Afford Anything - Q&A: Would You Spend $60,000 on a Wedding Knowing It Could Be $800,000 Someday?

Episode Date: July 28, 2026

#736: A bride wants to spend $60,000 on her wedding — money that could grow to $800,000 in 40 years if she invested it instead. This week, three very different listener questions all boil down to the same fight: what the math says versus what actually makes you happy. 👉 Figure out your own money mindset — free FiiRE Playbook: https://affordanything.com/fiire This week, Paula and Joe tackle three listener questions: a professor trying to retire in 12 years while his daughter starts college, a bride wondering if $60,000 is too much to spend on love, and a couple in Luxembourg deciding whether a 1.2% fee is worth paying to keep themselves from touching their own money. In this episode, we discuss: How to know if you can retire in 12 years while your kid starts college A little-known tax-advantaged account almost nobody realizes their child can use Why a 7% return assumption isn't a "set it and forget it" number Whether a $60,000 wedding is a smart use of money — or a mistake How to decide if a big purchase is worth it before you spend the money Why paying a fee to a financial company might actually be doing you a favor How to tell a resilient money habit from a fragile one This episode is for anyone caught between what the math says and what they actually want — whether that's a wedding, a retirement date, or a fee you're tempted to cut. If you've ever done the "mathematically wrong" thing on purpose, you'll feel understood by the end of this one. ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS Note: Timestamps may vary slightly depending on dynamic ad placements. (05:26) Can this couple retire together in 12 years? (08:22) Why his college savings look thinner than expected (30:37) The two retirement levers you can actually pull( 30:54) A little-known tax-free account for kids (34:41) Is a $60,000 wedding a smart money move? (38:31) The math behind what that wedding money could grow into (44:57) The $25,000 zipline entrance he saw at a wedding (52:14) What every big purchase question really comes down to (55:11) Pay the fee, or invest it yourself? (1:08:28) Why a small fee might be worth paying 🔗 RESOURCES MENTIONED 👉 Figure out your own money mindset — free FiiRE Playbook: https://affordanything.com/fiire 👉 Register for Steve Stewart and Sean Mullaney's free webinar on ACA subsidies and the Subsidy Cliff: https://SteveStewart.me/webinar 👉 Hear Paula, OG, and Jesse Cramer react to the Diary of a CEO episode on AI's future, on the Stacking Benjamins podcast: https://youtu.be/wppwRxGtFD4 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe, how much did you spend on your wedding? Oh, no. You are not expecting that question. It's like, wait, I have blocked it out. It is a nightmare. Personally, I did not spend a lot of money. My father-in-law spent the money, did not share with me how much money that he spent, he and my mother-in-law, I guess, spent together. I remember there was consternation about how much

was being spent around every corner. Listen to that passive voice. There was consternation. There was consternation was had. Right, as if we hadn't created it. Somehow there was consternation. I don't know. Who created that? But we did get lucky. I mean, Cheryl's uncle had a beautiful place that we could get into for free. I was required by my father-in-law. If I wanted to, entertainment, I was going to pay for it. And if I wanted limos, like for the wedding party, like I was paying for that too. So for me, it was the cost of a DJ who I knew and liked and the cost of a limo. So not much. But you were a DJ. You were a DJ at the time. And that was cool. I hired my favorite competitor. I had one big competitor that I hated. They got all kinds of gigs because they had great

advertising, but they suck. They were horrible. And then I had this other guy who was phenomenal, just a fantastic DJ. And I was so excited to have my favorite competitor DJ my wedding. That's amazing. That's amazing. And that's a great spend because you know, you know that scene. You know the industry. You know the players. Yeah. Our wedding was a blast. We were Cheryl and I were middle school coaches. So we had a dinner with our family. And then when it was time to cut the cake and to party, we had our teams come join us. So my wedding reception was flooded with seventh and eighth graders. It was so awesome. It was so awesome.

Amazing. You were track and field coaches, yeah? We were track and field coaches. Nice. Nice. Well, we are going to answer a question today in the middle of the episode. Oh, this isn't just about me and my wedding. I have the slides ready to go.

That'll be the after show. Okay. But in the middle of the episode, we're going to answer a question from someone who she's having a wedding in New Zealand and wants to spend 60. thousand dollars. Is that a good deal? Yay, nay, pros, cons. We're going to discuss that. That's mid-show. Before that, we're going to talk to Mike. He wants to retire in 12 years. And after that, we're going to talk to a listener living in Luxembourg who has a question about what is behaviorally right versus what is mathematically right. All of that is coming up right now. What do you think, Joe?

Wow. Okay. We stretched out. Buckle up. I need to go. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that knows you can afford anything, not everything. This show covers five pillars, financial psychology, increasing your income, investing, real estate and entrepreneurship, acronym Double I Fire. I'm your host, Paula Pant. I trained in economic reporting at Columbia every other episode-ish. I answer questions from you, and I do so with my buddy, the former financial planner, Joe Sal C-high. What's up, Joe? I had a horrible morning this morning, Paula. What happened? Well, I found out. I found out.

my toaster wasn't waterproof and I was so shocked. With that, we go to our first question, which comes from Mike. Hi, Paula and Joe. This is Mike in Kansas City. I'm 51 years old, professor and graduate health care education. I also do some contract patient care and coaching consulting on the side, so pretty reliable income. My spouse is 43 years old. She's in the service and one of the unarmed branches, so also reliable source of income. For a variety of reasons, we were a little bit late to the game of becoming parents, but we now have an eight-year-old daughter. So we've got a little bit higher cash flow needs, I think, than most people are age based on the age of our daughter.

As it relates to our accounts, I want to give you the numbers of what we have currently, and I've combined both of our accounts into one, and I'll tell you kind of my thinking for that and ask Paula's opinion if I'm approaching that thinking correctly. Roth IRA, between the two of us, we have 300K, pre-tax between IRA, 403B, and TSP, we have 300K, 70K and taxable brokerage, 40K and high-yield savings. It was higher, but life happened. We are aggressively replenishing that. 20K and a 529, we're adding a little bit to that, but really not prioritizing it. A couple other key factors. Spouse is eligible for military pension. Technically, she can retire in five years, but if she stays in longer, pension goes up.

So I'm estimating her pension will be $80,000 a year when she retires. We also get health insurance covered via TRICARE. I'm estimating that we'll need about $120,000 per year initially in retirement because I'm including budgeting to assist with college expenses. My question then, am I approaching the overall retirement planning correctly? Can I plan for both of us to retire in about 12 years? that puts me at 63, my wife at 55, and in doing so, it makes it easier for me to look at all of our retirement accounts as one lump portfolio or one joint portfolio. Most of the Roth money is mine.

