Afford Anything - When a Child of Financial Chaos Stumbles into Adulthood - with Paulette Perhach

Episode Date: January 21, 2019

#173: Paulette Perhach is a journalist who has been published in The New York Times, Slate, ELLE, Marie Claire, and Cosmo. But we’re not going to talk about that today. We’re going to talk about the fact that she’s made every decision by putting her life first, and then forcing her career to follow. She’s hiked through jungles and watched eclipses and volunteered with the Peace Corps. She’s been on crazy adventures in far-flung places. She endured unimaginable pain and it’s because of those challenges -- not despite them, but because of them -- that she knows her one precious, wild life is too short to spend in a cubicle. Many people who pursue financial independence are looking for a fully-funded lifestyle change. But Paulette made an unfunded change. She lives her life, and then figures out how the money follows. What can we learn from her resourcefulness? Find out in this episode. For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode173  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything but not everything. Every decision that you make is a trade-off against something else. And that's true, not just for how you spend your money, but also how you spend your time, your focus, your energy, how you spend your attention. It's really about how you spend anything in your life that is a scarce or limited resource. And so the questions become twofold. Number one, what matters most to you? And number two, how do you align your daily decisions to reflect that?

Answering these two questions is a lifetime practice. And that is what this podcast is here to explore. My name is Paula Pant. I'm the host of the Afford Anything podcast. And today we have New York Times writer Paulette Perhatch on the show with us. Now, there are several things about Paulette that are fascinating. First of all, let's get her resume out of the way. She's been published in the New York Times, Slate, L., Marie Claire, Cosmo.

So she's a very well-known, acclaimed journalist. She catapulted to fame as a bit of an accidental personal finance writer after she wrote this article called The Story of an F-Off Fund. And the article that she wrote tells the same narrative twice. In scenario A, the protagonist of the story doesn't have an emergency fund. And in scenario B, the protagonist of the story does. And so she tells exactly the same story, but on these two separate tracks, and in doing so, she demonstrated the power of an emergency fund, or as she calls it, an F-off fund. And that story that she wrote went viral. It was read more than a million times. It was translated into multiple languages.

And it really brought her into the personal finance fold. But that isn't why I brought her on the show today. We do talk about that at the very end of the interview. But the reason that I brought her on the show is because our stories are quite similar. Paulette is a lot like me in that she and I both wanted to try. travel and wanted to write, and so we just started doing it and figured out the money part as we went along. With varying results, people talk about fire financial independence as a fully funded lifestyle change, but Paulette made the lifestyle change, or more accurately, she never went into a cubicle lifestyle in the first place. She has, for her entire life, forced her work and her career to fit around her life rather than vice versa. And so we're going to talk to her about

exactly how she's done that right now. Here's Paulette Perhatch. Hey, Paulette. Hello. I wanted to talk to you because your story is very similar to mine in that both of us, if you think of fire, financial independence retire early, as a fully funded lifestyle change, both of us made the lifestyle change first. And then after deciding to live this unconventional life, on the other side of that, we were scratching our heads going, huh, wonder how I'm going to fund this. I'm coining a term for that. I'm going to call it water. Okay. Yeah. Water is then it might dry up any moment. Oh, water is then you go in the flow. But you know, both of those are accurate. Or it might just turn to ice. Yeah. Definitely. If I had a lot of

cushion behind the lifestyle would be nice. But yeah, I pretty much jumped off the cliff and then assumed the water would would catch me on the way down. Jumped off the cliff and tried not to drown. Definitely, yeah. So tell us about your life because our origin stories are very similar. Take us to 18-year-old Paulette. 18-year-old Paulette was reforming after my dad died when I was 17 in an accident at work one day, which is really a formative experience for me. just coming home one day and seeing like, oh, there's your shoes, there's your watch, there's your clothes, and you are just gone one day. To me, after that, sitting in an office for 35 years at a job I didn't really like was not a thing I was going to do. I was like, oh, I'm going to

journalism. So I got my degree in magazine journalism really as a way to have all those experiences that money could usually buy because I had a pretty crazy childhood with money. My family went bankrupt when I was eight. And then we kind of tumbled from there. And then we were kind of just starting to get back on her feet when my dad died. So really flopped out into adult life, just flailing. My first big travel experience was when my sister was stationed in the Marine Corps in Hawaii and invited me out for the summer. So I went out for the summer and had my 19th birthday out there. And that was my first like, whoa, this is wild and I love it kind of experience. Then I graduated. I interned at some magazines. Let me let me pull.

Before we get to the graduation, let's stay on childhood for a while because there's a lot going on there. Yeah, there's a lot going on there. Let's go back to 8-year-old Paulette then so that we can take this in chronological order. Okay. Your family declared bankruptcy. What do you remember from that experience? I remember that when the phone rang, both my parents said, don't answer it. Wow.

I remember one day I was home alone and the phone rang and I picked it up and this guy asked for my dad. And then I could, now I know it was a bill collector. And he said to me, you know, I've been trying to get in touch with him. And he said to me, your parents are in trouble. So I really stopped spending a lot of time at home. I had my two best friends and I would just try to spend as much time over their house as I could. It was really scary. I knew my parents were in trouble and they didn't have the power to protect us from whatever was going to happen. So then we lost our house. It was just a really scary time. It wasn't about the material possessions. It was about seeing your parents really sad and not knowing what to do. That's a really scary feeling as a child. And I'm still trying to pick out how that relates to how I deal with money today.

I think it really affected me more deeply than I realized at the time. Wow. Did your parents talk to you directly about money? Did they ever sit you down and say, something's going on? Or did you catch contextual clues? I mostly caught clues. That was the thing. You know, my mom sometimes says, I feel like I talked to you too much about it, but we didn't really get. There was just like the no, the constant, like, no, we can't get that. No, we can't get that. And I have this memory, you know, I loved books. And I had this memory of going to Barnes & Noble and asking my mom for a book.

And she gave it to me. She said yes. And then I wanted to show her I was smart. So I read it as fast as possible in the car and said, done, I'm done reading it. And she remembers that story that she's like, you can't say no every time. So yes, I got you this book and you finished reading it before we even got home. It's just like, oh, you know, just seeing it from those perspectives. So to her, she felt disappointed because now she would have to spend more money on another book. Yeah, that was a purchase that didn't last or bring me like lasting joy. Wow.

And I also watched a lot of TV. So it was the time of coming into later like Beaver. Beverly Hills Now to a No and saved by the bell and a lot of Lisa and saved by the bell is going shopping. Like you think that going, I grew up thinking that going shopping was an expression of girlhood. And that was cut off, which is not a tragic story in the scope of the world. I think the craziest thing about it was just the sadness of my parents. But also the frustrations of like a pretty stereotypical young girl who wanted nice things and to have pretty dresses. and things like that. So a lot of levels. Where did you live? Where did you and your family live at the time?

So we lived in this neighborhood in Florida. And we had... What part of Florida? It was near Tampa. It was in Tarpen Springs, the sponge capital of the world. Oh. That's right. Sponge is like the thing in the ocean or sponge is like... The thing in the ocean. It also has one of the highest concentrations of Greek Americans in the United States. It's a really good Greek food. So we had a house, which to me, like, I went back and visited it. And it's not a big. house. It's like a little house, but it had a pool and it was on the water. So we were doing well. You know, we had a big van. And a lot of my favorite childhood memories are of buying things. We had a boat. We had a wave runner. My dad had a Cadillac. You know, my dad was a businessman. And we were doing well until we were not. So it was very comfortable until it was very uncomfortable.

