Afford Anything - Q&A: Should We Ditch Rental Properties Entirely?

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

#559: An anonymous caller, whom we name “Samantha,” and her husband are financially strained and feeling torn. Shortly after purchasing two rental properties, their income dropped dramatically. Should they sell? Tina is a full-time environmentalist. She’s worried that her index funds don’t align with her values on sustainability. Is there a world where she can be a savvy investor and fight climate change? Another anonymous caller, whom we name “Sarah,” is excited and uncertain about her growing business. Should she hold steady or invest more resources into it? And how does she know if she’s making the right call? Former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I tackle these three questions in today’s episode. Enjoy! P.S. Got a question? Leave it at https://affordanything.com/voicemail. For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode559 The Efficient Frontier: Join Joe for an exclusive live session all about the efficient frontier (aka the secret sauce of smarter investing). This 90 minute online event is Thursday November 21st at 8pm ET / 5pm Pacific. Head on over to http://stackingbenjamins.com/efficient to grab your spot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe, you used to have rental properties and then you exited entirely out of the game. I did. I disliked being a landlord. I get it. I understand why it's a great investment. Not for me. Wow. And see, this is how we're the opposite, which is why we're such a good pair because I, as you know, am gung-ho all about rental properties. So we, together, are going to tackle a call from a listener who's wondering whether or not she should exit out of the rental property game entirely. Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. Joe, you haven't heard the question yet. Oh, my bad. We're also going to be hearing from a listener who is interested in environmentally friendly, sustainable investing and is wondering what pointers we have.

And then we're going to go peel back the curtain. Is that the expression, peel back? No, you don't peel a curtain. You peel back the onion. You peel the onion. You peek behind the curtain. Peek behind. Peel. How can you keep these words straight? There's so much. All right. We are going to peel back the onion and peek behind the curtain and talk in response to a third

listener's question about the behind the scenes of running a content business, specifically, a podcast. But even to widen it out, Paul, I think that question also is even just more about the nature of entrepreneurship and when do you take the plunge if you're going to do it. Exactly. Yeah. When do you decide that it's time to double down? It's time to invest. It's time to take the little bit of money that you're making.

And rather than spend it on yourself, pump it back into your business. Burn the ships. When's the time to burn the ships, as Homer famously wrote. Right, exactly. So we're going to unpack all of those in today's episode. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that understands you can afford anything, but not everything. Every choice carries a tradeoff.

And that applies to any limited resource you need to manage, like your time, your focus, your energy, your attention. What matters most in how do you make? choices accordingly. This show covers five pillars, financial psychology, increasing your income, investing, real estate and entrepreneurship. It's double eye fire. I'm your host, Paula Pant. I trained in economic reporting at Columbia. Every other episode, I answer questions that come from you, and I do so alongside my buddy, the former financial planner, Joe Saul See High. What's up, Joe? Oh, man, it's fantastic. Today I get to hang out with you, and you are really making a brand new

studio. I can't wait to see where the studio's coming. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yes. So this particular episode is audio only. This one is not airing on YouTube because, you know how sometimes things get worse before they get better? It's a construction zone. It is such a construction zone in here right now. Oh my God. You can't smell the fumes that I can smell. But, uh, woo. The answers may get a little lively today. I might have to like literally just stick my head out the window midway through recording. That's where we are in the span of this construction. But we're building out, you know, we've got two studios now. Well, we've got one and now the second one is under construction.

So the one that we have is our studio where we interview guests. So our interview with Matt Schultz, which is coming up, and our interview with Leslie Zane, which aired a couple months ago, you know, we shot those in our studio that is optimized for guest interviews. But we, until now, never had a studio that was optimized for remote recording. Joe, what you and I do when we record, because you're in Texas and I'm in New York. And so that's what we're building out right now. We're building out a studio that is just optimized for remote recording.

So I'm at this very moment surrounded by sandbags and gaffer tape. Just that you know what gaffer tape is. You know, that's when you know you're deep in it. Yeah, exactly. But in about a week or so, we'll be ready to actually shoot. Super fun. Yeah. That's great. It's going to be amazing. And then the YouTube is going to, our YouTube videos of you and I, Joe, are going to pop from that point forward. Oh, boy. I'm going to have to do something about this face. But let's get started with our first question today, which comes from an anonymous caller. Oh, and this anonymous caller decided, as everyone will hear, to use an AI voice.

Yes, extra anonymous. I have the perfect name for the anonymous caller. We'll hear it right after the question. Hi, Paul and Joe, you might recognize my voice. Yes, this is Vail from ChatGPT's voice mode. My human partner who wishes to remain anonymous has found such value in conversing together that she opted to have me make the call to talk. day. Here's what she wishes for me to pass along. My husband and I own two vacation rentals. The first

purchased in 2020 nets us $10,000 to $14,000 annually with around $80,000 in equity and has been easy to maintain. The second bought in 2023 has been more challenging. We have little to know equity as we used a $60,000 helock for the down payment. We do not anticipate any profit for the next two to three years and it is unclear how or when we will have the HELOC paid off. Currently, our first property's profit is allowing us to break even collectively, while the HELOC's principle remains largely untouched. Here is why we bought the second property. It's right next door to the first.

We hoped for easier management and portfolio growth, planning to hold onto both cabins for decades to come. Given our livelihoods a year ago, paying off the HELOC quickly would have been easy to do. But now, for reasons I will get into next, the financial strain is significant. Here's what's changed since buying the second cabin. First, my old position was terminated unexpectedly. I have since taken a small pay cut for a new job that I enjoy, but it leaves me with less

time for my real estate side business. Historically, we've used my commissions as a realtor, $15,000 to $30,000 extra income annually to quickly pay off debt and make property investments. Without that income, our ability to pay off the HELOC is uncertain. Additionally, my husband made an intentional job change to pursue a passion, but it comes with half his previous salary. His career path could lead us to move around the country and potentially increase our income significantly, but there's no guarantee.