About 90% of the Roth is mine, so we'd have access to that by the time she hits 55, and her retiring at age 55 would give us access to her TSP. So again, am I looking at this correctly that we can, if we retire together in 12 years, that this is all one portfolio. If that's correct, I've calculated a retirement portfolio of about $2 million, assuming a 7% rate of return and conservatively investing $2,200 per month. Then my question, kind of a Joe question, because he always talks about, well, every plan has an Achilles heel.

What could be the Achilles heel in this plan? So if I'm looking at annual expenses of $120,000, And this plan has us at 160,000 a year, 80K pension, 80K withdrawals, and health insurance is covered. So I'm wondering, what am I missing here potentially? Thanks so much. Learned a lot from both of you and appreciate any input that you have. Mike, thank you for the question. The first thing I would say is congratulations on all of the incredible planning that you've done.

It's clear from your question that you've done a great job thinking through this, lining up everything, getting all of your ducks in a row. kudos to you, big congratulations to you for doing all of that. Joe, I'm just going to dive right in. Joe and I did not discuss our answers in advance, so I'm curious, Joe, to hear what you're going to say, but I'll dive right in with the first things that I noticed right away. Number one, you've done a great job of diversifying the tax triangle.

And so I think big thumbs up in terms of tax diversification of having different buckets of different tax treatments. I think you've done a great job there. I noticed there is not a lot of money in the 529 account. I'm curious as to why your daughter is eight years old. She's going to need the money starting in 10 years and then running between 10 to 14 years from now. Given that she'll need it starting in 10 years and through to year 14, that means that her sophomore going into junior year is right at that moment 12 years from now when you want to retire. That's when sequence of returns matters most.

you know, in the two years prior to retirement, you know, it's your retirement date plus minus two years is the window of time when she's going to college, assuming, I guess that's an assumption that I'm making, but assuming you that she wants to and that you want her to go to a four-year college and to begin that at the age of 18. Assuming that, that means that her college experience is going to be your retirement date plus minus two years, which is when sequence of returns makes the biggest impact. And so, So that is the number one thing that I would be protecting for. You did mention that you are a college professor. There is a possibility that she has some type of a discount if she enrolls at the same

university that you teach at. You didn't say that in your question, so I don't want to make that assumption. But I'll also just kind of put that asterisk here because I guess my question back to you is, does she have some type of a benefit if she were to go to the university? that you teach at. If so, is that the reason that you're not putting more money in the 529 plan? And if that is the reason, how certain do you want to be that she will go there? Do you want her to have the opportunity to go somewhere else if that is a better fit? Those are my questions back to you. And again, I would not, it sounded like from the structure

of your question that you're thinking about retirement drawdowns in the context of using a portion of those early drawdowns to pay for her college. But again, given sequence of returns, I would probably not co-mingle retirement drawdown planning with the college bucket. I would, from a planning perspective, keep them separate. I'm a little worried about sequence of returns risk. I'll get into that because, as you know, Paula, I think sequence of returns is the second domino.

I think he's far enough away from the jagged edge of a safe withdrawal rate. that I'm not as worried about that. But those first two years I am for the very same reason, which is that his expenses could balloon because of the fact that he has this at the same line. And this is the importance. When people would come into my office and they would tell me a list of different goals to draw them out on a timeline. Like when you put them out on a timeline together, Paula, you nailed it. A lot of people would come to my office. They wouldn't realize, oh my goodness, she's going to be a junior in college the same year I want to retire. you can already see that that's going to change cash flow.

There's also a cool part to this, though, which is, you know, a lot of studies now on retirement, though, talk about if you can at all tiptoe into retirement, and a lot of people don't get the chance to. But if you do get the chance to tiptoe into retirement, that's actually better. And so those first couple of years where your daughter is still in college and you're training, your spending for the rest of your life as you transition, having that transition in the middle of it, I think might actually be a good thing. It might be a decent thing to help you cope with this new lifestyle that you have because you're automatically, the big thing people have a problem doing is replacing the things in their life that they were doing with other things.

And now, like friends of mine with kids in college right now, they're, you know, you want to leave your child alone. You don't want to be helicopter mom or helicopter dad. But, you know, once a quarter, they're off to the university to go visit junior and see how she's doing and take her and her friends out. And they're corresponding. They're sending care packages. They have this thing. And then she's flying home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. And yeah. Right. So there is this little bit of help with one of the biggest problems in retirement, which is what is my purpose once I've done working? Oh, I thought you were going to take that into a different direction. I thought it was going to be what is, what is my spending look like during that four-year

window when my daughter is in college because there's going to be all of that in addition to the college fees and the things that are planned, there's going to be all of that additional travel. No, 100%. Yeah. The cool thing there is that you will train your spending to be a little more frugal because of the fact that you have money going out of the door. As a guy who had twins go to college at the same time, you will have money going out the door.

Actually, and as we talk through this, it just occurred to me, if as a university professor, if she were to go to the university that you teach at, and if there is a discount associated with that, does that persist even if you were to retire? Is that contingent upon employment? You know, like what are the conditions that the university would set if that is even a factor at I say this because my dad was a professor at the University of Cincinnati, and he very much hoped that I would go to the University of Cincinnati, which I did not, because, you know, it would have been a lot cheaper if I had, but I very much did not want to go there. It's a great school.

Yeah, it's a great school. But the idea of living at home and commuting to college with my dad every day was like, yeah, you know, I think. Time for the next thing. Yeah, exactly. That was me too. Part of the experience of going to the Citadel was just being. halfway across America, you know, and not that I don't love my family, love my family,

but I just needed to learn how to be independent. Right. Exactly. Yeah. The reason, Mike, that we're having this discussion, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, Paula, but because you started here, I think you kind of felt like I do. He said, we're not really prioritizing that or something to that phrase when he said, 529 plan. We're not really prioritizing that or we're not putting a lot of money into that. And I immediately, the flag went up in my head, too, like, why? This is a big hurdle that you're going to have that's coming up at the same time as retirement. What about his idea of thinking of all assets as one portfolio? I like that, given that they are going to be retiring at the same time, you know, or given that

that is the plan. I like viewing everything as one cohesive portfolio and planning from that that framework. There are a couple of things that he said, though, that I would want to put a flag in. He said, you know, health insurance is covered by TRICARE. And that's awesome. Tricare is fantastic, but TRICARE is not free. So TRICARE does have fees and cost shares associated with it. And when you're 65, you're going to be paying Medicare Part B premiums. So you will need to set aside some money for healthcare costs. Like, it's, tri-care is wonderful,

but your health-related costs are not going to be zero. I would make sure that you do that planning. The other piece of it, though, is the $80,000 pension. What is the deal with the survivor benefit plan?

