Afford Anything - Q&A: How to Spot Investment Scams Before You Lose Everything

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

#633: Paul is worried the private equity investment he’s about to make could be a scam. How can he do his due diligence and stay protected when there’s a shortage of reliable information? Rob is questioning the purpose of a bond allocation in his eight-figure investment portfolio. Is he on to something, or is there a legitimate case to add them? Dan can retire in a few years, but he’s itching to do it now. Would buying a business be the key to unlocking an earlier exit from his W2? Former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I tackle these three questions in today’s episode. Enjoy! Resources: Interview with Dr. Eric Cole Interview with Katie Gatti Tassin P.S. Got a question? Leave it at https://affordanything.com/voicemail For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode633 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe, when you were a financial planner, did you ever have clients who got scammed in any kind of wire fraud scheme? Man, I got very lucky. We never had that happen. We'd a few people that got the phone calls. But you know what? We never came close. Everybody that I worked with was lucky enough to not have to happen. You know, I got a creepy phone call the other day, actually, from somebody who was like, they were like. I think you were to say from you. No, no, someone who called and they wanted to talk to me about my Bank of America card. And I was like, I don't have. I have a Bank of America card. Yeah.

And then I got super paranoid when I hung up because I was like, was that one of those AI where they called just to get the AI of your voice? But if any, I mean, if anyone wants the AI of my voice, I've got like a thousand hours of podcast in the public record. Yeah, it might be a few files. This is the most creative one that I've gotten lately. Yeah. I got a docu sign return to me saying that the documents being completed click here.

Ooh. With all the docu sign verbiage and everything. And I'm like, docu sign, what? I mean, it was very official looking. Yeah, so-and-so, counter-signed the document, click here. Yikes, man, you can never be too careful. Well, we're going to tackle a question today from a listener who might have had a very close call with a potential wire fraud scheme and wants to know what he can do to protect

himself against future potential fraud. We're also going to hear from a listener. This is like, can you use a audio testimonial as a success story? He took my advice and his net worth is up $3 million. I mean, cheers to him for he's the one who did the work, but wow. So listen to this show. It can be worth a lot is what I got to say to that. And finally, we're going to take a call from a listener who wants to know if we can put the E in entrepreneur.

All that? All that 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. It's double eye fire. I'm your host, Paula Panta. I trained in economic reporting at Columbia. Every other episode, ish. I answer questions from you, and I do so with my buddy, the former financial planner Joe Sal C-high. What's up, Joe? I put the ish in every ish, other ish episode. We were just talking about that pre-show. We like the flexibility, right? So basically every other episode except when it's not. She's the Paula, I'm the ish. Yeah. Well, our first question today comes from Paul.

Hey, guys, this is Paul from North Carolina. Sorry if you've answered this question before. I just look into diversify my investments a little bit and was looking. a mobile home park fund that seems to have a good track record. I've actually listened to their podcast for a long time. The guy's name is Kevin Bup and the fund is Sunrise Capital. And I literally I had gotten the paperwork and went to the bank to wire them the money. When I went to the bank, the wire number they sent me didn't pull up an account. And so I just put up some red flags. I called the investor relations guy and he said that it was,

I never heard of that before. People were wiring into their account that morning even. So I called a financial helpline, and they were like, how do you know they're legit? And I was like, honestly, when they asked me that, I didn't really have an answer. So I've listened to their podcasts. They're pretty public.

They've raised three funds in the past. Obviously, that doesn't mean for sure. So I guess my question, really, is how do you verify that it's not like a Ponzi scheme? take that whichever direction you want to. Thank you. Paul, thank you for the question. And I actually hear a couple of different questions embedded inside of your question because there's the question of how do you verify the soundness of the investment itself or the investing group? But then there's also the question of how do you

verify when you get wire information that that wire is going to go to the people that you intend it to go to because you mentioned that in this particular case, you gave us the name Kevin Bup from Sunrise Capital Investors. I looked him up and just from a cursory Google search, I mean, I see a robust LinkedIn profile. I see a profile on Bloomberg. I see Facebook pages. I see a website. I see the podcast books, et cetera, et cetera. I'm not familiar with this individual or with this company, but I can certainly see that there's a strong internet presence around him. but there's also the question when you receive wire information, is that wire information actually stemming from Sunrise Capital? Is that wire information stemming from Kevin himself?

Or was it intercepted and is there some scammer who is impersonating them who has sent you wire information? I want to talk about that first because that is particularly when you're dealing with somebody who is in the public sphere, that is a big threat, frankly. You know, it's a big concern. I know, and Joe, you can probably, I'm sure you can relate to this. I've had, without exaggeration, hundreds of fake Instagram accounts that have pretended to be me that have DMed my followers asking them to send money, you know, trying to sell some $5,000 or $10,000. quote-unquote investing course or quote-unquote crypto course. We've got one going on right now on Instagram for stacking benchmarks.

Yeah, there have been, I mean, without exaggeration, literally hundreds upon hundreds of fake Instagram profiles impersonating me, fake Facebook profiles impersonating me. It would not be, particularly when you're talking about wiring money, where you don't have the same protections that you do when you're paying via credit card. the major threat is that a scammer might impersonate this person who's in the public sphere and send you wire information that doesn't lead to Sunrise Capital accounts. It leads to the scammers account. Yeah, that's the issue is that it might not even be regardless.

And we can get into Sunrise Capital in a minute. And this gentleman, Kevin Pupp, that he talks about. But to your point, Paula, it can be a person in the middle who's just watching the transaction. When you wire money, that's like handing somebody cash. Yeah. And so if I'm taking 10,000, 15, 20, 25, 50,000, whatever the number is, and I'm wiring money, man, that's a dangerous, dangerous moment when you release those funds. Right. A few weeks ago, we had a cybersecurity expert come on the show.

His name was Dr. Eric Cole. He was the cybersecurity community. under President Obama. He was the guy whose job it was to give President Obama a Blackberry. And he is now a security advisor to Bill Gates. We talked for a very long time. And in the YouTube comments on that episode, somebody said, and this moved me, they were like, wow, this is maybe one of the most valuable episodes you've ever done. So if you haven't listened to that, please, please, please, go listen to that episode. We will link to it in the show notes, our interview with Dr. Eric Cole.