With so much up in the air, we're uncertain about our next steps. I always admire the way you and Joe evaluate both raw data and the less tangible emotional nuggets you suss out from callers. So here's my question. Should we consider selling the second property to ease our financial strain? And does it make sense to exit the rental game altogether? Anonymous, thank you for the question. And before we get started with the answer, Joe, what name do you have for this caller?

Well, I remember back when we thought that AI speaking to you in your ear was the thing in the far, far, far future, there is a very good movie that stars Joaquin Phoenix called Her, where he puts this voice in his ear and then he falls in love with this AI companion of his. The voice is played by Scarlett Johansson. So highly recommend this movie that's in the quote far future because we're there now, right? The voice in his ear is named Samantha. So I thought this has got to be Samantha talking to us. All right, perfect. Samantha, I have two questions to ask back to you. You talked in your question about the equity in the homes or lack thereof, which is normal when you have recently purchased a home. You know, the second home was purchased in 2023. It's very normal to have a tiny amount of equity in those first few years. Rental properties are the long game. And they're purchased for the sake of having equity 10, 15, 20 years down the road, not in year one or year two.

It's also very common to have low cash flow or to break even at the start because, again, rental properties are the long game. They are the retirement asset. And so as your fixed rate mortgage stays the same and inflation increases, that delta grows. And it has a compounding effect. So in the first one, two, three years after purchasing a property, it's common to not have a lot of cash flow. There are a lot of investors who will aim for maybe $100 per door. And per door, I mean per unit, not per bedroom.

You know, that's a common goal that some investors will have. But the idea is that over time, as compounding works in your favor, as that delta grows wider, And ultimately, as that home is paid off, 25 years into the future, you have a high cash flow retirement asset. The fact that you don't have a lot of equity yet, the fact that you don't have a lot of cash flow yet, those don't concern me. But what I do want to know, because this is going to make a huge impact in the answer that I give, is what is the cap rate on those properties? my real estate investing philosophy is hugely cap rate focused. And the cap rate is essentially the unleveraged dividend or the income stream that you're getting from that property. And when I say income stream, I don't mean the cash flow.

I mean the dividend. Much like a dividend on a stock. Exactly. And that's a great analogy, Joe, because any asset earns money in two ways. whether it's a home or a stock, any asset earns money in two ways. There's the capital appreciation, which is the growth of that stock price or the growth of that home value. And then there's the dividend that it pays out.

And so, Samantha, to calculate the dividend on each home, take the potential gross rent, which is the maximum amount of money that the home theoretically could make, if it had 100% occupancy, and if you were charging pet fees and parking fees and storage fees and laundry fees and any other ancillary revenue. So you take the total amount of money that in theory it could make in a perfect world.

Start with that. That's the potential gross rent. Then you subtract out all of the operating expenses, the repairs, the maintenance. Does the operating expense include the HELOC loan service? No. Excellent question. It does not.

Operating expenses do not include financing costs. And the reason for that is because we want to tease those out separately. We want to evaluate the asset itself independent of any financing. If you are buying a stock on margin, which means you're buying a stock with a loan, you wouldn't use the cost of margin financing to evaluate the stock. you would first evaluate whether or not Coca-Cola or Tesla or Berkshire Hathaway is worthy of buying and holding. And if you decide it is, then you take a look at margin, then you take a look at some of the financing options that are out there to decide whether or not you're going to borrow money to buy Coca-Cola or Tesla or Berkshire Hathaway. So the same works with rental properties.

It's material, but it's going to be a different calculation. Exactly. Because I think it materially matters here. Right. I think the HELOC materially matters on their satisfaction with this property. Right, right. But we don't want to conflate it with the evaluation of the cap rate of the property itself. It is material, meaning it's important, but it's a different equation.

It's a different calculation. We take the potential gross rent. We subtract out all of the operating expenses. and what we're left with is a number that's called the net operating income. Now, divide that net operating income by the price that you paid for the property, Samantha, and that expressed as a percentage is your cap rate. And that cap rate is functionally the dividend that that asset would be paying you. So if you, in theory, were to pay off this home and have it all paid off free and clear,

that is the unleveraged dividend. When you're looking at that cap rate, and I want to put a huge emphasis on this, remember, your cap rate is not your total return. It is purely the dividend. It's not the total return. So if you want to know what the unleveraged total return on that property is, it is the cap rate plus the capital appreciation on the property. So, for example, if you have a cap rate of 5%,

and you also expect that that property will appreciate over time at a rate of 4% annually as a long-term average, then that total unleveraged return would be 9% in that hypothetical example. So please don't look at the cap rate and think that that is the total return. It is not. It is the dividend in the same way that a share of Coca-Cola has a dividend, and that dividend plus the appreciation on the share of Coca-Cola is the total return. In other words, when Samantha said there was 10 to 14,000 annually of income coming in on that first property, a lot of our listeners might hear that number and go, wow, that's a lot.

Or they might hear that and go, wow, that's a little. We still don't know because we don't know what Samantha paid for the property. Exactly. So 10 to 14 could be great, could be horrible. We don't know. Yeah. To use an extreme example, it's a very extreme example for the sake of illustration. Samantha, if you paid $5 million for that property, that $10,000 would be a tiny amount of money.

If you paid $10 for the property, then wow, where do I get me on? It actually is interesting, Paula, because the analogy to stock still holds there too. I was talking to a young investor this last week, and we were talking about this individual stock whose prices had gone down from almost $10 a share. share to $8.50 a share. And the person I was speaking with goes, wow, that sounds like a deal. Like, is it? I don't know if it's a deal. It's not a deal. Number one, prices go down for a reason. Number two is all $8.5 is is a function of taking the value of the company and dividing it by the number of shareholders. We don't know the number of shareholders. We don't know truly anything when we just look at the share price. We don't know anything. People are here, oh, that's only $2 a share.

sounds like a steal. You could get stolen from by investing in that company where a company like Berkshire Hathaway sells for tons of money. And people could look at that and go, oh, my goodness, a share of that is so expensive. Sounds horrible. And as you and I know, been a phenomenal stock for a long time. Right. Precisely. Penny stocks, perfect example. A lot of people are like, ooh, penny stocks. Fantastic. Right. And I know a lot of people, including a friend of mine who is also a financial planner who in his early days lost his shirt on penny stocks. Yeah. He learned, but he learned from the school of hard knocks.

