Afford Anything - Q&A: “My Husband is Not Reliable with Money. Should We Split Finances?

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

#503: Lindsay’s husband struggles with a mental disability. She’s worried about the impact on her family’s finances. How does she maintain harmony in her marriage and protect her kids’ future? An anonymous caller is stoked about her young nephew’s interest in saving for retirement. What’s Paula and Joe’s advice for a teenage saver? Another anonymous caller wants to get personal about Paula’s personal finances. Following up on a discussion from episode 494, Melanie has exciting news to share about automating ETF investments at Vanguard. Former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I tackle these four questions in today’s episode. Enjoy! P.S. Got a question? Leave it at https://affordanything.com/podcast-questions For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode503 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You know something I just realized, Paula? What's that? We always talk about everybody else's money. How can we never talk about your money? Ooh, hey, I am a private person. These are private details. Yeah, private people, Paula, generally have a microphone in front of them. Yes, exactly.

A couple times a week. Well, I tell you what, at the end of today's episode, I will spill the beans. Wait, what? Really? Yeah, exactly. Pull back the curtain. Exactly. Open the corner.

Wow. All right. All right. So that's coming up at the end of the show. But first, we've got some questions of yours to answer. Welcome to the Afford Anything Podcast, the show that understands you can afford anything, but not everything. And that applies to your money, your time, your focus, your energy, your attention. It applies to any limited resource you need to manage.

So what matters most and how do you make smart decisions accordingly? Those are the two questions. This podcast is here to explore. I'm your host, Paula Pantt. And every other episode I answer questions that come from you alongside my buddy, the former financial planner, Joe Sal C-high. What's up, Joe? Paula, I'm super excited to be here. You and I took a couple minutes to preview these questions.

And wow. The first question that we're going to address is, well, you know what? Let's just play it. Yeah. Hey, Paula and Joe, this is Lindsay from Austin, Texas. calling to ask you something that may be a bizarre question, take it or leave it. So I'm 44. I make $104,000 a year. I just got this job. This is a pretty decent wage for somebody in my line of work. I only have, as far as retirement accounts, about $40,000 in an IRA at Vanguard. I have now access to this company's 403B plan. And they do a 2% match. So I have started contributing that. And I plan to start contributing a lot more so I can set myself up to actually retire someday. But I have three beautiful children. I have a husband who I think

you could describe has definitely like neurodivergent. He's a beautiful artist. He is mostly a builder. but he makes a very variable income. And that is due to his mental illness. I'm sure there are a million people listening who can relate, but that struggle with mental illness, sometimes they're just going to be highly productive, and sometimes they just aren't capable of doing that. So I would say his income fluctuates dramatically

based on how well he is, maybe on average, 50,000 a year. I want to separate our finances at this point. I want to know that money I have put away for the kids is safe. Money I have put away for myself will go to the kids. And yeah, as financial advisors, have you ever been in this situation, I'm just wondering what you would advise somebody who wants to stop sharing control of the money in their marriage because one of the people who would completely say this himself is not reliable with money. What do you think I should do to keep my family secure financially? Thank you. Lindsay, first of all, thank you for the question.

And I want to commend you for the incredible work that you're doing to support your family, to support your husband and your three children, to create a good and secure life for everyone around you and yourself. Let's talk about how to move forward. First, I think a financial plan in which your income, covers the needs of the family and your husband's income, which is variable and intermittent, covers things that have more flexibility but isn't required for needs. I also think that your structural proposal to separate finances make sense under this framework, because that separation does make it easier to have one batch of accounts that feed the needs bucket,

while you have a separate batch of accounts that fuel the wants bucket. And so, again, by virtue of separating finances between you and him, you're also, in doing so, separating the accounts that pay for the fundamentals, versus the accounts that pay for the things that are optional. There are two elements to address here when we talk about needs versus wants, and that's the short term, which is the day-to-day of paying the renter mortgage, buying groceries, buying clothes, those everyday needs. And then the long term, which is necessary financial planning for the future,

when it comes to the long term, your retirement is number one. And when I'm going to put a few asterisks here, because I want to be very clear about what I mean by the word retirement. In this context, I'm using the word retirement to refer to the old age version of yourself, who at some point in the future may be at an age. where you are unable to work, even if you wanted to, your ability to pay your bills is the number one goal. And that comes ahead of any money for your children. And I know that's very hard to hear because every parent cares about their kids more than they care about themselves. It's natural to want to set aside money for your kids.

and not yourself, but your kids have time on their side. It's the age-old maxim of you put your own mask on first. You know, the airplane and trouble analogy, affix your own mask, because until you've affixed your own mask, you can't help anybody else with theirs. Right. And if you think about it, the greatest gift that you can give to your kids is the relief of know for them to know that their parents are taken care of. Yeah.

Right? Imagine the burden that a child feels when that child is in their 20s or 30s and they are worried about their parents' retirement, right? You don't want to place that on your kids. It is better for your kids to be worried about their own student loans than it is for them to be worried about their parents' retirement. So the best thing that you can do for your kids is to secure your own retirement. And again, in this context, I'm using the word retirement to mean a time in your life when your health, typically due to age, prohibits you from working.

Statistically speaking, the vast majority of retirements in the U.S. are circumstances in which people want to work, but either they can't find work due to age. due to age discrimination, because if you get laid off at the age of 67, it's really hard to find an employer who's going to hire you, or they want to work but they have a health condition that prohibits it, or they want to work but they have caretaking responsibilities for a family member who has a health condition that prohibits it. So in the U.S., unfortunately, the vast majority of retirements are involuntary. And that is the number one thing. When it comes to separating the needs from the wants, your retirement and your spouse's retirement fall into the needs bucket.

And leaving money for your kids, I hear that you want to leave that as a legacy. That's a beautiful thing, but you've got to secure your old age first. We think about retirement through a very hopeful lens, Paula, but the evidence bears out that that isn't often enough the case, which is partly the reason why you have the show, right? So more people can have that joyful retirement that they want to have, the financial independence they want to have versus being forced into a situation. The more you can set yourself up with flexibility, the better things are going to be in the future. You know, one of my favorite Sun Tsu maxims, again, to use that same word, is that the best battle is the one that's never fought. And if I can set myself up for this flexibility so that I don't have to fight the battle in the future because I have the means to do that, because I've done some pre-planning, the better than I'm going to be. Which is why Lindsay's question, not just for her, but to her point to a lot of people listening that are in a similar situation is so important.

I only have a couple things to add on my end. And the first one is, for whatever reason, this idea of income variability brings on a lot of stress to many families. And it might be mental illness. It might be just you're a commissioned salesperson. But variable income always create stress. And it also makes it very difficult to not live a boom-bust lifestyle. And I'll tell you from an emotional standpoint how this works. I come home with no money.

