Afford Anything - Q&A: I’m Tired of Managing My Rental Property. Should I Sell It?

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

#752: A caller's rental is performing fine, but a late-paying tenant and a roof replacement have her ready to sell it before she moves to Madrid for her MBA. Paula argues the real fix isn't selling �� it's a hire she hasn't made yet. This week, Joe joins Paula to help a caller decide whether to sell a rental property from abroad, then dig into new data on why women's labor force participation dropped in July while their share of new jobs surged in August. In this episode, we discuss: How to tell if you're making the right call for the wrong reason Why a new roof or a set of windows can be a form of forced investing The one hire that can solve the same problem as selling your rental A simple way to estimate a rental property's real return What to weigh before selling a working investment on gut feel alone Why women's labor force participation fell in July even as their job gains led the year Why the trades are becoming a stronger bet than a four-year degree for some new grads This one's for anyone facing a big financial decision that feels more emotional than mathematical — whether that's a rental property, a career move, or a job you're not sure is worth keeping. ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS Note: Timestamps may vary slightly depending on dynamic ad placements. (01:45) Why she wants to sell a rental that's "objectively good" (03:25) When it's actually okay to sell a good investment (10:03) One hire that stops panic-selling a rental property (14:44) The simple math to compare rental returns vs. stocks (17:31) Paula's own confession about hating her first rental property (22:22) Why doing what you're best at beats doing everything yourself (30:11) 100% of last month's labor force drop was women (31:54) The real reasons women are leaving the workforce right now (32:18) Why women got 85% of new jobs created this year (47:00) The industry that could fix jobs and housing at once 🔗 RESOURCES MENTIONED 👉 Torn on selling a rental? Get our free 10-day guide, which includes a deal-analysis exercise to help you decide with the numbers, not just your gut: https://affordanything.com/fiire 👉 Sign up for our newsletter (get the new site first): https://affordanything.com/newsletter 👉 Leave us a voicemail with your own money question: https://affordanything.com/voicemail 👉 Read the BLS jobs report Paula cites in this episode: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe. Bola! What's happening? I am happy to be with you, and you are in New York. I'm in Texarkana. For those of you who are watching on YouTube, I'm in a studio right now. So this is a fancy new setting. Oh, yeah.

It's a nice living room. Right? It's beautiful. Yes. The aesthetics of this recording are better than ever. I don't want to brag, but I'm in Mom's Basement. I have been to Mom's Basement. It is a mom has a nice basement.

But I got a question for you, Joe. Have you ever given up a good investment? Yes. Actually, I did. One time, I realized that my rental property wasn't for me. It just wasn't for me. Oh, all right. Well, then you are well prepared to answer our first question today.

Uh-oh. We have a question from a caller about exactly that topic. And after that, we're going to talk about the labor force participation. rate as well as employment. We've got a question around that stemming from the first Friday episodes. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that knows you can afford anything, not everything. The show covers five pillars, financial psychology, increasing your income, investing, real estate and entrepreneurship, acronym, Double I Fire. I'm your host, Paula Pant, 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-Hive.

What's up, Joe? Hey, Paula. I am writing a new book. It's about reverse psychology, and I'm hoping nobody buys it. No. Come on. And with that, we go to our first question, which comes from Nieves. Hi, Paula and Joe.

My name is Nieves, and I first wanted to say that I love the show and thank you for everything that you do. I would love to get your perspective on a financial decision I'm trying to make around my rental property. To give you some context, I recently quit my equipment. my job and moved to Madrid, Spain for a year to pursue an MBA. I received a scholarship for the program, but I had to use most of my savings for a 20,000 euro deposit that will be returned after I complete a six-month internship following the MBA. I also took out a 30,000 loan for living expenses for the next 12 months, but the interest rate is less than 4%. I'm 30 years old, and I have around $150,000 in my old 401k, around $50,000 in my Roth IRA, and a duplex in St. Louis, Missouri,

that I bought in 2021 for $240,000. The mortgage, including taxes and insurance, is about $1,500 a month, and it brings in around $3,100 a month in rent. One of the units is a mid-term rental, so I do have additional expenses associated with that unit. I have been thinking about selling the property because my tenants have started paying late and the property needs a new roof and a few other repairs. I don't have enough cash to replace the roof out of pocket and I'm feeling stressed that my tenants are paying late. I used to live in St. Louis, so managing the property was not hard, but now that I'm abroad, it has become a little bit of a hassle. I could likely sell the property for around 250 to 275,000 and I currently owe $180,000 on the mortgage. My biggest question is how to know when it's okay to let go of an investment that is objectively a good long-term asset.

I've always viewed the duplex as part of my long-term financial security and I have been dependent on the cash flow to fund my lifestyle. I'm struggling with whether selling would be a smart simplification or whether I'll be giving up a valuable long-term asset. I think most people struggle with delay ratification, but I may be struggling with the opposite. I have been a hard time giving myself permission to lay go of an asset, even when doing so might make sense for my current life and also to give me peace of mind. We'll love to hear how you think about this. Thank you. Nevis, I love that question. What a beautiful question. First of all, I want to say congratulations on moving to Madrid, on the MBA program, on this next exciting, incredible stage in your life. congratulations on where your life is taking you because it sounds incredibly exciting. This is a great question. And I think there's a lot more to this than originally meets the eye, Paula.