Yeah, I didn't lose my shirt, but I lost some significant money. And now we're in the weeds a little bit, but I didn't realize when you're not listed on a major exchange, how easy insider trading is. And man, in a couple positions, I was completely taken advantage of. I'm sorry to hear that. Well, for me, it wasn't a bunch of money. I got to learn with very little money, which was great. Oh, good. Yes. It's good to have cheap tuition. It totally is. In the school of hard knocks. Which brings us back, though, Paula, to this second property. Because from where I sit, while the cap rate is important to decide maybe there's ways that I could keep this property if I think it's a worthwhile investment. The cash flow situation is so material. it's going to be difficult to keep that property. It would be very difficult for me to advise her to keep that property. Oh, tell me why.

Well, because when you've got money going out the door, it sounds like that's the question. How do I make my cash flow better? I know where the cash flow leak is. It's the second property. The cost of the property is break-even, but the he-lock, the financing mechanism is really creating this giant sucking sound for us completely. If I get rid of the second property, then I, at the very least, regardless of whether it's a great investment or not, I do have the first property, which is cash flowing that I could ostensibly keep. There were often times when I was a financial planner that we would make moves that long term

might not be the world's best move. But over the short run, it allows us to continue to breathe. And this is a big takeaway for everyone. When you're making decisions, the only constant is going to be that things are going to change. So prepping when you make an investment into an illiquid position, like this second property asking what if things change, it's a huge part of any financial planning process. It is a huge part. And I've had person after person tell me, no, it's not going to change. My job is stable. Things are stable with my husband. What is the chance, Paula, that her sudden unexpected termination would happen at the same exact time that he's making this career change, which changes the amount that they're mobile and their ability to service the property. It's so little. The chance of that happening was so little. And yet, let me tell you this, when I was a financial planner, we'd about, as I've said before, about 120 families we worked with. some of this crap was happening with one family all the time. So if you asked any of my individual

clients, they go, oh yeah, it's not going to happen. And I could even tell you, yeah, probably not going to happen to you. But we still need to solve for it because when you take a larger sample size, this cluster of misery that comes out of nowhere just to tax your financial situation and then you have to make a move that seems ugly. Right. I mean, if you could spread the financing in a different way. But, you know, a home equity line of credit has such a low monthly payment. You can make a payment that does nothing to the principal. You can just continually make the payment on the interest. That's it with a lot of home equity lines of credit. So if that's the case here, like it is in a lot of HELOCs, then I don't know a cost of financing that's going to be a lot less expensive on a

cash flow basis than the HELOC. We also know that rents are rising rapidly. And now she bought this property in 2023, the second property. I don't know what location the property is in, but in a lot of places around the country, rents are rising so quickly that if she bought this in 2023, it's entirely possible that she's still in that first year of lease. And when it's time for that lease renewal, depending on the market rates in her area, she might be able to get a decent chunk of additional top line revenue, which would then flow through to that bottom line because her financing costs would stay the same, but that revenue would grow, given the rise in rental rates. I'm not telling you, like, be the landlord that charges a whole

bunch, but fair market rate is just climbing. That is the economic reality of a lot of cities. And I like that because that's a way to control that HELOC cost. the, again, the financial planner in me goes, I would love to know how much money Samantha and her husband have sitting in cash. Because if they decide to raise the rate, the current tenant says no. And now for three months they have this vacancy. They could go from bad to worse in a hurry if they haven't done what we tell people all the time, which is keep money in reserve. Keep cash reserves. In case you have a vacancy. And if they haven't been able to do that or if they haven't done it, then that may still make things very

difficult. Right, right. And I completely agree with that. In your personal finances, you have an emergency fund and your real estate finances. I just like calling it a cash reserve either way. I think the term cash reserve encapsulates emergency fund. I've had way too many people live less life because it was their emergency fund and not an opportunity fund. I'm like, listen, when's the next time you're going to get to go to Portugal on this trip that is half price with your friends who are all going at the same time. But it's my emergency. No, it's not. It's your emergency slash opportunity. So I like cash reserve just for all of it. But again, semantics. Samantha semantics. But yes, I do absolutely agree with that. And what strikes me, Joe,

when you talk about cash reserves, you're talking about managing the downside risk. When I talk about increasing that top line revenue, I'm talking about upside potential. Sure. And so we're having conversations coming from two different angles on this, both of which Samantha are important and both of which need to be managed. Samantha, when I earlier talked about cap rate, the reason I brought that up is because what I want to understand within seeing that percentage, is the fundamental question of, is this a property that's worth fighting for? There are certain years when, as a rental property investor,

you have to fight to keep your properties. The likelihood of multiple financially stressful things happening to you at once, you receive determination from your job, and you have a new job now that pays a little bit less, which is not something that you were planning on, your husband also chose for very good reason to go into an occupation that pays half the amount that he was previously making. Those are two financially stressful things.

And they're the right things. You know, you love your new job, your current job. That's great. Your husband chose to go into this new line of work that is probably a better fit. And it's from the way you describe it, it sounds like it's his call. and this is going to lead to greater life happiness. It sounds as though career-wise, these are the right choices, but that doesn't negate the fact that they're also financial hits in a strictly dollars and cents,

sense of the word. And they've layered on at exactly the time that you took on a new obligation. So there are a lot of things that are hitting you at the same time. If it turns out that the property is worth fighting for, you know, when you bring up making the property pay more income. We can also look at the other property for more income. We can look at the job positions. She said that she really enjoys her new job,

but that takes away from her ability to make this extra money that she made as a real estate pro. So is there some way to reconcile any of those things to make more income? I feel like often, you know, we've got asset A. How do I make asset A bring in more income? I could have my job, we'll call my job asset C, provide income to help me with asset A. Just as a temporary stopgat measure. Well, or permanently. I mean, is there a way to still have the real estate money come in?