If they elect the survivor benefit plan, then the surviving spouse gets a bigger payout, if they don't, then if she dies first, then the plan vanishes. And so that's something that I would be cognizant of planning around. Like, with regard to that pension, what is the first to die slash survivor benefit set up? Well, that's important to know for another. At first, I'm like, why is she talking about him dying?

But then I realize that what you're talking about is the pension estimate that he's thinking might not be actually what they receive. Well, that's not where I was going with that. I was just going with if she dies first and they don't elect into the survivor benefit plan, then he doesn't get the pension. Right. But the amount that you have on the pension estimate, you want to carefully look at what that assumption is. That's where I thought you were going, which is now where I'm going.

Yeah. And if they do elect for the survivor benefit, how is that going to impact the payout? Right. because he's thinking that his plan's based on $160,000 a year, and maybe it's not. Maybe the pension's going to be less money. I like looking at it as one portfolio for a host of reasons, Paula. The first of which is, whatever I saw people's 401K plans, some had areas that were really good and other areas stunk. And what would happen was invariably when people would come to see me, they would have these two,

perfectly allocated pies. So hers is completely allocated with, let's say, large companies, small companies, international companies, maybe some bonds, whatever it is, right? Just kind of a traditional allocation. And then his would be large company, small companies, international bonds. But the bonds funds in his stink and the international fund in hers stinks. So instead what we would do is a couple things. First of all, since it's our money, it's both of you, it's both of your money. If she's got a great bond fund and he doesn't, then over contribute to and be over exposed to bonds in her portfolio and don't put any in his. And now you get the benefit of the good bond fund and hers and you can just eliminate the bad bond fund and his. And likewise with the international,

if he's got great international, she doesn't have good international. Now he looks loaded up. So if anybody went and looked at his statement, are you crazy? Look at how much international you have. Well, then you can answer, well, this is my entire portfolio of international because it's the best international fund we have at either of our workplaces.

So I like it for that reason. But I also like it because, going back to the timeline, Paula, if you begin lining up money to when you're going to spend it, their age difference is going to play a piece of this. His money could be the more conservative end of the buckets, because they'll be the first money that you go to, which means we shouldn't see anything remotely conservative in hers because of the fact that we have, now, we have to pay attention

to your risk tolerance, as I say that. But assuming that you have moderate talents for risk, your most aggressive money should be in hers because that has the longest time to grow if you plan on it where you're going to go through our money and his money first and then her money later on because she's younger. Would you be thinking about asset location based on the name that the account is on, or would you be thinking about asset location based on tax treatment of the account? Because I would, in the hierarchy waterfall, I would be prioritizing tax treatment first unless you're specifically earmarking a particular account to be tapped prior to when she turns 59.

and a half. When you get close to the time that you're going to spend the money, most of asset location stuff will tell you not to put your most conservative stuff in the place where you should put it that it's easiest to get because you're going to cost yourself more in taxes. Yet it's far easier to get at the money in a brokerage account than it is to pull it out of one of these retirement funds. Now, if you're going to live on a fixed income, it's fairly easy. We would set something up, you know, where you're taking money every month out of your IRA, right? Just the IRA sends off a check, withholds taxes, boom. So you could do it that way, I suppose, if you're comfortable with getting a check that's closer to a pension or getting a distribution that's much more like a pension.

The problem with that approach, Paula, is that we would have people that would set those up because asset location matters. They would then have this automatic withdrawal and then they go through a period where they just don't spend any money. And so they end up costing themselves a bunch of money in taxes by pulling the money out of the retirement account to quote spend and then they don't spend it. So I don't know. I'm not as excited about that part of asset allocation as I am. You know, when I think about this, so I think, number one, the brokerage account, right? Most flexible. So that will probably be your most conservative money.

But then I look at his Roth and her Roth and I look at his 401K and her 401K. and I think I'm going to want a Roth to smooth over tax brackets while we're taking his money out. And then I'm going to want Roth money to smooth over tax brackets when we're taking her money out. So I kind of look at her Roth as the way we smooth over her money, which I think of is the longest term money. His is the medium money with his Roth and her pre-tax. Then the brokerage account probably most conservative because it's easiest to tap. but you know I think like anything as you can see we're developing questions how do you live how do you take money on a monthly basis are you somebody that's going to be much better we're going to

cover this again later on in the show with another person where it's your behavior that really matters right that's going to be our final question yeah you like that foreshadowing people that's what it's spoiler alert yes this is the way all the pros do it right here before coming up later on this podcast we'll be talking about so I think for the most part, you still get great tax treatment on those assets. And I think we get better asset allocation because we're focused more on when we're spending the money when that dollar's going to be spent. Yeah. I will say overall, zooming out, in terms of your readiness for retirement, I mean, you're planning on a $2 million portfolio in addition to also having this pension.

So I'd say you are easily more than ready, particularly given the security of the pension. And even if you opt for the survivor's benefit and the pension is not 80 per se, the portfolio is already strong enough that like you've got the portfolio, you've got the pension, you know, the only thing that worries me is the major thing that worries me is sequence of returns risk around your daughter going to college. Beyond that, I think it's very strong. I love talking about the Achilles' Yale. Joe's like, I disagree. Well, I don't completely. I completely disagree, but he did ask the question, like, what's the Achilles seal? And so I think the Achilles seal is two things. Number one is, I love the fact that he said, our lifestyle is going to be $120,000 initially. Because my first thought is, even during the 16 years that I was in the trenches with people, their financial plan, we saw their spending go up just to keep up with costs.

So inflation is a bear. So I don't know if, Mike, if you did this using professional software, because inflation is surprisingly robust, even if it's a three or four percent number and your expenses take more of a bite out of your retirement than you would expect. So that's number one is you referenced inflation. So I think the answer is going to be yes. I'm going to be fine. And by the way, I do think you're going to be fine. So I should have probably led with that. But instead of doom and gloom, might have led with that.

But I want to do that. I wouldn't just take Paul and Joe's word for it. And then the second thing is, you know, what's the second Achilles heel? 7%. I mean, 7%. It doesn't matter how low your rate of return is. We've had years where we've had negative 20 before. It has been a long time since 2008.