It was episode number 616. But the chief takeaway is this. Dr. Cole recommends that if you need to wire money to somebody, don't. Instead, give them a cashier's check and do it by physically driving to the bank, walk into a bank branch in person, get a cashier's check made, then go to the office of that person or go to the office of an attorney or some other liaison who represents that person and physically in person face to face hand them a cashier's check. And when you do so, have them show you their ID and videotape with your smartphone, video, the entire exchange.

that is the number one way to transfer money. And it's not convenient, but it's way more convenient than having to deal with the fallout of accidentally wiring the wrong person, accidentally wiring a scammer. I did this myself in December. I needed to transfer $100,000 to someone. I was in Atlanta at the time. I physically got into a car and I drove to a bank branch and I walked into the bank and I said, I need to transfer $100,000. I'd like to make a cashier's check. And the banker actually told me, they were like, you could just wire it. You can just go online and wire it.

So even they didn't understand why I was there doing that. And I was like, nope, I want to sit down with you and I want to do this with a physical cashier's check. And so that's what we did. That's what we did that day. The aftermath of this is horrifying. We did an episode on Stacking Benjamin's Paula back in 2017. with a mutual friend of our Shannon Allen who was purchasing her first home.

She was excited. It took her forever to save $50,000. And this was her personal residence. She had all these dreams to fix it up. She works with the bank. And anyone who's been through a bank closing knows this. They give you wire transaction information, literally the day of the transaction, which is a whole different podcast.

It drives me crazy. Yeah, yeah. She has the $50,000. Minutes before she's supposed to wire this money, it turns out that there is a hacker who is watching at the title company, meaning not a part of the title company broke into remotely the title company computers and saw everything, changed one digit, one digit in the person at the title company's name. So on the surface level, look like the exact same name.

one additional digit said, oh, you know what? I gave you the wrong wire information. Here's the correct wire information. Please send it here. So Shannon, in a hurry, excited about this, gets this second email, goes to the bank, wires $50,000 to a hacker. And by the way, that's not the horrifying part, Paula. The horrifying part was trying to get that money back.

Because again, it's like I handed you $50,000 a cash. All of those things, like when you pay with a credit card, all of these safeguards have been put in place, you forfeit all of those in a wire transfer. Right. Luckily, because she was an online personality at the time that this happened, she raised a huge stink online and finally shamed the banks enough and got the FBI involved that finally, finally. she had some resolution. And only because, not because there was a lot that either bank could do, Paula, but only because the hacker was dumb enough to leave the money in the same account where they had had it sent to. They were able to go back and retrieve the money and retract the transaction because luckily the hacker had left it there.

Had the hacker move the money, which will happen in 99.9% of these transactions, they will have you send it to an account. They will immediately move the money. It's gone. But luckily the money was still there a few days later. So yes, to the greatest extent possible, avoid making wire transactions. And if you absolutely must make a wire transaction, don't ever follow instructions that are sent to you by email because hackers can spoof emails. Instead, you'll want to independently look up the information of the company that you are trying to send it to,

independently look up their website. And bear in mind, hackers can also spoof websites as well. But look up their way. And don't click a link on an email that leads you to their website. Search for their website in an incognito browser. Find the page that claims to be their website. Find a phone number on there. Call that phone number. Independently verify all of the information with the person who answers that call. Bear in mind that even as you're doing all of this, that website might be a spoof, right? So this isn't perfect, but it's certainly better than following instructions sent to you by email. Call the phone number on there, get that information, have a Zoom with somebody from that entity, have them give you that information on the Zoom call,

have them show you their ID into the Zoom camera, and record that entire conversation. Those are the steps that you need to take. If in the work, case scenario, this can't be a face-to-face transaction. But in the best case scenario, make this a face-to-face transaction and physically show up in person, even if you have to board a flight to do it, physically show up in person to hand them that check. I would way rather take one day out of my schedule and pay $200, $300, $400 for a flight, than I would lose a couple hundred thousand dollars. What's $400 on an airline ticket compared to the risk of loss of a few hundred thousand? Worth it.

Worth it. That is, if I have to fly there in the morning and fly back in the evening, that is one day well spent. This to me is parallel, is a parallel argument to people, Paula, who buy a primary residence or buy any property and they waive the inspection. I'm like, why would you waive that? That inspection is your insurance policy. this plane ticket to drop this off is your insurance policy that I'm not stepping into a transaction that's not going to end up well. I can understand advanced investors waiving an inspection.

I wouldn't advocate that for any retail homebuyers. Sure. And especially for your primary residence, I think. Right. Can we talk about the other half of this that Paul didn't ask about? Yeah. Let's talk about this idea of Kevin Bup and the mobile home. investment. I don't know a lot about it, but I think that part of what people have told us they

like about this show is they like hearing about how we think about these things. So let's talk about this because you may be presented with a similar investment. On the surface of it, what I like, I like that you're investing with someone who is public enough that they continually are out in the public eye, they are willing to discuss the investing that they do with the public. I like that. So I like the fact that they're findable. Often I found people want to go into investments and you know, you hear about this. I didn't know who the person was. All of a sudden, they're wonderful. They're there. And then the second I give them the money, they're gone. It decreases the likelihood that that would happen when I'm investing with a person who has a podcast that's been on for.

as long as Kevin's has been on. When it comes to investing in a mobile home park, I want to investigate what are some other opportunities that invest similarly? What are the upsides of investing in a mobile home park? By the way, I'm sure Paul did this piece of work, right? What are the upsides? And what type of return in general would I get from this type of an investment? I want to compare that with just investing in a reet or doing a good property by myself.

Now, the cool thing about investing in Kevin's or someone else's investment is I save time, right? So I don't have to do all this legwork that I have to do if I buy it myself. So maybe it's more applicable to compare it to a reet because a public reet. I'm having some other ownership group that is buying on my behalf. and then I'm taking part in this diversified real estate discussion. But in this case, it's a lot less diversified. And so there's a risk that CFPs worry about that I see a lot of investors don't worry enough about. And it's the specificity risk, which is if I'm investing in one mobile home park or two or three versus investing in 50 different properties spread across different economic regions of the United States of the world,

world. I have this risk that maybe the economy in that area blows up, maybe something bad happens with a tenant in this particular mobile home park and then bad things happen. I get this real risk. So what professional investors will demand is something called a risk premium. And the risk premium is how much more return are you going to give me because I'm investing in your mobile home park than I would get if I just did this very professional open thing that I can trade daily. I mean, a reet. I can go buy a reed fund on the open market. I can buy it.

