Afford Anything - Q&A: The Stock Market Sucks. Is Private Equity Any Better?

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

#601: Nick and his wife have $100,000 to invest, but they’re worried about the volatility of the current stock market. Should they look into alternative investments such as private equity? Even though Roth IRAs come with tax-free withdrawals in retirement, Josh is worried about his tax bracket going up and neutralizing the benefits. Is he right to be concerned? The retirement portion of Cindy’s financial three-legged stool is set, and she’s now focused on her taxable brokerage. What investment strategy will allow her to be work optional in 10 years? Former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I tackle these questions in today’s episode. Enjoy! P.S. Got a Question? Leave it at https://affordanything.com/voicemail Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe, have you ever changed your investment strategy based on the volatility of the market? No, not while the market was in super choppy waters, but what I have done is realized early in my investing career. The machine I built was not built as efficiently as I wanted it to be. And so I tweaked the machine, meaning I rewrote my investment policy statement. Ah, all right. Well, we're going to field a. question from a caller who's worried about how choppy the waters are and is wondering if this maybe demands an overhaul of their investor policy statement. We're also going to talk to callers

who have questions about growth assets versus income producing assets. We've got a caller with a comment about the efficient frontier. We've got a caller with a comment about following your passion. We got a lot of ground to cover today. All right. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that understands you can afford anything, but not everything. Every choice carries a trade-off. 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 and every other episode. I answer questions from you with my buddy, the former financial planner. Joe Sal C-high. What's up, Joe?

Happy day, Paula. I got my coffee. We got questions. I have the amazing Paula Pantt. What could be better? Absolutely. It's a wonderful day. And we will do. jump right in with this first question from Nick. Hi, Paula. My name is Nick and I'm from Dallas, Texas. My wife and I are 36 years old, and we both have full-time jobs. We're currently making around $260,000 per year. Our monthly expenses are around $7,000 a month, and we have about $550,000 invested, primarily in our 401ks, but we both also have Roth IRAs and brokerage accounts. We have around $200,000 in our emergency fund in our high yield savings account, and our only debt is our house at a three and a half percent

mortgage with about 22 years left for payoff. So we have around $100,000 that we want to invest out of our emergency fund. And with current market volatility, we're looking for other investment options outside of equities. One idea we had was investing in the private equity market, such as equities on. My question is, what are some of the benefits, pitfalls, or blind spots of taking the strategy. Do we even have enough cash to even consider investing in private equity? We've looked at the real estate market, but feel that it's too much overhead for us with our full-time jobs. We're also open to other investment opportunities outside the stock market. Thank you so much for your consideration and time in answering my question.

Nick, thank you for the question. My short answer is that while I'm a huge fan of private equity and of looking at investment options outside of the stock market, I work. that you might be going into the right thing for the wrong reasons. I question the premise a ton. Yeah. And by the way, Dallas, I just spent the weekend in Dallas. Nice place you live there, Nick. Loving Dallas, two and a half hours away from me.

It's like Nick and I are neighbors here in Texas, Paula. Dallas is a fantastic city and it's growing so rapidly. So, so crazy rapidly. Yeah, I think that there is the devil that you know, which is the stockman. market and he knows that the stock market, the U.S. stock market, we'll talk about that in a minute, but the U.S. stock market has been quite a devil lately, Paula. But the devil I think he doesn't know is that you are trading U.S. technology-based stock market risk for drama. Right. For tons and tons of drama and specific investment risk, which is a whole different world.

Yeah, there's a lot of concentration risk with private equity. If you thought the volatility of public equities is bad, just wait until you see the volatility and lack of liquidity in private equity. And I don't want to sound like I'm bashing private equity. I actually, and I say this for the sake of everyone who's listening, totally support the right person going into private equity markets for the right reason. But it's got to be right person, right time, right reason. Private equity demands that you are an accredited investor, which means that you have over a million dollar net worth. Frankly, Paula, I don't like that. Yeah. And I'm sure you don't like it, too. I can't stand that. It's a snobbish, crude approximation. Just absolutely boneheaded way of

figuring out whether or not you are a sophisticated investor. I will long die on the hill that if they want some type of paternalistic test to see if you are a sophisticated investor, then give us a test. Paternalistic test. Yeah. If that's the approach, then fine. Give us a test similar to a driving test that you take at end of driver's ed. Give us a test, sure, fine, whatever. But to use whether or not you have a million dollars in assets or you have above a certain income level, to use that as a crude barometer for whether or not you are sophisticated enough to be an accredited investor, I think is absolutely horsewash. But that's the system that we have. And so that's the system that we live in.