Yeah. We could have another black swan event on our doorstep any day. And we're kind of lucky that we haven't for this long. So 7% no matter what you do. And by the way, I think it's prudent that you said 7%. I would have done 7%, but it still is an Achilles heel. So here's what we would always do in our financial planning meetings. I would build milestones between here and that 2 million number.

Where do I need to be every year to get there? And let's say, Paula, you're my client and we come in. And right now you're at 750,000-ish, let's say. and we get together and it's a year from now and you need to now be at 805,000. And we add up all your stuff and you're at 815,000. Well, now we know we can do a few things. Number one is you could save less money today, which is really cool. Number two is you might be able to project an earlier retirement if you want it.

Number three is you could save the same amount but save it for other things. things. Let's say you like to travel. You want to travel more today. You're not prioritizing the 529 and you realize listening to what Paula said at the beginning of this that you should. Now you divert some money toward another goal. Or you can just keep the status quo and keep building ahead knowing that you now have flexibility for what happens in future years when 7% doesn't have. You have a lot of options. It's the same if you get behind. So if you have to have 810 and you're only at 780. Well, now. your options are, should I save more money? Do I ask for a raise? And then how do I come up with

that money? Do we need to spend less money? Do we cancel stuff? Do we go ahead and realize that we have a deficit now? Do I retire later? Right. Do I now retire later? Do we, you know, my daughter didn't want to go to my university where I work, but now she's going to? I don't know what the options are. But again, you've got a lot of options. And the options are better, Paula, when you're looking at it 10 years before, that you're not on the timeline than if you wait until two years before. So I love these milestones along the way. And I think that you're still far enough away that having that 7% number, I would just make sure that you're on it. And if you're not on it, what I like is that every time you look at whether you're head or behind, you then are

in the driver's seat versus without that timeline. Here's what people want to talk about when they came into my office. What's going on with these politicians? There's a new thing about Social Security. What happens about interest rates? All this crap that's out of your hands. And I would go, okay, let's talk about that later. You need to be at $810,000. Where are you? And immediately my client would go, oh, I'm at, let's see, I'm at $7.85. Oh, so do you think you should save more? You can control that, right? And then we start talking about how to do it. And all of a sudden, you put away all this crap that you can't do anything about and you focus on you and the goal. So essentially, Joe, what you're saying is that you've got two levers, one levers, your returns, the other lever,

your contributions. And so 7% is a great assumption, but check in with it. Make sure that you're hitting minimum seven. And if you're not, then you have to pull the other lever. Yeah, you got a course correct. Right. On the topic, Joe, of what's going on in the news. There is another piece, Mike, that I want you to pay attention to. And it is, in addition to the 529 plan, there's also something called the 530A plan. 530A is also, depending on what side of the political aisle you fall on. 50% of the population refers to it as a Trump account and the other 50% of the population refers to it as the Invest America account. If you're in the financial planning industry, you would call it the 530A account. So that's simply how I will refer to it.

But your daughter is eligible for that. Anybody with a social security number who will be under 18 at the end of this calendar year, it is eligible for you can open a 530A account for that person. So I would strongly encourage you to open and contribute to a 530A account. Now, your daughter is not eligible for the government contribution of 1,000. which is why a lot of people erroneously believe that this account is only for babies. That's actually not the case. The 1,000 is only for babies. But if you're a minor under the age of 18, you can have a 530A account. And the tax treatment on this is absolutely incredible. So I would, in addition to the 529, open that account for your daughter, contribute to it,

your family, friends, your workplace, anybody else may contribute to it as well. There's up to an annual limit of $5,000. But it's an opportunity for your daughter to be able to grow massively tax-advantaged money, like just massively, massively tax-advantaged money. I love the attention that you've given this, Mike. And the things that you've thought of, you know, the fact that you think that you can exist on 160,000, as we've talked about before, Paula. I believe strongly that staying away from that jagged edge of the safe withdrawal rate, it's just a good idea for being happy,

because then you don't have to worry about whether your withdrawal rate remains safe as much. So I've had that great. I think the questions he's asking are the right questions. Do I think about it is our money or separate funds? I like all the planning he's doing. Good stuff. Wonder about 529 plan like you do. But there's got to be a reason for it. We just don't know. Yeah. Well, thank you, Mike.

Thank you for the question. And please call us back with an update. Call us and let us know how this plan progresses. We're going to take a moment to hear from the sponsors who make this show possible. When we return, we're going to hear from someone who is planning a wedding in New Zealand, wants to spend $60,000 on it and is wondering, is that smart? Is that a financially savvy thing to do? That's up next. Welcome back. Our next question comes from Abby. Hey, Paul and Joe. My name's Abby. I'm a repeat caller. I called you when I first

went to graduate school to ask about investing for that. And then I also called you after I got my first job. And now I'm calling you to ask about my wedding. And before you can toast your spend drifts in support of my nuptials, I was wondering, do you guys have a rule of thumb or advice on how much to spend on our wedding? Perhaps a rule based on percentage of net worth or of income. My husband and I are tentatively planning to have our wedding in New Zealand, which will be at an all-in cost of around $60,000, which weaken cash flow. We have investments together in the range of $800,000, and we have an income of $400,000. It feels very much against the FI mindset to spend this much on a wedding, but I've worked hard and picked up a lot of overtime to pay for it.

However, I know if we invested that money, it could be worth 40 years. Can't wait to hear your advice. Thank you so much. Abby, first of all, I love that I've been there through so many milestones and moments in your life. That is so beautiful to have been part of going to grad school and getting your first. job and now you're wedding. Now our Abby's getting married. Google ran this ad once. It was just an ad for Google. I don't know why they run this. Everybody knows what a Google search is, but they were basically just running an ad for the Google search bar. They ran that ad by showing the set of like

search queries that was like study abroad in Paris. And then it was like, how do I ask a girl out in French, first date ideas? Oh, the whole timeline. You know where this is. You know where this is going. You see the whole progression. Visas to France. Oh, that's wonderful. Wedding rings, you know, and then the final one was like how to assemble a crib, right? So it was like this very, very cute ad that showed how you use Google searches across these milestones of your life. And I got vibes from that when Abby called and talked about. That's so cool. Yeah, that's great. I love this question. And before we answer it, though, I do want to talk about something that, Abby, the same thing that you thought always frustrates me about the, quote, fire movement is when people see the Phi lifestyle is rice and beans. And there is an element of that.