I have to eat ramen that night. I come home with no money the next night. I have to eat ramen. And I get used to that, Paula, but I'm starving myself, right? And I see people around me that are flourishing. And then I get the huge paycheck, this one big boom. And when I get the big boom, because I haven't had it very much, I feel this elation, this huge dopamine hit.

this huge pride that I have this amount of money, that I do the dumbest things with it ever. Because of the fact, for a few reasons. A, when you throw something at somebody who's been starving for money for a long time, you tend to go a little crazy with it, right? You're like, I don't know how long this is going to be around. So I have to spend it. This continuing mindset, listen, we never have money. So when we have it, let's make sure we have a good time with it.

And then the money's gone, and the idea of investing it never, never goes anywhere. So the quicker for me that we can get rid of this boom-bust lifestyle, the better. And Lindsay mentioned, I don't know if this is a possibility or not, but I'm going to throw it out here, mostly because it's effective for so many people. She said on average he'll make around $50,000 a year. It's a two-bank system, meaning you've two different bank accounts. and here's what might help your husband with the boom bust part of this. And I'll get to how this helps you.

His money, when he gets it, goes into bank account number one. That bank account, however you're able to do it, whether it's his first big check or this explosion of productivity you talk about that he has, goes into bank number one. We are going to separate mentally the money he brings in and the money that's in your budget. This is a problem a lot of American families have, by the way. If I bring in more money, my budget changes. Complete lie. It doesn't have to be that way.

The amount you spend has nothing to do with the amount of money you make. I mean, unless it's very, very low and then you have to spend every dime. But the quicker you can separate those two things in your brain, the better you're going to be. So now your husband pays himself from bank account number one into bank account number two, the same small paycheck, either once a week, every two weeks, once a month, whatever you want to do, the bank's happy to transfer money from bank account number one to bank account number two. Give yourself as little access to bank account number one as possible because people love to cheat systems. And your brain goes, oh, well, I got this big sum of money.

No, you don't. That is your future paycheck coming. Do not touch that money. So get rid of the debit card. Get rid of the online access. throw away the key, make it so that money just builds up there, and then once whatever time frame you want, you get this simulated paycheck to yourself that's meant for the budget. For a lot of people, what this does, Lindsay, is it gives your husband the security of knowing that he has reliable money during times when he can't be reliable.

it gives him the security and you the security of knowing that at least for a regular time frame, however long it takes him, that the money will at least continue so he can focus on everything else in his life. It also gives you from a budget perspective the ability to know that while there are times when he said that he can't be reliable, his income stream can continue to be reliable. You can now save monthly based on that paycheck. He can be responsible for whatever bills, the two of you decide that he's responsible for. You can do a lot of things that weren't open to you just because you have reliability. Now, what I like to do is then either once a year,

once every six months, give yourself a bonus. And what the bonus is is extra money that's built up. I like to still leave several months worth of money there for the next time. But if there's money on top of that, I will then bonus myself either once a year or twice a year that money. Now, I'll tell you what the bonus does, Paula. The bonus is also this fun carrot that I know my day-to-day number is not 100% secure, but it's much more secure than I used to think of it as. And I've got some pride in building up that bonus. And if I can make that bonus bigger and bigger and bigger,

well then maybe I have a boom bus cycle around the bonus, right? I do my big expenditures around this once a year celebration that I have or twice a year celebration while I still have consistent income. So I like that. Oh, the bonus can also be used for making big lump sum contributions to retirement accounts or to college savings accounts. Fabulous. So this once a year or twice a year bonus can be these big lump sum getting ahead on the long term goals. Think about what this could do for his psyche instead of feeling like a liability. He has the opportunity to swoop in and frankly become the hero in this story in some cases.

And just from a psychological perspective, the fact that Lindsay, we can hear it in your voice that he thinks he can be a burden. Just changing the way you take your money could help. The key to making this work, I did this for a long time, of course, because I have variable income as well. I don't do this anymore, but for many, particularly in the early days of working for myself, I gathered my business revenue in one account and then paid myself with a normal paycheck. Right. Exactly. But anyway, I'll talk about myself later in the show. Ooh.

Ooh. Forshadowing. But the key to making that work is giving yourself a pay. that is small enough such that there will always be money in the revenue account to be able to provide for that paycheck. So, Lindsay, you mentioned that on average, he may make $50,000 per year. I'm curious what that range is. I'm just going to hypothetical some numbers.

Let's say that that range is between $30,000 to $70,000. Right? Or maybe it's between 20,000 to 80,000. Whatever is the lower number within that range, at least initially, set to the paycheck based off of that amount, set the paycheck based off of the lower number within that range. So that that's what you're drawing from. And that way, there's time for money in the revenue account to accumulate and grow. And then that money then becomes the annual bonus. And that's another positive, which is then you're giving yourself raises later on. If you're very conservative and you give yourself raises, these things are confidence builders and handling money well and building the muscle is often just about confidence. And when you're not confident because you don't know where the next paycheck's coming from, that destroys anyone's confidence. and if you're in a family, it can also drive tension into that relationship as well.

I only have one other thing to add, which is on that topic of tension, which you can clearly feel in Lindsay's question, you know, the money discussions are really an important part of any relationship. And while you may have to separate him from the more. important bills and the money and having your money separate. Discussion-wise, I think it's still important if you're going to stay together to have what I love, which is a very frequent money meeting. And it is a muscle, it's a habit that you build up. You will mess this up. In fact, I was going through with a few people from our community, Paula, and Cheryl, my spouse was in the meetings and I was going through at the end of one of the meetings like, hey, what did you guys

get out of this? And Cheryl goes, we've even done our money meeting in six weeks. And Joe talks about how we do it every week. You will fall off. And all of our friends laughed because they're like, oh, even the expert gets outed that you fall off. And you do fall off the wagon. But the more you talk about the little things. And all we do in our money meeting is this. We walk through the bank transactions from the week before. And we just talk about how we spent money the week before. That's all we do. And then the next thing we do is we then look at how we're going to spend money in the

next week. And we talk about it. Literally those two things. No big huge discussion. It's not some freaking Camp David Summit like every money nerd wants to have. Your husband probably doesn't want to be a part of that. But you know what he does want to be? You want to be a part of what utility bills do we pay last week?

Is there a way to do best? there is there opportunity with our phone package i'm sure he wants to be a part of those discussions and having those no matter how you manage i think there's a ridiculous amount of attention paid to whether we have one checkbook or two just stab me in the eye right now that that is nowhere near as important this is why you should never take financial advice from twitter their engagement baiting by making these declarative like every couple should followed by some XYZ of what every couple should or should not do. Well, we've got a guy in Franklin, Tennessee, who we know who talks about this a lot too.

Ouch. Ooh, went there. Yeah. Always won all the time. And I do in this case get where that man is coming from or where Twitter's coming from. But there's a bigger argument, Paula. What they're actually saying is you need to communicate about your money. You need to communicate about it.

And I think doing it often keeping it light, keeping it easy is the way to have. The big conversations will happen if you continually have the small conversation of how do we spend money and how do we plan to spend money next week? Not the big stuff. Okay, groceries. You know, we went overboard last time and we didn't eat half that stuff. We ended up throwing it out. How do we do that better?