But Nick and everybody else, I'm sure, are wondering, Paula, why I brought that up. And the reason I brought it up is because I'm the guy that hates Rules of Thumb. But I think just like you said in the past, Rules of Thumb point you toward the truth. I think this rule of thumb points toward a truth that you can very easily cover your financial independence goals using the things that are widely available to all of us. The stock market, real estate, those two asset classes very often over long periods of time are the two that consistently beat inflation, which is what we need to do. And the reason I bring that up is because when you're looking at private equity investments, what type of person should be evaluating that? I believe it's somebody that knows that on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, I very easily have enough set aside that even if this restaurant, office technology company, health care, whatever it is, goes under, it's not going to wreck my investment world. And is it paternalistic? Yes. Is it silly? Yes. Is it way too broad and approximating absolutely? However, I think in this case,

Nick, when you shared with us your net worth number and your age, while I applaud all, of that, and I think you're doing a hell of a job saving, I don't think you have enough money to invest in private placements yet. I don't think you're there. Unfortunately, in order to be an accredited investor, you have to either have a net worth of over a million or have earned income of over $200,000 or earned income with your spouse jointly of over $300,000 in each of the last two years. He's like right on all those lines. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Or you need to have certain professional licenses like a Series 7, Series 65, or Series 82 license. You're not an accredited investor, even though I think that that's a complete baloney benchmark to have to hit. You're not yet an accredited investor. I think you quickly could be one if you wanted to be. So my concern for Nick is not whether or not he passes some stupid arbitrary qualification because I think that he could. if he wanted to. Sure. My bigger concern for Nick is, is he going into private equity for the right reasons?

Because if the reason is a dislike of the volatility of the public equity's market, I think that he's going to be leaving some volatility for more volatility. Yeah, when you look at a risk reward, a standard deviation chart, private equity is up, but it's up and to the right, meaning a lot more volatility. And not soft volatility, right? where we'll get a stock market that might go plus 20 or minus 20. No, no, no, no, no. We either 10x, 50x, or we go to zero.

100% go to zero. And when we talk about volatility, what I want to point out is that volatility isn't a reason to run, especially if you're already there. It is a reason to look for opportunities. So whenever somebody tells me that the market's valid on, I want to get out, I do think you have to check your risk tolerance, Paula, and you have to see if, okay, can I handle that many stocks? But let's talk about this volatility, too, because over on stacking Benjamins, you were part of this discussion. It was, is it time to throw out international stocks?

And we did that for a reason because I thought that it was ridiculous, the number of people in the personal finance universe saying, I don't need small cap, I don't need international, I'm just going to load up on the big stuff. Well, the big stuff now is through the floor. Right. Meanwhile, I just pulled up iShares, and this was at the end of February. So I know this is dated a little, all right, but I just want to have some consistent data. Japan up 5.97. The Eurozone up 17.7. China large cap up 25.99.

Broad China, up 24. Broad-based Europe, 15%. Brazil up 16.7. UK up 11.68, South Korea up 13.6. At the same time that everybody online is talking about, let's get rid of international, if you actually stayed invested, which is what people like you and me and my co-host over, Stackey Benjamin's OG have been saying over and over and over, and frankly, it's a lot of what the efficient frontier helps you do, right?

Just stay invested. You'd be high-fiving yourself right now because you probably, have 20% of your portfolio sitting in international funds that are saving your bacon. Yeah, exactly. I should say we're recording this end of March. So as of the time that we're recording this, the U.S. stock market is in the trash can, but international is doing well. International's doing well. Yeah. I don't know how the stock market is going to be at the time that this episode airs. This is slated to air mid-April. But I do think, Paula, the delta between where the international markets are and the U.S. markets are. It's going to be a hell of a time for the U.S.

market to bridge that gap between the time that we record this and the time that people hear it. Right. And what's cool about broad diversification is that if you're worried about volatility, broad diversification helps you reduce the volatility, which is, by the way, the reason why mutual funds were created in the first place. Because back in the 1940s, it was a way for small investors, like most of us to realize what big investors knew for a long, long time, which is if I own several different things versus owning one, my chance of losing my goals, losing my ability to get where I want to go,

goes through the floor, which is also why J.L. Collins talks about just buy a little bit of everything when you start out, right? Own the economy. So, Nick, the reason I'm questioning the premise myself, I won't speak for Paula, is because when you say, I want less volatility, volatility is a result of the market that you are in. If you go into private placement money during this same economy, if you're going into the U.S., you're in it,

but in a much more first person, lack of diversification, lack of transparency, focused on one single management team, A much more concentrated bet. Very, very much more concentrated. Yeah. You are asking for so much drama. Yeah. Well, and the beauty of private equity is that when you can make a concentrated bet, you have the possibility of a huge concentrated win.

