Afford Anything - Why I Hate the FIRE Movement, says Suze Orman

Episode Date: October 1, 2018

#153: A few weeks ago, Suze Orman's team reached out to me and asked if I'd be interested in chatting with Suze on my podcast. "Um, duh," I replied. Sure Orman is one of the most famous voices in the world of personal finance. From 2002 to 2015, she hosted The Suze Orman Show on CNBC. She's the author of 10 mega-bestselling books, she wrote a financial column for O, The Oprah Magazine, and she's made multiple appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show. I turned to Twitter and Facebook and asked this community, "What would you like me to ask Suze?" One question stood out far ahead of all others in popularity: What does Suze Orman think about the FIRE movement? I opened with that question. And Suze's response shocked me. "I hate it," she replied. "I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. And let me tell you why." That's a direct quote. (Really.) She spent the next 30 minutes explaining why she thinks pursuing FIRE could be the biggest mistake of a person's life. Well, then. Why does Suze Orman hate the FIRE movement? Find out in today's episode, and join the discussion and help spread the FIRE by sharing your thoughts on today's episode in the show notes, on Facebook, and on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything, but not everything. Every choice is a trade-off against something else. Saying yes to one thing implicitly means saying no to something else. And that doesn't just apply to your money. It applies to your time, your energy, your focus, your attention, anything in your life that's a scarce or limited resource. And so the questions become twofold. Number one, what's most important to you? What do you truly value?

And number two, how do you make daily decisions accordingly? How do your day-to-day actions reflect what you value the most? Answering these two questions requires a lifetime of daily practice. And this podcast is here to help facilitate that. My name is Paula Pant. I'm the host of the Afford- Anything podcast and the founder of Afford-anything.com. Today we have an incredibly special episode. Susie Orman is on the show with us today.

Susie is one of the most well-known financial education voice. in America. For many years, she hosted the Susie Ormond Show on CNBC. She's written 10 best-selling books. And she's been on Oprah. Susie and I recently spent an hour talking about money. And you're about to hear that conversation. Susie has a very strong opinion about the fire movement, which stands for financial independence, retire early. We discussed that for about half of the interview. Many of you are going to be upset by what you're about to hear. And so before we play this interview, I would like to make a few things clear. Number one, these do not represent my opinions as Paula Pant, nor do they represent the opinions of the Afford Anything podcast. I am the interviewer. My role is to ask questions. My role is not to argue, but rather to listen and to ask questions. Number two, I believe strongly in the value of listening to people who have opinions that are different than your own.

We talk a lot on this podcast about the importance of not staying inside of an echo chamber, about the importance of not only listening to the voices that fuel your confirmation bias. The following interview is not going to fuel your confirmation bias. It will do the opposite. I know that this episode is going to be controversial. I know that there will be a backlash. And so that leads us to point number three. There are three places in which I encourage you to leave your comments and remarks about today's episode. Number one are the show notes, which are available at Afford Anything.com slash episode 153. There is a place in the show notes to leave comments, and I encourage you to leave comments and to comment on other people's comments.

Turn it into a forum, turn it into a discussion, a conversation. Number two is on Facebook. search Facebook for afford anything or go to the URL Facebook.com slash afford anything. We will have a post on there specifically about today's interview. Number three is Instagram at Paula Pant, P-A-U-L-A, P-A-A-N-T. What I would like to ask from you, and I am asking this as a favor, and I am trusting you to consider this, please do not leave this entire show a negative review as a result. of this interview that you're about to hear. Sometimes when we bring a guest on our show and somebody

doesn't like that particular individual guest, it results in the entire show, all 153 episodes and many, many hundreds more to come, getting a negative review, getting a one-star rating, and that it drags our average down. This happened recently with the Rand Fishkin interview. somebody did not like a particular comment that Rand Fishkin made. As a result, he gave us a negative rating in iTunes and wrote a negative review about the entire show, even though that was only one episode out of 150. And my fear about releasing today's episode is that I don't want the entire show to suffer, the show that has existed since 2016.

I don't want the ratings of this whole show to plummet, because of one strongly opinionated, polarizing guest who makes what you are about to hear are very controversial remarks that I personally do not agree with, but that I think are important to hear. Now, with that being said, that disclaimer out of the way, I hope you enjoy the next hour, the conversation that's about to unfold about why Susie Ormond hates the fire movement. Hi, Susie. Hi, Paula. How are you? I'm excellent. How are you doing? Fabulous. Thank you. Susie, when we connected, when I knew that you were going to be on this podcast, I did something a little unusual. I went to my audience. I went to Facebook and Twitter, and I asked them, hey, Susie Ormond is going to be on the show.

What do you want me to ask her? So I normally don't crowdsource my interviews, but this one, this one is crowdsourced. Are you ready? I'm ready. Go for it, girlfriend. Excellent. All right. There is, by far and away, one question that was the most. most popular. It was so popular, in fact, that an entire ancillary discussion broke out about what people speculated your answer might be. Have you heard of the fire movement? Yes. Yes, of course I have, and I hate it. Really? I hate it. I hate it. And let me tell you why. Okay. Listen, everybody, I know you want to retire at 25 at 30 and 35. But here is the problem as I speak to you. at 67 years of age, approaching 70, as you get older things happen.

Not only do things happen as you get older, things happen when you are younger. You're hit by a car. You fall down on the ice. You get sick. You get cancer. Things happen. And if you don't have a significant amount of money, listen, if you have $20, $30, $50, or $100 million, be like me, okay?

If you have that kind of money and you want to retire, fine. But if you only have a few hundred thousand dollars or a million or two million dollars, I'm here to tell you, I doubt highly that when you no longer have a paycheck coming in and you've invested that money and maybe it's making some interest for you or dividends or whatever, if a catastrophe happens, if something goes wrong, what are you going to do? you are going to burn up alive because you won't have the money to do it. Listen, when my mom got older, I was responsible for her. I spent on her in seven years over $2.5 million.

And here's what the fire people you are not thinking about. So I'm going to give it to you straight here now. Artificial intelligence is coming in big time. Do not be surprised if by the year 2030 there's a 25% unemployment rate. and how that affects you is this. When people are no longer working because machines have replaced all of us, there is nobody paying into the tax structure. When nobody is paying into taxes, tax brackets will have no choice but to go up.