And it is my least favorite part of it. I think we have to dispel this myth that cheapening our existence is a better life. Right. Whoever started that piece of the five movement needs to be shown the door. We need to take them and kick them out of the club because cheapening your life does not make it better. It doesn't. Less expensive can be better. We can even talk about that because that's going to be part of my answer.

But cheaper is not better. Oh my goodness. Stop. Stop. But, Abby, that's not you. That's my trigger with people who think that fire means I, I, I, do less than what I could. Yeah. Abby, so honestly, when you said, you know, I know that that money, if invested at 7% for 40 years, would end up being

and the reason that I want to bleep that out is because it doesn't matter how much that money is going to be. What are you going to do with that? What's it for? the point, the whole point of money is not to amass more zeros in a bank account or in a portfolio in a brokerage statement, right? The point is to have dry powder, to have a set of tools that you can use in order to construct the life that you want, to build the memories that you want, to do the things that matter most to you. Money is a physical manifestation of your values and your priorities. And so if this wedding is a priority to you, which it sounds very much like it is, then I don't care what that money would be 40 years from now because there's nothing that you would

otherwise spend on 40 years from now that would be worth more than what that is worth. to you today. Let me use another example. I was talking to Joe, a mutual friend of both of ours, and we were discussing this question you often hear in the personal finance community of should you live in an expensive city like New York or San Francisco, or should you live in... Texarkana. Texas, yes. And he made an excellent point. He said, all right, calculate the differential and then ask yourself, what would you otherwise spend that differential on? If you would otherwise spend that differential on something extremely important, like, you know, if this is a, your kids can eat three meals a day versus your kids can only eat two meals a day

type of a scenario, then obviously your answer is quite clear. You go to a lower cost of living place. But if you look at that differential, and there's nothing in particular that you would necessarily spend it on. You're kind of like, I guess I could get a nicer pair of jeans. I don't know. I could buy a few extra sweaters. I could order DoorDash a little bit more often. Like, what the heck are you going to do with that money?

My TV would be marginally bigger than it otherwise is. If you don't have anything that is a bigger priority, then why wouldn't you spend it on this thing that's going to be really influential. And so anyway, in that example, it's where do you live? But in your example, it's do you make this memory that you will have for the rest of your life or not? All right. Can I have a slightly different take? Yeah, go for it, Joe.

So the average amount of money that people spend, I went and looked it up, Abby, when you called, just because I didn't know. I haven't kept up in a place that many of us have heard of called the knot keeps a running index of what the average wedding is in America. It's $35,000 in 2026. So $65,000 wedding should be a very nice wedding. Now, the thing that we referenced earlier in the show is that for 10 years, I was in the wedding industry. Oh, that's right. As a DJ. I did weddings. I did fraternity parties. Like I did everything. I did all kinds of events. But I saw some really expensive weddings. I was a piece of some really expensive weddings that were not awesome. And I saw some really inexpensive weddings

that were super awesome. So what I wouldn't do is make the mistake of equating more money with a better experience because they can be two different things. And the thing is, I'm sitting in a spot right now and my daughter won't mind this. My daughter just got engaged. So we're about to have a wedding in our family. And we've been talking about this a lot and not really about the budget as much as what makes a beautiful wedding. What do you want it to look like? And I think that's where you start. I think you start with how is this a beautiful thing?

Because if you're going to spend $60,000 on it, I would want it to be phenomenal. And I'll give me an example, a different example. I saw a TikTok video last week, Paula, where a guy paid $25,000 so that he could zip line into his own wedding and be on hook from the zip line. And he said it was worth every penny. He must be a zip line enthusiast. Well, and I'm glad you made that point because from where I sit, it, it looked like throwing money away. Like seriously, throwing $25,000 away for 10 seconds for me. But again, that's me versus him. And there is a difference. And it's a difference. And it's, it is your day. All the years I was a financial planner, I've never heard anybody say, I wish I would have spent more money on my wedding. What I have heard people say is I wish I would have had a more beautiful day. I wish I would have had more fun that day. I wish I would

have had more. And what I saw were brides that had spent a lot of money being pushed around by the help that they hired to make sure that it ran. And they were so into, because they'd spent so much money, they were so into it being the perfect day for everybody else that they forgot that it was supposed to be their perfect day. Spend time making it your perfect day, not making it everybody else's perfect day. I don't have a dog in the fight about $60,000. I don't. I have a huge dog in the fight when it comes to that $60,000 and having it work for you,

if you're going to do that. I don't know. It's as much about more money or less money as it is about, you know, talking to people that have been there, getting different professionals. opinions about how do I make sure that this is a great day for me and a great day for my guests. Yeah, I guess start with the wedding that you want and then don't let money be the friction that causes you to shortchange the vision. Yeah. And I also wouldn't have guilt around it. You know, to your point, again, Paula, just to reiterate this, there's definitely some guilt around

if I invested this money, it would be who cares. Right. Who cares? Who cares? You know, somebody emailed me. was many, many years ago, back when I used to write online frequently about world travel. I don't do that as much anymore. I mean, I still travel a lot. I just don't write about it. This is before remote work became popular. So at the time, the zeitgeist was what was called location independence. And I remember getting an email from, this is back when I used to check my email. Oh, that was a long time ago. I remember getting an email from this guy. You guys don't know how funny that is, by the way.

I really. It's been like six years since I checked my email. You know how funny that is. You checked email? Once upon it. In my youth, Joe. In my youth. And so he was like, I really want to.

I think he was at a transition point, one of those natural transition points in life, like middle zone after undergrad, but before grad school, that band of time when you've got a lot of flexibility and what you do ultimately isn't really going to matter that much anyway. And he was like, I really want to travel. I've been reading all of these essays online and I love the idea of just going to Thailand or going to wherever. He was like, but I just keep running the numbers and thinking about how if I invested that money instead, it would be worth whatever by the time I'm 65.

And this is the shadow side of the personal finance space. You know, we have to simultaneously talk to both audiences. We have to talk to the people who are neglecting the 65-year-old version of themselves. But we simultaneously also have to talk to people who have taken the concept of, quote-unquote, delayed gratification too far and are now simply deferring their life. There is an expression that I love, which is plan for the future, don't live in it. And if you overly are living in the future, then you neglect to live in the present. And that only leads to regret because you have certain windows of opportunity in any present moment that will not be there a decade from now. We do underestimate time.

