Afford Anything - Q&A: I'm Burned Out But Not Quite Ready to Retire

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

#688: Anonymous: "Anonymous Sheryl" is 38, mortgage-free and exhausted after 15 years of teaching. She’s torn between pushing a few more years toward FIRE or switching to relief teaching now for better work-life balance. How do you trade speed to FIRE for sustainability without blowing up the plan? Anonymous : "Anonymous Ray" hired a bank portfolio manager but isn’t sure how to judge the results after just a few years. With mixed performance, dividend-heavy funds and higher fees, when is it fair to evaluate a manager — and would a simple index ETF outperform? Nathan: Nathan’s 14-year-old just earned his first W-2 income, and Nathan wants to jump-start his son’s investing journey with a Roth IRA. But with household income above the Roth limits, is there a legal way to make this work without sacrificing the child tax credit? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 Pant. I trained in economic reporting at Columbia. Every other episode-ish, most Tuesdays, I answer questions that come from you, and I do so with my buddy, the former financial planner, Joe Sal C-high. Joe, I've got a situation for you. A situation.

A situation. Imagine being in your 30s, totally mortgage free. You've paid off your mortgage, but you're extremely burned out of your job. I love the fact the mortgage is paid off. Right. All right. We're going to tackle that first. Then we're going to talk to somebody who's wondering how to evaluate a portfolio manager.

Are they getting good? You know, yeah, there's some nuance in that. And then we're going to hear from a dad who's wondering. about his kids Roth IRA, 14-year-old kids Roth IRA. A head start. Yeah, exactly. Awesome. With that, we'll go to our first question today, which comes from Anonymous.

Hi, Paula and Joe. I'm Anonymous calling from New Zealand. Long-time listener, first-time caller. I'm 38, and I'm at a crossroad, and I'd love to hear how you think my situation through because I'm caught in a water spiral. For context, I've been a teacher for 15 years. In the past two years, I felt really burned out, and I've felt, focused on aggressively paying off my mortgage. Now I am mortgage-free and I have lower expenses

and I want to leverage it into better work-life balance by moving to relief teaching, but I've gone from having one clear, defined goal of fire to a lot of options that I don't know how to think through. I'm considering working full-time for a further two years until I am 40, then becoming a relief teacher to pay for my day-to-day living while my investments grow in the background. I currently only have $160,000 invested in a growth fund. I have $140,000 in Kiwi-Saver, New Zealand's retirement account. I can't access that until 65. This is also invested in a growth fund. I have a 10K emergency fund and another $15,000 cash that is earmarked for things like saving for a replacement car, an overseas holiday, or a marathon major if I could qualify.

If I continued to work full-time for approximately seven more years, I could fully fire with $900,000 as I estimate my spending will be $36,000 a year. However, I don't think my body in mind are going to hold up for another seven years. Talking with relief teachers, I can reliably earn between $25,000 to $30,000 per year relief teaching, but this means I may need to top up my living expenses from $5,000 to $10,000 each year until my investments have grown to $900,000. This could be 10 years or more. My question is, how do I best prepare myself to become a relief teacher on a fluctuating income? Do I invest aggressively for 2026 and then in 2027 contribute to a cash account so that I can

cover the difference between income and expenses while relief teaching? Do I stop investing now and save a really big cash cushion? Or do I work three or four more years to build up my investments more so I'm over halfway to fire before I move to relief teaching? I currently invest $1,900 a fortnight and save $450 into cash savings, which is approximately a 65% after-tax save rate. I'm no Taipei spreadsheet queen with a dozen contingency plans. I stick to the Kiss method, keep it simple, stupid, and this situation has too many moving parts for me. Please help.

It does have a lot of moving parts, Paula. But I love it. A 65% after-tax savings rate. That's incredible. Just huge round of a plug. Can we get a round of applause here? Thank you, Steve. Well, Anonymous, since you are a teacher, I thought we might honor someone else who was a teacher before switching to a different career.