Absolutely. That's why I'm an advocate for private equity for right person, right time, right reason. But we have to start with what's the goal? Is the goal to design a portfolio that has the possibility of a unicorn win, or is the goal to reduce volatility in your portfolio? And Nick, based on the question that you asked, you said you're worried about the current market volatility of equities. So it sounds to me as though the goal is to reduce that exposure, that equity exposure that leads to volatility. And what that means to me is that you need more diversification and private equity would actually give you less diversification. If there was a way on a very small level for you to own a small amount, and by the way,

I also question what I'm about to say, Paula, because the companies that are going to unicorn generally do not want the investor who's looking for a small amount. Right. By the way, I don't mean unicorn in the literal sense of it's going to reach a billion dollar market cap. Sure. Will it be a runaway winner? Absolutely.

But companies that do that know what they've got. and they have the right management team, they have the right people, they're well regarded, companies that will let somebody invest the amount of money I'm talking about maybe $10,000, $30,000, though that's an even bigger risk.

However, I do think that if you could do a small number like that in something that you like, I think you can begin learning from the school of hard knocks. Why is it important to know what the business plan is

and not just talk to the CEO? I used to go through this all the time when clients would bring me private equity deals. They'd be like, oh, yeah, listen to what they said. And I'm like, yeah, but none of that's on paper here. None of that is in the business plan. Oh, no, but I talked to the guy. He's good. Like, this guy's great.

Well, just because he talks a great game doesn't mean that this new product to the market is going to have any win beneath its wings to quote, Bet Midler. Can't believe it is quote of Betmiller. Well, yeah, it's a lot of fun to like go to Angel, list or go to Hive and just spend some time poking around and seeing all of the companies that are out there. If nothing else, it gives you a very good sense of the innovation that's happening and all the opportunity that exists. So those types of investments, especially if you can make a small bet, they're certainly fun, they're certainly educational, but they are a deep concentration of risk

rather than a diversification away from risk. A hundred percent. I know that they're used. to be, and I don't have any names on me right now, but there used to be, Paula, some fintech companies that would pool together a bunch of smaller investors. And by smaller, I mean people that want to invest, $10, $20,000, $30,000. Smaller investors in that market, they pull them together and they go in as one market. And the people that run the fintech operation actually have already applied their own filtering system on top of it. So they might be looking for investment in five different private placements, you get in to help them fill the barrel of money that they're looking for to come across together United as a single big investor, maybe going and looking

for one of those companies. Now, the bad news when you do that, of course, what are you adding? You're adding another layer. Layer of management. Between you and the management team and higher fees, which, by the way, the transaction costs sometimes on these private deals are not phenomenal. if you're used to 0.0007 and you get mad when you get 0.009. Joe is exaggerating by a couple of decimal places.

People's heads could explode. I'm going to pay 0.009. Joe's exaggerating by at least two orders of magnitude. But your point is taken. The management fees, while they're steep because there's a heck of a lot of diligence involved. Yeah, a lot of moving parts. and people need to be paid. I mean, in this market, Paula, even France was up 15.78 percent. Even France, for goodness sakes. Don't get me wrong, France. I love you, but I'd never thought of you

as an investment powerhouse. So, Nick, I think that you're on the right track in asking the question, how can I diversify? But private equity per se is not for you a good road to diversification at this juncture. And besides which, the paternalistic forces that determine accredited investors won't even allow it until you reach some certain arbitrary threshold anyway. That is so bad. Right? Daddy's not going to let you. Yeah, exactly. It's just so bad. Exactly. That's the system we live in. It drives me bonkers. But give us a driver's test. I will absolutely die on this hill. Give us a driver's test to test our level of sophistication.

That would be a much better way of filtering. But no, no, that's not the system we have. They want you to get a raise at work. And then you're an accredited investor. So thank you, Nick, for the question. Hey, Paula, before we move on, I'm looking at all these I shares, right? Yeah. Which country of all the countries represented in Black Rock's,

I shares exchange trade of funds was up the most at the end of February year to date? Ooh. Which country? And not the U.S. Not the U.S. Well, U.S. is down, right? Okay. Which country up the most? Let me think about, well, China is the obvious answer. So I'm not going to guess China because it's too obvious. China look good, though. We were talking about that in the mid-20s. I mean, that's some good chiching already for one quarter or, well, one sixth of the year. Yeah, but too obvious, so I'm not going to guess it. Bangladesh is under an interim. government right now. They're still cleaning up after their treasury got robbed. So I'm not going to guess them. And I'm also not going to guess India. So I'm methodically eliminating South Asia.