Her new job that she likes has a chokehold on this secondary income stream? that she had. And the question I would have is, does it have to? The answer may be yes. It does have to. But the answer also may be, well, I don't know. That'd be interesting to talk to my boss about. I don't know. Often I know this. What you bring up, though, Paul, I think is a great point. We feel a lot more confined than we really are in many circumstances. We feel like the things that I did yesterday are the things I have to do tomorrow. Samantha, my last question to you is to what extent do you enjoy the idea of being a rental property investor and owner? Part of why I lean in the position of let's see how you can fight to keep this is because

when you described having two homes that are right next to each other and the idea that you would keep these forever, that these would be part of your permanent portfolio, There's a famous quote from Warren Buffett. He says, our favorite holding period is forever. And that is an expression of his belief in long-term investing in high-quality assets. And that's what I hear you express when you talk about having two homes that are literally next door to each other that you planned on holding forever. It sounds as though you found these really high. quality assets that you see as remaining as a part of your life, whether or not you continue

to live in that location. And I know this as somebody who I have rental properties in three different states, Georgia, Nevada, Indiana. And I myself personally live in New York. But when you find a good asset, you want to keep it. So my final question to you is, to what extent is that part of your long-term vision? And where I'm going with this is oftentimes mentally when I'm trying to make decisions about how to prioritize a huge list of projects or tasks, I will put them all in a spreadsheet. And actually, Joe, I learned this from you.

I will rank them based on ease, magnitude, and alignment. So this is a general project management thinking framework that I use. dump all the ideas into column A of a spreadsheet. Column A is just where you brainstorm, dump ideas. Any task, any project, anything that you might do, it all goes in column A, right? Column B is ease. Column C, magnitude. Column D, alignment.

And by alignment, I mean alignment with your long-term goals. Ease means obviously ease. And magnitude means how big are we talking? Impact. Jump change. Yeah. How big of an impact is this going to make? And that could be either quantifiable or it could be qualitative, right?

How big of an impact am I going to make in somebody's life? And then you assign a score to ease to magnitude and to alignment. And then you take a weighted average. So my question to you, Samantha, is the vision of being a long-term rental property investor when you ask the question, should we exit out of the game, to what extent is that an important part of how you, see your future unfolding. So thank you for the question, Samantha.

And please know that you're in a very specific moment because of the huge income changes that both you and your husband have had. You're in a very specific moment in time where you're facing a lot of financial stress right now. It's a testament to how well you've managed your money that you're getting through this so well. It's likely that things will only get better.

We're going to take a moment to hear from the sponsors who make this show possible. And when we return, we'll address two questions, one from a caller who wants to know about investing in a manner that reflects her values. And then after that, we'll talk to another caller who has a question about when to reinvest money into a side hustle or a company or a project that you yourself have started. Stay tuned. The holidays are right around the corner and if you're hosting, you're going to need to get prepared. Maybe you need bedding, sheets, linens. Maybe you need serveware and cookware. And of course, holiday decor, all the stuff to make your home a great place to host during the holidays.

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That's your commercial payments of Fifth Third Better. Welcome back. Our next question comes from Tina, and although her question is about the environment, we can also broaden this out because there are many of you who are listening who will have a similar question about, whatever set of values it is that you hold. For some of you that might be the quote-unquote sin stocks like alcohol and tobacco or entertainment companies that promote smoking.

For some of you that might be gambling or controversial weapons or small arms. But how do you invest in a selection of companies that reflects your values? That's the question from Tina. Hey Paula and Joe, long-time listener here, and thank you so much for all you do for the community. I have a question about investing and being sustainable. I am very interested in personal finance, and I also care a whole lot about the environment. It's my full-time job. recently I heard about the kind of inquiries into Vanguard and trying to see if they had stocks that are more environmentally friendly.

And so these index funds and things like that, some of them have obviously coal and gas and things that and things that contribute to climate change and are detrimental to the future. And, of course, being 20 or so years away from retirement, I want to be able to access my retirement in a world that is going to be accommodating and still nice. And so just curious on your take, if there are any companies or index funds, mutual funds, things like that, ATFs that rise to the top in terms of growth

and environmental consciousness. You know, I know this has always been a concern for me even when I started saving for retirement at the beginning of my career 15 years ago, but now it seems like it is getting more traction and people are talking about it more. I hope that maybe there are better options for people like me.

I appreciate your time and thank you so much for all you do. Tina, thank you for your question. And first, I want to point you to some environmentally responsible ETFs. There is an MSCI Sustainable Future ETF. There's an MSCI green building ETF. Fidelity has an international sustainability index fund and a U.S. Sustainability Index fund. I-Shares has an ETF dedicated to global sustainable development. goals. So there are a lot of ETFs and index funds out there that are based around environmental

impact. There are some that get really specific and granular because as an example, if you're someone, Tina, like you are, who is worried about the carbon footprint. There may be other people that are worried. You talked before, Paula, about guns or people worried about other issues. To find a fund that really fits your values, there are so many. any choices. I found an ETF database, which has five pages top to bottom of all kinds of different funds, Tina, that you can wade through depending on whether it's the I shares breakthrough environmental solutions, ETF, the Spider-Down Jones International Real Estate ETF, which has a sustainable component to it, the Vanek Low-carbon Energy ETF. I mean,

there are so many nuances to responsible investing. And essentially, that solution, Paula, also is what creates the problem is because as you become more granular, what you'll find is this measure I like to look at called standard deviation can go way up. Because if we're just going to look at green housing, as an example, a green housing fund is going to have a standard deviation that's much higher. in the S&P 500. Number one, you're only investing in one sector of the universe, which can be problematic

because every sector will go through good times and then bad times. So you're going to see that thing vacillate a lot. It's going to be quite a roller coaster. Also, the costs go up. And certainly, to the right investor, is the cost increase worth it? Well, I would say, sure it is. if I want to put my money where my mouth is, I need to be willing to pay for that. And the reason you're paying for it isn't that these companies are trying to rip you off.