I can sell it whenever I want. Bam, I'm in. I'm out very professionally run. A lot of oversight from the Securities and Exchange Commission and from the listing place. Like if it's on the New York Stock Exchange of the NASDAQ, I also have some oversight from them. I have far more safeguards when I invest that way. So what am I getting an exchange? for those safeguards. And I'll tell you the reason I bring that up. And again, I don't know this

investment, but this, Paul, is just a question I would ask, which is what's the excess return that I get? And I'll tell you, the reason why a lot of these investments exist is because of the fact that amateur investors don't ask for a high enough risk premium. They will accept, oh, I would get 10 in a reed. You're going to give me 11. That's nowhere near enough. It's nowhere near, near enough return. So what is the return? And that return, by the way, and a lot of the time, again, some smoke and mirrors. And by the way, I'm not saying this is Kevin. I'm not saying this is this investment. A lot of the time also, they will tell you what the return is to the fund, not to you, which is why I would also identify a couple others that Kevin directly competes against.

and I would do at least one more interview, maybe two, just so I can compare the strengths and weaknesses of two or three of these types of investments before I go there. Now, I'd also look it up online. You did this online, I'm sure, Paul. Paula, you mentioned looking it up online. I noticed that they're not accredited by the Better Business Bureau. Companies have to, there's a whole process of that. That's not a big deal that they're not accredited.

The bigger thing is you can complain about any company with the Better Business Bureau. there's been no complaints. There is a complaint on bigger pockets, which is for people that don't know, a big real estate group and they have these online forums, there's a complaint that the salespeople don't return calls when they're supposed to. There's also a complaint from one person that lives in one of the mobile home park saying that Kevin in his group say that they're there for the tenants. And he says that they are not there for the tenants. Now, all that's disputed. And it's not a reason why I wouldn't invest, certainly not a reason why I wouldn't invest in either one of those cases. But they're great things to know and they're fantastic to bring up when I'm finally talking to the sunrise capital. I see this person over here said that you aren't as responsive as you say that you are. What's your response to that? It's a great question. I still might invest anyway.

I mean, and I'm thinking about a mutual friend of ours, Alan Corey, who said that often when it comes to getting a property manager, Paula, The property managers with the worst reviews are often the best ones. And the reason is the property manager has to discern when a tenant is being unreasonable and not being unreasonable. And often the ones who are the best at dealing with unreasonable tenants, the tenants only recourse then is to scream out into the wilderness and tell everybody that this property manager sucks. So Allen actually goes toward a lot of property manager. that are, no, you're paying your rent on time. No, I'm not, I'm not taking your excuses. No, no, no.

This is a business. We're not friends. I'm sorry. You're renting from me. So all of this, I want to know. It's a great data set before I jump in. Yeah. I think the broader fundamental question is when you're doing business with anyone, how do you

suss out whether or not they're a worthwhile company to interact with? with. Again, when you're paying by credit card, you have a certain level of protection. If I purchase gloves or sunblock or any other good or service from a company that I've never done business with, as long as I use a credit card to make that purchase, I know that within a reasonable amount of time, I can, if worse comes to worse, file a credit card dispute and there will be some level of protection. I think where the added risk comes in, Paul, is when you are doing business with an entity

through which there is no third party protection. And for that, I would need a very, very, very high risk premium. Yeah, this is most probably organized as what's called a syndication. And in a syndication, the only thing that you are betting on is the person who's running it. Yeah. That is your only assurance. So now we get into how long have you been doing this?

We report a story in stacking Benjamin's Paula just over a year ago about someone running a syndication in Dallas. This is from the Dallas Morning News that had huge reet failure, monster reed failure. And it turned out, Paula, people had given this gentleman all of their retirement, like every dollar of their retirement. And here's the kick. The guy wasn't crooked. he just didn't know what he was doing. He had no idea. He'd never done it before.

And the question, the only thing that you have when it comes to a syndication is, how long have you done this? How many transactions have you done? How many years? How many transactions? What are the size of the transactions that you've done? I need to see those in writing. I need to officially see those. I can't just take your word for it.

Because into syndication, you're investing in a new investment, not the ones that we're successful before, you're investing in something new. So even if they've done this for 15 or 20 years, it can still go bad. Right. And so investing all of your retirement money like a bunch of people did, millions and millions of dollars worth people did, this guy was a phenomenal talker, just a great talker, had all these big visions. It turned out he'd never done one of these before. Oh, so he wasn't crooked. He was just incompetent. Just incompetent. So you can't even get him for anything then, you know? Right. Right. He didn't break any of the rules. The money's just gone. So I worry about that also. But, and that's not part of Paula's question, but I thought that since we're on

this topic, when I'm investing in a syndication, which can be, can have phenomenal endings. There are advanced investors, Paula, who invest in syndication after syndication after syndication and do very, very well. But there is a level of risk that you're taking on. I would never invest all of my money in a single syndication. Yeah. Paul, I hope that helps as you navigate the risks associated with doing due diligence on a company, any company that you find online. And again, prior to your call, I've never heard of Kevin.

I've never heard of Sunrise Capital. I'm not commenting on them. I do not know either this individual or that company. And so I cannot comment on either one. Yeah, me neither. Neither of us have heard of them before and neither of us have done the due diligence on them. I actually have heard of Kevin, by the way. Oh.

I have heard of Kevin Bup. I've run across his show before. I've never listened to it, but I have heard of him, Paul. Oh, okay. Well, I've never heard of him. I can't comment on him. But it's, this is more, these are general comments on how to assess and do due diligence on any group that you find.

And beyond that, how to. put some protections in place so that a hacker impersonating him doesn't get in the way. Because that's going back to the people who have impersonated me, I know people who have had entire Facebook message conversations with someone who they thought was me. With fake Paula. Yeah, it's scary. I'm aware of at least two instances. One was a friend of my parents, an old family friend.

friend. You know, this is somebody who knew me when I was a child. And so she follows the Afford Anything Facebook page. Some scammer reached out to her. She thought that she was messaging with me, right? And she was like, oh, she calls me Pragya. That's my Nepali name. Oh, Pragya, so good to hear from you. I've been watching a year. You're doing so well. I'm so proud of you. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And then they start pitching her and selling her on some stuff. And fortunately, it was getting weird enough that she asked my parents, she was like, you know, this doesn't really sound like Prugya, like, you know, and so we caught it. But, I mean, it's just terrified. These are people who know me who genuinely believe that they're having a conversation with me.