Oh, tell me more. Well, I think that when it comes to selling an investment, any time is a fine time to sell an investment if you don't think that it fits you. That is not without repercussions. When you sell an investment, that investment had something that was doing for you. So the question is, is the new thing you're going to invest it in going to be satisfactory? Here's what I see. And the reason I bring this up is that let's say that somebody doesn't like the stock market. They don't like the risk, the ups and downs. That's perfectly fine. But when they make this risk tolerance decision without thinking about the fact that if I lower the risk on the volatility of an investment, I don't get that upside volatility anymore. Well, now I got to replace it

with more savings, or I got to lower the goal, or to push the goal back. Like, there will always be ramifications. So my question isn't whether it's fine to sell the property or not. I think it's always fine to sell the property. If this investment's not working for you right now while you're abroad, I think selling it is a fine idea. But I think the rest of it is where the problem can happen if you're not careful. So I had a different take. It's not necessarily a conflicting take, I'm coming at this from a different angle. As usual. Number one, sometimes you might make the quote unquote right decision for the wrong reason,

and I want to make sure that Niavists that you're not doing that. So when you talked about some of your reasons for wanting to sell the property, A, you mentioned that your current tenants are paying a little late. That is a temporary, short-term, and solvable problem, especially if you take the long game approach. You know, if you're going to be a landlord for the next or a rental property investor for the next 30 years, right, you will have tenants who pay late, you will have tenants who pay never,

you will experience the whole gamut. I would not let one set of tenants paying late be the thing that drives such a major decision. You also mentioned needing to. to replace the roof. There are two viewpoints that you can take on that. On one hand, there's the immediate cash flow management viewpoint, which is a very serious one, which is you don't currently have the cash to be able to make that roof replacement. That would have to come from a loan. It's never nice to have to take out more loans or more debt. Given the equity that you have in the home, you can take out a HELOC. You can take out a home equity line of credit. You can access

the money to be able to do that, but it does suck to take on more debt. So I understand that piece of it. On the other hand, there's a part of me that gets a little bit excited every time I have to make a major capital expenditure on a house. Like every time I replace a roof, replace a set of windows, replace the siding, paint the house, rip up the floors and put in new flooring. I know that I have just made an investment that will last me, barring any kind of black swan event like a fire or a tornado. I have just made an investment that will pay dividends for the next insert lifespan of component here. So if it's a set of windows, for example, that lifespan could be 30 years or 40, or depending on the quality of windows you buy. It could even be 50 years.

If I have to spend $10,000 getting a new set of windows for the entire house, cool. I have just front-loaded the payment that will pay dividends for the next 50 years. If it's a roof, I've just front-loaded the payment, if it's asphalt shingle, for the next 25 to 30 years. So there's a part of me that gets really excited about doing that because it is a form of almost forced investing. It's a form of, again, you talked about delayed gratification. It is a form of putting in a payment now that your future self will benefit from. and the fact that the debt and cash flow piece of it sucks, both of those things are simultaneously true. I also think, Paula, that this is a good lesson just for real estate, anybody who's going to invest in real estate, taking some of that cash flow and putting it away ahead of time, the roof is going to at some point need to be replaced.

it is a great practice to take some of that cash flow as you go and put that aside so that when something like this happens, you know, you're not wondering about selling the property because of the fact that the time has come. Right. Nevis may have done that. Sure. She may have cash reserves that are sufficient for, let's say, replacing a water heater or replacing an air conditioner, right? Replacing the HVAC. It's just that a roof specifically is one of the most expensive components. of a home. Yeah.

That said, I just replaced a water heater. And when I did it, I was like, great. For the next eight to 12 years, I'm not going to have to do that specific component on that specific house. Done. Yeah. Check that box. The other thing, Nevis, it sounds as though, and this is an assumption that I'm making,

which may or may not be true, but it sounds as though you may not have a property manager. If that's the case, I strongly encourage you to get one. And I know there are a lot of people who say, you know what, I've got a good relationship with the tenants. I know the property very well. I can manage it myself. I can save that spread. Like, why would I pay that to somebody else? But, and I'm assuming you won't have a property manager.

But let's, if you don't have a property manager, that's when you're more likely to sell a home the moment there is an issue with the tenants. you know, that can often lead to making what in the long term might be a bad decision because in the short term it provides relief because in the short term selling a home allows you to not have to deal with the tenant situation. But hiring a property manager also allows you to not have to deal with the tenant situation. And it allows you to spend your time focused on your life in Madrid rather than thinking about. this duplex. The benefit of a property manager, partially it's the time savings, but I think a big, big piece of it is the emotional and psychological benefit of having a professional in your corner advocating for you. You know, someone who knows real estate law in your specific geography backwards and forwards because every locality is different.