It's because of the fact that sussing out to use Samantha's word earlier, because I'm a susser, as Samantha said, to suss out the stocks that meet this criteria, it requires due diligence. Yeah, it's way more hard to keep on top of. So as an example, I've seen some of these. funds where we'll look at the S&P 500 exchange traded funds might be 0.02 or 0.05 even, you're going to maybe have 0.6%. So, I mean, huge difference in the cost structure versus a fund that is just going to be straightforward. But what I would recommend, and we will link to the database that Joe found, because it's a very robust database of all types of all over the place.

Yeah, exactly. It's hugely robust and it gives a massive variety of options. What I would do, if I were you, Tina, is look at the funds within that database, look at the underlying composition to choose funds that reflect specifically your set of values. And then I would put these into software that evaluates your asset allocation to make sure that you are, as you put these funds together in your portfolio, make sure that you have an asset allocation balance that is a good fit. And there are a lot of programs

where you can review your asset allocation either for free or for a very low fee. Morningstar has an asset allocation analysis tool. Bank rate has one, smart asset has one, portfolio pilot has one. So I would step one. look at the database, which we are going to link to in the show notes, and pick out the funds that you think best represent your set of values, and then plug those into an asset allocation analysis tool so that you can make sure that you are on track with your goals. It's a two-step process. They're two fairly big steps. Each step is going to take you a couple of hours, but it's a good Saturday project.

The other thing that I would do, so a couple of days ago, I went to a conference hosted by Yahoo Finance. I heard a speaker there named Tom Steyer. He runs a climate-focused global investment firm called Galvanize Climate Solutions. And he was enormously optimistic about climate tech investments. He talked about how the cost of wind and solar have dropped. significantly about how battery life is increasing. He was enormously, enormously bullish on climate tech and climate investments. And so I would take a look at how venture capital firms are allocating their capital towards accelerating climate solutions.

What are they excited about? What are they investing in? Where is the climate solutions space heading? Because if you know where the VCs are investing in the private markets, that could clue you in as to what types of investments you might want to lean towards in the public markets. I like the idea of lean because what a lot of people will do is make big bets. Realize that when you make big bets, that increases again. Again, that same word I keep using your standard deviation.

The chance that you could be wrong, the narrower the bet get. So keep your asset allocation. I like thinking of a sailboat. There's a sale called a Spinnaker sale that you put out when the wind's blowing the right way. But the spinnaker sale is much, much smaller than your main sail. Nothing close to the hull of the ship. So have your haul of the ship toward your game plan, have your sail go toward your game, plan and have a spinnaker than that is these are the areas that I favor. As an example, I have one that

is a bet on AI, the underbelly of the AI, the wiring of the AI. My environmental play is on water and the fact that we're going to need water and water resources we seem to be fighting over more and more. But Paula, that's not a huge part of my portfolio. That's my spinnaker sale. That's when the wind hits those areas. And guess what's happened with both of those positions as examples? The win has come full blast sometimes and other times the sale just sits there. Sometimes it's kind of waiting the ship down because it's going backwards. But I got to be willing to have that happen. And I also need to have the confidence to know I can reach my goals with these broader indexes while my Spinnaker sale is at sometimes dragging me down and other times is getting me much closer, much quicker.

Right, right. So it's nice to take a portion of your portfolio and devote it to educated bets so long as the bulk of that portfolio, 90% of it, is in reliable asset allocation in broad market index funds and ETFs, which through the database that we're going to link to in the show notes, there are a lot of those that represent environmental interests. Do you want to hear, by the way, some of these awesome ticker symbols for some of these ETFs? And I'd love to have you guess what you think the ticker symbol would be. The Invesco MSCI Global Timber ETF. Oh, T-I-M-B, timber? C-U-T-C-U-T-C-U-T-K. Oh, man.

Ouch. Yikes. The New Day Ocean Health ETF. What's that one going to be? O-C-E-N, Ocean? Oh, that's a good one. That would be cool. No, it's Ahoy, A-H-O-Y.

That's cute. How about this one? Tina's going to love this one. The Vanek low-carbon energy ETF. Low-carbon. I mean, I'd say C-A-R-B, carb, but I'm sure some, like, bread company has taken that one. Right. Wouldn't that be great?

That's great. But still, Carb would be a fun one. This is even more fun than that. How about the ticker symbol is SMOG, smog. Oh, wow. Just hits right at home. Wonderful. Wow.

Some playful names. That's great. And, you know, Tina, so when I introduced this question, I wanted to broaden it out for the entire audience because this audience has such a varied set of values and interests and priorities. And so there are going to be some people who are listening to this who feel very strongly about, as I mentioned earlier, the sin stocks such as alcohol or tobacco or gambling. There will be others who feel very strongly about animal rights. And there's actually a vegan stock. It's VEGN, the U.S. Vegan Climate ETF. There's a good one. But But what's particularly fascinating about climate specifically is that's where a lot of the innovation is headed.

That's where a lot of new investment and new capital is headed. That's what I was talking about when I was bringing up the fact that there are all of these VC firms who have climate tech focused investment thesis. We don't necessarily have that in the realm of avoiding tobacco stocks or avoiding alcohol stocks. There isn't new investment going into the avoidance of tobacco or the cessation of smoking, not in the way, at least, that there is in terms of new capital flowing towards climate. So given that your heart is really focused on climate and sustainability, you have the opportunity not just to engage defensively in terms of eliminating some of the worst polluters, you actually have the opportunity. not just to engage defensively in terms of eliminating some of the worst polluters, you actually have the opportunity to invest on the offense side of the play where you are aggressively pursuing returns

because there are going to be some big returns in climate innovation in the decades ahead. That's why I say look at where private equity capital is flowing. What are the innovators doing? What are the frontiers of this field of climate tech? I know a guy actually here in New York who is starting a climate tech venture fund. Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah, we went to school together, and he has a lot of investors and a lot of interest.