Oh. Cheryl Crowe, the singer Cheryl Crowe. Really? Yeah. Cheryl Crow was a music teacher before her singing career took off. And one day she just said, I just want to soak up the sun. No more teaching. Yeah.

She soaked up the sun and why. wanted to tell everyone to lighten up. Yeah, Cheryl Crow was a music teacher and then switched to doing something that she found more fulfilling. How about that? So Anonymous, we are going to call you Cheryl. Man, diving into this. Can we shine a light on something I think is really cool besides paying off the mortgage? Yeah. Which is something I know that you spoke about this when Andy Hill was the guest on your show, just how this idea of paying off your mortgage people go in an interest rate. why would you do that? But bam for Andy and here for Cheryl paying off the mortgage fits the bill. Like it is the thing that is going to give her the flexibility to do what she wants much earlier. So I think that's cool. The other thing that's really cool that I think is often overlooked, the value of that emergency fund and the sinking fund, the $10,000 in the emergency fund,

and the $15,000 for things like a car, whatever these big purchases might be, she doesn't have to worry about those things, Paula. And what I see happens in a portfolio is people invest more conservatively than they truly should because they're worried about what if something comes up. And so when people talk about risk management, the pushback I always get is, well, that emergency funds not earning a great rate of return. And it's not. But what's cool is, is that she can be in growth funds like she is with the rest of her money,

growing it without worry because of the fact that she knows that if something comes up in the short term, she doesn't have to go near that money. So it's this ability to invest the way that you should instead of trying to cover all these what ifs and backing down your ability to earn a lot of money with your money, that truly is the magic of that emergency fund. Right. So I love that. I think that's all great.

Yeah. One thing that I love about your plan, Cheryl, is that your next chapter, which is to become a relief teacher, that will cover most of your living expenses. Not all, there's still a small gap to plug, but that gap is relatively small. You know, that next career, relief teaching, or as we call it here, substitute teaching, right, that's going to cover the bulk of what you need. So we're actually solving for a very small dollar amount when it comes to the budget deficit. Yeah. Cheryl, to your first question, you know, where you asked, hey, should I just suck it up and stay in this job for a while longer?

I knew you floated the idea of potentially working full-time for seven more years so that you could fully fire with $900,000. No, don't do that. Because it is so clear from your question that you are done. You are burned out. You don't know if your body can take it. You don't know if your mind can take it. You don't know if your spirit can take it.

Everything that you've done so far, paying off your mortgage, having a 65% savings rate, you have needed to have a strong spirit in order to be able to do that. And I don't want you to do anything that's going to break that spirit. And when we are in jobs that are not our calling, we know that. And that really can break the spirit. And so that's the first thing that I'm protecting for is I'm protecting for that spirit. I truly think, Paula, the real question is, what am I going to do beyond get the hell out of here. That's where I think the magic is. I think that when she lights up about something else, whether it makes money or not, I mean, you'll be able to design a portfolio if it turns out to be a thing that doesn't make money. But when she finds

the thing that lights her up, I think that is where I would be spending my time first before any of these money questions. I think, Joe, where you and I are in total agreement is the option of spending seven more years in this role is completely off the table. That's a no. That's a hard no. The option of becoming a relief teacher, a substitute teacher, is on the table. It sounds as though she's open to that. She's had conversations with other people who do that full time. She knows her income would decline and her income would also be fluctuating. And so there's a cash flow management question around should she start drawing down from some investments in order to be able to do that. My assumption, Cheryl, by the way, is that if you did that, here's what I'm guessing is going to happen.

I'm guessing for the first three to six months, you might need to just rest and recover. But I'm guessing after about six months, you will have so much more energy because you won't be in the role that you're currently in, which is draining so much life from you. that with that new energy that you have, you will have ideas and enthusiasm for other things that you would do in that time that would have some type of income generating outcome. Yeah, at the very least, I think she'll have the quiet versus every day going, man, I don't like this. Now she'll be able to be in a quiet place or she can really see where the river is flowing.