What triggered the decline? My dad losing employment or having a disagreement with his employer and, you You know, it's one of those, like, never got quite the details. So your dad lost his job? Yeah, pretty much. And he had, like, a fight with another guy at the company and kind of said it was him or me. And my mom always says, what my dad didn't know at the time was that that guy, like, slept on the floor of the office while the owner was building the company. So he would never have fired him. So when he said him or me, it was like, well, it's got to be you.

So they didn't have as much in savings as they should have. And we didn't have, like, Dave Ramsey. And we didn't have, you know, you didn't even have the internet back then. But, you know, it was funny. I remember seeing Tony Robbins personal power tapes in their car when everything was going down and really thinking like that must be total crap. And reading like the cover and being like, no, this is total crap because we have these tapes, but everything's still sinking. So this must be worthless. And so I was very against self-help for a long time. Did you know when your parents declared bankruptcy? I mean, what you've described so far is that you got a sense that something was going wrong. You noticed that bill collectors were calling. Did you know when they began filing the paperwork? No, not at all.

I have this memory of hearing my dad on the phone at one point just saying please to someone. And just the tone in his voice stopped me short. I remember one time there, this wasn't food in the house, and I knew better than to ask. You know, but there wasn't food in a house on the water with a pool. Yeah. You know, and so that kind of turned me against nice things for a long time. Yeah. We're really scooping out the depths of everything I'm trying to figure out now of just like, okay, what did all this do?

Yeah, we just, it just felt pretty terrible for quite a while and felt like a secret. You know, and we weren't told like not to tell, but my life at home and how things were felt like a secret. Hmm. You mentioned that your family ultimately lost the house. How did your parents talk to you about that? Did they say we're moving out or did they tell you that they lost it to foreclosure? I don't remember the conversation, but I do remember thinking knowing we were going to lose the house before we did. Knowing we couldn't afford the house anymore.

Everything in the house had changed. It almost felt like a different place. And we were, you know, my dad was the funniest person ever. Like everyone called him Big Pete. His funeral, you know, his best friends had to be like, this is the biggest funeral I've ever seen, like the most people. Like, he was a beloved character. So we were very, like, happy family, but aside from all this stuff going on, you know, there was a lot of joking, a lot of laughing.

But this time, I just remember, like, the silence, the silence of the house. the silence among all of us, you know, I don't remember a big conversation. It didn't come as a surprise. And then I really hated the house we moved into after that. Did you have to transfer schools or could you stay in the same school district? No, we actually moved into the same neighborhood, but like a much worse house in the same neighborhood. So I know that my parents tried to keep things as stable for us as they could, you know. Do you have any brothers or sisters? Yeah, I have one brother and one sister. So I was the youngest. And then we're two years older than two years older again. So they were a little bit older.

When I was going through middle school, things were really, really tough. And, you know, I wore my brother's clothes. I remember just like, because the thing was, it kind of tumbled us down the hierarchy of needs. Because when you are just trying to keep food on the table, you can't really worry about, like, keeping the house clean, doing laundry. You know, everything was, it just became like this chaos that we couldn't catch up from. And my mom's an amazing support and really allows me to talk about this so that other people can learn from it and relate to it. No, they're not alone going through it. And I wrote about this in an article for Elle about how one time she was working her summer job. She was a teacher, which also makes me like crazy about how like teacher salaries are so low because that was part of the problem. And she was working her summer job. And she wanted to get a hamburger at McDonald's for lunch, which was 40 cents. She did not have the 40 cents. she had already scooped out her car so many times for change, did not have 40 cents. So it was just that that level of broke.

Had your parents canceled their credit cards? I think everything had been maxed out, overdue, you know. And then at that point, my mom really started to wise up. And I remember her bringing me over offers for new credit cards because then they prey on you once they know you're desperate. And she said, hey, look at this. Okay, look down here. It says if you can't make a payment, it will go up to like 30% interest or whatever it was. really started looking at the fine print and getting smarter about money.

She learned through necessity. Yeah. So, and, you know, she's like, it was the rise of, in the 80s, the rise of credit cards and the commercials, you can have anything you want. And, of course, hindsight's 2020. But my dad could always get another job because I think he was so funny and so lovable and so smart. But then he just couldn't do it. Wow. So what happened in the decade that followed?

Your parents declared bankruptcy when you were eight, and nine years later, your dad passed away. Tell me about that decade. It sucked. There was a lot of asking for things. My mom and I would go to the mall to, like, window shop, quote window shop, and now knowing what I know now about, like, neuromarketing and how everything is designed to make you want things, obviously. We would always get in a fight because I always wanted more. I spent, like I said, a lot of time over my best friend's house because their family seemed like they, you know, had it together and just became like an adopted little side child of their family. And they're still my best friends.

And it's so funny. Their mom actually packed my lunch in high school. And my mom paid her to do, like, because I would just spend the night so often that like she'd be like, Paula, do you need a lunch? And like, I don't know, they worked it out to where Jerry packed my lunch in high school. It was so funny. I did get to do things like I went on a youth group ski trip in ninth grade. And I really wanted to go, you know. And I asked my mom, because I was writing a book proposal for a financial memoir.

In the ninth grade? No, no, no, like recently. Oh, okay. I asked my mom, do you remember how much that trip was? And she goes $160. She knew 16, 20 years later how much that trip was because they didn't want to say no. But I remember, like, I went to Burlington Coat factory and I wanted this, like, really cute ski jacket and I couldn't get it because I couldn't afford it. And then my friend went and got the

same one. I was like, oh, God, and I wore some, like, someone's uncle's clothes that were all too big and ugly. And of course, then you say, like, okay, well, there, this is like my problem all the time. I'm always trying to rehear my own story or geolocate in a way my own story globally, right, to see my own life globally. But I'm not like a global animal. I'm an animal that's used to comparing, like we evolved to compare ourselves to the people around us, right? Like our reference groups. So to me, it caused me emotional pain that I was like the floppy wearing someone's uncle's double XL jacket. You know, I wanted to be the cute girl and the cute silver ski coat and I wasn't. So it's like, well, get over it. No one cares. But also it's like,

well, that's how it felt at the time. So always going back and forth with that, with those kind of stories and wondering how valid they are of being told even. But that's the way it felt at the time. Well, it's your emotional truth. Yeah, it was my emotional truth at the time as like a 14-year-old girl who wanted to be cute or whatever. And, you know, everyone wants to be the like, well-dressed. It was always trying to catch up with people around me and being pouty that I couldn't and blaming my parents. I started working at an ice cream store when I was 14. And I remember my first paycheck and I got myself a little boom box. And that was like such a great feeling.

Made minimum wage like $4.25 an hour, I think. And then I worked at a skating rink. And whenever I don't like my work now, I think about cleaning bathrooms at that skating rink. To the sound of Spice Girls and InSink from which I have some kind of PTSD. And then all the kids would leave and it would be side. for like one second. And now being a writer and knowing how much I thrive in silence alone, and no, I recognize like how hard this environment was for me. All the kids would leave. They would turn off the music for like one second. And then my boss loved Shania Twain. So then it was like, br-brun-na-na-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-nert. And then I would have to like clean whatever disaster mess, some child left, some poor sick child. If I went to open a stall and it was locked, I was like, oh, God, here we go. I had to crawl under the stall.

Like the moist floor with like roller skate lines through the dirt and then discover whatever horrifying nightmare this child would rather lock the door and leave the stall than open and show to the world. And then clean that up. Wow. So that was fun. Any time that I'm stressed out about work, I think back to my first job, which was the drive-thru of McDonald's. Oh, really? And I'm like, you know what? Anything is better than that.

God. Anything I've ever done is better than that. Yeah. I'm really glad I had that experience. Yeah. Because. Yeah, it makes every job from that point forward better. Yeah. Then we started to kind of make her own money. That was nice. That was really good.