We overestimate assets and we underestimate time, which is this precious asset, non-reestimate. renewable asset that we we don't think enough about, I think, in this community. I do want to reiterate this another way, Paula, which is, I just had a wonderful discussion with another friend of both years of mine. It got him Jesse Meekum who runs Wynab, which is great budgeting software. And Jesse and I were having this chat, and he has learned through experiences he's gotten older. And I love how over time we learn these lessons, right, where he was very militant about budgets early on. And now he's graduated to what matters most is what the money's for.

And he said something very poignant, which was some of the multi, multi, multi, multi millionaires that he interfaces with are very unhappy, are incredibly unhappy people. And he said, because even though they have millions and millions and millions of dollars, they don't know what that money is for. They don't know what it's for. And so you could extrapolate this money, Abby, and have it go to a beeped out number. That's a pretty big number, right? You could have it get to that number. But what's it for? Here we know what $60,000 is for.

We know what it's going to do. And I would suggest, you know, through my experience in financial planning is Jesse's right on. Once you've assigned a home to that money, then the money becomes fuel and it becomes fun. But until then, it's just a pile of assets and it doesn't help you with what I think most of us are trying to sell for, which is happiness. Yeah. So solve for happiness. That's the takeaway. We're not solving for zeros on a brokerage statement.

We're solving for happiness. Yeah. Now, I will say this. If you had come here, Abby, and told us you want a $60,000 wedding, but your future meals for next week are on certain, which is what we see far more often, our answer would have been hell of different. Right. Right. Right.

Incredibly different. This is all predicated on the fact that it's not affecting your future. Yeah. That your future is fine. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Yeah.

So enjoy the wedding. Send photos. Send photos. You're going to have to open up your email to get the invite, Paula. All right. I will concede to check email if you send photos. Wow. You heard it here first. Hot take of the show, Afforters. I will check one email and it will be that one. I'll ask Rima to ping me. She'll be like, Abby sent her wedding photos. And then that will be the one email I open. You know, I would like to say that there's a nice chat going on YouTube. If you want to hang out with us, we make this on YouTube. We have a lot of fun doing it. But a guy named some dude, hanging out with us says, my wedding cost about $1,800 in Vegas before they

close the chapel in the Excalibur. Parents bought us a helicopter ride over the city at night, fun and cheap, lots of family made it. You know, it's in the eye the beholder, Paula. It's in the eye the beholder. For some people they'd hear in New Zealand, are you kidding me? Then the whole family can't make it. Inexensive thing in Vegas, then the family can make it. There are people here Vegas wedding. I'm out, you know. I'd rather have the destination. So it begins with you and the fact that it is this moment for you and the fact that you can afford it, whatever it might be. Beautiful. Well, thank you, Abby, for the question. And send photos. We are going to take one final break to hear from the sponsors who make this

possible. And when we return, we're going to hear from a listener in Luxembourg, who has a question about what behaviorally makes the most sense versus what mathematically makes the most sense. That's up next. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync. Everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business.

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Here's to Westjetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. Welcome back. Our final question today comes from... Did you know? What? Did you know we're international? We are international because the final question comes from Luxembourg.

How about that? Hi, Paula and Joel. Thank you very much for this incredible podcast and all you do for the community. I really love the podcast and I've learned so much so far. I've tried to apply some advice on investments even here in Europe. My partner and I are both immigrants that live in Luxembourg. I am 28 and my husband is 30 and we've been working in Luxembourg for three years now. Here in Luxembourg, there's an option to have an additional private pension minus the state pension, which is directly deducted from our salaries. The private pension option allows us to invest in mutual funds with insurance companies and the amount contributed per year is tax deductible from our tax return. My partner and I contribute a total of 534 euros per month. Out of these, 11 euros are deducted as charges and also there is a 0.1% fee for assets under management per month, making a total amount of 1.2% per year. But the major benefit of this plan is that our

tax liability reduces by about 1,500 euros per annum and the potential return on investment. The average return from the two mutual funds were invested in from 2020 to 2024 is about 9% and 10% and we do have a 50-50 split in each fund. But the issue is that the contract is for a duration of 10 years. Cancelain the contract before the 10-year period expires requires all tax benefits received to be paid back to the tax authorities and there are some penalties attached. But since we just started the plan last year, the refund and penalty will not be significant if we cancel now. My husband really wants us to keep the plan regardless of the fees since it's a contract

and it forces us to invest always no matter the circumstances and we treat it as part of our monthly bills. But I'm thinking we can automate our investments in ETFs directly and save up on the fees and also in Luxembourg, if we keep the investments for more than six months, were not required to pay any capital gains tax too. We both have good investment habits because we have been able to save up to six months in majesty funds and we invested more than 30,000 euros in ETS and across four individuals' stocks in three years. So I believe all things being equal, we will be able to directly invest by ourselves,

but I'm more concerned that instead of us continuing to invest in ETS, We will be tempted to play around by investing in more individual companies, which can have a negative impact on our future goals. My question is, does it make sense to continue with the private pension contract or invest directly by ourselves in ETS? Thank you so much for answering all our questions. This is a great question, Paula, but we can't answer it yet. Because we have to give her a name. She's anonymous. I did some homework.

Yes. I did a little bit of homework. I looked up famous people from Luxembourg. And there is a phenomenal chef named Leia Lindster from Luxembourg has had the gold, Michelin Star, has had a Michelin Star, which is amazing since 1987. Wow. And to hang on to a Michelin Star every year since 1987, because every year you have to get it again is tough.

She's also the only woman ever to win gold at the, I'm going to pronounce this horribly, Bikusta Orr. she's the only woman to ever win gold there. And I think that she's cooking up a great question here. Ooh, I see what she did there. So I think we should call her Leah. Leah, beautiful name. Leah, the thing that struck me at the end of your question.

So, okay, yes, the fee is high. 1.12% is a high fee. But fundamentally, this is a question about behavior versus mathematics. And the thing that struck me was that you said that, if you were to self-direct your investments, you might be tempted to invest in individual stocks. And that has higher risk, higher volatility, to use the technical term, higher standard deviation, meaning it zigzags a lot more. I think this is very much a question about knowing yourself. because if investing directly in ETFs yourself leads to one month saying,

you know what, I don't want to go to an ETF, I'd like to take a flyer on an individual company, then that ends up hurting you more than it helps. And to give an example of this, and I think I mentioned this on a previous episode within the last week or two, I have a friend. I think I said this either in the last episode or two episodes ago. You said you had a friend? I know. Yes, exactly. You open your email and you have a friend. I know. Headlines. It's just somebody alerted the media. Who was all invested, didn't have much investments, but at individual

stocks. Yeah. And he's 48 years old. He has almost zero safe for retirement. And I tried to get him to go into index funds. And then I followed up with him a week later to see how it went. And he had bought into the SpaceX IPO. Oh, my. And it was because he just couldn't resist the lure of individual stocks. And so I think there is a know-yourself element because Leah, if you end up buying into individual companies in a way that is outside of your plan, then that outcome is much worse. And actually, I want to make a statement here for the broader audience. It's one thing to have a plan that you're going to put 95% of your assets into ETFs or index funds and then 5% into individual companies.