Right. Yeah, because she also asks so, you know, if she doesn't work for seven more years, Should she work for three or four more years? No, quit as soon as reasonably possible. You know, maybe you have to stay through the end of this academic year, but quit at the end of this academic year. You know, quit as soon as reasonably possible without doing harm to your current students. Well, and I think part of the question is which piece of it is the piece that isn't connecting? Is it the piece? Essentially, there's a reason she got into teaching in the first place. Is it this particular role?

You know, sometimes the problem is, and we don't know any of this, right? This is 100% conjecture. We don't know any of this. But these are the questions that I'd be asking. Many of the smart people that you and I have interviewed, people that are phenomenal at finding this workplace harmony, often it's just the change of scenery and being with a group, a different group of people that are doing the thing that you love. If she loves teaching, maybe it's just finding a different role.

Maybe it's finding a different group of people, a different situation where she's with people that are lighting her up and affirming, you know, whatever teaching piece that she loves. It could be that simple or it could be, no, teaching's not for me. It's something completely different that is for me. I need to be done with teaching. I don't know the answer to that. But certainly finding something beginning to explore what it is that is the draining. peace, I think it's going to start unlocking a lot of doors. Yeah, because sometimes it could be the relationship with the manager or the relationship

with the administration, right? Sometimes it is that a person's view of their direct manager, whomever you directly report to, across all industries, your view of that person and your relationship with that person has a disproportionately large impact on whether or not you enjoy your job. Yeah. It's your relationship with a single person makes or breaks the job in so many cases. My son had this during his time at Microsoft. He had three different bosses. And it was funny. One boss, the job was okay. One boss, the job sucked. The third boss, the job was amazing. Yeah. And he just reflects back on his time at this major organization. Like, do you like Microsoft? He looks back and goes, you know what? My view of the entire company was based on who I was reporting to. Right. Sometimes it was good. sometimes it sucked and sometimes it was phenomenal and it was all based on one one person. Yeah. And there is research that documents this, that your impression, a person's impression

of their direct supervisor has an outsized disproportionate impact. So, Cheryl, it might be the case that changing schools, changing administrations, working with a different group of colleagues, maybe that'll do it or maybe not. Maybe the solution. is, and it sounds clear from your question that the direction that you intend to go is to switch from full-time teaching into relief teaching, to take the income hit that accompanies that, and then to solve for the question of how do I address that income hit. And my direct answer to that is make that switch immediately, as soon as when the academic year ends, right?

Don't wait for three or four years, right? Make that switch as soon as you reasonably can without disrupting the school year because the sooner that you are relief teaching and the sooner that you have that time-free and that energy back, the sooner you will have the space to figure out what else you're going to do to fill that time

and I'm guessing whatever that will be will produce some type of an income. So yes, you will be drawing down from your accounts in the short term, maybe for the next year or two or three. But I don't think that that's going to happen for the next decade. You're 38 now. If you leave this role by the time you're 39 or 40, I'm pretty sure that by the time you're 43, 44, you will have found something else that you will enjoy quite a lot more, that you don't have any sense right now of what that is because you're so busy with the day to day. But once that time is clear, you'll find the next thing.

Mechanically, what we're doing is changing the emphasis from money being the most important piece to your time is the most important piece. And both of these are finite resources. But in money communities, we tend to optimize for more money when I certainly believe that optimizing for my time is incredibly valuable. And I'm not going to get it back. So do the thing that gives me the time to do what I really want to do is much more often what we should be solving for. Yeah. And I would say even beyond time, your mental bandwidth, your energy,

I'm going to use the word spirit again. Your spirit is the number one thing to solve for because that's the source of everything that follows. Yeah. That's where I'm coming from, Paula, is that the time in a negative mental space. It's the most quantifiable. Yeah. Well, and the time in a negative mental space just isn't worth it.