Somebody who does this all day every day, this is literally their full-time job. They do, you know, this is all they do. They're going to have full focus on making sure that your property is managed well. There's an enormous amount of relief in that. So if you don't have a property manager, I think that will solve that plus a helock to replace the roof

will solve two of the most pressing issues. And if you've got the property manager, manager, that manager can then interface with the roofer, the contractors. You just have to upload funds to the portal, and the manager handles the rest. They handle all the contractors. It makes it much easier, much simpler. Yeah. What if she's still just not feeling it, Paula? If that's the case, like if your gut says, I just don't want this, my question to you is, what is the alternate use of that money? So if you sell the property,

you'll have to pay, because it's a rental, it's not a primary residence, you'll have to pay capital gains tax on it. So there will be transaction costs, real estate commissions, transaction costs, you know, all of the costs that go into selling a home. Then there will be capital gains taxes. And then after that,

you're left with the amount that you're left with. What would you do with that money? and comparing the return that you might make on this property in the long term to the return that you might make on the gains you capture after taxes, after fees and taxes, that mathematically would be the comparison. That being said, it's not a perfect comparison because the risk profiles are going to be different. rental properties are concentrated bets, unlike a REIT, for example, a rental property is a concentrated bet on one specific property in one specific location. So necessarily that means the risk profile is different. Rental property is also biased towards the income stream. So if you think about any asset makes money in two ways, there's the appreciation on the asset, which means how much does it grow over time?

and then there's the dividend or the income stream that it pays out. And with a rental property, there is historically speaking, some appreciation. Historically nationwide properties have appreciated at about 5% over the long term. And again, that's nationwide. So your locality may vary. And as I often say, there's no such thing as the national real estate market. There are only many, many, many hyper-local markets. And the way that real estate works in one local market is going to be very different than

another. So anyway, all of that is to say nationwide, five percent, but take that with a grain of salt and look at local conditions. That's the appreciation that you might expect. And then there's also the dividend. And that dividend as a percentage of what you paid for the property is that percent. And so if you're getting essentially the equivalent of, and I haven't crunched the numbers, but just hypothetically, if a person were getting, let's say, a five cap, which means a five percent dividend of 5% cap rate on a property, then that five cap plus the 5% long-term appreciation equals the total unleveraged return. So in that case, it would be a 10% unleveraged total return. I like to calculate unleveraged return because with real estate specifically,

there's also a different formula that's called cash on cash return. I don't really like to use it. A lot of real estate gurus. They do. A lot of them use it. Yeah. They really. really, really love that one because it's so easy to juice and it's so easy to like have eye-popping, mouthwatering numbers. And that's exactly the reason that I don't like to use it. So we're going to set cash on cash return to the side. We're just in order to compare apples to apples, which means we're comparing unleveraged returns to unleveraged turns. We're going to look at, on your rental property, cap rate plus appreciation. And then we're going to look at what you would do with that other basket of money. So maybe, for example, you might put it into an S&P 500 index fund.

And we compare the two and see what type of returns you get, but with the caveat that we're not talking about risk-adjusted returns. So it's not exactly a fair comparison. Depending on the risk profile of the property that you hold, some properties act more like equities and some are more like bonds. And what I mean by that is that some properties have a higher level of risk, but greater potential upside. And if they're in rapidly changing neighborhoods, you might expect the potential for greater appreciation over time, whereas there are other properties that are stable, stalwart's relatively low risk, and you buy them for their income stream. That's the other piece when I talk about how it's not exactly a risk-adjusted comparison.

The other piece of it is that real estate in general doesn't have a risk profile. I would argue every home has its own unique fingerprint of risk profile, depending on its age, its condition, its community street address. Yeah. That's a mistake you see a lot of beginning investors make, Paula, is they talk about the quote, real estate market. And I think there definitely is a big old S on the end of that. Real estate markets.

Yeah. But, Joe, to your question, what if she's just not feeling it, then my question to Nievis is, what is the next best alternative? Yeah. And how does that compare? Joe, tell me about, you know, you had a successful rental property. The numbers were good. It was doing well. But you just didn't like real estate investing.

Tell us about that. No, I did not like it at all. Of course, I'd never taken your course. I didn't think I knew you yet when I owned when I own this. I probably would have avoided making every single mistake possible. And most of it was exactly the advice that you're giving today. It was the friction of owning the property, not having a property manager. I had a tenant that I thought was a really good tenant.

It was a recently divorced elementary school teacher, just this sweet, sweet, sweet, older lady. And I thought, what a fantastic tenant. not at all the case. Late with her rent every single month. When she moved out, the house was disgusting. It was absolutely horrible. Cleaning it up for my following tenant was one of the biggest challenges that I've had. And I thought at the same time, you know, I'm a guy who had been a financial planner for a long time.