And so I know that happened. And I also know separately another instance in which a friend of a friend thought that she was messaging with me. And then we both went to Greece. We met each other in Greece. So it was a big group of friends. And she started talking to me about this Instagram DM conversation that we, quote, unquote, had had. Oh, man. And I was like, I was like, what are you talking about?

Came to find out that some hacker impersonating me had been DMing with her. So that's the other thing to be wary of. When people are in the public eye, they get impersonated a lot, particularly when you're in the public eye about a money-related topic. So be cautious about that as well. And if you choose to go through with this investment, buy a plane ticket, meet him in person, hand him the cashier's check in person. Well, the cool thing is, is if he has any other properties that are local as well then, you might be able to go on a personal tour and see some of the other properties that they own, which I think would be a great due diligence trip as well. Yeah, exactly. And if you organize this investment as a business, there may them be an opportunity also to use it as a business expense.

That's something you'd talk to a CPA about directly. Right. So thank you, Paul, for the question. Speaking of real estate. Oh, ninja! Yeah, look at that. Our next call comes from someone who took a piece of advice for me and made $3 million. I got to do a victory dance on that.

Oh, no. Well, I can't claim the credit. He's the one who did the work. He's the one who added value to a deal. Oh, I totally claim the credit. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Totally claim the credit. Rob, this is all, Paula.

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The holidays are right around the corner and if you're hosting, you're going to need to get prepared. Maybe you need bedding, sheets, linens. Maybe you need serveware and cookware. And of course, holiday decor, all the stuff to make your home a great place to host during the holidays. You can get up to 70% off during Wayfair's Black Friday sale. Wayfair has Can't Miss Black Friday deals all month long. I use Wayfair to get lots of storage type of items for my home, so I got tons of shelving. That's in the entryway, in the bathroom.

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We met briefly at the Choose Five San Diego meetup. You've graciously answered two of my questions before, one on stock versus real estate allocation, and another on choosing a value-add deal versus buying more VTI. I bought the deal, which was your advice, and my net worth is up over $3 million since then. Thank you so much. Today's question, I'm an $11 million net worth with a $17.3 million real estate portfolio and $9.8 million in equity. My liquid side is 100% VTI or cash reserves for the real estate portfolio. No bonds. If more than half of my wealth is in diversified income producing real estate, do I still need a bond allocation? If so, how much and why for someone whose career and

balance sheet are already heavily tied to property and split between index funds and real estate? Thanks in advance for hopefully taking my third question and keep up the great work. I really appreciate all you do. Rob, first of all, congratulations on everything that you have Bill, I am so thrilled for you. What an incredible success story. As to your question, and Joe and I have not discussed our answer beforehand, so I am very curious to see if we are going to agree or not. My answer is very straightforward. No, you do not need a bond allocation as long as you are not currently in retirement, as long as you are not currently in the drawdown phase. And frankly, even if you are in retirement or in the drawdown phase, you still may not need a bond allocation.

If you're actively earning income, you definitely don't need a bond allocation. That's my position. Joe? I think, Paul, you're completely wrong. And no, no. By the way, before I get to my answer, I have to say, Rob, I follow you on social media. And my favorite Instagram post of yours are the ones where you have a cigar in one hand, a glass of wine in the other. You're in your hot tub.

I don't see the hot tub. I just see the glass of wine and the cigar and I see the ocean across the street from you. I'm always jealous, Rob, every time. But had I known that those cigars and glasses of wine had to do with Paula's success at helping you, I would have felt differently about those things. But so I think there's a difference between need and want here. I agree with Paula that if you have a. enough income producing property in your portfolio that even if you needed income streams,

that that gives you enough, there is zero need for a bond allocation. Also, the fact that you have seen over the last several years when the market takes dips, you've watched your own behavior to see how you act. That tells me you're comfortable with what we call the standard deviation in the portfolio or the wiggle in the portfolio, right? And if Rob, doesn't have any bonds now and is not responded negatively to that and can imagine yourself in a place where you're withdrawing income and you're still comfortable with that, I would still stick with your allocation that you have currently. There is, frankly, the only thing that bonds are going to do is cap your upside potential. I mean, that's in the big long world. What it will do

as a positive measure is while it caps your upside potential, it will also make the ride smoother for people that don't like the gyration of having money all in long-term assets like real estate and stocks. But for you, no, I think just the little bit that you described and a little bit that I know about you, I think you don't need a bond. Oh my goodness, we agree, Joe. Well, the place that I disagree. Rob does not need a bond allocation. Well, but just to be clear here, that doesn't mean everybody doesn't because I've met so many investors who have said, I'm very comfortable with risk and then they're not, right? There's a lot of know yourself here, which is why need versus want. I want to draw the line there. You know what's interesting? I was thinking about,

remember back in early April when the markets just tanked? Do you remember that? Yes. We started getting emails, DMs. I started getting, I'm sure you did too, Joe, flooded with messages from people who were like, I'm so worried. The sky's falling. The sky is falling. My portfolio is crashing. I look at what my portfolio balance used to be and it's not that anymore and I'm freaking out. What's funny is that when the market recovers, I never hear the opposite.

right? No one ever messages, like we don't get inundated with messages from people being like, I'm so happy. Look at their recovery. We're essentially the like negative Yelp review of the stock market. Like when the stock market is doing poorly, we get flooded with messages. And on the stock market's doing well, it's crickets. It's just total silence. Everything's like it should be. But Paula, when it goes up like that, that's not your fault. That's their fault because they're a phenomenal investor. You mean it's their win? Well, yeah, I just like the emotional roller coaster. Like, when you're high-fiving yourself and you think that the world's great and you're incredibly smart as an investor, that's actually the time of greatest risk, right? When the market

is low and you are in this state of complete despair, it's generally, not always, but generally the time of greatest opportunity during those times. I remember, I remember. I remember. a mentor of mine early in my career saying, imagine if you were on an elevator every day where your two choices were sore or plummet, because that's the way the media is going to describe what happens every day of your career. The stock market soared today. The stock market plummeted today. And so you just got to get used to that roller coaster. And clearly, if you're somebody who wrote on social media that you're worried, and by the way, no judgment here because I get worried, which is why I have a more conservative allocation than I would if I didn't have those feelings.