Right. It isn't worth it. If I got to spend the next seven years trying to dig out. Now, if we're solving for quiet and the ability to be quiet, then what I'm doing doing is I'm building up that emergency fund to buy myself more time over the short run, full well knowing that that is suboptimal, money wise, long term. It gives you the space when you need it, which is right now. I need that space right now. But I believe then it's easier than to build a plan for growth in the future when I'm in a head space that I'm putting it

there in a much more healthy way. Right. The thing that really, really is exciting about this is how close she is to being able to do that because her overhead is so low. Exactly. Mortgage is fully paid off. Living expenses are low. That gives you so much freedom. A 65% savings rate throughout your 30s. I mean, that unlocks doors that allows you to really enjoy your 40s and 50s in a way. way that most people only dream of. So a huge congratulations to you for managing your money so well that you have the freedom to leave a job that is not your calling. The sooner you do that, the sooner you'll find the thing that is what you were meant to do. Well, thank you, Cheryl, for the question. I look forward to you leaving your job as soon as reasonably possible.

And I know, Cheryl, that change will do you good. Ooh. That change will do you good, do you good. That change. All right. Well, we are going to hear from the sponsors who make this show possible. When we returned, we're going to hear from a listener who hired a bank portfolio manager, but isn't quite sure how to judge the results.

And after that, we're going to hear from the father of a child at 14. year old who just earned his first W-2 income and wants to put that money into a Roth IRA. Both of those are up next. Welcome back. Our next question also comes from an anonymous caller. Hey, Paola, I love your podcast. So I have money invested with a portfolio manager at a bank. While I know some investing basics, I'm unsure how to evaluate whether he's doing a good job.

I can compare returns after fees to benchmark funds. but the portfolio has only been invested for a few years. Setting aside short-term volatility, how long should I wait before fairly assessing his performance against benchmarks? After two years, he's beating the large-cap benchmark, underperforming by half in mid-cap, and matching or slightly trailing in small-cap developed and emerging markets. Granted, large-cap makes up half the equity portion of the portfolio,

so it's weighted more heavily, while mid-cap is around 2% with small-cap-and-deper. develop markets covering the majority of the rest of the portfolio. The manager favors dividend funds, arguing that I can use the income as needed. I understand this makes sense if I need money now, but I'd rather maximize long-term returns for bigger purchases or retirement later. Sometimes I wonder if I'd get better results, simply investing in an SMPETF for 10 to 20 years. Thanks in advance. I love this question, Paula, but first we have to give him a name. I have an idea. Oh, what's your idea?

Well, he's a guy who aspires to be a great investor. So I think we got to think about people like Ray Dalio, right? So maybe we just call him Ray. Ray, all right. I love it. Ray, I agree with your instinct. I am for the long term, not a huge fan of dividend-focused funds either. I share your doubts about the portfolio manager.

Really for a couple of reasons. One is there's the strategy itself. And then also there is what it sounds like a lack of communication, coordination, education between the two of you. So there's two issues here. One is the relationship between you and this portfolio manager. And then the other is the substance of what the portfolio manager has said. I've got doubts in both arenas. With regard to dividend focused funds, those tend to be the funds that don't grow as much over time. And you've clearly stated that growth is your priority. And I understand, by definition, dividend-focused funds, bias towards an income stream. But you can also harvest capital gains if you want an income stream. I mean, we did an interview with Mears Statman, a behavioral economist, who talks about how growth is growth, returns or returns. Whether it's capital gains or dividends, I mean, there are tax implications of the difference between the two. But ultimately, mentally bucketing for any reason outside of tax planning doesn't make sense from a rational mathematical standpoint. It's simply a mental model that people use.

Well, dividend-based fund, the capital game might not be as high, but he can make up at least a good portion of that with the dividend income stream being reinvested. The problem is that creates friction if he's outside of a tax shelter. Exactly. But if he's inside a tax shelter, I'm with you. A gain is a gain is a gain. So a dividend income strategy could produce more consistent gains than a growth strategy because of the fact that that dividend is by definition going to be more constant. It's going to be this river flow that is less likely to be a boom-bust cycle like a growth fund would be. So while I have doubts as well, my doubt is more along the communication about why the growth