And I'd had many different investments. And they were so passive. They were so absolutely passive that I definitely thought there is nothing about this. that turns me on. There's nothing about this. What turns me on is putting money into an index fund and going and doing the thing that I really love to do. You know, a mentor mine talked about your unique talent. And so being able to focus on the things that are my unique talents versus managing my property was something that I really wanted to do. So I think you could have given me, I could have totally been her. You could have been giving this advice to me,

100%. It's interesting how deeply not having a property manager can affect you. 100%. It wasn't Paula, that it was super hard. I want to be clear. Because some people are like, well, I don't want to have to fix the toilet at 3 o'clock in the morning. Listen, your tenant is not going to call you at 3 o'clock of the morning to fix the toilet. Those calls never came. It was much more the hassle and the mind share, right? The fact that there wasn't anything between me and my client calling it or my tenant calling at any point. So 100% it was not having that person between me and my tenant. Someone that I spoke with recently was telling me about his grandparents had purchased some property out in Orange County, California, back in the 1950s. And then in the 1970s, they also purchased some property in Vail.

rather than hold on to it, they sold both, largely because they were doing all of the work themselves, not just property management, but also like handyman work, fix it, repairs. They were doing it all themselves, didn't want to hire it out because they were like, why would we give away a percentage of our profits? And so instead they sold both. And they sold both before the values really popped. You can imagine property in OC and property in Vale, like if they had held onto that, the legacy that it would leave. And I tell that story, I mean, those are two unique locations. Those are two incredibly unique locations that have popped in a way that many locations haven't. If I had told that same story and both of those properties were located in Cincinnati, nobody would be playing a tiny violin. So to a certain extent, you never know how a location is going to pop. And there are some places that really surprise you.

But when I think about their story, I think that, I don't know, I've always felt that the saddest part was that they never discovered what rental property ownership would be like if they weren't doing everything themselves. Let me just say this. if I was podcasting but I had to manually edit every episode myself, hi Steve. If I had to edit every episode, I would not be podcasting anymore. If I had to upload every episode with the corresponding show notes to create a blog post for each episode.

If I had to do that myself with the tagging and the SEO and the this and that, forget it. I would have quit this game a long time ago if I was doing that. Offloading the day-to-day of a thing so that you can be focused on the thing that you want to focus on, that keeps you in the game. That's how we got to 752 episodes. Yeah. Another thing that a mentor taught me a long time ago, focus on your unique talent. Often we try to get decent at things that other people. around us are really good at. Like on a scale of 1 to 10, we try to become a 5. But what if you

delegated that like we're talking about with property management and took all that time where you're taking something where you're a 3 moving up to a 5 instead took something where you were an 8 moved it up to a 10 in the same amount of time? You would be happier because you're working on the thing where you're 10. It clearly is something you're good at that other people aren't good at. You're probably going to go further. And somebody else who's a 7 or 8 already at the thing that you're not great at, like, why, why spin your wheels getting to that point? And I think it's a common mistake. It's something that we all do when we think about productivity and quote being well-rounded. There's a great quote, Paula, that I don't remember who said it,

but they said it's the cracked ones who led in the light for the rest of us. And that being well-rounded is not something that, you know, some of the world's greatest thinkers ever were. Right. So, Niavis, neither of us will tell you what to do, but we want to give you a variety of perspectives and frameworks to help you think through it. And so I hope that this provided food for thought so that you can make your own decision. And to anyone who's listening who's new, who's like, wait a second, how can somebody call in and they don't tell them what to do? It's, we very intentionally try to never, I shouldn't say never, never, never say never. But like, we try to limit the amount of prescriptive advice that we give because it's more important that a person develops frameworks for how to think through decision making than it is to tell someone to do X or Y, which doesn't actually teach them anything. Well, thank you, Nievis for the question. Best of luck with whatever decision you come to. And please call us back and let us know what you end up choosing. We're going to take a moment to hear from the sponsors who support this show. And when we return, we're going to answer a question about the labor market, the labor force participation rate specifically.

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stream. Download the Culture Next Report to discover trends and insights that will inspire your next campaign. Welcome back. Our next question comes from Mandy. Hi, Paula. Thank you so much for taking this question. I really loved your most recent podcast on the July jobs report that came out. And I saw something recently in the news that said that 100% of the labor workforce decline was actually female in gender. And 100% of it was females leaving the workforce. And I didn't know if you could speak to that. I wasn't sure how accurate or correct the information was. And I was curious if it was accurate, what's the

reason behind it? And are there things that are impacting that? I appreciate your input and always look forward to how thorough and thoughtful and considerate your responses are. Thanks. Mandy, thank you for the question. The answer is yes and. Yes, that's true. And there's some more interesting data to contextualize that. So the stat that you heard came from the National Women's Law Center, which did an analysis of the July 26 data from the BLS, the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And among adults ages 20 and older, the number of women in the labor force fell by a about 165,000 in the month of July, while the number of men in the labor force remained essentially unchanged. And so that means that in the month of July, 100% of net decline among adults over 20 of labor force participation was women. There are a few things to note here. Number one, and first, just to clarify what labor force participation is, labor force participation means that a person either is employed or they are unemployed but they want a job. So they're actively

looking for work. So if a person is unemployed but they don't want a job, maybe they're retired, maybe they are just super rich, or maybe they've got caregiving responsibilities, right? If a person's unemployed but they don't want a job, then they are not counted as unemployed and they are not counted in the labor force participation rate. So labor, labor, labor force participation are people who have jobs and people who want jobs. One point that I want to emphasize and why I define labor force participation is because I don't want that stat to be misunderstood as that many women lost jobs, right? So when we're talking about that decline, we're not talking about job loss. We're talking about, in many cases, the choice to participate in the

workforce might have shifted from I want a job to I don't want a job. Heather Long, the chief economist at Navy Federal, has noted that over the past couple of years, there's been a noticeable decline among women with children under the age of five and has pointed to both expensive child care and the return to office policies as contributing factors. 42%, this is from a survey run by catalyst, of women who left the workforce in 2020. of those women, 42% cited caregiving responsibilities as the strongest factor. And that includes cost of child care. So I think with inflation, with rising costs, with more households feeling strapped, specifically the cost of child care is a big component in this.