Because for me, it does matter. It does matter. And I don't sleep that well at night. So I've realized that my picks, my investment picks are not as aggressive as they could be. And it's purely sleep at night. And do I understand the fact that I'm holding back from some potential returns? 100%. Absolutely. Well, and it's a very rational fear. If you look at the history of the stock market, the history of the stock market is littered with crashes. Look at the flash crash of 1962. Look at pretty much the entire decade of the 1970s with high inflation, right? Look at the 1980s with stagflation and a bold oppression.

And then you had Black Monday of 1987. And then you look at the dot-com crash, the big run-up in the 90s followed by the dot-com crash. And then there was 9-11. And then there was the Great Recession of 2008. The history of the market is the history of lots and lots of crashes. And frankly, in the United States, historically, so far, we've been lucky. We haven't been Japan. But we could be.

We did have a time from the early 2000s, Paula, a long time where the S&P 500, it took it forever to get back to zero, just to get to zero return. The last decade. Exactly. We had a lost decade in there. And so it is absolutely rational to be worried about the stock market and to choose to invest more conservatively if that's how you feel. And so, Rob, you and I, as real estate investors, are hedging our risks in a different way. because as buy and hold real estate investors, we have a significant portion of our portfolio

that is oriented towards a predictable and reliable stream of income. That's what we've created by virtue of creating rental income. And that is our way of offsetting some of that risk. And because real estate is the income portion. of our portfolio, we don't need bonds because bonds otherwise would be an income portion of a portfolio. So as real estate investors, we can have a portfolio that is all equities on the stock side, all VTI or other broad market index funds, and all rental real estate on the income side. So it's perfectly fine for anyone who has.

a large allocation of rental real estate holdings to not have a bond allocation. But I also do want to say, for the sake of everybody, if you choose to have a bond allocation, there's no shame in that. I support either decision. But I myself, Rob, follow the same example that you've outlined. I have no bond allocation. I think of the rental income portion of my portfolio as my income investments. And bonds are an income investment. What's funny for me is that I'm all stock allocation as well, but I'm further down the efficient frontier than I would be if I was more comfortable with a higher standard deviation. So my portfolio has more large companies, more boring companies in it because of that. But I think there's a lot of people, certainly a lot of people that were clients in mine that would still look at my allocation go, you're really aggressive. but I backed it down specifically so that I don't blow up my own plan.

You know, I realized I shared in a previous episode my allocation for my Roth IRA, my 401K, and my taxable brokerage. But there were two accounts that I forgot to mention. One is my HSA and the other is my donor advised fund. Since you brought up asset allocation, just to talk about both of those real quick. my HSA, I have invested in the Paul Merriman for fund portfolio. So it's 50% large cap, 50% small cap. And my donor advised fund, technically I can't reallocate it. I can only issue a recommendation because once you put money in a donor advised fund,

it is technically no longer yours. But just last week, I issued a recommendation for the donor advised fund to get reallocated into purely a one-fund portfolio, which would be a total stock market index. So, yeah, I'm going zero bonds on all of them. Across the board. Yeah, across the board. No bonds in taxable, in 401K, in Roth IRA,

in HSA, or in not even in the donor-advised fund, which is where withdrawals come out more frequently, assuming they take my recommendation. I don't think it's common that they would reject a recommendation, but it would be interesting if they did. Could I appeal that? Congratulations on the success, Rob. Yeah. We're going to take one final break to hear from the sponsors who support our show.

And when we return, we're going to put the E in entrepreneur. Welcome back. Our final question today comes from Dan. Hello, Paul and Joe. This is Dan. and I was recently contemplating my retirement. I have a question and a brief challenge. For background, I'm 56, my wife is 55.

We have about $1.7 million in retirement, $600k in Roth, and the balance in pre-tax. We have about $450K and after-tax. My wife and I started side hustles recently, hers in 2022 and mine in 2024, and they cover about 20% of our living expenses. Our current plan is to continue my W-2 job and plan to work another three to four years, and then sometime around age 60,

start living off of our savings, after-tax savings, plus our side hustle, for about five to seven years. After that, we'd be able to go into full retirement, knowing that we've got the last double on a retirement money. We're definitely post-fine, and probably pull the trigger now if we were frugal, and to include the Social Security in our plan. My question, I was recently presented with an opportunity for the purchase of a business in which I would work full-time.

I signed the NDA, reviewed the financials, talked to the bank about an SBA loan, etc. I'm not sure this specific purchase works out, but it got my brain working. What if I purchased a business to replace my income? I've enjoyed running my side hustle, but would not scale to full time. I read the Sopozy's book and really enjoyed your recent podcast with Grant Sabacier, and I'm in the process of getting his book. My questions are, how would this fit into my five plan? I'd like to take the down payment from my retirement savings using rule of

or using other some after-tax money. What are some good sources to learn about buying a business? Unlike FI, there are very few trusted resources in this area. How do I find a good advisor for this? Overall, what framework should I use for making this decision? Lastly, my challenge is for you and Joe to lean into the E from the double-eye fire. You both have started multiple businesses, and I really think the community could benefit greatly from your sage wisdom and entrepreneurship.

Thank you for your health. Dan, thank you for the question. I love the plan that you have. I love the mindset. I love when you talked about taking advantage of the last doubling because that is so critical. With all of that said, let's get to the heart of your question. What if you purchased this business? So a couple of things come to mind right away.

One is that purchasing a business, buying a business is a very different game than starting one from scratch. And one could argue that buying a business in some ways might have less risk associated with it because the business has a solid track record. It has an established brand. It has an established customer base. It has operations. It has employees. And to that extent, it has some degree of stability and some degree of predictability.

by contrast, it also has all of the flaws, problems, weaknesses, pain points that have already been part of it. If you imagine, I guess the analogy that I would use would be buying an older home. An older home has a lot of character. And it's got some things that need to be fixed, but it's also got some things that are really unique about it. that are difficult, if not impossible, to replicate. Now, with regard to how much risk this is going to carry, a lot of that is going to depend on what type of business we're talking about. If this is a doggy daycare,

I've literally no idea what type of business this is. Let's just say hypothetically, this is a pet boarding and daycare facility that is in a small to mid-sized city. All right, that's a relatively stable business. It's not going to get replaced by AI. AI can't board your dog. Even if it does have some operational pain points,

maybe it has kind of a weak tech stack, maybe it has messy SOPs. Those are all very, very fixable problems. and you can come in and add quite a bit of value and make it run a lot better. So I would be far more inclined to go for a business like that where the brand is established, the customer base is loyal, the offering itself, you know, dog walking or dog boarding is not something that is at risk of getting usurped by big technological changes. and any problems that may have are likely going to be highly fixable.