There will not be the money there for Social Security because now who's going to be paying into the Social Security system to take care of all the 76 million baby boomers that are all retiring? and to Medicare and to all these things, all these programs will collapse. We already have $21 trillion of debt. We have all of this stuff going on. So now you're making the same amount of money. Maybe you're making now, but you're only keeping a little bit of it because of what? Because of tax brackets.

And the interest may go down at the same time. Who knows what can happen? Are you kidding me? Listen, I am 67 years of age, and I've said it before. I'm going to say it again. I fly on a private plane. I live on a private island. I go anywhere and do anything.

And at 67, I still feel like I am 20 and I am 30. I travel the world. I have a good time. I work when I want to, when I don't want to work. I don't work. But I get to live forever and I will never live long enough to outspend my money. It is now almost impossible. So if you think you're having a good time at 30, just wait.

You better be having a good time all the way when you're 60, 70, 80, and 90. You know, most people are living now until 95 to 100. Are you sure your money's going to last you that long when you get sick? You spend more money big time, especially when you get older. Really, everybody, that's what I think about it. There are some people whose response to that might be that fire gives you the option to stop working if you were to choose to do so, but not the obligation to. So a person might reach fire, but then choose to go into lower paying work. And that's fine.

I don't have a problem with that. But really, what is the definition of financial independence retire early? How do you define that? You own your home outright. Maybe you live in a little home. You're fully funded in your retirement account. Will it generate enough income for you when? When can even take that income?

Because you can't take it until you're older, depending on what type of retirement account. you have. So really, how do you do that, Paula? Really, how? You know, are we talking about how much money are these people accumulating? Because here's the real problem. If you've achieved financial independence and you're no longer now putting money into your retirement accounts, you are losing the compounding years of your life. And what do I mean by that? When you're younger and you lose this as you get older, You put $100 a month into a Roth IRA and you put it into a good standard and porous 500 index fund and you do so every single month until you are 65 for 40 years. Now you'll have a million dollars with a 12% annual average rate of return. But you wait till you're 35 to start and you'd put in $100 every month.

That's only a $12,000 difference over 10 years. At 65, you'd have only $300,000. Those 10 years cost you $700,000. So when you are younger, your money that you invest makes money, and that money makes money, and that money makes money, and your money compounds, and you cannot make up for that with sums of money later on in life. So when you stop working early and you're now not able to continue to contribute because you're not having income coming in, now you're financially independent.

you've retired. So now you're living off of the money that you have if you want to be. How do you take advantage of your compounding years? So rather than having millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars when you're older, maybe you have a million, maybe half a million, really? I'm telling you, you can do it. You can do it if you want people, but I've lived enough. Listen, nobody has talked to more people about money than me anywhere in this world. You know, we would get 10,000 emails a week. And I have seen it all. And when everything was going great for somebody and then, you know, they were in an accident.

They were riding a horse. They got thrown off. They were in a car and a pole goes through the front of the car off of a truck in front of them. and, you know, totally paralyzes them. They get hit by a bus walking down the street of New York and on and on and on. If you think these things can't happen, I have a bridge to sell you. So if they happen to happen, you better have enough money if you never can work again

that you can support yourself no matter what happens. How much do you think that is? What would be a safe amount at which a person can say, all right, At this point, given the size of my portfolio, I'm comfortable enough that if I did get hit by a bus, I would be fine. It would have to be in the millions. How many million? It depends where you live, you know, what your other expenses are. Do you own a home outright?

So what are your expenses? But just think about it logically. Let's say you need help and everything. Remember, I took care of my mother and it cost me, like I said, it was $30,000 a month. 30,000 a month. So you're talking about very possibly for full-time help and everything, because good luck getting insurance and things to pay for it now. But it's, you know, so you're talking about maybe three, 400,000 a year. All right, so I'm wrong. You're talking about a quarter million dollars a year there. Now you have other expenses and food and everything. And let's just say

you need another 100,000 a year to live because of other things that you need. So now you need $350,000 a year after taxes. If you have money, even if you have a million dollars right now, and you're getting a 4% yield, that's $40,000, right? Yeah. 40,000 a year. So you need at least $5 million, $6 million so that 5%, and that's before tax. So you need a 5% after yield tax and municipal bonds to yield you $300,000. So really, you might need $10 million just so you, if you're making, you know, 5% on that money and after tax, you'll be fine without touching your principal. Because you don't know how long you're going to live and because you've done it when you're

so young. Now you have all this money. And if you start spending $350,000, a million dollars a year in not that many years, all your money's gone. But do you understand why it doesn't really make sense? There are people who would state that assuming that you can work, certainly if you're in an accident that's so bad that you lose the ability to work, that's a different can of worms. It happens all the time, all the time. There are people who would state that achieving fire, let's say you build a portfolio of $2 million at the 4% withdrawal rate, it's $80,000.

That $80,000 annually plus an attitude that is frugal and flexible and willing to do some part-time work, some gig economy work, how would you feel about a person who had that as their life plan? I think that in the long run, $80,000, especially after taxes, and as you get older, is not going to be enough. You may think it's going to be enough, but it's just not. I'm telling you, especially if income tax brackets go up, if inflation comes back, if all these other things happen, you can do it if you want to. I personally think it is the biggest mistake, financially speaking, you will ever, ever make in your lifetime. Wow.

I think it's just ridiculous because I have seen people retire at 50, at 55, and then they call me back at 70, and they go, why did you let me do that? I said, I tried to talk you out of it. Don't you remember I denied you on my show? because as you get older, I am telling you when you're 80, 90, 95, if you need to go into a nursing home, oh, it'll be 20, 25,000 a month. If you need help, as you get older, you know, it's great when you're young and you think I was young, I'm not young anymore, everybody, but I am sure smart and I am seriously rich

because I compounded my money. I lived in small houses. I didn't spend money that I shouldn't. I lived below my means, but within my needs. You know, I made the most out of every single penny, and I watched those pennies turn into dollars and turned into $1 million, $10 million, $20 million, $30 million, $40 million, and on. I saw it.