Well, and that timing matches up with, I mean, a lot of reports that I've read about returning to work, right? About, you know what? Your job. It's not going to be virtual anymore. Time to get back to the office. Exactly, exactly. So the return to office policies, return to office mandates also correlate with this trend that we're seeing. So when you think about July specifically and the seasonality and the sector effect, July is a time in which education, K through 12, like if you are a K through 12 educator and you are going to make a career change, that's likely going to be in the summer if you can help it. leisure and hospitality, summer is a good time for career changes. The retail sector, summer prior to gearing up for the holiday season, that is a time when there's a lot of labor turnover. So a lot of the sectors that draw on female labor force participation are also sectors that have a higher

likelihood of having July or summer-related turnover. And so while July itself was particularly striking. The thing to track is not what has happened in the span of one month, but rather what has happened over the span of many months and or years. And so again, back to Navy Federal, the stats that Navy Federal and Heather Long, the chief economist from there pulled, there's overall a decrease in labor force participation from women with children under the age of five. that's a multi-year trend that we're seeing, but that it is a contributing factor to July's numbers, but it isn't the entirety of July's numbers.

But it is more signal than noise in that that is a multi-year trend, and any time you're talking about a multi-year trend, that is more significant than a shock that may concentrate into one given month. The other piece of it is to look at the jobs, new roles that have been filled in the year 2026.

And there's another stat that the overwhelming majority, and I believe it is a, let me double check this, but I believe it's around 98% of new positions have been filled by women. And that is largely because most of the new job creation is, as we talk about on our first Friday episodes, in fields that are predominantly represented by women. fields like education, health services, social services, most of the job creation has been in

women-dominated fields. There's another interesting stat that I want to bring to your attention, and it is that women accounted for about 98% of August's net job growth. So net job growth in the month of August, 98% went to women. Wow. Yeah. So we're seeing in July, 100%. 100% labor force participation decline was women. In August, 98% net job growth was also women.

So let's unpack this a little bit. First of all, this data comes from the BLS establishment survey. It shows that in between July and August, total and non-farm payrolls rose from 158.9 million to 159.07 million, which is another way of saying, we added 166,000. thousand jobs and payroll jobs held by women during that same time period rose by 158,000 jobs. 158,000 jobs out of a total of 162,000 jobs, technically that's 97.5%, which rounds to 98%. So women accounted for 98% of August's job growth. When we zoom out and we look at 2026 year-to-date numbers, women have enjoyed about 85% of all job gains. So total jobs added between December 2025 through August 2026, total jobs added according to BLS data is 643,000 jobs.

Of those, 549,000 jobs went to women. So women accounted for 85% of new jobs, total job gains. year-to-date 2026. That's a real multi-month trend. It's interesting how all that data changes when you zoom out. Yeah. And it's interesting because, again, it tells two stories. It tells the story of most of the jobs that we are creating, year-to-date, 85% of jobs that we've created have gone to women. And simultaneously, at least in the month of July, fewer women. Women want jobs, specifically within that women with children under the age of five, which means for the ones who do, depending on what sectors they're in and depending on geography, it could potentially mean less competition. But that would, of course, be sector specific and geographic specific. Sure, right. One other thing to note, when we talk about data from the BLS, remember that whenever we talk job data from the BLS, we're talking about job data from the BLS, we're talking about jobs.

held, not about individuals. So if one individual has two jobs, then that is counted as two jobs. If you want to be extremely precise, we're specifically talking about jobs that are held by women, as opposed to talking about women who have jobs. I just saw some interesting data on the job front in another facet that I found interesting in the Wall Street Journal, just a few days ago, Paula. which was generally for new college graduates and high school graduates that are not attending college, you see that for both groups when the job market tightens, both of them struggle. And then you see when one group is hiring, the other is not. There's a longer-termish, 10-year-ish trend in which those two are really diverging. And there are more college graduates than ever before.

And at the same time, you're seeing all of the pressures on people right out of college. And this is where AI is, I think, even though we haven't seen huge numbers that show that there's any type of huge disruption in the workforce because of AI, you are seeing people struggle more and wait longer to get a job that have a college degree. and sometimes an advanced college degree versus people going into the trades. Like that separation between people going into the trades and people with a college degree is for the first time ever over the last few years, those paths are diverging.

Right. And trade jobs are so in demand right now. I mean, we talk about housing, home construction. We have a housing shortage. What do you need in order to build homes? You need trade. You need roofers. You need plumbers.

You need HVAC. You need electricians. AI is not going to fix your HVAC. Yeah, exactly. Those trades are so heavily in demand. And given the housing shortage that we have, I mean, wow. Yeah. Trades are where the opportunity is at.