This is an Eastern European country. I know. Is it Latvia? Right next door. Lithuania? No, no, no. No, no. Come south. Estonia? Wait. Poland. Poland. Poland. Can you believe it? Poland. Number one in the world. Congratulations. Go Poland. At the end of February up 37.72. Wow. Percent.

That's wonderful. Congratulations to Poland. It's amazing. Yeah. Anyway, that blew me away when I saw it. Amazing. Speaking of amazing, we've got another color coming, Paula. We do.

Cindy is 10 years away from being work optional, possibly even closer. and is wondering how to split her investments. Meanwhile, Josh has some questions about Roth versus Trad when it comes to retirement withdrawals. And we got a couple of comments, one on the efficient frontier and one on following your passion. All of that is coming up next. Fifth Third Bank's commercial payments are fast and efficient, but they're not just fast and efficient. They're also powered by the latest in payments technology built to avoid. with your business. Fifth Third Bank has the big bank muscle to handle payments for businesses

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That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com. Sale ends December 7th. Welcome back. Our next call comes from Cindy. Hi, Paula. This is Cindy. I have a question about building out a taxable account with income yielding assets versus an account with growth assets.

So a little bit about my financial situation. between me and my husband, we have over $900,000 saved. We are in our mid-40s. We have no debt, and 90% of that money is in retirement accounts. So my focus now is going to be building out my taxable account. And we have a goal of being work optional in 10 years. And I've read different things about investing in growth and then converting it when I'm ready to retire to income yielding assets or doing that now in reinvesting. And I know there's tax consequences associated with that. And I wanted to get your thoughts on that. Cindy, thank you for the question. So first, if you're talking about investable assets, so if you're talking about sticking in the equities market,

then broadly speaking, optimizing for growth in the value of the underlying asset is a better long-term approach than optimizing for high-dividend stocks. So if you're thinking about, for example, pursuing a strategy of having a huge portion of your portfolio in a bunch of high-dividend yielding funds, I think a portion of that is fine, but I wouldn't put too much of your portfolio into chasing high-dividend funds. I would instead allocate your portfolio towards companies that you think will grow. Now, I want to clarify that when I say growth, I don't mean growth as in growth versus value funds in terms of investment style.

When I say growth, what I'm referring to is that any asset earns money in two ways. There's the appreciation of the asset itself, and then there's the dividend that it pays or income stream that it pays. And so when I say growth, I don't mean growth. versus value as a style. I mean, assets that are likely to appreciate in value, equities that are likely to rise in value over time, I would focus on that as a long-term strategy for the bulk of your portfolio as opposed to choosing specifically a whole bunch of high-dividend stocks. The difficulty, Paula, in that approach is that what you do when you go with growth-oriented

stocks as you increase my favorite measurement of risk, I mean, they all do something a little different, input to one that I was look at first is standard deviation. That's the amount that it's going to fluctuate. And so you're going to be on a much more volatile train, which is going to make it more important than ever that you don't miss when you're pulling money out to spend it. Because high volatility means, like we were just talking about with Nick, high up, but also potentially high down. And when things go down, and that sequence of returns works against you, it's going to work against you more if it's a position that doesn't pay dividends than one that does.

And by the way, for people that don't know why that is, so why do dividends mean a higher standard deviation? Like, Joe, how can you say that? How do you know that? Well, the reason is that companies pay dividends, they return money to shareholders when truly their growth options with that money, there really aren't many. Yeah. A railroad isn't going to be doing a lot of expanding lately last hundred years across the

planes anymore. So instead, the money that they make, they return it to shareholders. So a company that's big, established, not much room for growth, they're going to pay a dividend. A high dividend, yeah. Yeah. And a company that doesn't pay a dividend, they don't pay it because, the owner and the management team knows that money's better left with the management of that company.

Right. It's better off for reinvested. Exactly. And so for long-term investments, you want the types of companies where there is that room for growth, where the management is reinvesting back into the growth of the company because there's room for expansion. Those are the staples that you want in your portfolio when you're taking a multi-decade approach. Whereas when you're actually in the withdrawal phase, moving more of your money into high dividend assets at that time makes a lot more sense. I think though, Paula, when you're moving into the retirement phase, I think there is some room for both, not either or. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Where you know that you're going to get hit a little harder with taxes, but we're still looking for some growth. So an investment

like the Spider S&P dividend DTF as an example that'll kick out a two and a half percent dividend versus is a 1% dividend. So more of that money is in your pocket. The companies are a little bigger, but they're still got some companies in there that are looking to grow. So you're going to get some of the growth, a higher dividend. You're going to pay marginally higher taxes, but you're not turning on this.