By contrast, if it is a graphic design shop, I'd be a little bit more wary, particularly because we don't know where we're going to be with AI in five years. I want to talk just big picture, Paula. This idea, Dan, of owning a business, I think, can either be your best friend or your worst enemy just depending on how you approach it. It is your best friend when the business works for you, especially as close to a full retirement as you are. It's your worst enemy if you end up working for the business. And this is the problem and the trap I believe most entrepreneurs fall into is that you start off with great intentions. Your goal is to bring something to market, but also have it

be something that supplements your lifestyle and fits. into your lifestyle. You get to use some creativity. You get some nice cash flow. You're a part of a community. You're leading others. What tragically usually ends up happening is you end up at the whims of whatever the business needs and you find yourself working around the clock to satisfy needs of fickle customers and you become a victim of your own success in a lot of ways. It's not that you're failing. It's that you're so good at things and the business is doing so well that you end up just. So, Joe, what I hear you saying is the question then becomes the first question is, do you want this to be a lifestyle business?

Or do you want this to be a business business? Yeah, and based on where Dan is in life, I'm assuming you want it to be a source of cash flow and of purpose. and not something that he's working 24-7. I could be wrong, but when he leads off with, I've got this side hustle, and I have this career that I work in, but I'm thinking about instead buying a business that supplements my income enough that I can get rid of the job working for somebody else. I think the intent then is to go more smoothly into this full retirement. Yeah.

Well, Dan, I guess that would be the first question I would ask you. Are you looking for a lifestyle business or are you looking for a business that you can really scale and grow and see what this can turn into? And there's no right or wrong answer there. It's whatever you want it to be. But if you are looking for a lifestyle business, then there are a couple of points that I would make. One is don't have any type of a business in which you yourself become the bottleneck. Katie talked about this. Money with Katie?

She sold her business. She said this in the interview that we did. You can go back and listen to that episode. But she made this comment in that interview. She said, hey, word of the wise, don't put your name in the title of the business if you ever want to exit. She was like, I started a business called Money with Katie. Then I sold that business because she sold it to Morning Brew. And she was like, but I could never really exit it because it's called Money with Katie.

What am I going to have money with Katie without Katie? Got to find a Katie. Got to find some buyer named Katie. So there are certain types of businesses in which you yourself become the face of the business or for some other reason, even if you're not necessarily a public face, there's some reason why you are the bottleneck in that business. And when that happens, you functionally own a job. You are the owner of the job that you have. And that's great. but that is not a lifestyle business.

That is owning a job. Yeah. And even if your goal is to have a job-based business, I think that still becomes a problem because of the fact that the business that is tied to a single person instead of tied to a series of actions that the business needs to take. Right. So even for companies where it's not a lifestyle, where, you know, my goal is to grow it big.

If I want to grow up big and I call it money with Joe, I then, have just in the naming completely to your point, Paula, I've created the bottleneck in the name. Well, look at the Dave Ramsey podcast, right? Ramsey Enterprises is massive. That's obviously not a lifestyle business. That is a massive, I mean, a behemoth of a company. From sitting at your and my vantage point where we are watching Ramsey, not every day, but of course, they work in a spot where they're very visible. And you and I being in that arena, we see what they're doing, the struggle they had over the last 15 years of broadening out the brand away from Dave Ramsey. And I would suggest that while it's going very well, finally, it still is in,

it took a massive undertaking to turn it from Dave to Dave and company. Right. So I think you just want to always ask yourself, is the business working for me or am I working for my business? Which one's happening? I like the books that you're talking. talking about, I love Grant's work, read that. I like what Cody says. I also like the way that Cody coaches. I love Cody. There are a couple of other books, though, that I would say are really the first two that are spot on for me. Number one is the E-Mith, because I think you'll realize that then the less you're there, the better the business is going to operate, which is the conundrum that entrepreneurs deal with all the time. You want a system-oriented business,

not a personality-driven business, and the E-Meth will teach you to do that. I think that's required. I'm going to put an asterisk here. I want to first kind of take the step to establish the different types of businesses, because there's nothing wrong with having a personality-driven business. It's just that if you have a personality-driven business, then you own your job. And if you want to own your job, that's great. Do it. absolutely. You could have a great deal of joy doing that. But that is a very different type of undertaking than having a system-driven business. No, no, it's not. No, it's not. It shouldn't be. Because even if I'm doing it all by myself, what the E-Mith will help you do is still compartmentalize.

I need to spend time on this division of task. Then I need to spend time on these divisions of tasks in these divisions. I'm not talking about doing it all by yourself because obviously you have an entire back office of support. I'm talking about if you have a personality-driven business, then you yourself are very, very tied into that business. You can't leave that business for a prolonged period of time because you're so tied in. By contrast, if you have a system-driven business, let's look at the doggie daycare, for example. If you can get that doggie daycare really running smoothly and you have a great team, great operations, great SOPs, a great manager, you can completely exit that business and it can become very passive or very residual in a way that

owning a job with a personality driven business never could be. I'm not talking about doing it, you know, a one-person entity versus a multi-person team that's separate. I'm talking about with a personality-driven business, you must always be there. And with a doggy daycare, it could become a residual business in time. I still think even so, the E-Meth is the first book I would read. It is still the first book, because whether you're present or you're not present,

and I'll tell you what happens if you are present, which is actually the person in the book, because the book's written like a story. The big problem that entrepreneurs have is that they are passionate about one piece of the business, but the piece that they're passionate isn't where they end up spending their time often. And if they are able to organize it so that they spend their time on the piece that they're passionate at, that's one win. But the second win is you can't just, and these are Michael

Gerber's words, the author of the E-Mith, you can't just abdicate the rest because this is what people do. Paula, I do not like bookkeeping. You're going to be my bookkeeper. You're going to take that. Okay. Thank. Oh, thank goodness. I don't got to deal with bookkeeping anymore. Then Paula has all kinds of questions about doing the bookkeeping. The next thing you know, Paul is like, screw this. Why am I, why am I doing? I'm not getting any leadership. I'm not getting anything. I'm not getting any, I mean, people that work for you also have to have a way that they're delegated to. And I think the E-Mith really fleshes out how to get that done. So I think regardless of what type of business, if you're going to be an entrepreneur for the first time, I still think read the E-Mith first.