My advice has never been to go into a job sector because you think that the hiring is hot. we've seen over the years how those change. And plus, spending your life doing something that you don't want to do doesn't make a lot of sense. But I went to high school with some students that really, I went to a college prep high school. And I'll tell you, there were some people, even in my class, way, way back when. And I only know talking to my own children and to friends of mine that are younger than me, the people that they graduated with, there's a lot of pressure to go to college for people that it just doesn't necessarily fit. And if college isn't a fit for you right now, then I think there is more evidence than ever before that you shouldn't go, that you should go do the thing. And what's cool is college will always be waiting for you. It'll always be waiting. Let's say that you decide to become a welder out of high school and you become a journeyman welder, an apprentice welder, you work your way up. But then later on, you decide that you want to go into management or you want to maybe own a company. Well, all the statistics also show Paula that people going back to school when they're older, they get higher grades,

they know exactly why they're there. The ROI is much, much higher for somebody that is focused when they go to college versus somebody who's going to college just because they got talked into it by their friends because it's what everybody's doing. Right. For me, I went back to grad school after I had been in the workforce for over a decade. Yeah. I took my grad school education a lot more seriously because I had a decade of work experience under my belt. I regret that I did not take a gap or a pause prior to undergrad. I really do. And this is interesting, Paula, because when I went back to get my teaching certificate when I thought it was going to be a teacher, same thing. I was laser focused. I also felt like, I don't know if you felt the same way, I felt like because

of my life experience, I knew what the professor was after more. I had a much better idea of what the professor was asking when I remember earlier on going, I'm not sure exactly what I'm supposed to do with this, almost in every case, with all that experience under my belt, going back to get that teaching certificate, I was like, oh, I know what he wants me to do. And regardless of what the professor's asking, I also felt like I knew what I wanted to learn. I knew what elements of what I was learning could be applicable. 100%. What parts were theory and what parts were definitely great tactics that you can apply immediately. Exactly. Yeah. So I had a very strong sense of, oh, this will be useful versus this is a

waste of time. That being said, I also had a much lower patience threshold for the this is a waste of time parts of it. That is funny. Me too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, what am I doing in this class right now? Yeah, exactly. My patience for the waste of time bits was like, you know, but my appreciation for the useful bits was way, way higher. Going back to, I just want to tap in again on a comment that I made earlier on a big part of why 85% of the job growth, the 85% of jobs created in 2026 year to date are held by women. So why is that? And I mentioned sectors. So I just want to dial into 2026 year to date net jobs created by sector.

the overall biggest sector, education and health services, 347,000 net jobs created in 2026 year-to-date. That is by far and away, the single biggest sector. The second biggest is professional and business services. And then the third biggest is construction. And then after that comes retail trade and then manufacturing, transportation, warehousing, and wholesale trade. But all of them, I mean, you talk about,

manufacturing, transportation, wholesale, those are drops in the bucket compared to the two biggest. So 347,000 new jobs in education and health services, those are fields dominated by women. And then 155,000 in professional and business services, that's more of a co-ed field. Just those two sectors together comprise, let's see. So there were 643,000 net jobs created December through August. So let's just do some math here. Okay. So that means of education and healthcare services, that's 54% right there of the entire net increase.

Then you layer in 155,000 jobs out of 643,000 in total in professional and business services. And you can quickly start painting a picture as to why. by 85% of that job growth is held by women. It's interesting, actually, because we've just talked about how we need more people in the trades. And yet, by the numbers, construction is not one of the biggest growing sectors, which is unfortunate because it needs to be because we have a big housing shortage. Big housing shortage. Yeah.

Do you think we're going to see, I mean, this is getting speculative now, but do you think we're going to see continuing legislation in different states, know we've seen some as governments are starting to try to tackle housing shortages on a state-by-state level. Unfortunately, what we really need is supply. And unfortunately, we have a system in which people who are incumbent homeowners, people who already own homes, are incentivized to not allow new supply in order to protect the value of the homes that they already. own. You want the value to keep going up. Right. Because we have a society in which, for many people, either the majority of your net worth or if not the majority, then at least a sizable minority,

you know, a major, major chunk of your net worth is the value of your primary residence. And in a system in which for the average individual or the average household, a big chunk of net worth is the value of your primary residence, that means that you're going to battle tooth and nail to protect the value of your primary residence. And how do you do that? You do it by blocking new growth. And unfortunately, that means that we have a society in which incumbent homeowners are incentivized to pull the ladder up from under them and not let new supply onto the market. You know, if we want to create more jobs in industries that are more highly represented by men to solve the unemployment crisis among many men,

we need jobs in the construction sector. And that would be great for society too, because construction, of course, isn't just residential real estate. Construction is multifaceted. Could be commercial centers. It could be, you know, so it's not just residential real estate.

But residential real estate is a major piece of construction. And if we can get that going, we can solve two problems at once. We could solve unemployment among men. And we can also solve housing affordability. And all of that dials back to letting housing supply happen, encouraging housing supply to happen. And unfortunately, what we're seeing in city after city after city is the opposite. We're seeing the incumbent homeowners argue against it.

