a lot of discretionary purchases that you can make. And so you have a greater degree of control over that over your budget. whereas in your 80s, you know, if you come to a point where you shouldn't be driving anymore, for example, and you therefore have to rely on Uber or Lyft to take you everywhere, that is a particular type of expense that needs to be accounted for, but that is hard to plan for. So then the question becomes, how do you match the investment to the timeline when you just don't know what your expenses are going to be 15 years from now?

Which is funny because back when I was a financial planner, this was an excuse people would use for not planning. I don't know what my expense is going to be. So why would I make a plan? It's just going to change anyway. Which is why I think planning works so well is if you look at either things continuing or prices going up or my lifestyle inflating and you do these what ifs, it helps you chart that course of what's possible. so that as things change, you know how to respond. If your lifestyle goes above X, I know that my portfolio just can't sustain that. So I can't, I got to figure out what to cut. In other cases, if I find out that my portfolio is more durable, I have more money that I thought that I have, than I can do more things than I thought.

But I know what that limit is, you know? I kind of know what my budget constraints could be. And if I want to change my budget, then I have some idea of what to input and how to look at different opportunities that come around, which is pretty fun. It's really fun. The whole what if thing around financial planning is great. Yeah, none of us have any idea what our expenses are going to be 15 years from now. But going through and looking at, wow, but if they double, I'm in trouble. So what do I do today to make that easier is a pretty powerful place to be. So it always struck me, and people would say that,

I don't know what it is, so I'm not going to plan. When you want to plan more so you know how to take advantage of what comes along between now and 15 years from now. Right. So, Marian, I hope this gives you a structure of an answer. I know we haven't directly said, do X, Y, Z. and we can't give an answer that is that specific or that prescriptive because we don't have all the information. We don't know your life, your goals, your other investments.

We don't have the full picture. But I hope this gives you a framework around how to think about this. And also, congratulations on having such a great problem. Yeah. It is great. We're going to take one final moment to hear from the sponsors who make the show possible. And when we return, we're going to hear from Brandon, who has a question about protection from lawsuits for assets that are in a 401k versus in an IRA.

That's up next. Welcome back. Our final question today comes from Brandon. Hi, Paul and Joe. In a recent episode discussing umbrella insurance and liability, you mentioned that four 401Ks are generally protected while IRAs offer less protection in the event of a lawsuit. You used a hypothetical example of being sued after a car accident to illustrate this. So given this information, is there a case to be made for never rolling over old 401Ks into IRAs?

I believe the exact phrase you used was IRAs are protected to a lesser extent. So I've rolled over two 401Ks in the past. Was that a mistake? And then I've also recently left the job after six years. I have that 401K sitting at a fidelity invested in low-cost index funds. After hearing your episode, I'm hesitant to roll that one into an IRA. Curious for your thoughts and appreciate all that you do. Brandon, I have some great news for you.

You did not make a mistake. Let me kind of explain the landscape and then talk to you about why your rollover was the right thing to do. 401Ks are protected by federal law. IRAs are protected mostly by state law. There's a patchwork of protections for IRAs that's going to be highly, highly, highly dependent on what state you live in. There are some states that will exempt IRAs from creditor claims. other states will not. Some states have a test to see whether or not an IRA is what they call, quote, reasonably necessary for retirement. Some states consider that. Some states don't. And so what that means is that two people who are the same age and have the same IRA balance, but who live in different states, might have completely different IRA exposure, IRA risk exposure, I should say, IRA lawsuit exposure. Now, 401Ks, by contrast, totally different. 401Ks are federally covered.

They're covered by this law that's called ERISA, which is the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. That gives 401K assets virtually unlimited protection from creditors. So if you're in a car accident, if you're sued for a car accident, if somebody files a personal lawsuit against you, if you're in a business dispute, if you are sued for malpractice, The money that's inside of your 401k is generally off limits. And that is, regardless of the balance, there's no dollar cap.

It's federal protection, so it doesn't matter where you live. There are a couple of exceptions. So one exception is divorce. Money that's inside of your 401K can be split up in the event of a divorce. Another is if you owe money to the IRS, the IRS can come after your 401K money. There are very, very, very limited cases where 401k money can be pulled for child support. That's rare, but it has happened. Outside of a couple of cases on the margin, the money in your 401k has the strongest level of protection, and that protection is federal.