That's a plan, right? It's a different thing entirely to have a plan to put money into ETFs. And then at the last minute, be like, just getting and put it into individual companies instead. So that's the differentiation. Yeah. It's so annoying. I can't stand it when you go first and we agree so much. I wrote down mixed signals.

and I put knowing yourself versus knowing the fees. A lot of people know, focus on the fees and then wreck themselves because they're very smart at the fees and they're not smart at what am I going to actually do if I don't pay the fee. She says she's worried that if they don't switch, they're not in the best stuff. And he wants to stay because it's reliable and they built the habit, right? He recognizes, hey, we built a habit. We're going to keep doing this.

And sometimes being locked in as some cool friction. It actually is good. Locked in's not always bad because you keep doing the right thing. Then she says, well, we have good habits, but then turns around and says, but I'm worried that we might not keep the good habit. So I don't know. But what I do know is that just knowing how much knowing yourself matters more than the fees. And in this community, we worry so much about the fees. And yet I have seen people that have paid high fees to possibly the wrong person go. far further than they would have had they been left alone, far further with the wrong person, the wrong fees. Could they have gone faster, better, more optimized? A hundred percent they could have done even better. But the fact that they did anything at all versus doing nothing

just won them the day, won them the day. So our fees important. Yeah, fees are important, But doing the, so I would say this, Leah, that if you do remove yourself from the program, my question is, is what friction are you going to put between you and your money to make sure you you keep doing the thing? Right. And there's some great ideas. If you read James Clear's atomic habits, like the way people build these habits, you know, you attach it to other things, you attach it to, you give yourself some good carrots to reach

these goals at a time. before you know it, it's part of what you do every day. Yeah. So there's some cool ways to do it, but, but I, I don't know. Well, I would say even before habits. So the waterfall of priority is first automation and then habits. Sure. Habits are are only behavioral things that you have to do for things that cannot be automated.

Like brushing your teeth cannot be automated. So you, you have to. I get the feeling she's going to automate the money into a brokerage account easily. Like I get this feeling from her. She didn't say it. But when she goes, we have a good savings habit, we can do that. She'll set that up automatically because she knows that it's going to happen. Right.

I think her worry is once it's in that brokerage account, she takes it out of the index. Yeah. Yeah. The ETF. Yeah. And that's the thing that struck me as well because it's quite simple to automate money going into an ETF. But I think the question is the behavioral component of will you then be tempted to touch it?

I sometimes refer to that as unautomating the system. people sometimes set up these great automations and then unautomate their own systems. I've seen people really wreck their plan because they didn't have these checks and balances. The good news is I don't even remember these people's name. Early in my career, though, there was a couple. And one thing that happened, so the firm that I work for and the time frame that I worked, I started off in the age when there were very few fee-only planners. And I ended at a time when there was a collection of everything.

And I could charge people just a fee for advice and old nothing. I could do fees plus assets. I could do commissions. I could do all kinds of different things. But anyway, early in my career, it was all commissions where I was. So we were handed accounts when people would leave. They were these accounts. People wouldn't return calls of the current advisor, whatever.

And you could only serve so many people. So these advisors would unassigned the account. and then they'd hand them to new people. So I get these people's account, well, for some reason, they answered the phone. And they had this growth fund, Paula, that they had had for many, many, many years. And they had forgotten about it. And the only reason why they answered my call was because I happened to say, you know, there's a lot of money in this fund. And the woman goes, exactly how much money is in this fund. And I said, there's $90,000 in this fund. And she goes, well, way back in like 1983 or something, we put, you know, some ridiculous number like four or five thousand

bucks in it. And there's $90,000 here. Are you kidding me? And I go, yeah, she goes, that's amazing. So we get together. We do a full financial plan. They don't need the money. They have done really well without it. And now we put it to get an earlier retirement for them. They began calling me every other month because Paula, there were all the sudden emergencies that came up. There were reasons why we had to touch it. They drained that $90,000 within three years. It was gone. It was 100% gone. And it was just because they knew they had the money because we did the entire financial plan. I got to see their financial thing. And they're like, yeah, nothing's going to happen again. There's going to be nothing that comes up a couple months later. Oh, my goodness, you'll never believe it came up.

You know why it came up? It came up because you knew you had this money. And you couldn't keep your hand out of the cookie jar. Maybe not. Or maybe they were the most unlucky people ever and just became unlucky the second they knew they had $90,000 that they didn't know they had. Could be one of the other. I don't know. So I don't want to assume.

However, you can hear my dripping sarcasm. Nice people. Super nice people. But I think our brain does that. I think our brain goes, ooh, this money's available. And when it's in the plan, the Luxembourg plan, it's not. not available. Right. There's a magic to having it not be unavailable. I don't know, Leah, I don't want to tell you what to do, but I think you guys have to really have it out

about whether you are going to touch it or not. If you're not going to touch it, then move it. Well, I guess the way to conceptualize it then is to think of the fee as your quote-unquote insurance that guarantees that you don't mess with it. Yeah. That is like the payment that you make to secure that it's kept safe from natural human impulse. Yeah. A big part of money management, I think, is admitting that humans are, like, human nature is flawed and fallible and imperfect. designing a financial plan that recognizes that to be human is to be imperfect

and that recognizes that and sets up the safeguards accordingly. And if you have to pay a small fee that is like the I'm imperfect fee, right? I love that name. Yeah. Then I think if that fee leads to the outcome that you, want, then it is well worth it. There are a few things that we don't know about this plan that I think we should bring up. And that is, and I'm only going to bring this up because this is the way that it is in the United

States. If you decide to leave Luxembourg, I only say that because Luxembourg is a tiny country, right? If you leave Luxembourg for any reason, you know, the average person changes jobs every, what, 4.2 years, I think is still the number. So if you leave Luxembourg for whatever reason, what happens to that money? Does it have to stay in Luxembourg? Is it easy to move? Like, how does all that stuff work?