It's rare that I say something pessimistic on the show. Right. But you can see why. I mean, just follow the money. Follow the money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's just supply, supply, supply.

We need housing supply. And that would solve a lot of problems. And on that cheerful note, if you're looking for a job in education or health services. Bam. Yeah. Over half of our job growth is in those two fields. Thank you, Mandy, for the question. Thank you for sparking this discussion.

And it's something that we should keep checking on and that we should keep returning to. We're going to take one final break to hear from the sponsors who make the show possible. When we return, we're going to share a beautiful voice note that we got about a recent guest. Trade ice skating at Nathan Phillips Square for ice cubes in your umbrella drink. Let Porter Airlines fly you from Toronto Pearson nonstop to 10 top sun destinations in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Costa Rica. Enjoy award-winning Porter service. Toronto has loved for 20 years and start your vacation as soon as you're on the plane.

Book your sunny getaway today at flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. Welcome back. Our comment today comes from James. Hi, Paula. My name is James. I'm calling regarding episode 744 with Joseph Moore. That was one of the most interesting podcasts about finance that I've ever listened to.

I just wanted to call and give you that accolade, and to say that I will keep listening to your show on a regular basis. I'm a full-time stacker and a part-time off order. Keep up the good work, and I look forward to listening to your episodes in the future, and also make it easier to leave a review on your website because I couldn't figure out to do that. So that's why I'm leaving this message. Talk to you later. Thank you. Thank you so much, James. Actually, we are redesigning the website by mid-October.

We will have a new website going live. You heard it here first. New website, new design in the works. Can I just say that I told you so? I knew your episode with Joseph Moore was coming out for people that have been around this summer. And I said, you want to listen to that episode because Paul's ability to interview with this gentleman. interesting historical story. Like, these are two great tastes that go great together.

I knew it was going to be fantastic. And sure enough. You know, Joseph Moore, the historian, and if you didn't catch it, we'll put a link to it in the show notes. That particular episode on YouTube got more comments than probably year-to-date than anything that we've published in 2026.

It was split. The comments were split between people who called him uplifting and P.S. And people who had a bone to pick with him. Isn't that funny? Of course. Yeah. And I love the way he likes to stir the pot, you know?

Yeah. Yeah, he is a pot stir. But I think that there is a hunger for uplifting financial news because we live in an era where there's a financial incentive to present pessimism. And that financial incentive is that people pay more attention to negative. where our brains are wired like that, our brains are wired to pay more attention to threats. If there are 10 pieces of information that are coming at you all simultaneously,

and nine of those pieces of information are either positive or neutral, but one of those pieces of information is a threat, of course, your brain as a survival mechanism, should focus on the threat. So multiple inputs are coming at you simultaneously, and one of those 10 inputs is, hey, there's someone with a knife,

standing over there. Okay, cool. That's the information that I need in order to take the relevant action or in the prehistoric days. Like, there's a saber-tooth tiger, run. So we are wired to pay attention to negativity. We are wired to pay attention to threats. That is, that is a, it's a survival mechanism. Again, when it goes back to financial incentives, when the business model of Social media is and news. It's not just, I don't want it only blame social. Business model of everything on the internet is clicks, eyeballs, attention. That means there's a strong negativity bias.

And I think that what Joseph Moore did beautifully is he used facts, data, history, context, to create this picture of optimism. that is not Pollyanna optimism, but grounded, factual, database, historically contextual optimism. And that's not something that we hear, but if we're going to bias towards what is true rather than what has the probability of virality, then that is what we need to hear. It's not what we get rewarded. Like as creators, that's not what we get rewarded.

Like, as creators, that's not what we get. rewarded to say. In fact, to the extent that we don't go viral, we get penalized. Like, financially speaking, we get penalized for sharing a story of hope and uplift and optimism and nuance. Those are much harder stories to tell than a simplistic chicken little the sky is falling. Well, this has been the case forever. I mean, that phrase, if it bleeds, it leads. is a very, very old phrase. That's not a new phrase. And it increasingly as we're able to get media into the hands of people much, much quicker.

And there are fewer middlemen than, you know, even if it doesn't bleed, if we think it might bleed and we should be worried about the fact that it could bleed at any minute. Like that becomes news. Right. Speculation about bleeding. Yes, exactly. You know, the other thing I think there's always a thirst for, and that is just what you did with Mandy's question about the economic data. The ability to zoom out and go, you know what, this is not a new thing. This has repeated before.

This is how we tackled this last time, or this is how bizarre this thing was the last time this happened. And I think that gives us a lot more confidence when we know that this new, new is pretty old, old, just in a little bit. different, a little bit different ideation. Hmm. Well, with her question, especially because her question was specifically about the month of July, you know, and we talked to numbers from July, we talked numbers from August, and then we zoomed out and talked, all right, what is, what is the story year to date? Yeah. And anybody who has spent any time working with data can see that sometimes charts have little spikes, but you get a very different read when you zoom out and when you look at a long-term trendline.

but the long-term trend line, again, is not geared for virality. It's not geared for clicks. It's not geared for engagement. It's not shareable. It's not as commentable. And what that means, just from a media manager's perspective, like they've got to make payroll and keep the lights on. Virality is part of the business model and it's core to them being able to keep their people employed.