We look at that grocery number of $300 something or $200 something dollars or $200 something, whatever the number is. We look at that and it's bigger than normal. We have a discussion about it then. If we never look at it, we don't have that discussion. And by the way, there's people who are single listening to me right now going, well, I'm not in that relationship. You know what?

You're still in a relationship with you and your money and still setting aside this set time of 20 minutes a week to just look at how I spent money and actively think about it. Not passive. Like, wow, that was a big number. Actively think about it. And then actively think about what my strategy is going to be for the next week. still a date you want to keep with yourself. I don't think this relationship quote is just for two people. No matter who you are, I think that's an important meeting to have with yourself every week. And you know what happened during that six week period, Paula, when Cheryl and I didn't have those

meetings? What happened? We had more money frustration again. By the time we were in this meeting with our group between the two of us, we had had some really frustrating stuff happened. that frustration we got back on the horse since then has went away and it's not rocket science it's because we're actually talking about the little things again no matter how you do lindsay no matter how you decide to do the checkbooks no matter how you decide to do the bills the one thing i would not get rid of is continuing the discussion with your husband about how this stuff is being paid and about what our strategy is for the next week because i believe that's that's the important piece of this whole thing.

So, Lindsay, we talked about confidence. And I hope that what you've heard right now, I hope that what we've said gives you more confidence because you're doing an enormous amount of work. You are holding up your family. And you have every reason to be confident, right? You are on a day-to-day basis doing heroes' work. So I hope that this builds your confidence. I hope it builds your resilience and your fortitude.

Please call back with updates. Please, please do. We're rooting for you. Part of our commitment in hosting this podcast and Joe, I know you feel the same way, we want to make sure that financial literacy is available to everyone for no cost. In service of that, we have sponsors. So we're going to take a break right now to hear from the sponsors who allow us to make this show. We vet them very thoroughly.

So I hope that you take some time to hear about what they offer. The holidays are right around the corner. And if you're hosting, you're going to need to get prepared. Maybe you need bedding, sheets, linens. Maybe you need servware and cookware. And of course, holiday decor, all the stuff to make your home a great place to host during the holidays. you can get up to 70% off during Wayfair's Black Friday sale. Wayfair has Can't Miss Black Friday deals all month long.

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But they also have the FinTech Hustle that got them named one of America's most innovative companies by Fortune magazine. That's what being a fifth third better is all about. It's about not being just one thing, but many things for our customers. Big Bank Muscle, FinTech Hustle. That's your commercial payments of fifth, third better. Our next question comes from an anonymous caller. And Joe, Joe, this anonymous caller specifically requested that you give her a name. So what are you watching right now?

Well, I have had the opportunity to listen to this question already. And this caller, Paula, is slightly positive. She's so great. I love her. Slightly positive. And you know what? I am watching a wonderful documentary that I think a lot of our fans would love. Netflix is doing a series of documentaries about people in different sports.

It started off with Drive to Survive, which was a Formula One documentary. Even if you don't like Formula One, I think it's, well, you can tell by the numbers how many people like it. They did another one on golf. But there was a cool documentary in this series about tennis. And it's called Breakpoint. and it follows some of the cool young people in tennis. Well, there is the most positive woman in tennis is a woman named Anstjabor, and at the time she was the number two tennis player in the world.

And she is by far the best tennis player to ever come out of North Africa and from an Arab nation. And so many people around the world rally behind this woman. And the fact that she comes to tennis, which costs a lot of money to get great. at with no money, with no help, with no sponsorship, and did as well as she did to the point that so many people rally around her, including me, I love this woman. She's fantastic. And she's so positive. So I think Breakpoint is an amazing show. Big thumb up. If you like documentaries about people who are struggling to be great at what they do, I love it. And because of the positivity, I think we call her Ons. Ons. All right. Fantastic.

Well, this next question comes from Ons. Hi, Paula, a longtime listener and member of your real estate course from Beta. A huge thank you to you and Joe for providing so much great information. I appreciate your clear perspective and your generosity. And I love watching all of your success milestones, like speaking at Google, Money Magazine, Netflix documentary, and even Columbia, freaking university, you lifelong learner, you walk that walk. I even hear people quote you often now.

Please, please, please run for president. Oops, that just slipped out, not written on my notepad, or is it? And I love you too, Joe. I want to be anonymous just to see what name I get. Very much enjoy your perspective and learn a ton from you as well. Vice President hopeful? My question is about my 15-year-old nephew. We had a call today about his upcoming college visit,

and it turned to all things financial. He has a summer job lifeguarding, and he asked me if he should open an IRA. Oh my God, this was the happiest day of the year, even better than my visit to Spain. Even better than Piaia. He is ready to open a Roth IRA for 2023 before the tax filing deadline. Even though he might not earn enough to fully fund an account in 2024, we are starting with good financial hygiene by taking advantage of a 2023 account, just in case. My question is, where? I see the Fidelity has a youth account for teens age 14 to 17, but I'm not sure what happens

after each year is 18. Is it big fees? We decided we could always pivot then if we need to. He is also planning to ask his parents where they invest, so maybe there's an option to get a no-fee account there. I'm concerned that he won't earn enough to invest a consistent $50 a month or $100 a month needed for a low-fee account usually. Do you have any advice for us?

Do you think a broker will let him open an account where I have investments as his aunt? I'm so excited to get him started. And now we just need to know where. All right, Paula, see what I mean? Oh, my goodness. Ons, I am flattered. I am honored. First of all, the fact that you have been a student in your first rental property since the beta days.

Wow. That was, that was, what was that? 2019. So I am honored that you have been a student for five years, that you've been part of the Afford Anything community for so long. That's incredible. Thank you so much. And I can't run for president because I wasn't born in the United States.

You have to be a native born U.S. citizen to be president. Oh, one star. We're going to give this system one star, Paula. Do you remember the amend for Arnold? The amend for Paula. amend for Paula. That'd be so great. Would you really want to run to be president?