It gave me a sense of control over my own spending money. The other thing was I could always get money out of my dad because I was such a daddy's girl. And my poor dad would, like, give me money. And then my mom would get mad at him for giving me money. It was rough. I knew how to work the system. And my dad would always let me keep the change. Money was, oh, like, now it's like, ding, ding, ding.

Like, money is love. Oh, God. Another topic for my therapist. Did you have a car when you were 16? I didn't get a car when I was 16. I got a car when I was 17. I got a 1989 Mazda 626. Rerolled Nichols to get that car.

My parents said, if you can find half the money, we will find the other half. I think it was somewhere in like the $1,200 to $1,500 range. So I had to save up $750. So you had to save up $750? Yeah. And then I couldn't afford to insure it or register it for like three. I think it took me three months to be able to afford to register my car. Or maybe I got, no, I think you had to get registered to get insurance.

I think I drove uninsured for six months as a 17-year-old, which is a great idea. Wow. And I didn't know how to drive a stick and we just like got me a stick shift. That was like the worst month of my life. I remember we went through the McDonald's drive-thru, and my dad was in the car. It took me like five minutes to get from the first window to the second window. I kept stalling. And the women at the second window just leaned out and were like, they were like kept talking me.

They were like, you got it. Just let it out easy. You can do it. So yeah. Now the phrase, prepare for success. It's like. Yeah. in my life, and I know that's a thing, and that wasn't a lot of how we rolled.

Oh, yeah. When I was young. That's so funny. So I also learned how to drive a stick shift out of necessity after buying a cheap car. And it was when I bought my $400 car. So I spotted a flyer for this car. This car was $450. I went to the seller, and I was like, I'll give you $400 for it.

And he was like, no. It was originally priced at $500, so $450 is already a deal. And I was like, sorry, man, I'm giving you $400 for it. And we went back and forth and back and forth. And eventually I got it for 400. Actually, it might have been 420. I think I had to compromise somewhere in between 400 and 450. But then it turned out to be a stick shift.

It was a four-speed. It was a four-speed manual. And I didn't know how to drive a stick. And so I just tried to figure it out and stalled all over the streets of Boulder, Colorado. And then eventually the way that I learned, because I kept trying to get friends to teach me and nobody had the patience. But then eventually, one of my roommates got a DUI, and so her license got taken away. And so she wanted me to drive her around everywhere. And she knew how to drive a stick. So I was like, all right, Jessica, if you can teach me how to

drive a stick, I will drive you around to wherever you want to go. And so that incentivized her to actually have the patience to teach me. Oh, man. My poor friends at that time, my God, yeah. It took me like four cycles to get through a left turn one time. And my friends played in a band and they were much older. And outside the club where they were playing, like I was leaving and everyone started leaving the club and I didn't want to have to stop because I knew I would stall out and I didn't want to seem like a loser. So I like tried to just like tap the horn, but it was like honk. Like I was honking like a total jerk. And then I had to stop anyway. And then I stalled. And then I restarted. And then there was a stop sign like right there. And then I peeled out on an accident.

Oh, man. Yeah. But you know what? All these humbling, humbling experiences are so important. Yeah. So another thing I did was I, like, signed up to go to Finland for the summer. You could get a scholarship to go to Finland. And otherwise it was like $12,000.

And I almost made it. And then I didn't. And I was 13. And I just remember being so bummed that I couldn't just pay to go. I had to, like, convince someone and charm someone. I think that's kind of an interesting theme of life is, like, charm as a, as a replacement for money, like a value. Like I remember being over my best friend's house and it's like, as long as I can be like,

clown best friend that everyone wants to have around, I'll be allowed to stay for dinner and things like that. So you would have food. Well, yeah. I mean, I didn't ever feel like I would go hungry. Like I remember when there wasn't really food in the cabinet, I put like barbecue sauce on bread, right? So it was like we had bread and barbecue sauce. They had better food. They had Sunny D.

It was amazing. And bagels. I joke with Jerry. I'm like, I just, if I ever make, Jerry is my best friend's mom. But I'm like, if I ever really make it, I'm just going to like send her a check for $10,000 and just write like, you know why in the memo. And she'll be like, like grocery bill, 1996 to 2004. Yeah. All right.

So then take us to when you were 17. So, yeah, I was in class. and they called me out of class and my dad had gotten a job as a construction site supervisor and he, you know, was really just nice. He just really seemed to come alive again. You know, I mean, it's got to feel terrible to not work for so long. He would try to start businesses and he had had this deal where it was like

they were going to recycle tires to cover the playgrounds, the playground floors. that was like a business they were starting. I just remember him saying like when this deal comes through, when this deal comes through, like we'll get money. And I just remember thinking like, give me a steady job at a corporate company. Like to me, when I was little, that sounded like the best thing ever. So then he finally got this job. And you could just tell like there was like that sense of pride again or that sense of, I don't know, he just seemed happier. And then my mom called, you know, they called me at a class.

And the mom and Jerry were there clearly had been crying. And my mom said, daddy's been in an accent. And I just, like, pictured him, like, in a wheelchair, you know? And then she just said, Daddy didn't make it. And I apparently, I just, like, screamed. My entire class ran out of the classroom. Yeah, then I went home. And it was, you know, the weird thing about it is there was this underlying thing that I later recognized as full presence. Because, like, you're in shock, right? So I graduated high school two months later. then I drove off to college by myself.

No one was at the house when I left. I've actually had the experience. In the last week, I've been lost on a college campus twice and just realizing like how much anxiety a college campus gives me because it's just a memory of that time. And it was so hard. And I forgot my book of CDs. And the only CD in my little boom box was Radioheads, the Ben's.

So for about four months until I went home again, it was just me and Radiohead and my grief over my dad dying, which didn't really hit until about three months after he died. And then it was like, oh, my God. It just really like obliterated my soul. There's no way to talk about it in a way that doesn't sound too dramatic. It just took me down to like nothing. I really became very exhausted. And also really selfish during that time, pretty, and my best friends, my poor best friends. I mean, like, you know, they're trying to have their first year at college, too.

So I became, like, really bitter, pretty selfish. And eventually just felt too tired. And I just became, like, fairly suicidal. I was just tired, you know. Just so tired. And I just thought that was the way life was going to be. It was funny because it has a money theme. I actually remember, like, I had a few thousand in my bank account for my student loans.

And just thinking about, like, what I would do with that money. I would do some big thing with it or go somewhere and end my life. This is your freshman year? Yeah, but I couldn't do that to my mom. So there wasn't any life insurance. And thank God we were all, like, as old as we were. You think about people who, if we had been, you know, eight, ten, and twelve. It's like no one swoops in.

You think someone's going to swoop in. No one swoops in. It's just the way it is. My mom was able to do things like pay for my cell phone bill during college. So she helped me out. And of course, there was like the here and there, mom, can I have 200 bucks? You know, things like that. Whoever designed the system of like sending 17-year-old.

a few thousand dollars at once for student loans to last them for months. I don't think was really thinking things through. So, of course, oh my God, college was a shit show. There was one night that I pretty much consider, like, it was the hardest day. And I just, I just called my best friend. You know, I just knew I had to call someone. And after you've been, like, such a burden for so long, it's so hard to, like, call again and be like, hey, again, I need you to, like, come over. But she talked me through it, and she was like, I love you more than you know. And just the way she phrased that and was like, more than you know, it just reminded me of like everything I don't know and like being open. So I remember about 10 months after my dad died just being like, okay, I'm ready to like live again.

And then my sister who lived on Marine Base invited me to live with her for the summer in Hawaii. That was a good place to figure out how to live again. And she lived like 100 yards from a beach in Hawaii on the Marine Base in Canioui. I spent $740, which was like the biggest check I'd ever written, to go out to Hawaii and just wrote. I didn't have any money, but I didn't do anything. I just walked to the beach every day. And because the beach was on a marine base, I, uh, had this huge, beautiful beach to myself most of the days. It was crazy.