Tax me to hell engine. Right. By doing that, I think there's some midpoints there that you can explore. Right. And what I like most about that, Paula, you're also decreasing the standard deviation. Looking at standard deviation as an example,

I'm looking at this SMP dividend ETF, ticker symbol SDIY right now. Standard deviation over the last three years, 16 and a quarter, versus the S&P 500 growth index, 19 and a quarter. Now you hear 19 a quarter and 16 a quarter, that doesn't sound like a huge difference,

but think about three points in 16. I mean, that's a big difference in volatility. That is a nice difference. Again, it doesn't mean that it can't go down to standard deviation to 16 points either way from your average, 66% of the time. Still a pretty big swing there, but a lot less than going with just a growth portfolio. Which means it's going to be less likely you're going to have times when you're not going to want to harvest the gains. I'm looking at lower standard deviation, not to cap my growth opportunity. I'm looking at it so that if I have to go there to get some money out to live on,

that I'm not as likely to be stepping in it when I do that. Right, exactly. And that's the reason why I want her to be in growth-oriented stocks now. And again, I don't mean growth as in the investing style. This is not a growth versus value conversation. I mean, stocks that appreciate. I want Cindy to be in more of those now because she's at least 10 years away from being work optional. Actually, Cindy, your number sound great. So if you wanted to be work optional

earlier, I believe you could be. But in your own words, you're 10 years away from being work optional. And even in 10 years, work is still going to be an option that's on the table. You're not 10 years away from a complete and permanent cessation of work. You're 10 years away from the optionality. And so given the fact that withdrawal is so far into your future, you at this stage are very much going to be in the mindset of a long-term investor. And I'd be excited about that with 10 years to go to looking at the U.S. stock market. You know, we were talking with Nick about international and how that could save your bacon. But I think the U.S. being down, if I've got 10 years to go right now, it's a pretty nice thing.

Because what's the thing everybody on Wall Street has been worried about about U.S. Stocks, Paul, a valuation? So we're seeing these valuations come down in a hurry, in a big hurry. And if that continues over the short run and you're 10 years away, fantastic. The people I worry about are the people that aren't thinking 10 years out and they still have money in growth oriented stocks for money they need right now. It's a horrible place to be. I'm specifically speaking about public equities that are in your investable portfolio. The conversation shifts if the question becomes, should I, for example, buy a handful of buy and hold rental

properties because my argument has always been that rental properties are functionally a high dividend stock. Not exactly, but they can be analogous to that in that rental properties bias a lot of their returns towards the income stream. They bias much of their returns towards the dividend. But in that particular case, you can then reinvest the dividend, both through the cash flow as well as through borrowing against the equity in order to grow that portfolio. And so if we're talking about owning assets that are outside of an investable portfolio, yes, you might have some assets that are analogous to dividend stocks. And then it becomes a different conversation. Rental properties are a different conversation. Direct ownership of private businesses that have more of a cash flow orientation,

like maybe you buy a vending machine. That vending machine is unlikely to appreciate in the long term, but it's a type of side hustle that throws off a lot of cash. It's a type of business ownership that throws off a lot of cash, that's a different conversation because that you can more directly reinvest in a more direct way. So my comments around encouraging you to focus on asset growth are specific to public equities in your portfolio. Speaking of which, I think we've said the word public equities on this episode more than we have on maybe any other episode ever. If you're playing the bingo game, congratulations. Take a shot every time. Speaking of which, since we're on this topic, should we play the comment about the efficient frontier?

Okay. This comment, by the way, comes from Anonymous. Hi, Paula. In your most recent episode, you asked about whether there was a way to show that the efficient frontier is the best without bid to authority. Harpid back to my grad school days, there's a reason why I've been very confident and excited by your expletable. of the efficient frontier, which is that we actually did the calculations ourselves to show that with several points along a graph of the beta risk and the expected return, you could, through a combination of different points achieve a more efficient outcome, a higher return for the same level of risk. And it was a simple math problem, no calculus involved. So if any of your listeners might be

interested in showing to themselves why the efficient frontier works and you don't need to just trust the Nobel Prize committee doing that simple math could be a helpful exercise. I'll also say, that in terms of portfolio visualizer, not being an ideal tool, I would be willing to pay quite a hefty sum if you all invested in creating a better tool at the afford-anything crew. So if you didn't have enough things on your plate already, tossing that out there. Thanks, Paula and Joe, for everything you do. and so glad that we get to hear the sum of your thoughts, which when combined are greater than each dot would be along the plot line.