manager is using the dividend fund than the fact that he's using the dividend fund, because maybe a dividend fund will get him there and it's inside of a tech shell. I don't know. I think his gut is right. I think his execution could definitely use some cleanup. First of all, when we look at volatility, you know, he said looking at volatility, of course, the manager is going to skew left and right. The manager is going to skew left and right, but also the benchmark's going to skew left

and right of what you're trying to do, Ray. The first benchmark, the only benchmark that matters, throw away all these other benchmarks is what rate of return do I need to reach my goal? Period. full stop. That is my benchmark. And when I start with that, a lot of this stuff that's blowing in the wind no longer blows. Doesn't really matter because I then can design a portfolio around achieving that result. And then my benchmark that I create is a hybrid of all of these garbage benchmarks that you're looking at. And I call them garbage because for your goal, it doesn't matter if it beats

emerging markets. It doesn't matter if he beats small cap. What matters is the hybrid, right? The hybrid of all of these things that I set in motion to reach my goal. So that's going to give me two things. It's going to give me a performance measurement, but it's also going to give me a risk measurement. What's the amount of risk that I want to take to get there? And that is a discussion that I have with my team, which might include the bank portfolio manager, might not, around, what's the level of acceptable risk that we're taking? And then I create this hybrid benchmark that, by the way, Paul, it doesn't look like anybody else's benchmark. This is my benchmark. And my benchmark is a combination of large cap, international, small cap, midcap. And then I'm no longer

looking at is my manager winning versus the S&P 500. Who cares? It doesn't. It doesn't. It doesn't, not matter whether he's beating the S&P 500. The S&P 500 has zero to do with your goals. So if he's overperforming here, he's underperforming here, doesn't matter. My answer is we were looking for an 8% rate to return that quarter and we didn't get it. Why didn't we get it? There's two reasons. Well, there could be three reasons actually. Reason number one is we have set up the benchmark incorrectly. So I'm, I'm in the wrong asset classes and we set this up incorrectly. Reason number two is fees, right? I paid more. Wow, look at that. I didn't put fees at the bottom. I actually put it in the middle. You like that? But it can be fees. He could be

charging too much, right? I could be skewing lower because the manager's taken too much of my money, and I'm not getting it. The third reason could just be that the market didn't deliver it. And this, by the way, is what the reason is when we underperform all the time. And then we ask, do I need to change my allocation to make this up? Do I need to save more money to make it up? Or is this just over time? Will it make it up? I like that a hell of a lot better than playing the, well, he's underperforming on the

emerging market side, but he's overperforming on the large cap side. And oh my God, I can't monitor that. You won't be able to monitor that. There's no way you can do that. Create your own benchmark based on your goal. and monitor that. And then it's very easy to determine which of those three things is an, you know what? The market was, all the markets were down that are based on our allocation. And looking at the long term, I know that these markets historically have got me there

over 20 years. So then I'm taking into account, Paul, of the volatility, and I'm going, I've got two choices now. I can either, number one, change towards, something that has more of a recency bias, which you can see the danger in that, right? Whatever has been, quote, doing better lately, that screws up, my portfolio return. I can adjust based on the change of my goal and the change of risk that I want to take. That might make sense. Okay, I want to take more risk. I can say I'm not going to change anything and I'm going to fill in.

I'm going to change my savings rate to invest more heavily, knowing that. that this volatility, if I invest more heavily, I can invest while it's down. So when it comes up, I'm going to fill in even better, right? I'm going to take advantage of the volatility in the market. I go from being like a kite blowing in the air and I'm just going wherever the wind's taking me to somebody who's much more in control. And I definitely prefer that way to benchmark my portfolio. Joe, what I hear you saying is essentially you're figuring out your spot on the efficient frontier and then evaluating whether or not the manager is executing that. Yeah, 100%. In the manager's defense, and I do want to make this observation about the portfolio

that they've constructed, they have a combination of small caps and large caps with only a very, very small allocation towards midcap, and they also have both developed and emerging markets. What I hear within that construction is a healthy dose of low correlation assets in which you have diversification without diversification. Because sometimes when you have too many asset classes, having too many asset classes can feel like diversification, but they actually overlap in their performance and in their composition so much that it just introduces unnecessary complexity without really giving you the low correlative nature that is at the benefit of diversification. So the fact that it's skewing towards the two ends, small cap, large cap,