And I made a friend and wrote around in his old VW bug. And I made jewelry. I considered that as my profession for a little bit. I was really into making jewelry in college. Sold a little bit of my jewelry. And I remember one of my sister's friends sent me like a little congratulations card for getting my first jewelry in a store, which was really cool of her to do. And just thought about like, okay, let's live in this world where like everything that matters can be taken away at any second. And I hadn't realized it at the time, but I have generalized anxiety disorder. So that got really mixed in with the grief over my father's death. So I didn't recognize that at the time.

And now I do. So just living with that and trying to write my way out of that or figure. figure out how to feel good consistently was important to me. We did just cheap stuff. We didn't do much. When I got home, a virus went through my friend group called buying a puppy. And I was swept up in the mania and got a puppy like an idiot because if I can't take care of myself, why not get another animal? I can't take care of as well. So we all had dogs and then that kind of negated me from doing things like studying abroad like I wanted to. Not that I had the money. I mean, that was the thing. It was like I always wanted the semester at sea, the study abroad. I have this neurotic thing about life where I want to check all these boxes off, right?

Like I want or needed that very specific life experience. I needed to go to prom. I needed to get a yearbook. I needed to get a this. I needed to get a car at 16. Like I wanted that very, I don't know. what is that? It tells you that like you're really living or that your life is valid or something. Like I needed that, right? So I was really disappointed. I didn't get that. But I had a great group of friends and a lot of artists. I got my degree in magazine journalism. Had a lot of anxiety. Like college was pretty hard for me. I drank too much because of something, you know, now that I recognize, like I had anxiety. I have like social anxiety sometimes and very much like an ambivert. So by not dealing with all that. in the way that I should have. I drank too much. I spent too much money. I never lived within my

means. Kind of stuff where, like, I had to get my friend to drive me to sell plasma one time. I bought a really cheap car before Hawaii, and then it turned out to be a lemon, and it was just on the side of the house the whole time I was in Hawaii under tarp, and then when I got back, the tarp had melted onto the car. And then, like, I had to sell it for $100. Just that kind of stuff. So bad. We worked in a leasing office during college, leasing terrible apartments. Oh, all this that's like funny now. We'll come back to this episode after this word from our sponsors. Hey, do you remember 1989? Yeah, no, neither do I. That was a long time ago. And back then, businesses didn't rely on software as much as they do today. Today, modern businesses, everything.

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Type in, afford anything. That's Fresh Books, F-R-E-S-H-Books.com slash Paula, P-A-U-L-A. When they ask, how did you hear about us, mention afford anything. What happens next? I interned at Health and Coastal Living Magazine in Birmingham, Alabama, which was like real, like, old magazine money buildings, which was really cool, gorgeous buildings. And then at Coastal Living, you know, just editing, tagging photos. I had to share this cubicle with this other guide.

It was like when tagging photos first became a thing. We just had to go through so many photos, tag if there was a fireplace, if there was whatever, and write a caption. And I mean, we went, if you have to caption like a thousand pictures of living rooms, you start to go insane. And then I got a job at a small paper in St. Augustine, Florida, making nothing, which you know how that goes. And having just the time of my life, it was super, super rinky dink. super fun. And then I got $50,000 from the lawsuit of my dad's death. And I bought a house in Florida. You bought a house in 2005. What? I've known you for years and I didn't know that about you. Yeah. Do you want to cry again about it? Wow. Yeah. Oh, there's an essay. Yeah. Just as context,

I've known Paulette for a long time. Mm-hmm. And I've known. most of this story. I did not know about the house in Florida. Yeah. I think because it's, you know how it ends. Yeah. Oh my God. Nightmare. But I mean, there were so many things about it that were red flags. But it was really like Seattle, it's so crazy because Seattle right now is like a land grab. Everyone's buying. It's like, oh, it's going to go up so much. That's how Florida was. Actually, where I lived in Florida was the fastest growing county in the nation. So I got this house. I bought with builder who was so clearly a sheister and I was just like so young I was 23 and didn't know what I was doing. Tell us the detail. So did you put all 50,000 towards this house? How much did it cost? Where in Florida was it?

So the house was a little inland, right? So the best place to live was out toward the water, toward the beach, obviously. And this was like a little far inland, right? So it was a three-bedroom house. I believe it was 147, and I did not put all $50,000 toward the house. Of course, being me, I put $10,000, I think I put $20,000 of the $50,000 into the house. I bought a $10,000 car, and so that leaves about $20,000. And I paid off a bunch of credit cards. I did not pay off my student loans, which I, if I had later, I became a Dave Ramsey follower when I was paying off my student loans later in life. but if I had had, I didn't have any framework for like what to do with this kind of money.

The crazy thing was I was living in a house with this girl and my dog, her pit bull, and another dog. And her pit bull was kind of dangerous. And so she kept it sectioned off with a baby gate. So I'm getting this house built and this guy is like such, I mean, I'll send you his mugshot. And you will say how in the world did you buy a house in this guy? You know, I mean, I was 23. Such an idiot. And there was a gravel road. He told me that would be paved. Oh, it was a dirt road. To this day, not paved. Should have gotten that in writing, you know, so many things I should have done. So he's taking way too long to build the house. I'm feeling like this dog is more dangerous and more dangerous. And I really want to get out of the house. And I'm supposed to be out of the house. And I'm supposed to be out of the house. And I'm supposed to be out of the house. the house in October and I totally recognize it's going to take him longer to build the house. And he's like, oh yeah, sure, hon, you know, these things take longer. This is how things go, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

Then I have to tell my roommate I need to stay longer. November, I'm in my house. I am doing crafts listening to Lady Folk Rock and decided to get a glass of water, walk out into the living room. The pit bull sees me from the kitchen and just starts hauling at a-hirt toward me. And so, you know, just in case the baby game. fails, I jump up on the couch. Well, let me tell you, baby gates do not hold bad pipples. Also, dogs can jump on couches. Wow. So the dog jumps up, grabs my arm with its teeth up up here.

Oh. It's like using me like a chew toy. Its owner finally gets it off me and then I run toward my room and then I hear dog nails on the floor. So recognizing I would not make it to my room, I turn and try to kick the dog off me. It doesn't happen. Ends up grabbing me by the thigh, gets me on the ground. She gets it off me again, finally. And my arm was just puncture wounds, but my leg looked like a mini shark attack, like a lot of innards. So then I have to move in with my other friend.

So through these stories, you will hear a lot of themes of other. people taking care of me, not watching out enough for myself, not protecting myself enough financially or otherwise. So in this essay that I ended up writing about it, I compare getting attacked by the pit bull to what went down with my house of like warning sign after warning sign that things were going to go terribly. And then they do. So, oh my God, the house was such a nightmare. Like when I, and I haven't talked to you about this. but when I hear have renters, I think about the roommate I had who left disgusting things like entire chickens out on the counter, you know, picked over till the morning. She like let her boyfriend just kind of move in, move in.

They took out the couch bed in the living room and just like lived in the living room. She got a puppy. And then he had some like pyramid scheme with porn that he kept trying to get me. to. I was like, no, thank you. And then my next roommate was there for two weeks. And he said he was sick. And then his sister was like, he's going to be taken out to the hospital due to alcohol poisoning. And I was like, okay. So then I had all these EMTs in my house, moving my furniture, taking him out on a stretcher. I go into his room. There's a bottle of vodka, an empty bottle of vodka for every day he'd been there, cigarette burns in the carpet. And then I'm going to say

something graphic. Yeah. You ready? Yeah. His alcohol-induced diarrhea sheds dried all over the bathroom, under the bathroom rug, Paula, under. And so I had to clean that up. I would set a timer for five minutes, have flashbacks to when I worked at the skating rink. And I was just cleaning it up and I was just like, stocks.