And the second, I mentioned this guy before, but I think you need to then also think about, especially where you are, Dan, you need to think about building a business to sell. And even if you have no interest in selling your business anytime soon, the frustration that I've always had is some event comes along that changes your time horizon and you have not built the business to sell. And suddenly you need to sell and you can't sell. and your business goes by the wayside. Not only can the business bring in cash flow, but what a lot of mom and pop, as they call them, entrepreneurs,

a mistake that they make is that they don't realize the business also has value to a potential investor in the future. And if you build it right from the beginning, not only is it going to work for you instead of you working for the business more because you built it to sell, it will then operate without you,

which makes it easier to sell. and you will have more life satisfaction, regardless of whether you're building it for something, for the passion that you have to do this thing or just to create an income stream. Regardless of all that, if you think about building it to sell from the beginning, you're going to make a lot of decisions that you won't regret later.

Let me give you the biggest one that I see. I see entrepreneurs that are ready to sell their business, Paula, and I'm the person evaluating their business and whether I want to buy it or not. And I come in and I go, hey, so let me see the books. That's a funny thing about the book show that I only make $35,000 a year. Wink, wink, wink. The business really makes three times that. But I've been organizing things in a way with my accountant or without my accountant, whatever,

that this business minimizes cash flow so that I now don't have to pay much in taxes. If I were organizing my business to sell, I wouldn't have done any of that. And I would also sleep better at night, knowing that the IRS is not just one or two steps away from me. But, Paula, the number of times I've had conversations with business owners that over the short run think, oh, hey, I could live on more tax free because I run this business. So you're talking about heavily cash-based businesses? Heavily cash-based businesses that are taking money out the back door. it's almost impossible to sell that business. I don't want to buy a business like that.

I don't want to be involved with a business like that. Even if it's cash-based, I want all that above the board on the books. I want it all systematized because the multiple that I'm going to get on selling that business is going to be way unbelievably higher. And I'm going to have more people that are going to go, okay, yeah, I want to buy this business. but if I have to figure out the IRS the day after you sell to me, let's say you sell to me and then the IRS comes knocking a week later. Hey. Yeah, you don't want that on your, you don't want that headache on your hands. Yeah, like all of this is just, it's a massive short term and obvious trap that a lot of,

sadly, a lot of entrepreneurs I've run into, run into that trap and you want nothing to do with that. So for that reason, I like John Warlo's, and I've mentioned him before too, John Warlow is built to sell. John, by the way, also is a good advisor in that area because you talked about who's a good advisor. John Warlow is a guy of a ton of respect for that the reason he has the whole built to sell brand is that he coaches people on setting up businesses that are built with that end game in mind. Dan, I'll tell you what I did that I have found most valuable inside of my company is I hired a fractional COO. This is really cool. Oh, my goodness. One of the best things I've ever done because we were growing and we were adding these team members,

but it was all very hodgepodge. There were all of these tasks and they were, there was ambiguity as to what task would fall to whom and who was responsible for what. And so I hired a fractional COO and she came in and she just cleaned everything up. She built a better organizational chart. We had, we had an organization. chart, she built us a better one. And then she wrote very clear job descriptions for every single person on the team. And she kind of gave new job descriptions and job assignments to various people on the team based on our skills assessments. So she had us all take the Colby A assessment. I love the Colby assessment. She did in-depth interviews with us. There's the Colby. There's the Disc

assessment. There are all kinds of assessments in which you find various strength. and weaknesses of different types of team members, and you can use that to make sure you put the right people in the right role. She looked at our Colby. She looked at our disc. She looked at what it is we're already doing. She looked at what it is the company needs to do. And she going to reassigned all of our roles and gave us very, very clear job descriptions

and then created a organizational chart. So we all knew how what we were doing and how that fit into the broader scope of things. And then the next thing she did was she put us on much, much more robust project management software. She helped us streamline and really tighten our tech stack. Now we're currently in the process of her guiding us in how to create these SOPs, standard operating procedures, that then integrate with this far more robust project management software. We had a knowledge base that was like kind of floating around like a big Google Drive folder and then also a Dropbox folder. Like we were really running out of a, you know, this company out of a lot of like Google Drive and Dropbox.

And she pulled us out of that and cleaned off our knowledge base, cleaned up our SOPs, cleaned up our project management system overall. Hiring a fractional COO was probably one of the single best business decisions I've ever made. Dan, what I would do if I were you, if I were looking to buy a business, the first questions that I'd ask beyond can I see your books operationally are can I look at your project management system? Can I look at your SOPs? Can I see your org chart? Can I see your job descriptions? And can I see your onboarding process for new employees? Those are five things, right? Let me tell you, Dan, I get excited if they don't have those. And the reason I get excited is because I can put those in place and I understand how valuable those things are and the current owner does not.

And if they don't, I can then drive value into this business that did not exist. But if they don't have those, then you need, it should be priced accordingly. Absolutely. You need a discount premium. We talked earlier about a risk premium. For this, you need a discount premium if the company doesn't have those. No, but I think, Paula, it will be discounted already. And most of the businesses that I've looked at, it's discounted already because I can build

the multiples that the business is making much more quickly. Businesses are sold based on profit, right? I mean, there's different ways to buy business, but the most popular way is X times profit that that business brings in. So if the business right now is earning X amount of money and I can drive this system down and I can then double that or triple that because of better systems, I can take advantage of the fact that this business has intrinsic value. There's gold in those hills that the current owner does not realize.

My biggest problem when I go buy a business, if I buy a business that's already optimized, that business that's already optimized is going to demand a multiple that I, can't squeeze any more juice out of? Well, just because it's optimized doesn't necessarily mean that the revenue reflects that. I can think of certain businesses that have much, much better SOPs than we do. But their revenues are a lot lower. Where you can make it a higher revenue number. If you went in and bought it, could you make it then a higher revenue number?

Like how do you justify the upside in that purchase then? Yeah. So, well, there's one particular business that I'm thinking about in which I know. And this is much more of a one-person shop. But I know the proprietor, the tracking, the UTM codes, the tagging, the segmentation. I mean, the all the back end is so just perfect. I mean, it beautifully, beautifully run. But the front end, the marketing, the sales, the public facing element just isn't there.