US emerging. I like that component of it. Yeah. And the reason just to dive into that that Paula can see that professionalism in the portfolio is because midcap will often do very closely what large cap does. It's just going to go. The highs are going to be higher. The lows are going to be low. But the structure of the highs and lows are going to be based on many of the same stimuli. So you end up with a portfolio that just is a bigger roller coaster in midcap than you have in large cap. But you don't end up with any portfolio differentiates. that would change the game, like maybe a little bit of gold as an example like we talked about before.

Right. We'll change the game. It will very much change the game in your portfolio. Or a dash of reits can change the game in your portfolio. A lot, yeah. Yeah. And this is then where we go back to the efficient frontier because that's where you can see how you go out on the risk curve. And you can see how a dash of a handful of low correlative asset classes,

can boost your returns without unduly changing your risk profile. But then there are some asset classes that really just increase the volatility and don't boost your returns a whole lot. And so by tracking that, you're able to see that difference between diversification and diversification. And so I will say in the manager's defense, it looks like while I don't like the selection of dividend-focused funds as just a philosophical position. Well, I don't like it based on the manager's discussion of it.

Right. Yeah. Just be fair about why I don't like it. I don't like it because the manager says, well, this is money. You can get it if you need it. And the client is clearly telling him, I don't need the money. Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. There are times when I used back when I was a pro doing this, I would use dividend funds, but it was much more for stability and a lack of variability in the return.

I would try to use large company stocks and reinvest the dividend to solidify more of the returns and lower the amount of roller coaster in the portfolio. So if he told you that rationale based on your long-term approach, I go, okay, cool, awesome. That tells me a little about your risk tolerance, you know? Right. But I do like the overall composition of the portfolio. That blend of asset classes does make a lot of sense. Now, asset allocation is the primary driver of the portfolio, but I would also love to see what specific funds then he's using in these different categories. Because that's when, now that we've whittled this down to what is our benchmark and then what's the allocation

that gets us there, this is where then fees is a distant third Paula. But then I can look and see, okay, do we have any portfolio drag because of our asset selection? Right. And often, and this is what scares me most, is that the reason I'm actually bringing that up, when I'm the guy that I'm most shows is minimizing fees versus all these other things, is that's where Paula, a bank person scares me. Because bank people generally pick funds that have more drag. Not always.

And I don't know what bank you're with. and maybe it's a, it's like a family office set up in the back of a bank and that could be something totally different. But if it's a person who's in an office at the front of the bank that the teller sent you to, that person is generally a commission-based advisor and we could see some drag in the portfolio because of asset selection. Right. So Ray, I hope this was helpful in allowing you to form a checklist of attributes that you

can use to evaluate that manager. And I hope you have the returns of Ray Dalio. Well, we're going to take one more moment to hear from the sponsors who make the show possible. And when we return, we're going to hear from the father of a 14-year-old who is about to open a Roth IRA. Hey-o. Welcome back.

Our final question today comes from Nathan. Hi, Paula and Joe. I hope you're doing well. This is Nathan, and I have a question about starting a Roth IRA for my son. He's 14 years old and just got his first W2 job this year. I'd like to contribute to a Roth IRA for him to give him a head start on compounding growth by contributing up to the amount he earns in 2025 on his W2, which will probably be around $1,000 this year.

However, our family income is above the Roth IRA income limit to make a Roth IRA contribution for 2025. So I'm wondering if there's another way I can fund a Roth IRA for my son to get him started. Since I've claimed both of my minor children on my income taxes each year, I wonder if I should not claim my son this year and do the individual 1040 easy form for him on the 2025 return. And then his own individual income would be well below the income limit, so he could contribute to a Roth IRA with financial assistance for my wife and me. Is that even possible to have a teenage child submit their own separate tax return? My wife and I would lose on the child tax credit if we don't claim him on our taxes.