Next time, stocks. No one has to clean shit off stocks. Why didn't you hire a cleaning person? Oh, I didn't have money for a cleaning person. So here's where just where I'm going to give the disclaimer. This is not how you buy a rental property. You bake in a budget for hiring a team and one, you're running the numbers to see if the property works. So, yeah.

Yeah. See, I don't do financial advice. I do financial, like, warning. Yeah. The thing is, oftentimes if somebody hasn't properly analyzed a rental property, they'll have a bad experience. with it because that particular property is not a good rental. And then that experience scares them away from buying a rental property. But the problem isn't rental properties generally. The problem is they did not run a proper analysis before buying the property. See, I'm going to take your course

and then I'll feel better. So yeah, that was nightmare time. So then so many crazy stories happened. You know, the whole time my house is just diving in value. Like I still have issues when I look at Zillow, I'm like, oh, God, Zillow, because Zillow was where I got the bad news, where it was like, just falling. And then at that same time, I was applying to go to Peace Corps because I was like, okay, I want to travel. I still haven't traveled. I'm never going to do it unless I just do it. Like, the only way I could afford to was to do it for work. The recession was coming on. It was 2008 I ended up leaving. I was very lucky to get renters who were in my house the entire time I was in Peace Corps and nothing went wrong. I sold my car for $5,000 before I went to Peace Corps.

And that was my buffer money, which I slowly ebbed away during Peace Corps in the ATMs at the Capitol where all you had to do was think in dollars instead of Guarinese in Paraguay and like, just be like, I'm just going to take 20 here, 20 there. And next thing, you know, you know, and visits home and things like that. So then what happened after Peace Corps? Because you've, similar to me, you came back and you decided to be self-employed. Floyd forever. Yeah? Like, we both went overseas for two years and then came back to the U.S. and decided that the 9 to 5 life was not for us. And we both did it without first having any money. So that's why I call us water instead of fire because we both did the unfunded lifestyle change.

Well, first I came back from Peace Corps, like such a shit show. I have an essay about this that I wrote for us. salon about, I just was like, I cannot do this anymore. Like, it's not fair to my friends or my family to be this way anymore and just trying to, like, getting to that lowest point. So, like, two days after Peace Corps, I'm in a cubicle the size of a bathroom stall, inputting insurance forms from handwriting and sobbing all the time because, like, I didn't have any time to grieve. I just had to, like, get to work because I didn't have any money. Wait, grieve. Grieve, I mean, coming back from Peace Corps is much harder than going to Peace Corps, I think.

You don't have the support system. I, you know, in one fell swoop, I had, you know, lost my host family who I was super close with, my job. Leaving Peace Corps was kind of a mess for me a little bit. But the best experience I got out of that was this energy, this I'm not staying here energy. So I'm like, okay, you really hate where you are right now. You're in a tiny cubicle being yelled at at work, which is not okay. I do not like being yelled at it. It work.

Quick time out. How did you get a job so quickly after coming back from Peace Corps? How was it that you were working two days after getting back to the U.S.? I was temping. And so in order to get out of taking foreign language classes in college, which was hilarious once I went to Peace Corps and could have used that Spanish. I took computer classes. So I was really good at Excel. I'm like a spreadsheet nerd.

So that to get hired as a temp as a spreadsheet nerd, you can get a job pretty quickly. So I just was like, okay, you really hate where you are right now. What are we going to do? And I decided that I was going to study 10-key so that I could input the numbers faster. So every day I would do a little five-minute lesson on 10-key and just do that because I'm like, I'm going to use this to launch myself forward in the tiniest way because you can't just like sit when you're in a bad situation. That's what I've learned. Move forward. So the temps in general were treated with disrespect at that company.

This one woman yelled at us and then moved up to. working as an administrative assistant for one of the executives, stayed there long enough to hear the woman who yelled at us get yelled at for her attitude by the CEO, which I got to say I really enjoyed. Then moved to Seattle. I was waitressing for a while. At that point, my house started going into my renters, they were supposed to do rent to own for 200,000, but now the house was worth 75s. They were like, we'll give you 90. So then they stopped paying rent. I stopped paying my mortgage. I'm getting letters from Bank of America saying, you know, $30,000 behind of my payments, which is real fun. Making $300 a week as a waitress, really low money. My pit bull attack money came through, which was $750.

And that's the only way I made it through the summer. What? Are you see, you got a, you got a settlement for $750? Yeah. Well, she had already, she said she would pay my medical bills. It cost me $1,600. But then she just, like, disappeared on me. I was like, really, dude. come on. All I want is my medical pills. It's $1,600. So she had already paid me $750, and then I got another $750. And that's what got me through the summer. And I was like, girl, you've got to get your life together. I do not like this sentence like, my pit bull money attack came through. I can make it through this daughter. I was like, my God. So, but still like kept up. I'm not staying here energy. I read a lot of books about negotiating and getting a job. I called a. career help person. I literally was like career help person. What are they called? I got a career coach. And I said, I have no money. Can you like give me one tip? And she said, buy the book the overnight resume. And so I bought that book. I got an interview at a tech company. Writing proposals totally was not qualified to get it. But interviewed well. I remember on the day of the interview, like I didn't, I forgot my wallet. It was just like life was a show. But I got the job.

I told my partner at the time, I was like, I'm going to negotiate for 5,000 more. And he was like, I don't know, you're really desperate for a job. I don't think you should negotiate. But I was like, no, I'm reading all these books about getting a job. Like, you should negotiate. I negotiated for 5,000 more. I asked for that. And they were like, well, what about commission?

So I ended up getting 1% commission. And that was over the next three years, $100,000 difference. Wow. So I started making good money. And I liked it. I mean, I had made $28,000 as a reporter. I had made $2,000 a year as a Peace Corps volunteer. And then I'd had little jobs here and there.

So I had never made more than $30,000 a year. You see why we get along so well. We have such similar stories, such similar origin stories. So I was like, okay, girl, this is your chance. I was like, you know you want to be a writer. So I paid, I took writing classes at a writing center in Seattle, which was amazing. I paid off my debt. I paid off all my student loan debt. And I wanted to be debt free by the time I was 30. And literally the week before my birthday, I made it. It was crazy. So I set myself up for that life because I was like, you know you want to do that. And I put a ton into my 401k. I put as much as I could into my 401k because now that I've been freelancing for two years, I gave myself a few years to take a break. So one thing that strikes me when I hear you tell this story is the power of earning more.

I think the reason I talk about that so much is because there are so many blogs and podcasts and voices out there that are like frugality is the answer to everything. And what I hear when I hear your story is that your problem was not a problem of spending too much. Your problem was a problem of earning too little. You were making $28,000 a year at the St. Augustine newspaper. and then you made a stipend as a Peace Corps volunteer, which, of course, nobody goes into Peace Corps for the money. That's what you're supposed to do. You're a full-time volunteer just on a living stipend. But then the thing that got you to be debt-free is looking for a job that paid really well and negotiating really well during the hiring process so that you could make – were you making six figures? One year I broke six figures by $600.