I created it. And, you know, here I'm somebody who was a way, waitress till I was 30 years of age for seven years making $400 a month. So I didn't come from money. And look at me today. When you're older is when you want $40, $50, $100 million. $2 million when you're in your 30s, you may think that is a lot and you can live on $80,000 and you can have a good time for two years, three years, four years, five years, and hopefully nothing will go wrong. but I promise you as things get older in your life, as hopefully you will, if you think $80,000 a year as you get older is going to make it for you before taxes, I have a bridge to sell you. Other than medical expenses, what other expenses have you seen that come up in, we'll say at the age of 60 plus?

60 plus sometimes, believe it or not, as you get older and you're no longer having. having any income and all you have is the $80,000 a year coming in. And I'm assuming that $80,000 is before tax. So, or if you're just taking $2 million at a time, you know, you have to be careful because the markets can go down. What is your money invested in? Is it just invested in dividend yielding stocks that pay a cash dividend? There were a lot of people that had a 5%, 6% dividend yield on their IBMs in those stocks. And when the market crashed, guess what they did? They took away the dividends. They cut the dividends in half. Some of them took away all of the dividend. So if you're using up 4% of your money and it's not yielding you that anymore, or if all of a sudden your portfolio

has gone down and now you own a home and now you not just need 80,000 to live on, now you're in your 60s. You've owned your house forever and now you need a new roof. $20,000. That wasn't part of the equation. Oh, you need a new car. You need whatever it may be. Oh, now you have kids. And now the kids get in trouble or the kids need to live with you and now your expenses increase or you want to send your kids to school or you've signed for your kids' college education or whatever it may be or your mother no longer can work.

And now a lot of 65-year-olds are saying, mommy didn't save enough money. And so now I have to support my mother. And that happens. and when mommy comes a calling, you're going to have to be there for her. Those are all the things none of you are thinking about. Your spouse gets ill. Your kid gets ill. You know, mommy, whatever it may be, things have been.

You know, even in the stock market, how many crashes have I seen from the 80s all the way till now? Oh, you think you have it all together and a company totally goes belly up in that money's gone. You know, there were people who invested in really great companies, and those companies just disappeared, just disappeared, gone, totally bankrupt. So you better know how to invest, you better know how to watch it, you better know what to do if they cut their dividends, you better know what to do, if they stop paying the interest on municipal bonds, look what happened to Puerto Rico bonds, they stopped paying the interest that were 6%. That millions of people

purchased, thinking it was a guaranteed 6% yield and all of a sudden it stopped. All right. Just telling you, you will get burned if you play with fire. Strong words. And you know, you can go ahead and you can think I'm crazy and you can just go ahead and do it. But when you get older one day, you remember hearing me on this show. Listen, everybody, I have a new book out called Women and Money. And the whole goal of this book, especially for women, is to make you strong, smart, and secure, to give you a financial empowerment plan for you to follow so that later on in life, whatever it may be, you can live the life that you want to live. You know, this retiring at 30, what are you going to do with your life in 10 years?

You think you're not going to get bored. You think you're just going to travel around and everything will be fine forever. All right. And you can work if you want to. You don't want to, you don't have to. But again, the biggest mistake you're making is time. These are your compounding years. And you should be putting every penny you have into investments so they can compound.

I gave you an example, how just $100 a month will cost you $700,000. $500 a month would cost you $3.5 million if you waited 10 years. You want to be a multimillionaire? Do not, do not insult the beauty of compound interest. What if a person were to have a strategy, let's say they have a $2 million portfolio, invested 50-50 in equities and bonds, and they tap it at a more conservative 3%? Well, actually, so we'll make it a $3 million portfolio. They tap it at a more conservative 3% withdrawal rate. Wouldn't that still allow the bulk of their portfolio?

portfolio to continue compounding? As long as nothing goes wrong, Paula, I have to tell you, I have thousands of letters, as I told you before, of things that went wrong with people who are healthy, young, vital that never expected something to go wrong. And if you're going to do that, then besides your investment portfolios, you better have disability insurance, but you're not going to be able to get disability insurance because you're not even working. So there's nothing for them to be able to ensure.

So there's no way to ensure the income from your portfolio that, you know, nothing goes wrong at this point in time if you withdrawing principle and everything like that. You know, maybe eventually there will be investments out there that will guarantee you an income. But whether you do that or not, you have no way of knowing that the income that you are getting now and a plan to get forever will be able to meet you. your needs. I've seen it happen with friends and I see what happens when they don't have the money to pay their bills. I've seen them take guns and put it to their head, not seen it, but, you know, obviously experienced it because I got news that they're dead because they ran out of money.

They thought they would be okay. They were living their dream. One of them is my cousin who did it a month ago. And so I have seen it. Now, I pray that all of you that do this, that nothing ever goes wrong in your life, that you're always okay no matter what happens. But I'm sure all the people that were on that duck boat in somewhere where they all went down and they drowned, I'm sure nothing, and the only one that lived was one person and they lost, what, nine family members? I'm sure she never thought any of that was going to happen. I am telling you, don't be naive. Don't test fate. You should work as long as you possibly can in an area that you love so you don't feel that it's work. Love your professional life. Love your personal life. But the answer is not

just accumulating $2 million. $2 million is nothing. It's nothing. It's pennies in today's world to tell you the truth. So the next question is, I'm sure there are some people who are listening to this who do not have fire as an ambition, but in their full-time line of work, they earn $50,000 or $60,000. And they are, let's say, in their 40s or 50s and in an industry that's contracting. what would you say then because one of the themes that has kept coming up during this interview is how you'll need more than that, particularly as you age. What would you say to all of the households that have a household income of 50,000 a year? You want to know what I learned years ago. I did all the retirement planning for Pacific Gas and Electric, which is the utility company for Northern California.

And 7,000 people would retire and they'd all see me, right? I did all the retirement planning most of those years for them. And what was fascinating is that people who made 50 or 60,000 a year, who were the line workers, the gas meter readers, all of that, they had more than enough money to retire versus the executives that had millions in their 401K was going to get a pension of $13,000 a month, and blah, blah, blah, blah. And what I learned from all that is that when you make a lot of money, the more money usually you make, the more money you spend.