There has to be, there has to be some place. There has to be something that you can improve. fairly easily, I think, when I'm evaluating a business, there has to be something that I can improve easily that's going to make this a business that I want to buy. I do not want to, I do not want to just sign up for something that is going to be, that is so optimized is going to be incredibly difficult to. Right. And so I guess so my, so then my point, Joe, is that the back end can be absolutely optimized, but if the front end, the public facing side isn't there, then that actually might be the best possible business to buy because the operations are totally

nailed in, but the revenues don't reflect it because of the fact that the marketing just isn't there. Beautiful. Right? And so then that's the element that you come in and bring in. Beautiful. So in that regard, I mean, personally, I would rather buy a business like that where the operations are in place, but the marketing sucks.

because for me, I'm better at the public facing side than I am at the back end side. And that's what I was going to bring up next, Paula, because that reflects your individual expertise. I think Dan looks at his expertise and goes and says, what am I really good at here? And if this is what the business is not as doesn't excel at yet, and I can bring that to bear with my unique talent. And the rest of it, the stuff that I'm not great at is already optimal, beautiful. Yeah, so then, so Dan, my question to you is, are you, are you a better operator? Are you a better marketer? Are you a better, are you better at sales? Where are your strengths? You know, and how do you find a business that is solid at everything else, but that lacks in the area where you're strong? Going back to my previous statement, part of the reason for me that hiring a fractional COO was such a game changer is because operations is where I'm weak. And so functionally, I hired someone who had a specialized skill set in the area in which I'm weak. So Dan, I think that's how I would approach this.

Start with, do you want this to be a job that you own or do you want it to be a lifestyle business that can become residual in time? And either answer is fine. It's just what do you want? And then, yeah, from that, how do you? do you find a business that is strong in the areas in which you're weakest and that is weak in the areas in which you're strongest? Those are the two questions I would ask, the two broad questions I would ask to get started. I hope it's a doggy daycare. That sounds like a fun one.

Doesn't it? That just sounds like a fun business to operate. No. For you. And that's why you start with what lights you up because no reptile and amphibian daycare aviary daycare could you imagine that bird boarding right that'd be great just don't just make sure they don't fly away I have good news and bad news. Your bird seems very happy. That's the good news. The bad news is it's up there. So thank you, Dan, for that question.

What a great discussion. I love, love, love, love, love, love, love, just that question. And I ask myself this all the time with Stack and Benjamins, Paula, is the business working for me or am I working for the business? And there are times when I am working for. for the business. And that makes me think, what needs to change? Because the business should always work with me. That's the great thing about being an entrepreneur. It's why we get into it. It's why anybody would own a business. So it works for you, which goes back to your question

of intent. Right. Well, Joe, I think we've done it again. Again. High five. Joe, where can people find you if they'd like more of your sage wisdom? Sage wisdom at the Stacky Benjamin's show every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Mondays, we dive into a current topic like all the new tax law stuff that's come out recently, Paula, and starting to sort through those. How do we make the most of that? On Wednesday, we have phenomenal mentors like the Paula Pant, diving into negotiating some of the greatest minds on Wednesdays and then Fridays. We have a nice fun roundtable discussion with a topic like, are you in or out? Which, which, which, we're getting ready to record right now, I deliver to our roundtable contributors a statement

that is controversial. And then Paula has to tell me and Jesse, and in this case it'll be Don McDonald from talking real money joins us, are you in or out on that statement? And it's interesting because then we start talking about how cool it is that we disagree on some of these things, but also how nuanced a lot of these things that we think are black or white truly have some nuance. And I love what all three of you, we haven't even recorded yet, and I know I'm already going to love what the three of you are going to bring to the table on each of these statements. You've already heard some of the inner outs and they're good ones. They're great ones.

So thank you, Joe, and thanks to all of you for being afforders. If you enjoyed today's episode, please do three things. First and foremost, share this with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, your dog walker, dog border, bird border. Salt with Michael Gerber, who wrote the E myth. Oh, I was going to say your reptile and amphibian border. Share it with. Share it with your real estate customers, Rob. Share it with the person on the other side of Zoom who's holding his ID up to the Zoom window to, as he's telling you the wire instructions.

Share it with the gate agent on the, that's letting you on the plane. Right, exactly, because you're flying to take that cashier's check. Share it with the Uber driver when you land at your destination with the cashier's check, burning a hole in your pocket. Sell it to that person that sold you the cigar that's in your picture while you're in your hot tub, Rob. Oh. I'm speaking directly to Rob over and over. Sell to the guy that.

All the people Rob should share this with. I don't care what anybody else shares. Rob, here's who you need to share it with. No pressure, Rob. In that case, Rob, you should also share it with the guy at the wine store. At the what, duh. And the hot tub repair person. I don't know if that hot tub breaks down because he's in it a lot.

There's got to be a maintenance person, isn't there? There's got to be. If not, share it with the people, the other people who come to the ocean, those beach people. Yeah. Yeah, the people biking by. Yeah, exactly. Share it with the tenants at the mobile home park. Share it with the banker who's like, why are you in here for a check?

You can just send a wire. Because that's literally what they told me when I walked into the bank. I physically went there and they tried to send me home. And I was like, nope, I'm here. I'm doing this in the flesh. And she sat down in the lobby, said, I'm not moving. Yeah, more or less. It was nearly closing right before they closed for Christmas.

So I think they just like didn't want to be there. Yeah, please. I walked in like an hour before they were about to close for Christmas. Oh, that's great, Paula. Yeah, yeah. Here's their favorite person to see already. Oh, God. Well, I wanted to get it done before they shut down for the holiday.

I have a complex transaction and you're about to go home. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Share it with the customer who walks into your place of business. An hour before you close for a long holiday. Share it with that person. Share it with all of those people and birds and frogs and turtles and dogs and more. Aviary boarding.

Come on. Someone's got to buy this business. It could be you. Because sharing it with all those people in your community, that is how you spread the message of F-I-I-R-E. This is like the best who are the people in your neighborhood is what this has turned into. This is the Sesame Street. Who are the people in your neighborhood of personal finance? Oh, boy.

What are the other things you should do if you support the show? Make sure you hit the follow button. leave us up to a five-star review. Share a few sentences in that review about what you enjoy about the show. Subscribe to our newsletter, afford-anything.com slash newsletter. I think we've covered all the bases, haven't we? I think so. All right.

Well, thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Paula Pan. I'm Joe Salcihai. And we'll meet you in the next episode.