You know, he sees that there is huge opportunity and huge growth in this arena. And I'm always the guy, and I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to, Steal the enthusiasm parade. I feel like the Grinch, the Stole enthusiasm. Always have to temper your enthusiasm because it is very easy to get super excited about a market segment, about an idea. And your brain gets on board with that. You release all of these chemicals that make you feel really good and make you feel very

self-assured, which is why when the downside comes later, if you're not careful, you just don't see it coming. You're like, well, nothing could go wrong. I mean, what? No, this is going to be fine. There's not going to be this, there's not going to be any hurdles. I think especially when you think, well, this is obviously the future is when you have to think to yourself very carefully, what am I missing? Because if you feel like you're not missing anything, that's the time of greatest danger. It's always asking, what could go wrong? What could the government do to change the game? what could the marketplace do to change the game? What could other governments do to change the game?

What could happen with, I'll just use your friend as an example. What if his biggest investor pulls out? Right. And maybe that's 65% of the money, you know? I mean, I don't know. But what happens then? You just truly, truly, truly don't know. I have seen, and you've seen too, Paula, so many great ideas that when the idea gets

implemented, either the timing goes wrong or the implementation goes wrong or something comes out of the blue that happens. That's really frustrating. That's why I still always want to make sure I'm very comfortable with the size of that spinnaker sale, not being too much of my portfolio. Right. See, Joe, this is why we are a good pairing. I'm the optimist who's looking at opportunity and you're the the gritch nobody's ever called me which is funny

because if I'm the pessimist on this show we're in trouble like we are in because Paula you've known me for a long time don't know how big a pessimist I am I'm usually the glass isn't even half full

it's three quarters full yeah we're in trouble is such a pessimist thing to say that's right see I'm a pestimist about how optimistic I am I'm overly optimistic.

Must be horrible. All right. Well, thank you, Tina, for asking that question. And one final thing. I want to refer you to episode 250 of this podcast, which was an in-depth interview that we did with Dr. John Hale, who is the head of sustainability research for Morningstar. You can find that episode at afford-anything.com

slash episode 250. Well, we're going to take one final break to hear from the sponsors who make this possible. When we return, we will answer a question from a listener who wants to know, when should she invest money into her own entrepreneurial venture. Our final question today comes from Anonymous. Hi, Paula and Joe. I am excited to be calling in with my entrepreneurial question for you. But first, I'd like to say thank you so much for all the knowledge that you share so freely on the podcast.

I really appreciate it. My question is about podcasting and entrepreneurship. I really enjoyed your episode a few months back when you talked about what you had learned in business and podcasting so far, and another episode where you talked about how you pick and work with podcast sponsors. I also have a podcast, though it is not in the personal finance space. My podcast is spirituality based. And my question is this. How do you know when it's time to invest in business growth, specifically growing a podcast? Did either of you invest in a business or podcast coach to help grow and learn? For some context, my podcast, at the time of my call, has about 2,300 subscribers. I started the podcast in August 22, and I have seen my podcast grow steadily, especially this year. It has grown about 19% since the beginning of this year, with very little marketing on my part, I will say. I do all the editing, social media, guest research, and all that comes along with producing a podcast on my own right now. I do have some products and services that I

offer apart from the podcast that the podcast helps me promote. So that's how I've made some money from the podcast so far. I also usually hear you ask, what's the goal when people call in with their questions? So I will also provide you with my goal. In my biggest dreams, I would love to work on the podcast and be an entrepreneur full time. I have an entrepreneurial spirit and I know that I could do it for sure. However, I am conscious that I would want to do this once the business is ready to fully support me and not leave my nine to five before my own business is ready to pay my bills, which right now it is not ready to pay my bills, which is okay. Any tips on knowing when to step it up, or are there any key indicators that I should be looking out for to know when it is time to

invest in the growth of this budding small business? Thank you so much. Paula, we can't have somebody be an anonymous caller. They can't be. We have to give them a name. Exactly. So what do we name her? Well, I'm feeling very confident about her podcast. You know, if you have more than roughly, I think the number is around 200 listeners. You're already in the top half of all podcasts. Seriously? Yeah. So the fact that she's over 2,000 listeners is a phenomenal place to be. So I think she's going to continue to rock and blow up the podcast base, which is what happened when a woman named Sarah Koenig created a show called. called cereal because a lot of the big reason why podcasters as popular as they are now is goes back to the show cereal several years ago. Right. So we're going to name her Sarah because she's probably the next Sarah. You know, two things happened in tandem. Sarah Canig came out with cereal at exactly the same time that the Apple Podcasts app went native to iPhone.

And the combination of those two things. There it is. In tandem, it was really the inflection point in podcast. podcasting is a medium. Interesting audio and better distribution. Right. My direct answer, Sarah, is going to be very simple. For as long as you do not need to live on this money, you have a blessing.

Currently, you have a 9 to 5 job, which I assume covers all of your bills, so you don't actually need any of the revenue that is coming from your podcast. That is a huge, huge asset. put every single penny of the money that's coming in from your podcast back into the podcast. Because you've stated that your goal is to eventually one day do this full time. And if you are pulling money out of the enterprise in order to pay your bills, that is necessarily money that you are not using to grow it. So your objective right now is not personal gain. It's not personal income growth. Your objective right now is the growth of the enterprise itself. And I'm using the word enterprise because I want to broaden out the answer. This is an answer that is applicable to anyone who is starting any type of side business that they hope will eventually become their full-time business. If you are starting any entrepreneurial venture and you are lucky enough to not need that money to buy groceries or keep.