You don't save it. You don't invest it. You're not wise with it. And when you don't make a lot of money, normally you don't spend like you have a lot of money because you don't. So you tend to stay out of credit card debt. You have a house that you can afford, all of those things. So if you can set yourself up,

in a situation where if you own a home that you have, hopefully you haven't spent a fortune on it, that you follow my rules, which is live below your means but within your needs. And that house is paid for it. You make it your number one priority that after you fund your 401k or your 403B or your TSP, you know, if they match you, you fund it up to the point of the match. You make sure that you have a Roth 401k or 403B or TSP or a Roth IRA if they don't match, or all of those, the Roth 401k and a Roth IRA. And you make sure that your home is then paid for. All extra money goes, assuming you're out of credit card debt, you have your car paid off. You keep your car for 10, 12, 15 years. You take good care of it.

But your extra money then goes to paying down the mortgage on your home. so that when you do retire, you don't have a mortgage anymore. And now that your money's in the Roth retirement accounts, now when you go to take them out, you don't pay taxes on that money so that you don't have to worry if the government raises taxes on everybody to fund the future of the government because nobody's working anymore.

And you set yourself up in a situation where you only buy needs versus wants. Ask yourself the question, before you spend a penny. Is this a want or is this a need? And if you only buy needs from this point on and once in a while let yourself have some wants and you like I said live below your means but within your needs and you do that by only buy needs versus wants and you get as much pleasure out of saving as you do spending,

I think you're going to be just fine. You don't need millions of dollars at that point then if you have everything taken care of And then as you're getting older, you've built up money and you're doing okay. And you have hopefully social security whenever they let you have it and maybe Medicare or if that's still around. And hopefully the government will figure that out. Okay. You gave it your best.

And you wait till you're 70 to take Social Security if there is any. And those things. And you just keep doing the best you possibly can. But the key is putting money away. So help me understand this because I'm a little bit. confused about something. Yeah. In both of those cases, you've got person A and person B. I know where you're going. Yeah. Go on. Yeah. They both have fully paid off houses. They both live below their means. They both have accumulated, one is a line worker, a meter reader who makes 50k a

year. And the other is a software developer who makes 200k a year, but with a huge savings rate. And they both have over time, but different increments of time, accumulated $3 million, dollar portfolios plus a fully paid off home. What's the difference, right? Exactly. What's the difference? I'll tell you, the one that has continued to work, most likely will not retire until they're at least 70 years of age.

And therefore, they will not be drying down on any of their portfolios during the years that they are working. And possibly and probably they're covered by disability insurance if they're working for a corporation. Maybe they're covered by a health insurance plan from their corporation. Maybe all of those things, and they're offered a health savings account from their corporation, which also they can save tax-free for their future and everything like that. The worker that retires at the age of 30, if something goes wrong from 30 till 70, now they're in trouble. The other worker is probably covered by the things of where by the policies and everything that is at work once they retire and they're at

70 now all right if something goes wrong they still have all of their portfolios they haven't drawn them down all of the money they possibly could accumulate is there and if something goes wrong between now and 70 they'll be covered by something at work it's when you're not covered then you don't have a choice to continue working or maybe you do think you have a choice, but you stopped working and now it's hard because now everybody wants to know, well, what did you do?

And is there a job for you and whatever it may be? It's just you're taking more of a risk. If you stop earlier, you have more years that something can go wrong with no way for you to correct it. Okay. Paula, are you one of these people that want to stop working at 39 at 30,

or whatever age you are. I have zero ambition to ever stop working even when I'm 200 years old. Great. But I like the idea of having enough money that I could if I wanted to. Yeah. But you want to know it's also funny. You know, people always think that when you have as much money as some of these people, your Bill Gates's, your Warren Buffett's, even your Susie Ormond's, why do we continue

to work when we don't have to? Because we work because we love what we do. We don't work for money anymore. It's fun to make the money, but who cares about it, really? I don't care if I never make another penny in my life. But I love doing what I do. And it's that passion that keeps me going. So hopefully, if you do retire early, you have a passion that keeps you going.

You have a love of something that you wake up for every morning. The friends that I have that make me look poor to tell you the truth, they're all multi, multi-billionaires. They work harder than I ever work because they love what they do. And they would laugh, they would look at this movement and they would go, whatever. And they would feel sorry for the people that want to retire early because they don't have a passion. They just want to retire. So maybe you have a passion.

Maybe you want to be an artist. Maybe you want to be this. Maybe you want to be that. But just sitting and doing nothing, we'll get to you after a while. It will. I'm telling you, I just did it for three years on my private island. I retired at 65. I shut down the Susie Ormond Show.

I sold five homes. I got rid of five cars. I stopped going on QVC. I stopped writing for Oprah's magazine. I stopped giving talks. I stopped doing everything. And I had a great time for three years. I learned how to fish.

I learned how to win tournaments. I learned how to be the captain. And on my boat and all of a sudden it was like, oh, there's still stuff for me to do. Now, I was in a field that everybody welcomed me back when I came back. They were excited to see me in the halls of NBC and MSNBC and everywhere that I went this past week. And on the stage of the Apollo, we sold out 1,600 seats in a short period of time without any paid advertising at all. by the way that show has been taped and will be shown on the Oprah Winfrey Network October 1st at 8 p.m.

That all of you should be watching men and women alike. They welcomed me back. And they were like, where were you, Susie? There's nobody else out there that be our money matriarch. Teach us, Susie. We need to learn. I don't know if you just retire and you don't have that type of ability to just come back when you want. You should all think about it.

Because then what do you do? What do you do to fill up your hours and your days once you've traveled the world and you've done all this and there's no other place for you to go. And it's, what do you do to fill your days up? Telling you four or five years into it, you're going to go, I need to do something. And then you can, hopefully, as long as nothing's gone wrong in the meantime. We'll come back to this episode after this word from our sponsors. Are you tired of getting nickel and dined by our?

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you can get two months free when you sign up at Skillshare.com slash Paula. That's two months of unlimited access to thousands of classes for free. You can get that at Skillshare.com slash Paula. Again, two months free at skillshare.com slash Paula. You've been talking about money for decades. Is there any tip or piece of advice?