Nice. Okay, so you were making close to or at six figures. And that was the thing that made the difference. And the thing that I felt at that time was that I earned it. I killed it at that job. And I knew that I couldn't afford to not kill it. And it was the first time that I had really high expectations for myself and really because when you were making $28,000 a year, you're like, well, I'm making $28,000 a year. So you're not getting the best of me. I got to be honest. Yeah. There was that much money to be made. And I don't think that money is the only, you know, like I really love Daniel Pink's drive, the book drive. It was also a good challenge for me. I got creative. I rewrote all of our proposals. I learned in design really well, which began my love of Adobe products. And I still love to this day graphic design. And that's a part of my creative expression now, too. And so that and that opened up, I started learning on Linda.com. And like those people, Linda, call me. You need to start paying me because all I do is talk about. Linda.com, which is being rebranded as LinkedIn Learning. And they're a sponsor of this show. Oh, get out of town. Actually, they used to be. They didn't renew.

But really, it had been in Peace Corps that I discovered the crazy revolution, really. I don't know how, like, how strong of a word to say, but like you can learn from experts anywhere at any time. That in the history of man is a crazy change. So, like, I just bought a horse in Paraguay. I just kind of snapped after. a year. Long story. Anyway, bought a horse. And then just like Googled like how to ride horse. Enter. I went to equestrian school on YouTube. And like then there's someone in America, like who

seemed very professional with a really nice big horse, you know, teaching me how to ride a horse. And I was like, whoa, I'm in the middle of South America. I can't get soy sauce right now. If I want soy sauce, I can't get it. But if I want to learn how to ride a horse from one of the top experts, here it is. And I ended up actually starting a corporate university. that tech company and became like full on a doll education nerd, which has become a big part of my, like what I offer and also what I'm about because I really didn't take advantage of my education and I see my own personal education as a pathway to make more money and live my dream at the same time, which I'm trying to do because I'm not wasting time here. I got a life to live.

We'll come back to this episode in just a minute. But first, if you run your own business, then you know you're juggling a bunch of stuff. Sometimes some of that stuff that you're juggling, like filing taxes, running payroll, issuing 1099s to your contractors. I mean, it's necessary, but that's not why you got into business. And it's time-consuming and it's just not that much fun. That's where Gusto comes in. They'll take care of that for you so that you can focus on other parts of your business

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So you're at this high-paying job. You're making close to or above. six figures, above by $600. So you were making $100,000 and $600. Then paid off all your debt, you became debt free. What happened to the house? The house in Florida. The house short sold for almost exactly half of what I paid for it.

So about $70,000? Yeah, $75,000 I think it sold for. And then it was just so weird because I think it was like money just became unhinged. At one second, you owed $140,000, then you didn't. you're $30,000 behind on those payments, but then you don't owe them. It was this really crazy, mind-boggling thing. I don't know. Didn't it seem like that?

Didn't it seem like all of a sudden something really big at one point, all of a sudden didn't mean anything? The weird thing about real estate is that $10,000 is a rounding error. Getting into real estate for the first time and getting into a world where I'm someone, as you are, Paulette, also, I'm someone. to whom $100 is a big deal. A thousand dollars is a very big deal. And then you get into the world of real estate

and you can make a $10,000 mistake and that's just called Tuesday. Or conversely, you could make a really good decision and come out $10,000 ahead. And that's just called Wednesday, right? That's what's so hard to grasp to internalize in the world of real estate. And really in any type of entrepreneurship or running your own business where all of a sudden the numbers become bigger than you because they are bigger than you because now it's not just you. It's this business that you're running.

It's really crazy. And I think there's something about my history from which I have a hard time going big. I keep staying really small. Girl, me too. I mean. No, seriously. Seriously. Me too. I kind of want to talk about where I'm at right now a little bit. Do it. After the tech company job, I had an article go viral. When did you quit the tech company job? In 2015. Okay.

And why did you quit it? It's kind of a long convoluted story where we parted ways. Oh, got it. Cool. And then I had a 20-hour-a-week job. I really got into, okay, how am I going to do this? How am I going to? Well, one of the things that.

I saw at the tech company was people making a lot of money. You know, the sales guys made a ton of money. And I was like, what if you could? Let's say you make $100 an hour. Can you make $100 an hour and work for 20 hours a week? So I was very interested in taking off the 40 hours a week label. And this is what I think being a Peace Corps volunteer, even though I didn't make a lot of money, I got a ton of value at a Peace Corps. I mean, you're on the other side of the planet. You look up for the stars that you know and you realize like, oh no, This is the darkness on the other side underneath. We are floating in space. Who the hell decided that we have to work 40 hours a week? Yeah. We evolved from single-celled organisms. We don't even know where we are what we're doing.

Why are we like sitting in car? I mean, all the stuff that you guys probably already thinking, but Peace Corps really rammed at home for me. And coupling Peace Corps with the way that I saw my dad's life and so abruptly, I'm doing my own thing. And I'm going to make it work. So I read the four-hour work week. Then I decided I wanted to get into adult education.

I wanted to be a writer who helps writers be writers. That was my thing. And so I started freelancing and doing all kinds of writing. I have written 4,000 words on eye makeup remover. Thank you very much. I got $2,000 to do that. Wow. You didn't know there were 4,000 words about eye makeup remover, but there are.

That's 50 cents a word. That's solid. Yeah, that was good. So really doing an online course for writers. And then that online course got picked up as my book, Welcome to the Writers' Life. And now I'm doing writing coaching. And then getting in 2016, I had an article go viral, which was really crazy. You know, after probably 10 years of studying creative writing and learning about narrative,

I had an article published that I got paid $40 for. My story, a story of an FAA fund. mostly about rethinking situations that I had been in in life without any extra money and where people had exerted control over my life. It wasn't exactly my story, but kind of a fictionalized version of things that had happened to me. And then replaying what that story might look like if I had had a few thousand in the bank. Now that I had a few thousand in the bank, really for the first time after those situations had happened. Wait, so you were going back through earlier life stories and reimagining what they would have been like. if you had had a little bit more cash?

Yes, and imagining what that power would have looked like, how the power dynamic would have gone down. So it was so funny, I was actually at my 20-hour-a-week day job in my cubicle, and people started posting the story, people started tweeting about it, and then at like 10 a.m., Jezebel wrote a story about my story. I can comfortably say a million people read it. I saw it in all different languages all around the world. It was mentioned in L and in all kinds of magazines.

It was crazy. And we will link to it in the show notes. Link in the show notes. And so that was a really cool show of the power of art. Because how many people have said you need to save money for a rainy day? I don't know. The more that I research art and its history, the more I see how integral it is to the human experience and valuable. It's helped me value my work.

So since then, I've gotten stories for the New York Times and become a more well-known writer and a go-to person as someone who can put power to words, whether it is in persuasive writing for a business, which I'm happy to do. DM me. I was kidding. Then I do writing for websites and businesses and just pick up things here and there. And I coach writers and I sell my writer's course and it all trickles in, you know? So you've been self-employed since 2015 then? Yes. Well, there was a break.

2015, I left the tech company. There was a break for a while. And then I worked in 2016. And I think I left. The last time I had I worked for someone else was like early 2016. It's a wild ride. Oh, my God. I was not prepared.

I'm still just like, oh, I run a business. Like you say, like, I'm going to be a freelance writer. No, you're starting a freelance writing business. You have your departments. Like, what's your operations department looking like these days? And I got to tell you, probably for a lot of freelance writers, not great because we don't think about it. Right. What are operations?

Your marketing department, which I hate. I don't want to be all about myself and send a newsletter. It says, hey, come to me for writing coaching. But I do because I would like to make a living at it. I'm getting better at that. Okay, so you've been fully self-employed since 2016 doing the thing that you love. And one of the things that strikes me about your story, not just now, but throughout, is that you have been guided first and foremost by what you want to do. When you graduated from college, you worked for a magazine and then for a newspaper because those were things that you were passionate about.