Thanks, guys. Along the efficient frontier of thoughts. Yes. Thank you so much, Anonymous, for that comment. And I love the business idea. I'm going to leave it to some hungry entrepreneur in this audience. There's a market and there's a demand. So if someone wants to build it, if it's good, we will promote the heck out of it.

I like the tactful way you say hard pass. There are many, many great options that are out there and I can't pursue them all. Yeah. So I have to. No bandwidth. Yeah, I have to be selective about what I'm doing. Right now, our course on how to get a raise, our course, your next raise, has been under development for a year. and we're now in our second round of beta, right? So I can't take my eye off that because build fewer things,

but build them well. Much more of a recipe for success. Yeah, exactly. So I got to keep my focus on being able to teach you how to get a raise still under development after one year of production and two rounds of beta. But Cindy, I play that now because I think it links back to your question, because your question when you ask about growth versus dividend is largely around the efficient frontier and asset allocation. And so I think if you take some time to play with portfolio visualizer, it can give you a good sense of how you want to invest that portfolio in the 10 years in which you work towards work optionality. It's funny, Joe, with all of our talk about the efficient frontier over the last several episodes, we're functionally saying, hey, here's a smart and interesting way

to divide up your assets. I like the fact that it's a, yeah, been by smart, science tested. Yeah, it's a science tested way to divide up your assets. Absolutely. So thank you, Cindy, for the question and thank you, anonymous for the comment. Up next, we all know that Roth IRAs have tax-free withdrawals in retirement, but Josh is wondering if he withdraws from his Roth IRA is his tax bracket going to go up and neutralize those benefits? We're going to field that question from Josh next, and we're also going to hear a comment about following your passion. Our final question today comes from Josh. Hi, Paula. We have a question here. We all know that a 401k is going to be taxed in retirement when you start drawing, and that a Roth IRA is not going to be taxed. The question is,

will the income received from a Roth IRA increase your tax bracket, therefore marginally increase your tax burden from what you pay in taxes from your 401K income? Thank you. Josh, thank you for the question. And I have great news for you. Withdrawals from an IRA are tax-free, as long as you are above the age of 59.5 and the account has been. been open for at least five years. So you will not be taxed on those Roth IRA withdrawals. So it will not neutralize those benefits that you get. I love Josh looking around every corner though, because there are unintended consequences that happen when you would draw from places as an example in retirement. Income that you're bringing in, earned income you bringing in could affect your ability to either. It could affect your Social Security payments. So you need to be careful about that. Also, of course, anyone who is getting any type of government assistance needs to know

what the rules are around income streams and taxable income streams. But often we get hit with these unintended consequences. So I absolutely love the question. Yeah. And Joe, since you mentioned Social Security, Roth IRA withdrawals also don't impact Social Security. Do not affect it. Yeah. As an example, one retirement tax that people pay is called Irma, income-related monthly adjustment amount. I can't stand. You can't stand these acronyms. Oh, I just ate them all. I can see the pain on your face.

Just throw them away. The Irma is a fee that you might have to pay on part B and part D premiums. of your Medicare, and it's based on the income on your tax return the two years prior. So it's funny because you're going along, Paul, everything seems great. And oh, by the way, you got this additional fee really added to your Medicare benefits. Yeah, but the good news is the Roth IRA, qualified withdrawals from a Roth IRA are tax-free. Tax-free. You're not going to have to worry about any of that.

So, Josh, take it all out right now. No, no, wait until you're 59 and a half. Oh, sorry. Or older. And make sure that the account has been open for at least five years. Make sure you meet the five year holding period. Check those boxes and dinner's on you. Well, thank you, Josh, for the question.

We have another comment, Joe. Another. Another comment. And also anonymous. Are you curious to know what it is? I'm so curious. Aren't you curious? All right.