Well, I mean, I've done nothing in politics so far in my life. Well, some people, Paula, say there's a lot of people in Washington who also have done nothing in politics for their entire life. Let's get to her question, which is, what account should her 15-year-old nephew put his money into? Great news for Ons, Paula, which is that kids often have different rules than adults do. So minors have different rules specifically. And depending on what state your nephew is in, it's called an Utma account, uniform transfer to Minors Act or an UGMA account, uniform gift to minors Act. Whether it's money that they were given or money that is theirs, these types of accounts

are meant to specify that this is money in a kid's name. the transfer or gift also includes rules that people are yelling at their device. Well, Joe, that's not it. No, it isn't it. There's more, which is money that gets transferred to somebody who is a minor. There's also rules around how that works. And just to give Paula our audience a little fun history lesson on this, the reason these rules exist at all is that before they existed, you found people in the 1970s, 1960s, whatever, a common tax loophole. was you give a bunch of money to your kid who's generally in a lower tax bracket than you are

in most families. You then do whatever financial transactions you want to do that are going to be taxable while it's in the kid's name. And then you take the money back away from the kid and give it back to mom or dad. And so it was a huge tax dodge. And so these rules exist to stop tax dodgers. and they say basically money that's in a kid's name, this is exactly how it can be spent. It can't be spent on food clothing shelter for that child. It has to be spent benefit of the kid in other things, but specifically not those things. And then the child is in control of that money. What's cool is, by the way, Paula, when the child is no longer minor, that account then flips to be just an adult account and a regular account like.

the rest of us have. So when it comes to small contributions, you will find, and it's going to be different for every institution, but you will find you can make much smaller contributions because these companies get that. And they love the fact that they're getting your nephew when he's young, because like you, they want to encourage not just a new customer, but want to encourage financial literacy and the fact that he's excited about this. So the account minimums are smaller, the minimums to get into the different positions are smaller. But what I would look up would be specifically that. And all of your big-time asset managers do this.

So if you like Vanguard, Vanguard has accounts for minors. If you like Fidelity, Fidelity has those accounts. You like T-Roe Pryce, whoever you like. Schwab also. They are, yeah, they're going to have these accounts. But specifically look up, and it just depends on your state, whether it's UGM. or UTMA, put that in your search engine and that will give you everything that you need to know

about that. But it's going to be a lot easier than you think. Let me tell you the downside here. Every strategy has an Achilles heel. And if you don't think your strategy has an Achilles heel, got to keep looking because every single one does. I just want to warn you, and by the way, this is not a big deal. But if your nephew is eligible for financial aid, money that's in a minor's name is expected to be spent on college, in most instances, before they get any financial aid.

So money in a child's name, money in an UGMA or UPMA account counts 100% against financial aid you would get when it comes to calculating expected family contribution. And I get it. There should be a financial burden on somebody who is looking to build a different asset, which is their education. So if you have a strategy for your nephew, which includes him getting financial aid, this money will directly drop the amount of financial aid that he receives in the future.

Joe, I'm curious why you would recommend Utma or UGMA as opposed to a custodial Roth IRA. Well, her goal was to have money that was. his right right money that was was specifically his so if he's in one of these ugma or upma accounts then he has the money earlier if it's a custodial IRA IRA money is a tax shelter so then that money's going to be for a different reason he can't spend that money on a house on a car I mean might be able to but he's going to have to go through a bunch of oops to get money out of that IRA if it's specifically for retirement, go for it. Yeah. You know, if it's specifically for the long, long, long term goal and you wanted to not have anything to do with short term money,

absolutely 100% go for the custodial IRA. But if it's flexible, his money and he can decide later whether he puts his money in an IRA or not, then use the Agma up account because that'll give him more flexibility. See, I like the custodial, assuming that the 15 year old is on board, I like the custodial Roth IRA idea because then he takes his earned income. which he's making right now at the age of 15, puts it into a custodial Roth IRA, and then fast forward 60 years, he'll be 75 years old,

taking out all of the capital gains, all of that growth, tax exempt. I mean, wow, wow, 60 years worth of growth. Well, and if Aunt decides to do this, we had an expert on talking about working with kids and money, And what was fascinating to me, Paula, is that the way a lot of parents talk about money with kids is they talk about the stick. Do not get into debt. Do not take out excess credit cards.

Do not use other people's money. He said that kids hear that, but they still make the same dumb mistakes after they hear that. He found almost no efficacy in giving them these lessons. There was almost none. The place where kids got really excited was with. he used a Roth IRA and the rule of 72 to show them how this little bit of money would make them a millionaire with almost no effort. And they got really excited. So what I would say is if you did decide to go that route, couple it with a rule of 72 lesson, which shows money doubling

over time. And that will also give them the bad news a little less going, listen, you have to let this money sit, which often, you know, a 15, 16, 17, 17 year old doesn't want to. to hear about when I'm 70. But when you tell them you're a millionaire from this or you're going to have most of the money toward it or whatever the amount of money is, then it gives them the positive reason to let that money sit. And they're much less likely than to wreck their own strategy because they know what that money's there for. Right. Right. Exactly. So yeah, if the 15 year old is on board with putting money aside for retirement, I personally, I like the idea of putting this money into a custodial Roth IRA because then you get all the benefits of a Roth IRA for longer.

I mean, to put money into a Roth IRA when you're 15 is, you know, with compounding growth, it's that last doubling that matters. Even if you put money in at the age of 25, you're still one doubling shy of what you would have gotten if you would put that money in at 15. I love your enthusiasm for that, Paula. But you know what? I love even more. It's just as Ones enthusiasm for having this conversation at all.

Exactly. Exactly. Oh, and Ons then to also directly answer your question, every major institution is going to have a custodial Roth IRA. So again, pick your favorite. Schwab, Fidelity,

Vanguard. And probably between those ones, don't you think it's much more if Ons is going to be the one helping her nephew direct this? Between those three, frankly, I would do the one that Ons is more comfortable with because if Ans has navigated the Fidelity portal as an example, she knows how to make this easy

and get things done at Fidelity. Every one of these institutions has their own quirks. But when it comes to like their usability, I think that's the, I don't think it matters. Yeah, I really don't. I think the biggest thing that matters. Exactly. When it comes. So the three big discount brokerages are Schwab, Fidelity, and Vanguard. Of the three, you cannot go wrong. People often ask me, which one is the quote unquote best. And there are some people out there who really want a specific answer. What I often tell people is, hey, you know what? Vanguard is a co-op.

It is member owned, which means it does not have shareholders that it has to satisfy, right? If you have a Vanguard account, you are one of the owners of Vanguard. So if I had to pick one of the three, starting from scratch, I'd pick Vanguard. But that said, my donor advised fund is at Schwab, right? My ordinary checking account, my day-to-day checking account is at Schwab. I love them both. And as I mentioned earlier, when talking about on strategy with her nephew, everything has an Achilles heel.

And what's the complaint you hear about Vanguard? The user experience online is not as good. Exactly. Yeah. Their user interface, personally, I think, is, it's not intuitive, right? Their user interface is just not that intuitive. So. Schwab and Fidelity so much more intuitive.

Exactly. But the low fee stuff is at Vanguard. Yeah. Well, it's really, it's at all of them, you know? It's at all. all of them. So, so oftentimes this is what happens on the show is I will say these are the three discount brokerages, pick any one of the three. And then oftentimes I'll hear from the community, like, please, just I don't want to pick from three, give us one, right? People who want a definitive

answer say, don't give me three, give me one. So then I'm like, fine, if you want one, Vanguard. But then, and then I hear from people who are like, oh no, my account is that Fidelity should I switch, right? Yes. No, don't switch. If any of those three are amazing, any of those three, you can eat, meeny, miny, mo it, right? I almost feel like people when they want that short answer, you almost do yourself a

disservice. Because frankly, it isn't which one you choose. It's the rationale behind it. Yeah, it's the why. Because, Paula, you could give me a huge why. And I can figure out why we disagree about something because I know the lie. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, so any of any of them are great. They're all low fee. You're not going to get pushed into a higher fee account when he turns 18, a significantly higher fee account. Like all of them are famous for being rock bottom when it comes to account fees. So in terms of picking a brokerage that the 15 year old can keep for the rest of his life, any of those three are going to be great choices. So just pick your favorite. And you can pick based on. ownership structure, which would be Vanguard.