So 401K is basically from an asset protection point of view, from a liability point of view, 401K is definitely a lot stronger. But, Brandon, to your question, which is, did you make a mistake when you rolled over your 401k into a roll over IRA, we have good news. Money that's rolled from a 401k into an IRA maintains the protections of ERISA. Roll over IRAs maintain the same protection that a 401K has. It maintains the federal ERISA protection.

So you do not make a mistake. And I'm hoping, and I can't speak on behalf of Paula, Brandon, but I'm also hoping the takeaway from that discussion was not maybe don't roll over your 401K, it was to have umbrella liability coverage. It's a usually incredibly inexpensive coverage for an event which rarely, rarely, rarely, happens, but when it does, can have this serious magnitude that it makes it a great choice for a wide swath of our audience. you know, moving money from a 401k to an IRA, even without the protections, is by far the thing that you want to do, not want to do.

And I usually see leaving money in your 401k at an employer after you leave that employer as a mistake. And from a few perspectives, first of all, we'll deal with the easy one. Behaviorally, the number of times people forget. to continue to allocate that money, to count that money, to make sure it's doing what it should do, it happens so often. It happens a lot. I prefer a more simplified dashboard where as I leave employers, that money rolls over to an IRA where I can see the money all in one spot, makes it far easier to have a good allocation that way. But the second thing is this. Whenever an employer becomes more generous than they used to be.

It's such a big deal, Paula, that it makes the news. They have a big PR event about how this company did something incredibly. And that doesn't mean companies aren't generous. But generally, companies begin generous and then over the course of time, either maintain or cut. If they go the other way and go, hey, guess what? We're going to double your time off for everybody. That's like a huge event. Everybody knows about it, right?

And the reason is, is scarcity. It just doesn't happen that much. The thing that I've seen over my career has been that even if your 401k has phenomenal choices today and their low cost choices today, it's very easy for a bean counter one year, three years, five years, eight years into the future to go, you know what? We could go to an annuity-based plan and we could pass all those expenses on to Paula instead of us pay them ourselves. Or, We could go from a plan that has 20 funds down to one that has five funds and not that less is worse. Sometimes less can be really, really good. Look at the TSP that federal employees use. There's not a lot of choices, but they're really good ones. But often it does come with not just

limited choice, but limited choices and higher fees inside of it. So 401Ks, even if they're great now, they can get ugly in the future. And if it's not a part of our main dashboard, we might not even see that until six months a year, two years, five years later. So I really, really, really prefer that you move your money to an IRA with a major company like a Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab, where I have nearly unlimited choice of what I can do. And then, when I leave the next job, I have just this master IRA. So I have two positions. I've got the 401k where I'm at and I've got the IRA of all the other places where I've worked in the past, all was rolled over. And now I have a very, very simple dashboard where I work now and everything

else. Easier to manage. Easier to see when things change. Much more flexibility. Easier to understand how to move from point A to point B in terms of I want to move out of one investment to another investment so much more simple and so much better. I would never vote against rolling money to an IRA from a 401k, even if Paula had answered the question differently than she did. Well, I do want to add one other caveat. When you roll money from a 401k into a rollover IRA, don't co-mingle that with other IRA assets. Keep it clean. The money that's in your 401K, roll it over into a roll-over IRA,

and then that's it, end of story. But don't co-mingle other regular IRA contributions with that. That way, in the event of a lawsuit, you don't have a bunch of co-mingled funds. And by the way, that's true for any bucket of money. For example, if you have multiple rental properties and you have a separate LLC per rental property, You want to keep each one clean and don't co-mingle, you know, expenses for one rental,

for your Illinois rental with the expenses for your Indiana rental with the expenses for your Iowa rental, right? You just, you keep up all of them separate. And I can see people, Paula, having difficulty with what you just said, you can have a rollover IRA and a regular IRA and a Roth IRA all at Fidelity. Right. By commingling, she doesn't mean don't have. all the accounts at Fidelity. I would have them at one place, Vanguard Fidelity, whatever, Schwab, because you get used to the research tools. I don't want to learn three different ways to

research my stuff. I want one. I want to know how to buy stuff. I want to know how to sell stuff. I want to be able to do that very easily. So I want to learn one thing. So decide where it's going to be, but you can have multiple accounts at one place if you're new to this. That's not commingling. I've seen people that have accounts at five different places, Paula, because they don't want to commingle. And that's not the same thing. Thank you for the question, Brandon. And thank you for drawing attention to the importance of asset protection. I think so often on these shows, we talk a lot about growing your wealth and not enough about protecting it.