I just want to know these. It almost goes back to Mike's question. Now, every plan has an Achilles heel. If you stay in it, like we just told you what we think the upside is staying in it. And that is the fee is the insurance. But besides that, what are the downsides to staying in it? Like, if you build this up, like if you build up a 401K, you know, you're going to be paying a lot of tax later on.

what are the issues with staying in this plan? And I don't know how this plan works. I don't know what the deal is with it. So I think you want to look that up, though. Well, Leah, thank you for the question. And I love the discussion because this is the root of a lot of financial planning. It's do you do the thing that on paper seems, quote, unquote, like more ideal? Or do you do the thing that recognizes, you know,

your own nature. Can I just give one more example, actually, as I'm thinking about this? It's so funny, Paul, because I just thought of an example, too. So one other example, and I think a lot of people who are listening to this might be able to relate to this. The age-old question of, do you keep your mortgage or do you pay off your mortgage, particularly for anybody who has a mortgage with an interest rate that's less than 5%, right? So if you locked in an interest rate that was a three point something percent that you locked in in like 2019 or 2020, do you keep the mortgage, do you pay off the mortgage? And of course, mathematically, if you've got a 3.5% mortgage interest rate, it makes sense to hold on to that mortgage, right? It makes sense to not pay it off and to put that money into investments. And so, Joe, we were just talking about this recently on your show. I made the decision, the mathematically unsound decision, to pay off a, actually not just one, but multiple low-interest mortgages. But I did that largely because I understand myself, I understand my own behavior and my own nature.

And based on the other types of risk in my life, the inherent risk of being an entrepreneur, the inherent risk of running a company, as well as just based on like behaviorally. do I just want to deal with the added cash flow management or not, I made the decision to just simplify my life and reduce the amount of risk that I was exposed to by just paying off the mortgages, right? Does that mathematically make sense? No. Would I be, would I have a greater net worth if I had put that money in the year 2020 into index funds?

Absolutely. I would have a much greater net worth today. Do I regret it? Nope. Not at all. If I could invent a time machine and go back, I would have made exactly the same decision. Zero regrets.

And that's why you didn't invent the time machine because it would have been a wasted time. Exactly. Like why? Otherwise, she would have invented the time machine. You know, it's funny just to take this fee idea,

too, to the extreme, the fee versus behavior. This is the thing that I saw a fair amount when I was a financial planner and talking to our friend, OG about this. He still sees this from time to time, which is the person that goes, you know, I can't stand my company. I hate working for my, I'm not given those people. We'll say the word people, but change it. I'm not going to give those people any of my money.

So I'm not putting any money in the 401k. I'll show them. And then they end up, Paula, doing nothing to show the man. I'm not giving you anything. And oh, gee, has talked about what we were talking about this just a couple weeks ago. He's like, you know, the owner of that company is not sitting around going, ah, I wish Joe would be putting money in the 401k because I'm not eating. It's going to be horrible. Like you're not hurting them at all. A, they don't run the 401K.

They off into somebody else, right? It's a benefit so they can do some cool tax things on their head. But, yeah, you're just hurting yourself by. not putting money into the into the plan. And that is that, you know, that's extreme. That's Leia, not at all what you're talking about, but just struck me that sometimes when people are like, I'm not paying those fees. Like, well, my person you're hurting is you. Well, so Leah, thank you for the question. Best of luck with everything ahead. With Luxembourg. You can. Yeah. It looks beautiful. Every time I've seen, I've never been through Luxembourg, but Leah, looks like you live in.

a gorgeous country. Absolutely. I'd love to visit someday. Joe, where can people find you if they'd like to know more? You know, what's interesting is there was a wild show that everybody's talking about on a different podcast. I know that most people are talking about afford anything. And if they're not, they're talking about stacking benjamins. But there's a little show called Diary of a CEO. And they had on this gentleman who used to work for OpenAI, the company that makes chat GPT, And his job was to do forecasting for them. And he quit. And they offered him $3 million to shut his mouth about what happened to open AI.

And he said, no, Paula, so that he could say the things that he thinks. So what he says about AI and where he thinks it's headed isn't good. So we had a roundtable discussion where we asked you, what do you think of what happened on Diary of a CEO? We asked OG. We asked our friend Jesse Kramer. And I love your opinions. You're not AI experts, but you guys have talked about money discussions. And, you know, let's say that this does come true.

Let's say it doesn't come true. What do you do anyway? How do you frame this? How do you look at it? How do you live with the fear that this might happen? Like, you guys answer a lot of great questions in that episode. Thank you. Yeah.

So go find our, you don't even have to hear the Diary of a CEO episode. We play the Open. I really like Paula, your take, Jesse's and OG's take. It was a really interesting. text your conversation. Yeah. So it was a reaction episode. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Roundtable reacts. You'll hello about the fourth thing they said. Yeah. So that is on the stacking Benjamin's podcast, which you can find on your favorite podcast player. Thank you to all of you for being afforders. Thank you for being part of this community. We have a free fill outable workbook on the five pillars.

There's financial psychology, increasing your income, investing real estate entrepreneurship. So if you want to, it's like an interactive fill in the blank, you can work through each of the five pillars and work through each of the five concepts. And it helps you put some thinking and some structure around your relationship with double I fire. You can download that. It's totally free at afford anything.com slash fII-I-R-E. That's afford anything.com slash F, F, I, I, R.E. Thank you so much for being part of this community. I'm Paula Pan.

I'm Joss, I'll see I. And we will meet you in the next episode. Oh, there's one thing we didn't say, which I promised Steve we would say. Steve. Steve. Hi, Steve has a webinar. Oh, yeah. Our esteemed audio editor, Steve, the guy who produces this sound effect.

Steve is hosting a webinar on Tuesday, August 4th. It's at 3 p.m. Eastern, 12 p.m. Pacific. He's co-hosting it with Sean Mulaney, an advice-only financial planner, on how to legally avoid an expensive tax surprise. If you want to talk about the subsidy cliff, check out his webinar with Sean Malaney on Tuesday, August 4th. We will have a link in the description and in the show notes on how you can register. Bam. Did it. Thanks, everybody. Yeah, thank you.

We do underestimate time. We overestimate assets and we underestimate time, which is this precious asset, non-renewable asset that we don't think enough about, I think, in this community. The other thing that I would like to think about is the fact that I can't remember what I was going to say. this is a good YouTube moment right here. I'm still stuck on the fact that you don't answer your email.