This is a question from an audience member called Rich and Regular. Is there a tip or a piece of advice that people consistently undervalue or underappreciate? Yeah, themselves, especially women. Women, when you undervalue what you do, the world undervalues who you are. And when you undervalue who you are, the world undervalues what you do. You put yourself on sale most of the time. Women, we are very, very different than men. Most of us will tend to say yes out of fear that somebody won't like us or somebody

will be mad at us versus no out of love for ourselves. We care more about our children's, our parents, our spouse, our brothers, our sisters, our employers, our employees, our pets and our plants before we give to ourselves. we need to learn to give to ourselves as much as we give of ourselves because otherwise you're going to be great, you're 30, 40, 50 years of age and all of a sudden you're going to find out that you forgot all about yourself and are you going to get divorced? Are you going to stay together? What's going to happen? So it's important that you start giving to yourselves right here and right now. And so yeah, what we undervalue is who we are, ladies, more than anything else in this world.

On the topic of women, there are a lot of women and men who become stay-at-home parents. Yes. And I've heard a lot of people in my audience say that their motivation for fire is that they want to become a stay-at-home parent, a full-time stay-at-home parent. And I don't have a problem with that. So if you have the money, there's nothing more important than being able to stay at home with your child. You know, I have a saying people first, then money, then things. And having a child have mother and father, mother, mother, father,

contact is essential in development if you have the luxury of being able to do so. But there will come a time at that point then. When your child starts to go to school, your child gets older, and now you're sitting at home waiting for the kid to come back. And then you're going to wonder, all right, where do I get my very? value from. Where do I get my worth from? You know, I have a podcast, Women and Money that's starting up again on Westwood One. You can hear some of the episodes on iTunes. And Sarah, my co-host, the reason I'm co-hosting with Sarah is because she's 38 years of age was a very powerful

young woman and has a lot of money to her name. She could easily do fire if she wanted to. And had a baby little girl by the name of Charlie. And it was very difficult for Sarah coming off powerful jobs and making all of this money and then taking the role of just a mother. It was very difficult for her personally speaking. And so she then started to divide it between her and her husband, Kevin. And it's been working out great. But Sarah now has a new passion called Women and Money and this whole thing that I'm on. You can see the fire in her eyes now and her passion.

about what she's doing. And so she was just with me in New York for a number of days, loved to come back for Charlie, and Kevin was with the baby while Sarah was gone. Now, Kevin is in Australia doing his thing. Sarah's with the baby, and it's working fabulous. So if you can work it out and you're okay, but like I said, there comes a time

when you really love what you're doing, you now give it up. You're now with your child. You just got to make sure that you're also fulfilled. then a lot of people need to go back to work. So it just all depends on who you are and how you feel and do you have a passionate job. And there's no one answer to it. But I don't have a problem with that whatsoever.

So it sounds like there's seasons in a person's life. Of course there is. There's stages in a person's light. How you feel about something when you're 60 is very different than how you felt about it when you're 30. And having a child is a highlight. But a child is also very expensive. It's not just the daycare when they're young and making sure they're okay. All of a sudden, are they going to go to a private school?

And are they healthy? Does anything go wrong with them? Or are you going to send them to a public school? And if you're going to send them to a private school, now we're talking about $35,000, $50,000 a year, even for high schools. And $10,000 or $20,000 a year for grammar schools. And then do you want to send them to college? And do they want to go to Harvard? Do they want to go whatever?

and now we're looking at $250,000 to go to a college right now, let alone later on, it will probably be $500,000. So what aspect do you want to play in your kid's life and do you want to put all of that on them or you're going to want to help them with that because you don't want them to graduate with all these loans? And all of it gets very, very complicated. A lot of the parents really choose to spend their money rather than them retiring and them having a good time to making sure that they've put away enough money so their kids graduate without student loan debt. So their kids graduate with the best education possible in the hopes to get the best future for their kids. But can you do fire and be married and have kids and raise them? Can you?

I don't know. But I don't think $80,000 a year is going to pay for a private education in high school or college or whatever it may be. So then you have to start schooling your kids. If you have children, you're going to have to do it on your own. You're going to have to get scholarships. You're going to have to do loans. Oh, but then direct loans will not pay $50,000 a year for a college education. So then you're either going to have to sign parent plus loans or the kids going to have to get a private student loan and you're going to have to co-sign for it because they're not going to be able to qualify for it. And then here we go with student loans. and that you can't get rid of with bankruptcy.

Speaking of being a student and being in your 20s, when you were in your 20s, you dropped out of college, jumped into a converted van, drove across the country. You had some great adventures, and then you moved to Berkeley and became a waitress. And during that time, you didn't make much money. You made $400 a month. That's right.

Looking back on that, since we discussed the importance of compounding, particularly when you're young, Do you regret the opportunity cost, the monetary opportunity cost? Not anymore. I used to. When I was just a financial advisor and seeing clients and I had some money but not a lot of money, right, because you all have to start somewhere. It's when I realized, because remember I became a stockbroker at 30, I did not write my first book till 45. And many of the stockbrokers already had millions of dollars at the age of 30.

And I would go, how did you do that? they had been investing for years and they had been compounding and they put a lot of money away every month and they had a 401. They had not, well, they didn't actually, a lot of them had 401Ks, but they had individual investment accounts. And I was like, oh my God. And I was just in awe of all the money that it was mainly men that all these men had. And I kept thinking, wow, but I didn't have that opportunity because all I was making was

$400 a month. I always said, well, you know, if I can make $10,000 a year, I could really start saving money. But then you go from $5,000 a year to $10,000. And the more money you make, the more money you spend. And then you tend not to save that much. And you think, it's okay. I don't need to do it this year. I'm still young. I'd rather go on this trip. I rather buy this BMW to impress everybody. I'll do this. I'll do that. And now I don't regret it because of how much money I have now. But if I didn't have any money and I had just been every day working and making the $100,000 or $200,000 a year or whatever it was, yeah, you bet I would have regretted it. So would you recommend to people who are listening to this who are 20 years old or in their early 20s, if they were contemplating, taking a couple of years to go have an adventure, go travel, go see the Grand Canyon, would you recommend that they do that or would you recommend that they put that aside and go straight into the workforce? I would recommend they put that aside and go right into the workforce and start saving.