You can pick based on intuitive user interface, which would be either Fidelity or Schwab, but any of them is equally as good as any of the others. So thank you, Ons, for that question. And thank you for the nomination to the executive office. We got at least one right-in vote. Amend for Paula. Our final question today is a question that asks me to reveal a bunch of details about myself.

So maybe this will actually undo my presidential candidacy, right? You know, TMZ is listening, Paula. Exactly. Perez Hilton is on the case. But before we get to that question, or we're going to get to that in just a moment. Before we get to that, we're first going to play a comment. Now, this comment comes from a listener named Melanie, who is calling in with a comment related to a discussion that we had about exchange traded funds or ETFs on episode 494. Let's hear from Melanie.

Good afternoon. My name is Melanie, and I've been listening for probably over a year. Great work, guys. Thanks for all that you do. I'm currently listening to episode 494. I'm probably halfway through the podcast. And we were talking about investing and someone mentioned that there isn't a way to automate buying ETS. Well, I wanted to let you know that there is through Vanguard, but it's a pilot that they have just started, but they only send it out.

I don't think it's open on everybody's page. They just, you know, I got an email and I said, hey, we want you to know we have a pilot program coming out where you can do automatic investments into ETS. Click this link and you know, I'm logged in and I now have that option to set it up for weekly, monthly. There may be even a bi-weekly. I set up a monthly. And the first transaction hit last week, I think I set it up on a Monday to start once a month, but starting on that Wednesday. and on Wednesday it executed my trade for VTI.

And so now I don't have to think about it. At least once a month, some ETFs are going to be purchased. Now, obviously, if I want to purchase a bigger amount, then I'll go in and do that manually. But at least I don't have to remember, oh, I've got money coming out of my bank account. Okay, now I've got to go to Vanguard and actually buy the ETFs. I don't have to do that often unless I'm buying a bigger amount. At least I know that once a month there's going to be an execution. So I just wanted your listeners to know that.

Thanks a lot for all you do. Have a great day. Hope I wasn't rambling too much. Melanie, thank you so much for that comment because, Paul, I think this is something that I brought up during that discussion, which was that exchange traded funds are the less expensive way to go. And it's because of the more recent architecture. Mutual funds have been around for a long time.

Exchange traded funds, not as long because of that being the more modern product. Generally, your best bet if you're investing all at once. But if you're trying to do this month by one thing, can't do it. But I think something we had said that even if we didn't, Melanie brings up a great point, which is that as innovation marches on, it was only a matter of time. And although it still isn't widely available, even when we had this decision, discussion, you can see that this is coming. And what I love about this, and by the way, thank you for that comment, Melanie.

And I'm very excited that it's coming because I do think it is a better path for most investors. There is going to be a smaller tax that you pay in a non-IRA account because exchange traded funds are allowed to exchange positions versus have these huge capital gains tax that sometimes a mutual fund will have. They're cheaper by a smidge than a mutual fund, but heck, if it's the same thing and it's less expensive, let's do it. So I really, I really like that. Melanie brings up kind of a side point here, Paula, which is that, you know, it will be worth it for people to redo where they're saving two if this becomes a big thing. It will be worth it. Much like when Roth IRAs came on board in the 1990s, it was well worth it for people that started those Roth IRAs immediately

to be in on the ground floor. Imagine people that were just starting to save them and they were able to do all Roth IRAs. I'm sure there's somebody sitting in the audience right now. There's 100% of their IRA money in Roth IRAs. And they're sitting in a sweet, sweet, sweet spot right now with all this money that they don't have to share with their uncle, who's not really their uncle in Washington, right? I love that. This is why it's not having a plan that it's planning is because even if your goals don't

change, the world around you continues to change. Another example is something that Fidelity and Vanguard and BlackRock and others are working on and it's available to some investors, you can take an index like the S&P 500 and you can cut out the companies you don't like and make a Paula Pant index, which is S&P 500 minus this one thing, these three companies that annoy the hell out of me for whatever reason. Or maybe it's plus a company. You can have a completely individual index that fits who you are, but is still indexing, which is this is this cool thing.

There's a mutual fund family called Dimensional. Dimensional has, I believe, three Nobel Prize winners on their staff. Dimensional does this already. Their philosophy, Paula, is you don't know who the winner is, which is why you index, but you know what? You look at the S&P 500, fairly easy to pick out a few that probably won't be the winner, which is why when you look at over the long term, one of the few fun families that has done exceedingly well versus an index, it's dimensional. It's also why it's hard to sell to get into those funds. But now you can do that yourself. You can look at the S&P 500 if you're nerdy enough and go, no, I don't think that's a winner.

that's a winner. Now, there's plenty of downsides to go with that polo, but just the fact that the innovations at the point that we can think about this is pretty kick-ass. It blurs the line. So what I'm hearing is that the line between active and passive investing, the line between selecting investments versus going into what we've traditionally thought of as an index is getting fuzzier and fuzzier until perhaps at some point in the future, the delineation will be difficult. Yeah, it is exciting and scary altogether, which means that it comes down to what you talk about on this show all the time even more. It's going to be your behavior. You know what I'm hearing right now?

So this is kind of a theme, I think, in a lot of domains, increasing convergence. So if ETFs are becoming more customizable such that you can, let's say, take an S&P 500 index fund, which represents 500 companies and 503 stocks because some of those companies have multiple ticker symbols. So 503 ticker symbols are currently represented in a standard S&P 500. And if you can add or subtract, if you can make it 506, right, or if you can make it 498, right, that means that there is this level of customization, which starts to then converge close. to what people who buy individual stocks do. Now, when it's just a minor deviation like that, you're only in that very first step of convergence, but it clearly is pointing directionally towards a trend of increasing convergence. And what's interesting about that, I was having

this conversation yesterday at dinner with a friend. We were discussing how the law, this is a completely separate topic, but we were discussing how the law distinguishes between a private individual versus a public figure when it comes to privacy, when it comes to the ways in which the media handles the privacy of that individual. And that is an really interesting area of the law right now because we're in the era of social media and the era of podcasting in which the delineation between a private individual versus a public figure is far fuzzier, than it used to be. In the 1970s, in the 1980s, it was far more clear who is a celebrity and who is not.