And so how do you, for any media entrepreneur, right, how do you, honestly, in that tension between truth and nuance versus negativity and simplicity, the latter often wins even when the former is the case. And that is what I think Joseph Moore is fantastic at, is taking something that is long term. and a moderated approach, but wrapping it in the hype that we love as humans. And, you know, the headline of, that is not true. Guess what's not true? You know, number three is going to make you go, oh, my God. But what he's talking about is exactly the opposite. This thing that we're all fixated on is not true.

It is not true. It's pretty fabulous. Yeah. I love that. Our discussion around this comment, it feels like a continuation of our discussion around. Mandy's question. It does, because that's what Joseph Moore does,

is Zoom's out. Yeah, exactly. But I just want to go back to, I told you so, that you were going to have a great interview. I knew it ahead of time. I called it. I told everybody you want to hear this. And there it is.

Approve. You know what I told Joe right before we started recording? I was like, you know what, Joseph Moore is my favorite Joseph? And I was like, damn it. Foiled again. He's my favorite Joseph, too. Paula knows that ever since talking to Joseph more. I think I talked to this guy like three times a week.

I didn't know him six months ago. I didn't know who he was six months ago. Now Cheryl's like, who are you texting? I'm like, none of your business. Awesome. Well, Joseph Andrew, Joseph Andrews, all see. Do you have anything else to say on the matter? I do not.

No, I'm glad that he liked it. And Paula, you're fixing the website. So I think we're good. Yeah, I am fixing the website. Yes. So mid-October, we're going to have a brand new website. Oh, and if you sign up to our newsletter, we will send you a link when that goes live. Cool.

Affordainthing.com slash newsletter. Look at that. You know what we call that? That's a plug. That's what they call it in the industry. And this goes back to what we were talking about before, about how podcasting looks so easy. Paula, you know there's something always that's broken. Yeah, like our website.

Always something. Yeah, but it's this one piece, like 95% of your website's fine. I was on, I don't know, I was on a page that we have for stacking Benjamin's the other day. And I was like, really? How come I never saw that? Like, like, how has this been sitting here for the past two and a half years? And I haven't fixed it. Nobody's, nobody's noticed. There's always something. Yeah. Well, Joseph Andrews Sol See-high, where can people find you if they would like to learn more? Well, guess what I did? Because Paula's, Joseph, More interview was so good. Of course, I interviewed, I just call them Jojo. Jomo. That's right. Jomo, yeah. And if you've ever heard Paula interview people and me interview people, we ask totally different questions.

So if you love Paulus Joseph Moore interview, go to our YouTube page. Our YouTube video is just out. As we record this, it came out yesterday. And we have a cheat sheet with all of the, that you can download that has all of the top things in the interview. So go to YouTube.com slash stacking Benjamins and you can see even more, Joseph Moore, after you've watched Paula's Joseph Moore interview.

Excellent. Well, thank you, Joseph, for spending this time with us. Dude, this guy owes us 20 bucks. Right? He totally owes us 20 bucks. We have talked about Joseph Moore a lot. And Joseph, it's well-deserved. I'm just kidding.

Thank you for spending this time with us. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share this with friends, family, neighbors, colleagues. Share it with people who are participating in the labor force. That is to say, people with jobs and or people who want jobs. Share it with your favorite trade school teachers. Share it with people who live in Madrid. Oh, that's a good one. Share it with your favorite historian.

Share it with anyone who's currently getting an MBA. Perfect. Share it with anybody who is currently tooling around on the Ford Anything website. Share it with anyone who's thinking about taking out a helock in order to put a new roof on their home. Oh, that's a good one. Right? Yeah, throwback. Share it with your favorite property manager. I see what you did there.

All right. Share it with anyone who has an account at Navy Federal. Share it with the elementary school teacher who was a horrible tenant, but don't let her know that we were talking about her. Share it with any of the over 340,000 people who have gotten a job in the education or health services sector year to date. That's a big number. Yes, that's a lot of shares. That's a full-time job right there. Yeah, and if you take that job, you will participate in the labor force. Absolutely.

And Paula will be very grateful. All right, we'll share it with all of those people and more, because that is how you spread the message of hope and optimism and nuance and truth and context and trend lines and zooming out. That's how you share this message in a world that is so narrowly and myopically focused on today and threat. So, wow, that was a big ask. Oh, you just find the share button. So you just open up the app and you hit the share button.

That's how it works. Anyway, you can text it to somebody. You can WhatsApp it to them. You can drop it in your signal chat. Super in your signal chat. Yeah. As you do. As one does.

Please share this with the people in your life. Remember our newsletter, afford anything.com slash newsletter, so that you can get an update when we drop the new website mid-October. Maybe, I don't want to over-promise, but maybe even beginning of October. Ooh. Yeah. So yes, afford-anything. slash newsletter to see the new, get a link to the new website. And please leave us a review up to five stars in your favorite podcast playing app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever it is that you like to listen to this show. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Paula Pan. I'm Joe Salcihi. I thought you were Joseph Salcihihi. Joseph Andrew Salcii hi. And we'll meet you in the next episode.