Well, let's follow that. That's so good. Hey, Paula, on a recent episode, you attributed the quote, Follow Your Curiosity to Cal Newport, and I just wanted to suggest that this actually isn't fully accurate. He did suggest the idea that following your passion isn't a great idea, but actually the phrase, follow your curiosity, was first notably said by Elizabeth Gilbert in her book in 2015. Just wanted to share that bit of information as it is a somewhat obscure fact. But I think it's important to attribute quotes from where they came from. Thanks. Anonymous, thank you for the comment. Liz Gilbert is widely

attributed as having popularized the phrase, follow your curiosity with the publication of Big Magic in 2015. Cal Newport first discussed following your curiosity with the publication of so good they can't ignore you in 2012. the book So Good They Can Ignore You. That book title is actually a quote from Steve Martin, who when asked what the secret to success is, said to be so good they can't ignore you. So even Cal Newport's book, which he published in 2012, that title is actually from Steve Martin. And Steve Martin himself was really not the first person to say, be so good they can't ignore you, but he was the one who popularized it.

I think, Paula, when you say he's the one that popularized it at that time. Right. Because what you'll also find is that throughout history with different phrases, there are skips of maybe 30 years and somebody reaches back 30 years and pulls this back out of obscurity and makes it again. And nobody that's listening at this point remembers what people were saying 30 years ago. Right. So you are correct. Follow your curiosity is widely attributed to Liz Gilbert. but she stands on the shoulders of many who have also discussed following your curiosity who came before her. When Cal Newport published So Good They Can't Ignore You, the premise of that book is about what he calls the passion hypothesis. The passion hypothesis is that if one follows their passion, they will succeed.

And he spends his book refuting the passion hypothesis and proposing following your curiosity as the remedy to that hypothesis. Now, I haven't done a reread of that book, so I don't know if he specifically uses the phrase follow your curiosity within that book, but it is from that book that he first became associated with and the doctrine of follow your curiosity. That said, Cal Newport is, with all due respect,

not as famous as Liz Gilbert. So it makes a lot of sense to him, particularly in 2012. Cal Newport was this young professor of computer science at Georgetown, whereas Liz Gilbert, by the time she published Big Magic in 2015, already had the fame that came from having published Eat, Pray, Love. Cal Newport in 2012, he talked about the importance of following your curiosity, but because he wasn't as famous, he spoke that phrase to a much smaller audience. He had a much smaller platform, particularly at that time.

So it makes sense that Liz Gilbert is often attributed as the one who popularized the phrase because Liz Gilbert is more popular. Because her book did moderately well. It was an absolute smash runaway best. Let's put it this way. Julia Roberts has never started a movie based on a book that California, Newport wrote. Yet. Yet. And Julia, I know you want to, but Cal might not be ready. A man that I have a lot of appreciation for is artist and writer Austin Cleon. He's been on my podcast a couple

times. And he, of course, wrote a book called Steele like an artist, Paula, which is kind of exactly what we're talking about right now. Great art is built on the backs of other great art. And while certainly stealing, plagiarizing, ripping off is not only not acceptable, it doesn't create new art, it doesn't advance the discussion. Taking though what somebody else built and roughing off it is exactly how great artists have existed forever. And so they pay homage, they remix it, they truly make it their own and build it into their work, while at the same time, pointing at the people around them going, you know what, this came directly from them, but fused together with this thing I brought from somebody else creates an entirely new era,

which is really exciting. When you think about the number of people that think that they're not creative, like, oh, I'm not creative. It's so hard to come up with stuff that nobody's ever thought of before. That's not at all the way artists create is Austin's thing. People are constantly reading, looking, knowing, and then taking the, diverse activities and pursuits and discussions infusing them together a new exciting way. It's funny because it's great with art. It's great with food. It's great when you think about

finance. I mean, it truly is, regardless of the discipline, how advancements are made. Right. And so all of everyone that we've talked about, Liz Gilbert, Cal Newport, Steve Martin, we all draw inspiration from those around us. Somebody said, follow your curiosity. maybe in a little different way, maybe in a different platform, maybe related to something different. I'll bet before either of the two of them. Think about the number of people, by the way, just to bring this a little closer to home, the number of people, older people in our community who have said, I was practicing

the fire movement before the acronym came right. Yeah, exactly. This isn't new. The number of older people I know, they go, this isn't new. this isn't something that Vicki Robin just out of the middle of nowhere went, you know, I got this new thing. Right. Let's spend less money and be self-sufficient.

Vicky and Joe did a great job of taking it, but then look at what happened. Then Pete, Mr. Money Mustache, riffed on it. And then we have all these other brilliant creators now riffing on it. The idea that we have all these other annoying acronyms that I can't stand, Coast Fye and dumpster Fye and all. Barista FI. Barista FI. This podcast has its own fire acronym, Double I Fire.