These days, there's much more of a gradient. I saw just last week, another woman getting fired from her job at a hospital because of a TikTok video. Interesting. So is she a celebrity or is she a private individual who works at a hospital? And I was thinking more about how big does your following, have to be? How many listeners do you have to have? How many YouTube subscribers do you need to have before you cross that threshold? Right? Is it the blue checkmark threshold? Is it, you know, again, is it recognizability on a sidewalk and if so, to what extent? When we live in an area of gradient and we live in an area of convergence, these questions become not only increasingly important, but also simultaneously. far harder to answer and far more nuanced. At any rate, all of that is to say that that discussion that my friend and I were having

last night at dinner about the convergence between private and public life reflects, Joe, what I'm hearing you say with regard to an increasing convergence between active and passive investing strategies. This is why, for me, more does not equal. better all the time because as a guy who helped people with money for a long time, this creates a bunch more noise in your head. It creates a bunch more. Am I doing the right thing?

Like you were talking about, oh, I got my money. Fidelity. Should I move it to Fancard? Oh, gosh, please don't. Please, you're fine where you are. And now people are going to hear, oh, I can take the SB 500 or I can customize it.

What could possibly go wrong there, Paula? The problem right now isn't that indexing works. The problem is people will buy indexes and then they will. hear news on the radio or on one of the news stations and they will sell their position because they're worried how it's going to affect things in the short term and they will buy back. We say out loud that we index because passive wins and then all the studies out of all these big account holders shows that we still day trade our passive funds, which is frustrating.

It's still even more than ever this gift of choice can also be a burden. In any event, Melanie, thank you for calling in and telling us about your experience with this pilot program. The future is now, Paula. Right. And thank you for sparking this discussion. It's time for you to quit delaying, Paula. Speaking about moving from private life into the public spotlight. I'm so excited. Oh, here we go.

All right. The next and final question today invites me to divulge more than I typically do. And ironically, the person who asked it is anonymous. Of course. So, Joe, would you like to give this anonymous caller a name? Back to this breakpoint documentary, there is a player who is very much a potsterer named Nick Curios, a wonderful Australian tennis player, but he does things that other tennis players don't do.

And I think that this caller is doing something nobody's done. They're turning the lens back on you. Yeah. We don't typically get questions about me. We get questions about the individual and their life. Yeah. And the way that Nick plays good tennis is he knocks other tennis players off their game with antics and with things.

But you know what, Paula? I think what we're about to see is that the way to beat Nick is the big time professionals just still go at it. So Nick, you're about to see Paula bring it in her hand. You're not going to knock her off her game. I've been working with her long enough. Paula, the bars high. You're going to back me up here. But anyway, Nick Curios is a tennis player.

So let's call this caller Nick. All right. Then our final question today comes from Nick. Hi, Paula. I have a bit of a personal question. for you. Given some of the life changes and successes that you've experienced recently, including moving to New York City, completing your fellowship in business and economic journalism, the role that you played in a recent Netflix documentary, and the general growth in the afford

anything business, would you be willing to share a bit about your current personal financial planning goals? I'm sure that you have a framework that will communicate higher thinking and making decisions, but some double-click questions I'm wondering are, how do you think about personal financial risk currently? And is it different than what it looks like three years ago? Are you looking to expand your real estate portfolio today? Why or why not? How are you shifting your broader investment portfolio over time, if at all?

And how and where do you see your time, energy, and focus allocations changing? And can you comment on which of those changes have been intentional in nature? I realize that these are deeply personal questions. So feel free to ignore any and all of them. I would love to hear what you're thinking about these days. Thanks. Paul, it's funny, this idea of personal financial risk. Right.

I find all these questions interesting, but do you view personal financial risk differently than you did just four years ago? Well, his question was three years ago. And what struck me about specifically three years or four years ago, that was the pandemic. And I will say during the pandemic, my brain broke, as I think a lot of ours did. During the pandemic, I was far more conservative. And in particular back then, there was a lot of uncertainty around jobs, around income. I mean, early 2020 was when businesses were taking, including afford anything, we were taking

PPP loans because we weren't sure if we were going to still have revenue come in. And so my concern back then was not about myself. It was about the team here at Afford Anything because, you know, and we don't have a huge team, but we've, you know, we had a couple of W-2 employees, like W-2 paychecks with health benefits. And I was worried about making sure that we were going to be able to bring in enough money to pay the salaries for the people on our team. You know, and even also independent contractors, too, when you have independent contractors who have been working with you regularly for, for years, that's not. morally and ethically a tap that you ever want to turn off suddenly. And so anyway, in 2020, particularly in the first six months of 2020, my overwhelming financial priority at that time was

to make sure that we could pay our team. And so to that end, I was much more cash-centric, I wasn't concerned about long-term growth. I was concerned about making payroll. What's shifted these days is that the economy in 2024 is incredibly strong. I've talked about this on the show before. A disconnect between popular consumer sentiment and economic data. The economic indicators all point to an incredibly robust economy, inflation is under control and has been under control for several months. Unemployment is at a 50 to 60 year historic low, meaning employment is incredibly high. We've avoided a recession. Remember all of the discussion that people were having back in the day about are we going to have a hard landing versus a soft landing? That's a moot question. So we have avoided a recession. We have gotten inflation under control. We have. We have.

high levels of employment, we are standing on the precipice of huge productivity gains brought on by AI and biotech, which is an area that we have not really covered in depth on this show yet that I want to do an episode on at some point in the future. There is so much innovation happening which points to strong, strong indicators of positive economic progress. I think there is an enormous case to be bullish. And so when I think to your question about how do I think about personal financial risk and how has that changed, I don't think about risk in my portfolio, in my investment portfolio when it comes to stocks, bonds, etc.,

I have been in a barbell allocation, meaning heavy equities allocation and then cash on the other side. I don't invest in bonds. I have been in a barbell allocation for years, and I continue to remain in a barbell allocation. But when I think about personal financial risk, I think about how much risk is afford anything subject to. How much risk is this company and its team subject to, which is another way of asking, how fast can, can we grow? And I am a conservative business owner. I grow more slowly than I need to, I think often to a fault, because I want to make sure that I have the cash coffers, as well as the logistical, operational, and administrative capacity to be able to handle that growth. And if I think that for one reason or another, I'm shy or deficient in one of those two areas, whether it's I don't have enough money, Or I don't have, for whatever reason, enough focused attention organization to be able to operationally or logistically manage growth. If either of those are in a state of deficiency, then I do not grow.

I simply maintain. That is very much the opposite of the Silicon Valley spirit of move fast and break things. Now, do I necessarily think that that's the right move? I don't know. We as a company have held ourselves back by virtue of moving too slowly. But would I rather err on the side of survival? Yes. As I listen to you, Paula, I think that for me personally, because I also have a tendency to move slower than sometimes looking back than I should have, it's hard for me to be confident if I'm not. making moves that I 100% agree with. Number two, that aren't going to keep me up at night because the risk level is higher than my personal risk tolerance. Like, I've realized just how much

less risk tolerance I have than I used to think that I have. Because as I've made some moves, some moves that end up being rash in hindsight, you know, those caused me a lot of consternation. So I spent a lot of time on that Sun Sioux piece that I spoke about earlier, that The best battle is the one that isn't fought. How can I move in such a way that I don't fight the battle? And in some ways, yeah, maybe afford anything move too slowly. But on the other end, if because of that, you wake up confident every day and you wake up able to feel good about where you're at, then slow wins the race. We have a mutual friend, nomadic man.