Start investing the max in your Roth IRAs. Absolutely contribute to the match, the max of your retirement plan if you work for an employer that offers that. You should be putting every penny you can away right here and right now and hoping that these markets go down, down, down. Do not want these markets to go up because when you put money away every month, you are doing, a technique called dollar cost averaging. And as the stock market goes down, the shares of what you're investing in go down and your dollars buy more shares. If it goes up, your dollars buy less shares, but over time, you're averaging the cost of what you're buying with your dollars. And you don't lose big, you don't gain big, but over time, you will make a fortune. So take a sum of money,

max out everything. Now, if you're maxing out everything, and you don't have any credit card debt and you have at least an eight-month emergency fund outside of your retirement accounts and you're maxing your 401K, you're maxing your Roth IRA, you're maxing your Roth 401K, and everything like that. And all right, you want to take two weeks or six weeks or whatever you'll get on vacation. You can do that. No problem. But you need to max out everything during the years.

We need to start a movement called max. you know, where you make the most out of your money, you really go for it. You know, I used to do this thing that, and I don't have the numbers in my head anymore, but if you contributed to an IRA with maximum amounts of money from almost from 20 to 28 or whatever it is, I should do these numbers for you again. And you left that money alone all the way until you were 65. It's almost as if you would have more money than if you started at 28. and did it all the way until you're 65.

Now, those numbers aren't accurate, but there's some age in there that if you just started young and invested to the max and then just left that money and never touched it for a number of years, you would have more than if you started at your ending point and you did it maxed out every year until you were 65. But given that I can't remember what those numbers are, what do I know?

We'll return to the show in just a moment. Do you run a small business? If so, you want to get your books organized before the start of the new year. So that that way, when the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve, you know that you're going into the new year with your invoicing and your accounting totally set up and ready to go. That is where Fresh Books comes in. FreshBooks makes invoicing and accounting software that's designed specifically for small business owners. So if you have a side hustle, you're a solopreneur. This is made for you.

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Again, freshbooks.com slash Paula. FreshBooks.com slash Paula. Try it free 30 days. Are you an entrepreneur? If so, you know that payroll and benefits are hard, especially for small businesses because you don't have the time to become an expert in taxes and regulations, and old school payroll providers aren't built for the way that you work today.

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Go to gusto.com slash paula. That's g-u-st-com.com slash paula. Again, to get three months free once you run your first payroll, go to gusto.com slash Paula, G-U-S-T-O-com slash Paula. Speaking of the years in which you were a stockbroker at Merrill Lynch, now many of us know about Randy from Merrill Lynch. Other than that, what was your biggest money mistake and how did you overcome it? I learned that I really needed to listen to my own gut over what Merrill Lynch was telling me. to buy for people. That sometimes the brokerage firm has the client's interest at heart, and sometimes I'm not

sure they do. At least when I was a stockbroker now, I don't know if they still do this or not, they would offer these stocks from their portfolios. And let's just say it was an IBM. And let's just say IBM was selling at $30 a share in the open market. They would have a meeting and they would say to you, listen, your clients can buy IBM at $28 a share. And we'll pay you a dollar for every share that you sell.

Your client makes off like a bandit. You make off because let's just say the normal commission was 40 cents a share. Just let's say that's true. Right. And I would go, oh, my God, what a fabulous deal. And I would call my clients and I would say buy IBM. You're buying it at a discount and it's a net sale, no commission to you and blah, blah, blah. and the clients would do it. And great, here we were. IBM was at $30 a share. And before you knew it,

IBM was at $22 a share. I started to learn that they would offload stocks that they had in their own portfolio on the brokers. I learned many lessons about when I got advice and when they would tell me something was okay and when they would have a buy rating on something. And there were sometimes reasons outside of that the stock was just going to go up. That's when I really learned that they didn't care. They didn't care. And I learned that over and over again in many different ways. And that's when I started my own firm in 1987.

I had a very unusual way of charging people money. I let them pay me what they thought their services were worth. I never sold anybody a loaded mutual fund. I never sold a bond fund to anybody because I knew that when interest rates went up and they were pushing these bond funds at a four and a half, five percent commission to the stockbroker while I was selling people treasury notes and treasury bonds that would pay me $25, even if somebody put a million dollars into them. because I knew that if interest rates went up, the value of these bond funds would go down and that the interest rate in the bond fund would not go up and people would lose their money when they were supposed to be conservative. And then when these target date mutual funds came out that were the rage of all the 401ks,

I knew not to put anybody's money in them. Because you never invest according to your age. You invest according to what's happening in the stock market and with interest rates. And you would never want to put money in a mutual fund anyway, unless it was an index fund and you just needed, you know, a no load index fund or a spider ETF because people needed diversification and then they could do that on their own. But if you were going to be managing money for somebody, why would you put their money in a mutual fund where you got a load, you got paid a nice commission for it? But then they all had to pay expense ratios and charges to the portfolio manager managing the mutual fund. why wouldn't I just invest their money themselves? And then I learned about when I became a registered investment advisor that they wanted everybody's money into one account so I could charge them a 1% fee or whatever it was on all of their money when I didn't want to do that.

I would put their bond money where I bought individual bonds for them, which always were better than bond funds. and I put that into an account where it wasn't a managed account because you never bought and sold those bonds. You just left them there. And I only put the money that we would be buying and selling or trading with or whatever into another account. And then I learned it doesn't even pay to trade. If you just buy great quality stocks and you just leave them over the long run, oh my God, are you kidding? You know, you bought Facebook at 48 and then it went down to 18 where I bought it, by the way. And then it goes all of a sudden up to 48 again and you go, oh my God, and you sell it.

But no, you keep good quality stocks. Not that I necessarily would keep Facebook here, by the way, people. I have sold my Facebook now if you want to know. But stocks like Amazon, I remember when it first came out. And then it went up and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I thought, oh, we made a fortune. And now if I just kept it, look at it. Are you kidding?

So you never really outsmart this market. You can't time this market. But if you're in this market for the long haul, You buy stocks that are fabulous. And as long as something hasn't happened in the management, like with Tesla, in my opinion, I sold all my Tesla stock. I thought I was going to keep that stock forever. But I don't like what I see happening with management.