Then you went into the Peace Corps because that was a meaningful experience. And then you were in debt. So you leverage the power of earning more and worked for a tech company and made $100,600 per year, and in your best year. And got yourself out of debt. And since 2016, you've been completely on your own. And that's not without its hiccups. It's not without its ups and downs. But your motivation has been to lead with what you want to do.

and figure out how to make the money work out. And it's working on a lot of levels. I am as happy as I thought I would be if I did this. And it comes from a place of gratitude that we have the opportunity to do this because not a lot of people do. And I think if you do have that opportunity, you should go for it if you can, you know, and stay financially stable. One of my jobs in the personal finance world, which I have been scooped into because of, of the F-Off Fund story is that I'm here to say, oh, my gosh, I'm bad with money too. My friends want me to say, I'm getting better with money. I'm learning to be better with money.

And even when you mess up again, over the last year, I started my blog and I was like, I'm going to save my $10,000 again. So your goal for this year was to save $10,000? Yeah, my goal for this year was to save $10,000. And I went $13,000 in debt this year. Oh, okay. So interesting. Interesting move there. By the way, when we say this year, we're recording this in 2018. This is not going to air until 2019. Oh.

So just to keep saying, okay, well, what do I need to do now? And continuing to be open about money struggles, especially in the face of things like the neuro-marketing industry, which other generations have not had to face. You know, and just the onslaught of consumerism that we grow up in, coupled with my history with money, and just to continue to be out and not have shame about it and to say, oh, these are the struggles I'm facing. Because I am a writer. I'm a creative person. I'm impulsive. That's a lot of what makes me who I am in the best ways, and it's what makes me who I am in the worst ways. And just to try to corral the things that can be out of control about my personality.

So, and to continue to have that, I'm not staying here energy. And what that means for me this year is to say, okay, over the next year, I'm giving myself a freelancer MBA. And so that's a list of courses that I have on LinkedIn learning. That's about 12 books. And I just said, for the next year, I'm going to pause a little bit learning about my craft and I'm going to learn about business. That's how I'm going to face whatever situation I'm in right now. Because I think a lot of people in the personal finance community are very good with me. money naturally, it seems like. There are definitely a few, you know, a lot of people talk about past mistakes and things like that. And I really want to help creative people make it financially and figure it out as I figure it out. But I think overall it's so worth making it work because it is such a joyful thing. It makes me think about the regrets of the dying and how the number one regret that this hospice nurse, Bronny Ware, saw over and over was, I wish I'd lived my life in the way that I wanted not what other people expected of me. And it's such a joy and climbing back up that hierarchy of needs and reaching the top of self-actualization where I feel like this is what I'm made to do.

This is where I bring value to other people being a writer. And I was reading essentialism as part of my freelancer MBA. I said, where can you contribute most? And I said, what I can do is be a shameless goofball. And that's where I, that's my place, right? And I think that other people relate to that. And also as I learn and address the parts of myself that make it hard to function as an artist and make that art work and make that art life work, I can help other people figure it out too. Because it is figure outable.

There's something that I have to dig deep and get out of my past that causes me to live outside my means and spend more than I have and be almost too afraid to plan because things feel so out of control. But I can get up in the morning and say, no, check your Wynab. you know, and have that meeting with your partner and say, okay, what are we doing with money? What's our plan? And even when it's not working to stop and say, okay, what's making it not work? So this year has worked in so many ways. I feel like I've grown my network. I've gotten a few more stories in New York Times. Like things have worked on one level that's not as easy to graph as the financial level. But it was a year of building my business. And I really feel like next year it will pay off. And I'm betting on and investing in myself. I feel that I'm on the path to success, even though it's been a little rocky over the last year. So it feels 100% worth it. Nice.

Thank you, Paula. Is there any final takeaway that you would like to leave people with? Yeah, I think if you're saving for financial independence in order to do something creative, that's amazing and that's a really great way to go about it. But don't wait until you have financial independence to start because you really only get better at doing the thing by doing. the thing. So start to carve out time now, start to own that identity now. Even when you have a day job, like when I had my work to the tech company, I would say I'm a writer, but my day job is in tech. I owned that identity, but even before it was a full-time thing. Start to learn from the masters, start to learn your craft and really set yourself up to go into that fully. And I think that's

starting with whatever you imagine that you'll do once you're retired will really help you stay on that path if you're doing it by way of financial independence to say, like, yes, I, like, my best hour of the day is the day that I get to play the piano or, you know, throw pots. So start to follow the people you love on Instagram and, you know, follow the hashtags and get into the community a little bit and start to identify as that. And then it'll make it all the more easy once you are in that world. And then once you're FI and you want to really go for it, remember that you are in sales, you're going to be selling, you're going to be making something and selling it to learn about sales. And

that you are running a business. So really come to it with the awareness that you're an entrepreneur and getting that entrepreneurial education and bringing that entrepreneurial spirit with you if you want to make money doing it. Nice. Awesome. Thank you, Paulette. And where can people find you if they want to connect with you? I am on Instagram as Paulette J. Perhatch. I lost Paulette Perhatch. I don't know what I did. And I'm on Twitter as Paulette Perhatch. Those are the easiest ways. My blog is F-off fun.com spelled out. And I'm also at Pollett perchhatch.com.

And we will link to all of those in the show notes. Thank you, Paulette, for sharing your story. What are some of the key takeaways that we can learn from this conversation? Here are nine. Number one. When we frame things in a global perspective, your life may be full of first world problems.

However, that doesn't diminish them. They are still emotionally valid. are still problems that impact you and that affect you at a deep level. I went to Burlington Coat Factory and I wanted this really cute ski jacket and I couldn't get it because I couldn't afford it. And then my friend went and got the same one. I was like, oh, God, and I wore some like someone's uncles clothes that were all too big and ugly. And of course, then you say like, okay, well, this is like my problem all the time. I'm always trying to rehear my own story or geolocate in a way.

my own story globally, right, to see my own life globally, but I'm not like a global animal. I'm an animal that's used to comparing, like we evolved to compare ourselves to the people around us, right, like our reference groups. So to me, it caused me emotional pain that I was like the floppy wearing someone's uncle's double XL jacket, you know, I wanted to be the cute girl and the cute silver ski coat and I wasn't. So it's like, well, get over it. No one cares. But also it's like, Well, that's how it felt at the time. Wearing someone's uncle's hand-me-down jacket on a ski trip rather than buying your own jacket. Sure, that's the epitome of a first-world problem, but it's still emotionally valid.

And so that first key takeaway is not to discount your emotional truth or the emotional truths of others. We're not here to compare our lives to anybody else's. This is not a who had it worse pissing contest. If something is emotionally true to you, then it matters. And if something is emotionally true to the person that you're speaking with, it matters. So that's that first key takeaway. Yes, there are people who have it worse, but that does not diminish what you are experiencing. Key takeaway number two.

Sometimes we want things because we've been taught that having, of that thing validates our existence. That was the thing. It was like I always wanted the semester at sea, the study abroad. I have this neurotic thing about life where I want to check all these boxes off. I want or needed that very specific life experience. I needed to go to prom. I needed to get a yearbook. I needed to get a this. I needed to get a car at 16. Like I wanted that very, I don't know, what is that? It tells you that you're really living or that your life is valid or something. I thought that was a good observation when Paulette said that checking the boxes feels like it validates your life. When you're in high school, it's going to prom and going to high school football games and getting a yearbook and a class ring and a senior photo.