He's a travel writer. We can never find him. Yeah, he's very nomadic. But he recently posted that he was celebrating, I may be misquoting the exact number of years, but it was something to the effect of 16 years of creating content around travel. I mean, he was there in the early days of the internet, right? In the early days of blogging. He also, in his post, wrote something similar where he said, you know what?

to have survived for 16 years, running a full-time online business for 16 years with a small team of employees, to have survived for 16 years doing that is a rare feat. A Nick, to answer your question, I optimize for survival even when that comes at the cost of growth. And so that, to answer your question about how I think about personal risk, that is how I handle personal risk. Now, what that means as a business owner is that I take on less risk in other areas of my investments so that I can concentrate risk inside of afford anything to the greatest extent possible. For example, all of my rental properties, I have paid off. They're completely free and clear. on the surface, there are a million people on Twitter who are going to tell me, well, it makes no sense.

It made no sense to pay off mortgages that had a very, very low interest rate because why would you pay off a 4% mortgage? Well, the reason that I did it is because I want to afford anything to survive. And that's the cost of making sure that afford anything survives. That's a decision that I made for the sake of making sure that I have minimum. my debt, my bills, my cash flow output in other arenas of my life so that if I need to spend an extra $5,000 a month on something that this business needs, I have that money available. Well, obviously, Paula, I'm not in your head, but from the outside looking in. There's something else going on, too, which I learned from some coaches that I've hired

which is the business has to also work for you and what you want out of life. Because when you mention growth, you know, there are many entrepreneurs that are just beating their chest because they have so many employees and they have so much top line revenue. But they're also working a bajillion hours a week. They have a massive team and the actual ROI on that extra time and effort versus the ability to be. nimble and do what you want and be able to extract the joy from it. You know, often when it comes to running a business, people talk about the only currency is money, but it's simply not true. There's the currency of time.

There's the currency of happiness. Like there are these other currencies. You know, a big aha I had from these coaches was growth for gross sake can often be horrible for an entrepreneur, your ability to take off and go. to Mongolia, China, and spend a couple days in Cairo is a direct result of the fact that you set this up in a way that you were able to do that. And that goes back to what I was saying about not having the operational capacity to grow. So I mentioned my two deterrence to growth.

One is if I don't necessarily have the cash. The other is the operational and logistical capacity. What I mean is me putting in the time that it takes in order to push us to get to the next level. And in the moments or during the eras when I can't do that or when I choose not to do that, it's because I have some other more pressing priorities that have decided take center stage in my life. It's just another framework of saying what you said, Joe. There are times when I intentionally go into maintenance mode. because there are other elements in my life that I want to focus on.

And then there are times when I go into growth mode, but when I go into growth mode, I know that other things are going to take a backseat. There's this theory. It's called the Four Burners Theory. So this is a framework that came from the writer James Clear, who's a former guest on this podcast. You can find our interview with him

just by going to afford anything.com and searching for James Clear. But the four-burners theory takes the analogy of a stove. You've got four burners, and each of those burners represents a quadrant of your life. Family, friends, health, and work. You can prioritize two of the four burners, right, by moving those to the front two burners, but that necessarily means that the other two go on the back burner. the four burner's theory states that you are always consciously choosing which of these two are going to go on the back burner.

Now, that might sound sad because you never want any of those four. Those four are all important. You never want any of them to be on the back burner. But you can look at it not as a permanent condition, but as a constant rotation of the pots and pans on that stove. right. So maybe in the span of one day, right, maybe there's one day where two of those four are on the back burner and the next day they get moved to the front. Or maybe it's over the span of one week or one month or one quarter, right? Determine your time period accordingly. But the moments when I've chosen not to grow are the moments in which I know that I'm in an era where maybe health or relationship. relationships are on the front burners. This is where I'm fascinated with people like our mutual guest, Laura Vandercam or a woman like Laura Martin at Google and how you organize your day and how you organize your time. Another mutual friend of ours, Steve Chu and I talked about this, that he decides, Steve decides to organize his day so that he spends time in the morning working on his work.

And then the afternoon is family time. He does that by day. But he is a friend, Paula, that works. works in seasons will will spend four months going pedal to the metal on the business full well knowing that then he's going to spend the next three to four months not thinking about the business at all so steve meets it out on a daily basis and his friend on a quarter by quarter or you know seasonal basis i don't think that matters i think what matters though what i'm getting at is just the intentionality to which you decide how to do that

That versus letting your calendar dictate to you, the fact that you take control of the calendar and go, you know what? These are my non-negotiables. It's a huge part. You and I hear over and over when we interview these fascinating, wonderful people who've done so much in their life, the fact that they have made the conscious decision on the calendar is, I think, a big key to success. And Cal Newport talks about seasonality as well. Dr. Cal Newport, who was just on the show, his theory of slow productivity is one in which work is done seasonally, in which intervals of focused work are interspersed with intervals of deep rest. Nick, to go to another element of your question, you asked if I'm looking to expand my real estate portfolio, not aggressively.

I would say that end of 2024, or more likely in 2025, I will probably start looking for a multifamily unit to add to my portfolio. The reason for that is because I have a dollar cost averaging approach to acquiring rental properties in which I'm not looking to buy. buy a lot of properties all at the same time. I'm looking to buy one every two years, one every three years. I'm at that slow and steady position in which if I just acquire one property every two to three years and I do that consistently over a 20 year time span, I'm good. And I started doing this back in 2011. So I know that I can be consistent because I've already been at it for a decade. So if I just stay slow and consistent, again, over the long term, that's the approach that I have. And that's very different from real estate investors who are like, I want to go from zero to 200 properties in the next four minutes, you know.

You hear a lot of that. You hear a lot of, frankly, bluster on the internet because it's such a compelling headline. And for the people who are into that, cool, I'm glad you found the thing that you're into. Real estate has never been the center of my life. It's always been an accessory to it, a tool that enables me to pursue my passions, or more accurately, to follow my curiosities. I think passion is a overhyped cliche with negligible meaning. But curiosity is critical to follow.