And I think the child tax credit this year is around $2,200 per year per child. I'm not sure I want to do the backdoor Roth just for the small Roth IRA contribution amount for my son. In case it's helpful context, most extra income that we have goes toward our kids' 529 plans, paying down our mortgage principle, or maxing out our employer's 401K style plan. Thank you very much for any suggestions or ideas you have for how I can. and contribute to my son's Roth IRA when he was young, but our family income is too high for a regular Roth IRA contribution. Thank you so much. Oh, Nathan, we've got good news. Very good news. Do you want to be the one to tell him or should I, Joe? Oh, you tell him.

All right. So, Nathan, the parents' income does not block a child's Roth IRA. The child's Roth IRA eligibility is based on the child's earned income. So as long as your child has earned income, then doesn't matter what you make. You don't need to do a backdoor Roth. That's overkill. Your income, as the parents, does not hamper your child's ability to contribute to a Roth IRA. Also, the child status as a dependent, that doesn't block their ability to contribute to a Roth IRA. So you don't need to give up the child tax credit. You can take the child tax credit, continue to claim your child as a dependent, open up a custodial Roth account.

And as long as the child has earned income, the child can put their earned income into a custodial Roth. The only thing that hampers your child's ability to put money into their Roth is if they make so much money that they fall victim to the same income limitations that you do. Right. Like if your child is like an Olson twin. And that would be fantastic. If they couldn't put money in the Roth because they're making so much money, but not the case here.

I just realized that was a very dated example. I should have said like Zendaya or somebody. Yeah. You could have said a lot of different people. Selena Gomez. Yeah. Say you're of a certain age without saying you're of a certain age. I know, right?

Olson twins. Right. If you're Taylor Swift's parent, right? If your child is Taylor Swift. Swift. It's a different story. Could be. But great news there. And I love this idea. I love the head start. And I love the opportunities here, Paula, to teach your kid about investing. And so I wouldn't just open up the Roth IRA, Nathan. I would also show them what you're investing in and show them what it owns. And then maybe on a quarterly basis, talk about it going up and down because he's going to have those same

emotions that you had when you were first an investor. When it goes down the first time, he's going to ask you, why the heck are we still putting money in this? And so to be able to work through those things at a young age while he's still at home, some pretty powerful lessons you can teach. I know when I was speaking with David Gardner, one of the two brothers who created the Motley Fool, He talked about all of his lessons about money came from the kitchen table with his dad. Clark Howard, his biggest lessons that made him the money geek extraordinary that Clark Howard is were because of money lessons with his dad. Some pretty powerful moments that you can have with a kid that can affect their investing trajectory the rest of their life. Yeah. So keep claiming your son as a dependent. Keep the child tax credit. and open a custodial Roth and give your son the experience of putting his earned income into that custodial Roth.

There were days, Paula, when I didn't want to claim my kids, but that had nothing to do with taxes. It was like, I do not know them. They did not come from me. Never met him. Wasn't my problem. Yeah. Wow, that was a short answer, Joe. Sucinct.

Yeah, we knock that one out of the park. Us being succinct. That's also anachronistic. Anachronistic. What a word. How about you're welcome? That's two words. Well, Joe, we did it again.

We did it. Just fantastic. Joe, where can people find you if they'd like to learn more? We have some phenomenal mentors that we talk to on stacking Benjamins at the beginning of February. we talked to Whitney Elkins Hutton. Whitney used real estate to build her portfolio. But what I love, she's a partner in, by the way, more than $800 million in real estate. But that's not the way she started.

She started off by getting very lucky with one income-producing property and then deciding that she was going to buy another one, totally messed that up. And what I love about talking to Whitney is often when we messed stuff up, Paula, we learned the wrong lesson. Often I feel like as money geeks, we start with, hey, how do I get rich? How do I do whatever? Whitney just wanted to make this house not a failure. She wanted to learn the one skill.