Those are the checkboxes that validate your life, that validate that, yes, you did the high school thing. And when you're at college, it's study abroad or semester at sea. And then when you're older, it's getting the house and the nice car and the diamond ring and the big wedding and the big TV and a China set for some reason. In rich person society or an upper middle class society, those are the types of things that we are taught validate that you're a grownup. And sometimes people want that in order to validate that stage of life. So ask yourself if you find yourself wanting something, do you want the thing it's, or do you want the feeling of validation that that thing symbolizes? And if what you're actually going for is that sense of validation, is there a free or cheap way to get it? Is there an alternative

that doesn't involve spending thousands of dollars? So that is key takeaway number two. Key takeaway number three, move forward. So I just was like, okay, you really hate what. where you are right now, what are we going to do? And I decided that I was going to study 10 key so that I could input the numbers faster. So every day I would do a little five-minute lesson on 10-key and just do that because I'm like, I'm going to use this to launch myself forward in the tiniest way because you can't just like sit when you're in a bad situation. That's what I've learned. Move forward. Well, she says it right there. She did the opposite of what many people do. Many people complain, make excuses, and don't do anything to move forward, no matter how tiny that step might be.

Whereas, Paulette, she took a five-minute lesson a day, and it was a way that she could take one small step forward. She didn't like where she was. She didn't like the life circumstances that she was in, and she didn't just wallow in it. She figured out something that she could do, however small, to get her on that path out, out of there. That's key takeaway number three. Keep moving. Key takeaway number four. Always negotiate. I told my partner at the time, I was like, I'm going to negotiate for 5,000 more. And he was like, I don't know, you're really desperate for a job. I don't think you should negotiate.

But I was like, no, I'm reading all these books about getting a job. You should negotiate. I negotiated for 5,000 more. I asked for that. And they were like, well, what about commission? So I ended up getting 1% commission. And that was over the next three years, $100,000 difference. It was a $100,000 difference.

That single decision that she made. to negotiate her compensation was worth $100,000 over the course of three years. That is significant. One of the most powerful levers that you can pull is the earning lever. And negotiating for a higher salary or negotiating to receive a 1% commission on the sales that you make in addition to your salary, those are the types of moves that propel you forward. So don't be afraid to negotiate. Don't be afraid to raise your rates.

Don't be afraid to make career moves to jump to a different company if that's what it takes in order to give yourself a raise. Because at the end of the day, nobody's looking out for your earnings more than you. So that is key takeaway number four. Negotiate and keep leveling up. Key takeaway number five. Commit to the value and the practice of lifelong learning. And I ended up actually starting a corporate university at that tech company

and became like full on adult education nerd, which has become a big part of my, like what I offer and also what I'm about because I really didn't take advantage of my education. And I see my own personal education as a pathway to make more money and live my dream at the same time. Paulette's story is very much reflective of the power of lifelong learning, the power of continuing to develop new skills and continually self-educate. Long, long after her formal education is over, she keeps reading and learning and sharpening the saw. And that has been a big piece of her success. And so that's key takeaway number five. Commit to the practice of lifelong learning. Key takeaway number six, a job can be valuable, even if it doesn't pay a lot.

Even though I didn't make a lot of money, I got a ton of value at a Peace Corps. I mean, you're on the other side of the planet. you look up for the stars that you know and you realize like, oh no, this is the darkness on the other side underneath. We are floating in space. Who the hell decided that we have to work 40 hours a week? There is often no correlation between the income that you get from a job versus the value that you receive from that job. Paulette didn't make much money in the Peace Corps, but she learned a great deal. And when I was a newspaper reporter, I made a starting salary of 21,000 and an ending salary of 31,000.

But even though I didn't make very much, that's where I refined my skills as a writer. And because I developed those skills, I then had the skill set to be able to start a successful blog. And then five years after I started that blog, I launched this podcast with a co-host. And because both myself and my co-host had existing blog audiences, we had a very strong launch. which contributed to the rapid success of this podcast. So even though I didn't make much money when I worked at a newspaper, I made $31,000 at my peak, I learned how to write. And that skill has created multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars of value

over my still pretty young lifetime. So the point of that is that if you need money to pay off debt or if you need money to buy a rental property or to seat a small business, if you need a cash up, then sure, do what Paulette did and take a high-paying job for the salary, when Paulette took that high-paying tech job and she just needed to cash up. But if you're in a position in which you're not in a debt emergency and you have the leeway and the flexibility to do so, it can be worthwhile to take a job for the life skills that it will teach you rather than the paycheck,

knowing that there's no correlation necessarily between income and value that you yourself as an employee or as a worker get from that job. And so that is key takeaway number six. Jobs can be valuable even if they don't pay a lot. And by the way, the same quote from Paulette, the quote that you just heard, leads to key takeaway number seven as well. And that is don't feel as though you need to work 40 hours a week. Your value comes from your results, not from the amount of time that your butt is sitting in a chair. And so that's key takeaway number seven. Don't be stuck on this 40 hour a week framework.

Key takeaway number eight. Gratitude is at the center of everything. It comes from a place of gratitude that we have the opportunity to do this because not a lot of people do. And I think if you do have that opportunity, you should go for it. You can live cheaply and follow your passions. And that is not an opportunity that everybody has. So if you have the opportunity to live frugally and spend only on the things that matter most in your life and take control of your time, well, that's awesome. Take that opportunity. Not everybody can do that and you can. So be grateful for the fact that you can go for it and then go for it.

Finally, key takeaway number nine, don't wait until you reach financial independence before you start pursuing bigger dreams and passions and goals. I think if you're saving for financial independence in order to do something creative, that's amazing and that's a really great way to go about it. But don't wait until you have financial independence to start because you really only get better at doing the thing by doing the thing. by doing the thing. So start to carve out time now, start to own that identity now. Even when you have a day job, like when I had my work to the tech company, I would say I'm a writer, but my day job is in tech. You don't have to wait until you're financially independent before you start beginning your creative pursuits. You can start that now. And then when you reach financial independence, if you choose to quit your job, that can amplify what you're already doing. But you're already doing it. You're doing it. You're doing it. it along the path towards financial independence. So whatever it is that interests you, whether it's working with animals or traveling or music or art, do it now and do it after you reach FI, but do it now also. Those are nine key takeaways from this conversation with Paulette Perhatch.

If you enjoy today's episode, will you please do me a big favor? Share this episode with a friend or a family member. That's the single most important thing that you can do. to support this podcast. Send them a link to this episode or teach them how to download a podcast if they've never listened to podcast before. We're on Spotify. We're also on YouTube, YouTube.com slash afford anything. And of course, we're on every major podcast player like Apple Podcasts or Overcast or Stitcher. Also, don't forget to hit that subscribe button in your favorite podcast playing app so that you don't miss any upcoming episodes. By the way, do you want a rundown of some of the guests that are coming up? All right, this is

exciting. So we have Daniel Pink. He's the author of Drive, and he has a new book out called When. He is joining us on the show. That will be the February 1st episode. Dr. Cal Newport. He was a previous guest on this show. He's the author of Deep Work and So Good They Can Ignore You. He has a new book about digital minimalism, where he applies the principles of minimalism to your digital life and ties that in with the financial independence. philosophy. So Cal Newport and I discuss that. That's coming up on an upcoming episode and acclaimed investor Larry Swedro joins us to talk about, well, investing. All of that is coming up on the Afford Anything podcast in the month of February 2019. So make sure you hit the subscribe button so that you don't miss any of those awesome interviews. As a reminder, myself, Vicki Robin, who's the author of Your Money or Your Life, and Tanya Hester, who's, who is the blogger behind Our Next Life, the three of us, along with Cheryl Reed, the organizer, are going to be hosting the first ever Chautauqua event with an all-female speaker lineup.

Everybody is welcome. So if you'd like to join us, that's going to be held in Ecuador in November 2019, November 2 through 9, 2019. And you can get details at above the clouds retreats.com. Thank you again so much for tuning in. My name is Paula Pat. you can find me on Instagram at Paula Pant, P-A-U-L-A, P-A-N-T. Have an amazing week and I'll catch you next week.