But on the real estate thing, though, you know what happens to when you get so excited as a new real estate investor. And you're going to burry your way to success. And you buy six properties in a short amount of time because you're super excited, tell me how in the weeds you are six months from then. Right. You know, so with real estate being able to take on a project and give it the time and attention it deserves versus people have no idea the tsunami of headaches they create for themselves by not being slow and steady in that market specifically. Beware what you wish for. Yeah. I think the deciding factor is, do you want to make this the center of your life? Do you want

this to really occupy your mind full time? Or is this, for you, is it the equivalent of kind of putting your money in a Roth IRA? Your strategy is going to differ wildly, depending on which of those two attitudes you have. For me, it's the equivalent of a Roth IRA contribution. And so that's why I know that if I buy a duplex or a triplex every two to three years, I'm adding on average one unit per year. I'm good with that. On average over a long term, if I add one unit per year, and if I do that consistently over 20 to 30 years of my life,

and if I focus on paydown, which right now all of the properties that I currently hold are fully paid off free and clear, that's how you set up a very stable, secure long-term network. But it's not as clickable of a headline, which is why you hear about it less on the internet. Remember, the internet is not reality. What?

I know, right? Nick, you also asked how am I shifting my broader investment portfolio over time? I'm not. I've always been in a barbell allocation, equities and cash, and I'm going to continue to maintain only equities in my portfolio, in my investable portfolio. You know, actually, I take that back. There is one shift that I'm making, which is I'm starting to look into investing in private businesses more. I have not made moves in that yet, but partial ownership in private businesses is an area of investment focus in terms of new growth. When I do my first deal there, I will let you know. I have so far analyzed and considered several deals, but have decided not to ink any of them yet. But I am a big fan of business ownership, particularly private business ownership, whether that comes from starting your own company or whether that comes from becoming a co-owner

in an existing company. As to your final question, Nick, where I see time, energy, and focus changing, and if that's been intentional, yes, absolutely intentional. But it hasn't changed. It's afford anything all the way through. I'd say if there's any major shift, it's we're prioritizing YouTube a heck of a lot more than we ever have. We're, of course, moving this podcast to twice a week. We're prioritizing our newsletter, which you can sign up for, afford anything.com slash newsletter.

We're prioritizing the newsletter. We are putting more of a focus on deep, rigorous study of economic and financial topics, you know, our first Friday monthly economic updates, for example, and we'll be leaning more into that. I'd like to do more episodes that are deep dives into a narrow subset of the world of finance and economics. And, of course, to do more of something that necessarily means that you're doing less of something else.

So we used to send specialized content to specific segments of our email list. we're not doing that anymore. We're prioritizing the newsletter and everybody who is subscribed to getting our emails receives the newsletter. In the spirit of doing more of something means doing less of something else, in order to do rigorous deep dives into economic and financial topics, it means we do fewer interviews about anecdotal case studies. Oh, here's my story. Here's how I did this, right? A lot of other podcasts, particularly in the finance space, have a lot of those types of interviews. We've never really been a fan of that.

If you look at the type of episodes that we produced back in 2017, 2018 versus today, we do almost none of that now. And that trend will continue. So all of this is by design. I recently, internally made a deck of Afford Anything's. mission culture and values because I wanted to set that out so that any new hires on the team can instantly know what they're getting into. In fact, I want applicants to know what they're getting into before they come on board so that they can know this in advance before they decide to join us.

And what I stated is that our mission is to make intelligent, thoughtful, well-vetted, nuanced information about money and economics, including behavioral economics and related fields like psychology, neuroscience, metacognition, and probabilistic reasoning, accessible to the general public. The benefit that we aim to achieve is to guide our audience through the intellectual, psychological, and social frameworks of how to make smarter decisions, and we do so by teaching the skills of critical thinking and sharper decision making told through the lens of money. And so that's the mission that I set out and everything that I do, including how I manage my

finances, including the decision to pay off the houses, all the rental properties, everything is in service to that mission. Thank you, Nick, for asking that question. It was nice to be able to talk about that. So you heard it here first, everyone. I'm sure you'll hear about it in the next day or two with Perez Hilton or TMZ. Yeah, exactly. The tea is spilled.

Well, Nick, thank you for the question. And Joe, we have done it again. We have done it again. What a wild kaleidoscope of calls. I really hope we were able to help. Of course, I hope we were able to help everyone. Hope we are able to help Lindsay at the top of the show, though, a lot. And, man, the enthusiasm by which Ons wants you to be president.

I share that enthusiasm. Hashtag amend for Paula. The innovation that Melinda brought up that's happening, I think it's a good reminder to stay in touch and why you listen to shows like this one. So you can stay on top of it because sometimes it's not you. It's other things. And then to see what's going on in Paula's brain is always a treat. Well, thank you, Joe.

Where can people find you if they'd like to hear more of you? Oh, good news. Monday, Wednesday, Friday is the Stacking Benjamin show. and we from time to time also have interviews and one of my favorite people to talk to, he is so Gordon Ramsey. If you've never heard Scott Galloway speak about anything, Professor Scott Galloway is coming back to the show. I have received maybe more emails about Scott Galloway's first appearance than any appearance anybody's had and he's back. So listen to the wise words of Scott Galloway.

very few people I'd rather talk to. He's so blunt. He is so 100% salty blunt. And I love it. He's the guy who said that the entire GameStop Wall Street Betts saga was largely the result of guys not getting late enough. Yeah. Yeah. That was his theory.

Yeah. And by the way, what's funny about that is that is that he, he, he, He doesn't say that flippantly. He also talks about the big problem with young men in America. And at that time in particular is that we were all in shutdowns. Nobody could leave their home. So his theory was that all of that loneliness led to deciding to do a short squeeze that led to a gamma squeeze of short sold stocks such as GameStop and AMC theaters.

Setting up the whole hedge fund. David versus Goliath thing. Look at the amount that online gaming went up as well. Online gambling, specifically, I mean, I'm not talking about playing World of Warcraft. I'm not talking about draft kings. Well, but sports betting ceased because there were no sports being played. There were no sports. So now I needed a new sport.

So, yeah, he has unusual takes, which on the, the internet always play well. It's absolutely fabulous. So Scott Galloway's coming on, Paula, to answer your question. All right. And that is on the stacking Benjamin's podcast available wherever the finest podcasts can be found. Only the finest. White gloves. If you enjoy today's episode, please subscribe to our newsletter. You can find it at afford anything.com slash newsletter. You can find me on social media. I'm on Instagram at Paula Pant. P-A-U-L-A-P-A-P-A-N-T. I'm on Twitter at Afford- Anything. You can also talk to other members of this community by going to Afford-A-N-A-N-T-N-C-N-C-N-T-C-Lash-Community.

Please check out the sponsors of our show. We appreciate them for allowing us to bring financial literacy to you at no cost. You can find a complete list of sponsors plus all of the deals and discount codes that they offer by going to Afford-A-A-N-T-C-C-S-S-Sonsors. Thanks again for tuning in. is Paula Pan. I'm Joe Salcie. Hi. And we will catch you in the next episode. Lindsay, if you and your husband can help him set up what we think of is a two. You have balloons in your screen. I just went. I set my computer back to do a factory reset.

And it did this. I have no idea why that triggers balloons. I literally got my computer back yesterday. Oh my God. I know why Josh is obsessed with this. But anyway. Man, mine doesn't do any of that.