the lights on, then don't use the money to buy groceries. Keep that money inside of your business, reinvest every single dime back into the growth of the business. There is a lot of wisdom in things I've heard some of our, we call the mentors on our Monday shows at Stacky Benjamin's have talked about people that are in the entrepreneurial space. And it's that almost all of us will invest money without a set ROI in a college education. education, and yet if I want to get in the room with the right people in an endeavor that has a very specific ROI, we will still question a $5,000 expense, a $10,000 expense. But if it will put you in the right place with the people that have their finger on the pulse of the exact thing that you want

to do, I think we need to question that type of expense less and maybe question just the formal curriculum without ROI, maybe a little more. Yeah, exactly. It's like you don't think twice about spending money on a university education because it is socially sanctioned. Yeah. And to be fair, if you have a dream of having a very specific career that requires the university education, then it's necessary. Do it. If your dream is to be an anesthesiologist, you have to go through a certain prescribed path in order to do that. You can't just watch YouTube videos and figure it out. My buddy Lou does this. Yeah. But there are a lot of professions that many of us have entered that do not require a university education. And yet we've all paid for one anyway,

not all of us, but many of us who are listening to this, have paid for one anyway. But even then, even if you do require a university education, because that's super important, you're still going to augment it later on with your own curriculum to increase your knowledge in the area. And so, you're area that excites you. And in fact, if you're going for advanced degrees, you're going to find the exact institution with the exact people that are going to give you the best finger on the pulse, even if it is a university education. Right. So I think I start off with that. Okay, I'm willing to spend money. I love, love, Sarah, hearing you say that, you know, when do I do that? I think I do it right now. Yeah. But I think you've got to be careful what you ask for because, as you know, Paula,

there's a crap load of podcast coaches out there. Air quotes. Coaches air quotes. Yeah. And I get really, really nervous about being in the wrong room with the wrong people talking about the wrong crap. That's exactly what I was going to say.

So, Sarah, my answer is invest every single dime back into the growth of the company, but I wouldn't necessarily input that money into getting a coach, at least not right away. And the reason is, because there's so much variation

in the quality of coaches that are out there, you need to have a level of discernment in terms of who is excellent and who is mediocre. Because listening to the wrong voices, listening to the wrong people can lead you astray. And inside of afford anything, I can think of advice that I've taken that has put me back several years that I didn't necessarily realize at the time was bad advice. On its face it sounded good, but I didn't, at the time, I was so green that I did not have enough experience, enough judgment to be able to differentiate great advice from mediocre.

And I'm using the word mediocre because it wasn't necessarily bad advice. It was just mediocre advice. And there's a lot of mediocrity out there. There's just a ton. I think, and especially in an area like entrepreneurship, there's so many snake oil people. because the average entrepreneur wants something for nothing. They want to believe that I can do little to no work and get where I want to go. Biggest lie that continues to perpetuate itself since the days of gold mining, right?

The only people who got rich in Deadwood were the people mining the miners. All the miners were sold this. I'm going to go get rich by digging this stuff up. It's the same thing today in any pursuit, but especially online pursuits. So I think the nature of the business is to get a business plan together. I'm not talking about a business plan like the thing that I roll my eyes every time somebody starts off. It can be back of it.

Literally it can be on a napkin. In fact, it should be on a napkin. Totally should be. The true business plan for Southwest Airlines was on a napkin. It should be the same for you. I totally agree. But I think I want to get the heartbeat of what's going on in that industry. So, you know, we're talking podcasting, but again, Paula, you and I are keeping this wider.

Industry conferences are a great way to get to know who the people are, what the things are that people in your space are dealing with, what the common problems are. Heck, in a lot of cases, you don't even need to go. I do encourage you to go because then you know who the people are. But if you look at what the agenda is going to be at a podcasting conference this year versus last year versus the year before, you will see what the issues are. discoverability in podcasts is becoming harder than ever before. Getting noticed is harder than ever before. So knowing that gives you the fortitude to go, I know that it's going to be harder than ever to build community,

to build the machine. But here's how I'm going to do it. Right. Sarah, what I would do, if I were you, is invest heavily in building operations and building team. I would create standardized processes, SOPs, standardized operating procedures, for every element in your business.

Anything that you do more than once, have clear operating guidelines, start hiring people, start plugging them in. And then once you have people who are handling the day-to-day tasks that are inside your business, you then are free to work on it rather than in it. And you will find as an entrepreneur, and again, broadening this out to anyone who's listening, who has a side hustle in any field, you will find that you are in a constant tension between working in the business and on the business. That is true for every entrepreneur. And so the more that you can build out operations, hire a team, and free yourself up to focus on working on it. You may not be able to hire all those roles that Paul is talking about right away, but you need to have them laid out. Right. Because the important part about being an entrepreneur is laying out how that machinery works.

And a great book that illustrates this is called The E-Mith. And it's by a guy named Michael Gerber. The E-Mith Revisited is the current edition because he went back in and tweaked some things. The E-Mith will show you why what Paul is talking about is so. important, which is a great business is a machine that truly is a collection of roles. And he makes a great point by looking at, and it's in all of our backyards, McDonald's. McDonald's is not a collection of people who are deciding every day how to make a quarter pounder with cheese.

They're not like, oh, what do I do now? Oh, you know what? I'm going to put a little extra ketchup on this one. There is a way they do it. And when they train people, they train them how to work the machine. And then you have people that know how that machine works that are tweaking then the machine. Right. And you're spending all of your time out of the business.

Right. The executives at McDonald's. Yeah. They're tweaking the machine. They're tweaking it while people are getting valuable work experience working your machine. Right. And so initially, draw out what all of these jobs are. Who's going to work the front counter just to go with a McDonald's analogy?

Who's going to work the drive-thru? Who's the person putting the meat patties on? Who's working the fries? That's my favorite job because I love the fries. So all of these jobs, what are the different jobs? And you know what? Initially, Sarah, a lot of these roles in your org chart say Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. But immediately you'll know which ones are the ones to delegate.

They're the ones that are not your unique talent. They're the things that anybody can do if you give them the right machine, the right tools, so that you can focus on that thing. that you're better at doing than anybody else. So while you're on the microphone podcasting, maybe the editing of the podcast, maybe the going out and getting guest, if it's an interview show,

going out and finding sponsors, whatever that is, these are all roles that are super important. You want to be able to focus on your unique talent while giving other people the tools to do what's necessary to make your business's success. Right. In fact,

that quote unquote business plan that we talked about earlier, on the back of a napkin, I would just draw an org chart. Sure. Yeah, I think that's your whole plan. Get a napkin, draw an org chart on the back. That's the plan. Yeah, it's all the machinery.

How am I going to operate the business? Where's the income going to come from? Which means how am I going to market it, right? Right. Yeah, and then you have to plug people into those roles and then you need SOPs for every role. And there you have it. And it's a beautiful thing.