She wanted to get good at the one thing. And I think this interview is a great discussion about where we should start on building generational wealth and how we learn when we're losing. We don't learn when we're high-fiving ourselves because everything's going great. So Whitney Elkins Hutton first Wednesday of February on stacking Benjamins. By the way, episode 1800 coming up. Wow. Congratulations. 1,800.

Chevis. And I know for a guy that's like 23. How did I do that? I don't know. I have no idea. Aren't your twins 27? Shut up. My twins are almost 31.

Really? I know. Wow. Yeah. Which is weird that I had them in a negative. age too. That is so strange. I have no idea what happened there. But yes, that's coming up on the Stacking Benjamin show. And Joe, you and I sometime later this year are going to be together in person, both in New York and also in Texas. We will be. Just planting some seeds right now.

End of April slash beginning of May, Joe, you're coming out to New York. So we are- Details to follow. Yeah, details to follow. Trying to get the meetup together. Yeah, exactly. So anyone who's in the New York area save the rough approximate date, end of April, beginning of May. And then in Dallas, we will be before that. Yeah. Oh, look at that.

That would be, when is Dallas? Dallas is beginning of April. Yeah, we're going to see if we can get a meetup in. Dallas. And I know, by the way, we have some of our Stacky Benjamin's fans in Dallas who are trying to get together one of our bad groups, we call them, which are... Bad group? Benjamin's After Dark. Which are groups of Stacky Benjamin's fans that get together. We have groups now in the Twin Cities. Our friend Chris Lugar and Veronica Barnus do that group. We have a group in Seattle, Tacoma of Stackers and one getting ready to roll in Boston. Boston is just about to start,

but I'm super excited because as you and I record this at Minnesota State University last night, we had a group of 40 people, brave the weather up there in the great north to get together to talk about, as you know, Paula, not about money as much about life and values and using money to get more living. And it's just so cool to see these people come together. And what I really love about Minnesota State University and doing this on the Minnesota State University campus is that we have students that are a part of this group and then organizing this group, which is really exciting to see somebody who's in college, who's organizing, getting a group of people together to talk about these shared experiences. Oh, that's wonderful. Awesome. And if you are in any of those,

communities. We're also in the process of talking about groups in Tucson and in Dallas. So just go to Stacky Benjamin's.com slash bad. Bad. Benjamin's after dark. Which tells you what kind of meaning it is. It might not be like your mom's meetup group. Might be a little different, although my mom's a badass. My mom would have this meetup group. That's amazing, Joe. Your mom's a badass. Your mom would have this meetup group. I've met your mom, too, on multiple occasions.

Yeah, yeah. Awesome. So stackingvengemans.com slash bad. Awesome. Well, thank you, Joe, for being part of this community. Thank you for spending your time with the afforder community. And thanks to all of you for being afforders. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share this with the people in your life.

share it with your portfolio manager at your bank, share it with your 14-year-old. Share it with your school teacher. And your substitute teacher. Absolutely. Share it with the administration at your school. The bus driver. Who takes you to school? Oh.

Share it with the behavioral economist who wants to talk through the mental bucketing of dividends versus gains. Share it with Cheryl Crow. Share it with all of those people and more, because that is the single most important way that you spread the message of F-I-I-R-E, which, as we know, Joe hates acronyms. But that one's pretty fun. Oh, I thank you. Also, please subscribe to our newsletter. It's completely free.

Afford-anything.com slash newsletter. Joe, as you often say, it's free and worth every penny. And you know what? It's fabulous. Oh, thank you. It truly is fabulous. The U.S. Mint just stopped minting pennies. They minted their final penny.

I saw that. Yeah. Do we need a moment of silence? We'll do it after the show ends. That'll be a moment of silence at the end of the show. A lot of silence. Just consider the end of this show after it turns off automatically on your player. The moment of silence for the penny.

Yes, absolutely. And make sure that you leave a review up to five stars, up to and including five stars, to tell us what you enjoy about this show. Thank you so much for being an afforder. My name's Paula Pan. I'm Joe Sal C-Hi. And we'll meet you in the next episode.