Protection is such a big part of the practice of financial planning, but because it's not as exciting. as the growth part, it often gets overlooked. You know, there's an optimism bias, too. A lot of people are like, well, that'll never happen to me. But it's so important to realize things happen. And there but for the grace of God, go I. Joe, we did it again. I can't believe it.

And you're right. We were all over the place. Mexico, retirement planning, asset allocation, asset protection. Holy cow. Yeah. We covered the map. and relationships between Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. And you spoiled it for so many people.

Spoiled Harry Potter. Well, Joe, when people don't want Harry Potter spoiled, where can they find you? Well, if you're looking for a very relaxed variety show with a you can do this air much more like morning drive radio or late night TV, the stacking bedroom. show. I appear on every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Paula appears there as well on Friday episodes. We do a variety of things. It's a variety show for a reason. We'll have interesting guests for Valentine's Day week, Douglas and Heather Bonaparte, our mutual friend, Paula, coming back. We had them on when their book launch, but you know what? It's so much about relationships. And Valentine's Day is Relationship Week. So we talk to Heather and Douglas

about relationships again. And not just relationships. with other people, but relationships with your money, relationships with your job, relationships, you know, and different relationships, your accountability buddies, but whoever it might be. So we're talking relationships, but not just that. We do a TikTok minute where we shine a light on some of the ridiculousness that happens on TikTok, and we talk about a headline in the news. So very relaxed, morning drive radio kind of show stacking Benjamins every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Nice. Doug and Heather are great. They are super. It's so fun. And of course, because Doug's going to be there, we might laugh a little bit. So watch out. Awesome. Well, thanks to all of you for

being afforders. If you enjoyed today's episode, please do three things. First, subscribe to our newsletter. Affordanything.com slash newsletter. It is completely free. And Joe, in your words, completely free and worth every penny. Worth every penny. I love that. I'm going to use that all the time. It's so good. As you know, I've used it on stacking Benjamins for a while, and I yet have to get a laugh. So you can try it too. It is. That is 100%.

I have ripped that from Joe. Totally free. Worth every penny. Affordanything.com slash newsletter. So that's number one. Number two, please open your favorite podcast playing app. Leave us up to a five-star review. And while you're there, please write a few words, write a couple sentences.

tell us what you enjoy about the show. These reviews are incredibly helpful for allowing us to grow the show, to bring in new guests. These are amazing. So thanks to all of you who have left us a review. If you have not done so, or if you did so a long time ago and you want to update yours, please, please do so. I would love to read your reviews. And most importantly, share this with the people in your life.

Share it with friends, family, neighbors, colleagues. Share it with Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. Share it with your... I'm sorry that just... Like, wait, what? Oh, yeah. Share it with your building manager in Mexico. And your Mexico-based real estate agent, insurance broker, accountant, estate planner, contractors, share it with all of those people.

And don't forget to share it with your Schwab rep when you're rolling over your 401K. Oh. Because you can do that. Your umbrella insurance salesperson. and share it with your veterinarian. Not that we referenced them in this episode. I just, I like veterinarians. Here's to veterinarians.

Here's to veterinarians. I'm looking at this photo right now. Uh-oh. Yeah, Tazzy. My buddy Cooper's getting ready to go to hit the veterinarian again. Oh. And our veterinarian, Lisa, is amazing. Cooper is 15 and a half?

15 and a half, yeah. Wow. He's an old, a little bit grumpy, dude. A little bit grumpy. Oh, well, here's to five more years. with him at least. Amen. Well, thanks to all of you for tuning in. I'm Paula Pant. I'm Joe Salci. Hi. And we'll meet you in the next episode.