So I didn't sell the stock because it went up or down. I sold the stock because I didn't like the management anymore. There's just something about smoking weed on air that I just don't think is cool. And I could go on and on about things that I saw happen. and going, this isn't about making money for people. This is about making money for me and making money for the brokerage firm. That's not the goal of money. My goal was to make people as independent from people like me as possible.

And I never had a lack of clients. I didn't have to want my clients to stick with me. So I had them all open up when I had my own firm accounts at Charles Schwab. And I told them what to do. And I told them how to do it without commission and everything like that. They didn't need me. And I didn't want them to come back to me because I couldn't even meet the need of all the people that wanted to come see me.

It was fabulous. And is that what made you decide when you were in your mid-40s to write your first book that you wanted to teach people? No. No? I simply wanted to impress my clients with a book. Oh. How neat could it be if I wrote a book?

And here's the other example. I did all remember my degree is in social work in geriatrics. And so I always specialized in retirement planning. And that's what I was known for, which is why PG&E came to me. And I had made all these people, all this money within their 401K plans. They didn't have Roths necessarily at that time. And then a client had a stroke or a heart attack and ended up in a nursing home. And then what happened is they needed money.

from their 401k to pay for the expense of the nursing home because it was five or 10,000 a month, even back then. And then we had to take out $20,000 a month if it were $10,000 because after taxes, that's what we had to do. Right. And then the person uses all the money in the 401K. And now because the woman at home, it was usually the woman, is now needing the money as well, because now things are going to be.

gone wrong. And now the person in the nursing home dies. No money is left in the 401k. And with the death of that person, one social security check was lost. The pension plan at times was decreased. And even if it wasn't decreased, now I have a spouse that didn't, you know, is living on one social security check. All the money in the 401k plan is gone. Their pension, you know, is still there. It was a mess. And I thought, oh, my God, I need to learn about long-term care insurance. So I started to become the nation's expert on long-term care insurance. And I thought, I know, I'll write a book called Keeping Your Gold in the Golden Years about what can go wrong. So by fluke said, no publisher wanted a book by a woman on finance in 1994.

And so I was introduced to this woman, Esther Margolis, who, by the way, the Women and Money book is dedicated to because everybody has an Esther in their life. that looked at me and went, oh, I'll buy your book from you for $10,000. And I'm going to pay me $10,000 to write this book. And I'll give you copies to give your clients. I thought, I haven't made in the shade. I don't want to be an author. Authors don't make money.

You know, I'm a financial advisor. I have my own firm. I'm doing great. What are you talking about? Then she told me I had to go on a 27 city book tour. I'm like, what? I didn't do this to go on book tour. Well, to make a long story short,

Esther went with me and knew more about me than I knew about myself, got me on television shows, got me on QVC, whatever. And before you knew it, we sold 800,000 copies of you, Vernda, don't lose it in hardback. For those of you who don't know, a really good sale for a hardback book for an author is usually 25,000 copies, and that's it. And then it goes to softback. Now I'm getting a reputation of an author. then the next book was Nine Steps to Financial Freedom,

and that book went on to sell millions of copies. There was a month that it sold a million copies in hardback. And now all of a sudden I'm making millions and millions of dollars selling books. Before you know it, I have another book. Nine Steps was on the bestseller list for one years, the top selling book, you know, the number one nonfiction hardback book in America in 1998. And now I write another book called Couragellors. to be rich that knocks nine steps to financial freedom off the list to number two. And now I'm

selling millions and millions of books. Now I'm offered TV shows and everybody wants me on the air with them and da-da-da-da-da. And I learned how to do television by going on and doing little hits promoting my book. And the rest is history. To what do you attribute the success of those books, particularly the first one? I don't have an explanation other than I just got out there. And I spoke in truths. I don't speak in words. I speak in truths. You can hear the passion in my voice.

And I have been now on podcasts since 7 o'clock this morning, one after another, after another, after another. I just left one interview, you know, a week of interviews from early in the morning to late at night in New York, giving one talk after another talk, after another talk. And you can still maybe hear it in my voice as a little horse. But you can still hear the passion in my voice. You know, we were supposed to do a 45 minute, as you said, or a half an hour thing. And I'm still going with you. And I'm like, oh, we can go until my next one at seven because I have another one after this. You can hear it.

This is my passion, people. I want all of you to let me be your teacher. I am the money matriarch of the world. Most people say I'm the personal finance expert of the world because I just don't do this here. I do it worldwide. So listen to me. Let me be your teacher. Pick up a copy of the Women and Money book.

Take advantage of the offers that are in there, the free course, everything that you need to make sure that your life is protected and get other women and men to buy that book. And create a movement where you can stand up for yourself and be secure in every possible way, no matter what happens. That's the movement. I'm out to start. How do you know when you're secure? You're secure when you really don't have to worry about if you have a job or you don't have a job,

you're absolutely fine no matter what can happen in your life. When you're out of debt, when you own your home outright, when you're fine no matter what catastrophe comes your way. Because remember, you can own your home outright and it can be blown away by a hurricane, by a flood, and a lot of these houses that you see now that are suffering flood damage because of the hurricane, do you think they're covered with flood insurance? Or do you think they have lost all of the money that they had in their home? Uh-huh, you better think about that. Because when the floodwaters go away, mold comes in and now your house has to be destroyed, and most of your policies will not cover you for mold. But then it's all right. You're part of the fire movement. You don't have to worry about it,

do you? I've seen people who had millions and millions and millions of dollars in real estate that was generating income for them. And then the floods came and their real estate fell into a sinkhole or off a cliff in California or the muds that went through Santa Monica and killed seven people that I happened to know in multi-million dollar homes. their homes are gone, they're gone, which means the social security is gone, which means everything is gone, not that they needed it. And now what do their families do? I've seen it happen with people who are in their 40s and they have the kid. And now mommy and everybody is gone and the kid is there all by themselves. Do you have a will? Do you have a trust? Do you have an

advance directive? Do you have a durable power attorney for health care? Have you taken care of? What would happen if something happened to you? Who's going to pay your bills? Who will write your check? A will will isn't going to help you. Miners can't inherit money. All your money will go into a blocked account if you left it to your kids until they're 18. And then at the age of 18, they're now no longer minors. And if you don't have an advanced directive and durable power attorney for health care for them that they've signed over for you, if they need your help and they're in an accident or get sick, you can't make any decisions for them. These are all the things besides just accumulating money that you best all know about. Given all of the warnings that we've heard, the story of you supporting your mom

at a cost of $30,000 per month, I mean, how do we, knowing that there might be times the insurance won't be there when the floods come, when an aging parent needs that kind of care, how do we protect ourselves and plan for it on a middle class income? Yeah, you get long-term care insurance when it's affordable. My mother refused to get it because she told me she would never, ever, ever need it. My aunt and uncle got it. I got them the best policy out there. It wasn't that much money.