I'll tell you once you get into it, it is so fun. It's so much more fun working on the machine. Yeah, exactly. And that's really what running a business is. That's what entrepreneurship is. It's a lot of problem solving, a lot of putting the pieces of the puzzle together. And it's a lot of building the machine that does the thing. And your growth will only go as far as your ability to build that machine and refine its processes.

I still do think, though, Paula, it's important to understand the landscape of what you're getting into. There are so many times that I see misguided attempts to get into a business. I'm a big fan of board games. I will have somebody that knows I like board games. I will take a look at their board game and it's clear they have no idea what's going on in modern board games. They have no idea how they're retreading territory that's been done far better than what they're doing. But they have these nuggets in the game that are really cool. Nobody has done this alone.

everyone works off the shoulders of people that came before them that were already in the space. If you can't afford to go to industry conferences where you're going to meet the people and hear about the issues, at the very least, there are tons of podcasts talking about the issue. Oh, my goodness. Podcasts about better podcasting, there are tons of them. Two of my favorites, just specifically for Sarah. I love Dave Jackson's The School of Podcasting. It's a chatty show about podcasting. Dave Jackson is in the Podcasting Hall of Fame.

There's a Hall of Fame for everything, but Dave Jackson is in the Podcasting Hall of Fame, and it's for a reason. He is a very trusted resource by people that know what the heck they're doing. And then one of the places people upload their show to, and there's lots of different providers, Libson has a wonderful show called The Feed, which is a very chatty, very,

responsible show about the industry and things going on in the industry and what the big issues are in the industry. So I will often play the feed with Elsie and Rob as I go on my morning run or if I'm in my afternoon walk. And to broaden this back out to any entrepreneur in any field, and one thing that I have recently learned and really taken to heart is that scale comes from specificity. I would seek out people who can talk specifically about operations, about marketing, about bookkeeping. I would seek out voices, you know, not 30,000 foot view voices, but rather voices that can speak specifically about each subset of the business that you're running. And when you bring in outside consultants, you know, Sarah, this is actually.

actually the reason that I am not in love with the idea of getting a podcast coach, at least not at this stage. I think that later down the road a coach could be a good idea. That's a really good way to go from intermediate to advanced. But if you're going from beginner to intermediate, I would seek out people who specialize in narrow subsets, bring them in and have somebody who specializes in bookkeeping show you how to set up quickbooks for your business. Have somebody who specializes in web development. You know, I have a guy that I worked with for many years who was a full-stack PHP WordPress developer who I brought in to build out some underlying course infrastructure

when I decided to build my courses and I didn't want to use any of those plug-and-play platforms. I wanted to custom build, right? Those are the types of specialists that I've brought in. You know what I like, though, Paula? What's that? If you start off with all the wealth of information that is out there, step one, specific and directional, very specific experts in very specific places, by following what they have online, you'll get to know them really, really well. And guess what happens when you go to hire a coach, you're going to hire a much, much, much better coach. Right. Because you're going to have seen people's work and you're going to go, you know what, I got to hire Paula because Paula's the expert in XYZ and I need this specific person. I know exactly

what they're going to help me with. I know exactly what they won't help me with. I referenced Dave Jackson earlier. I know if I needed a podcast coach, the areas where Dave Jackson is strong. I know the areas where he's weak. I've been following Dave's work for the last decade. So I know where I would plug that expert in because I got familiar with the space first. So I love focusing on the business plan, which is the back of the envelope board chart of where you're heading. Napkin. The back of the back of the napkin. Not even envelopes way too big.

Yeah. You don't need that much space. Back of the napkin. And then I know, okay, I don't know that much about marketing. So I need to dive into what the best way to market would be. I watch a few videos and I realize that for me, email marketing is the best, as an example. Then I dive into email marketing. So now I'm niching down based on what I found when I first started out.

Then I find who are the best people in email marketing. And I dive in then to how to do that one specific thing really well. Yeah, and to Joe, to what you said earlier when you talked about industry conferences, actually one of only two that I went to this year in which I was not there as a speaker. I was just there purely for the sake of learning, paid for in my own dime, was very specifically a conference that was thrown by my email service provider. And who told you to go, Paula? Yeah.

Who told you to go? You were the one who told me to go. But I remember I was telling my dad, my dad was like, you're going to go. to you're going to a conference thrown by an email service provider? Who does that? But it's when you niche down far enough, you know these hyper-specific things that you need to pay attention to. Scale comes from specialization, and specialization comes from starting wide. Well, Sarah, I hope that provided some insight that can help take you to the next level.

And for everyone out there who has a side hustle or who has started some type of an entrepreneurial endeavor that you hope will one day become your full-time endeavor, I hope you got a lot out of that. Joe, we've done it again. We did it. Fantastic. Where can people find you if they'd like to hear more of you? Well, while you can find the Stacking Benjamin show every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, this Thursday, two days from now, I am doing a, live training on the Efficient Frontier for some of our Afford Anything friends and our Stacking Benjamin's friends. It's this Thursday evening. It'll be on YouTube on the Stacking

Benjamin's YouTube page. We'll have all the details in the Afford Anything Facebook community and in Paula, your Mighty Networks community. We'll make sure that we share all the details with everybody so you can sign up and come join me Thursday night to dive into the Efficient Frontier. That's going to be amazing. That is this Thursday. Two days from now. Thursday, November 21st. We'll also make sure we have, how about if we make sure, too, we have details in the show notes as well, Paula. Absolutely. Well, thank you, Joe, for hosting that efficient frontier training. And thank you to all of you for being part of the Afford Anything community. If you enjoyed today's episode, please do three things. First, share it with a friend, a family member, a neighbor, a colleague.

share this with the people in your life. Second, please leave us up to a five-star review in your favorite podcast playing app, whether that's Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And number three, subscribe to our newsletter, afford-anything.com slash newsletter. And number four, come to the efficient frontier training. Tadda! Thank you again for being part of this community. I'm Paula Pant. I'm Joe Sal C-Hi.

And we'll meet you in the next episode. Steve is the person who's going to be editing this. So, hi, Steve. Hi. I'm loopy. These beumes, man. Dude. Dude.