Double I. Double I. Yes. Double I fire. You'll never hear one of those acronyms come out of my mouth. That's a perfect example of taking an idea and riffing on it and making it your own. And what was the origin of fire? Was it, it is widely attributed to Vicky Robin and Joe Dominguez with the publication of your money or your life in 1992.

but prior to 1992, prior to when they came out with that book, they had to draw their ideas from somewhere. And sometimes I think it's just your ability to tell a story. A great book in the entrepreneur space is the e-myth. And there is truly nothing. All he's doing is showing little entrepreneurs what McDonald's does. In that book, if you want the TLDR on the e-myth, he's taking a small entrepreneur and saying,

look, McDonald's has all these systems, and that's why they got to the place that they are. If you apply systematic workloads and roles to the jobs that you do in this business, you're much more like to be successful than just be great at making cupcakes or whatever the business is. All Michael Gerber does in this book, and no stake on Michael Gerber. Phenomenal book and love it. And I think it's so hard to tell a great story. but just Paula, his ability to tell that story takes this thing that people already knew and makes it much more widely accessible.

I think Pete, Mr. Money Mustache is available to write that one blog post to tell that story about this is incredibly simple math. This is way, way, way simple math. And to do it in his way with his quirky spin on it, makes it. makes people pay attention where previously people might not have. Yeah. But thank you Anonymous for the call because I'm a huge, huge fan of Liz Gilbert, would love to have her on the show. And for anyone who has not read Big Magic, it is an incredible book. I highly recommend it. I read it as soon as it came out. She talks in that book about not burdening your art by forcing it to pay the bills, which is an important.

message, particularly for people who are trying to figure out what's next in their life. She has given TED talks and made other remarks where she's talked about the fallout of the runaway success of eat, pray, love. Really? Oh, yeah. Because she had to deal with this incredibly difficult existential question where she says, you know what, the peak of my professional career might be behind me. I'm in my 30s and my biggest professional accomplishment of my life is most likely behind me.

So how do I go on to have a fulfilling career knowing that it's all downhill from here? She's talked about that publicly many times. I was so moved by that question that when Mark Manson came on the show, shortly after the publication, after the runaway success of the subtle art of not giving an F, I asked him the same question. I said, Mark, with all due respect, your greatest accomplishment might be behind you. How are you facing that? And we had a great conversation. We'll link to it in the show notes. We had a great conversation about that. Wait, did he say? Did he say, I really don't give enough? Because that's the answer I really want. That would be very on brand. It would have been so good. Yeah, I really don't care. There's a subtle art to it, Paula. The questions that all of these thinkers pose around the nature of work and fulfillment at work is an incredibly important concept. And I think especially with so many afforders being part of the fire community, a lot of the fire community also concerns itself with workplace fulfillment. It's not all asset allocation all the time. It's not all efficient frontier all day long.

there's also the very deep question of how do we have a fulfilling and meaningful career or series of careers, how do we find fulfillment at work? And fulfillment after work. I mean, that's my passion right now. Right. Is what are the happiest retirees all about. Exactly. So thank you for bringing that to our attention because I think it's important to keep these names in the zeitgeist.

Cho, we've done it again. I can't believe it. That was so fun. Thanks again, everybody, for some really great questions and great comments. I love the fact that this episode was as much a discussion. Right. Right. With two people just commenting on stuff that topics we've had, really, that originally

sprang from you and our thoughts on stuff that you brought to the table. So nice job, everybody. Yeah. And please, I encourage you all to call in with comments, questions, afford anything.com slash voicemail is how you can leave. feedback, comments, questions. We love to hear from you. We want more voices on the show. So thank you so much to everyone who takes the time to lend your voice to the afforder community. Joe, where can people find you if they want to hear more from you?

I would point people, Paula, to our last Monday and Wednesday episodes. We were joined last week by Kevin Evers from the Harvard Business Review. And he did a deep dive along with the folks at Harvard Business Review on the genius of Taylor Swift, the systems, the processes, manufacturing, creativity, managing this monster tour, all of the above. When we have big topics like this on Monday, we do a deep dive, OG, and I. And then on Wednesday, we talked to the person that actually wrote the book on it, in this case, Kevin Evers from Harvard Business Review. So all things Taylor Swift on the Stacky Benjamin Show. except Taylor Swift. No Taylor Swift. But hey, if we got to talk to Harvard about Taylor Swift,

okay, so be it. Awesome. I can't wait to listen. Thanks to all of you for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please head to Afford Anything.com slash newsletter so you can get our incredible newsletter delivered hot and fresh to your inbox. We publish insights on there that you will not find anywhere else. So that's afford anything.com slash newsletter absolutely free and a great place to further and deepen this discussion. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Paula Pan. I'm Joe Salci. Hi. And we'll meet you in the next episode.