At the time, it was only $2,000 or $3,000 a year. And my mother refused to sign the papers the five times, even though I was going to pay for it. She wouldn't do it. So you be smart with your money. You make sure that you get long-term care insurance when you can afford it. if you think that you can afford it all the way from the time that you get it all the way into your 80s. You make sure that you have disability insurance. You make sure that you have flood insurance, that if you live in areas that possibly could have rivers swell and things like that.

You just get it. But then you're $80,000 a year on fire. You better have all those things included. You know, if you own your home outright, you better make sure will your hurricane insurance. Do you even, are you even having hurricanes? insurance or tornadoes or what are your risks how do your policies work all of that i was in the oakland hills when the three thousand homes burnt down thank god mine didn't but all the people that came to me because their insurance policies weren't updated and everything and they were

underinsured they were over whatever it may be and it didn't pay to rebuild their homes and so all of these things you just need to check you need to know about which is what I write the books that I write. So they tell you about all these things so you know what you can do. So, you know, if you have a home that isn't that expensive, then it's not that expensive for you to get the proper type of insurance to make sure that it's okay if something happens to it because I just want you to know this. If you aren't properly insured and now your home is destroyed and you still have a mortgage

payment, guess what? You have to continue to pay that mortgage payment while you aren't living in that. home. Did you know that? Yeah, it's still a debt that you owe. Yeah, it's still a debt that you owe. You know, and then if you have to claim bankruptcy, because you don't want to do that. And now, all right, to claim bankruptcy. If you have any other money, oh, they'll come after the other money that you have. Do you see, these are all things that I know you never think are going to happen to you, everybody. And I know you got a Susie slapdown for the fire movement. and I know you don't want me to ruin your dreams and have them go all up in smoke.

I'm just telling you over the almost 40 years that I've been doing this. I have seen it all. And I have seen things that have made me want to vomit, that have made me cry, that it made me feel like, God, why would you do this to these people? Are you kidding me? Just know that I say it with the knowledge. and the vision of things that I've seen and I've heard and I've read that I wish to God my eyes have never had to glance upon. Well, thank you, Susie.

You are welcome, Paula. And remember, everybody, October 1st at 8 p.m. on the Oprah Winfrey Network, men or boys, whoever you are, you should be watching it as well. because you can learn a lot when you watch the hour of the money matriarch and money. Thank you so much, Susie. Anytime, Paula. Well, that was an interesting interview. That was unlike anything I have ever experienced in my three years as a podcast host. As I said, this is a very special episode.

This is different than what we normally produce. Typically, after interviews, I give key takeaways that have come out of the interview. Today I'm going to do something a little different. I will briefly give my take, and then I would like to open this up for discussion. So let's begin. Number one, I carry the impression that Susie may not fully understand the nuances of the fire movement. At a surface level, it may seem as though the fire movement is dedicated towards building a portfolio of $1 million in index funds as fast as you can. so that you can retire at 30, live on 40 grand a year, and do that for the rest of your life,

and never earn a penny of income again ever from the age of 30 onward. Right? At first blush, that's what the fire movement might appear to be. But once a person begins to learn about that movement, it is far more nuanced than that. And I'm preaching to the choir here because, as most of you know, financial independence is the point at which your potential passive income, typically through investments, are sufficient enough that you do not have to worry about your basic cost of living. That is financial independence, but just because a person achieves financial independence does not necessarily mean that they retire. And if and when a person does retire, that does not necessarily mean that they stop earning income.

The fire movement has a very broad definition and an often debated definition of the word retirement. To some people, retirement means quitting a full-time, 9-to-5-saried position so that they can pursue hobbies that earn money. For example, if you're a lawyer, but you really want to be a podcaster, then quote-unquote retirement might allow you to do that. And maybe in year one or year two of your podcast, you might not make any money, but by year three or four, hopefully if things go well, it'll start to pick up. In that regard, I've heard some people refer to FIRE's brand of retirement as really almost analogous to entrepreneurship with a safety net or self-employment with a safety net or the gig economy. I don't think that anybody in the fire movement inside of the fire movement would argue that just because a person is retired, that person is all. obligated to never earn a penny again. And if they do earn a penny, that means that they're not, quote, unquote, really retired. The whole concept of the internet retirement police, well, you're not really retired. You work 20 hours a week as a guitar instructor. That's the attitude of the internet retirement police. But that attitude, as I think people in the fire movement understand, is a load of BS. And you can absolutely earn money after you're retired. And so that addresses the second aspect of her objection, which was part of her objection to fire is that you are no longer. making contributions to your portfolio during your young years, during your 20s and 30s and 40s.

However, as she herself later said later in this same interview, if you, number one, if you sufficiently fund your portfolio when you're young, you could theoretically never put in another dime and still have a seven-figure sum when you are older. And in addition to that, just because you reach five, does not mean that you are going to necessarily draw down your portfolio. That's why I say that the definition of passive income to me is that your potential passive income is enough. Because oftentimes the people who are ambitious enough to reach fire never actually end up drawing down their portfolio or never actually end up living on the income from their rental properties. Last year, my income properties grossed $125,000 and netted $43,000.

Could I live on that? Absolutely. Am I living on that? Not even remotely. I'm reinvesting all of it. So I would consider myself financially independent because my passive income is enough that it could cover my basic cost of living. But I don't want to sit on the couch doing nothing all day. I want to write and teach and speak and host this podcast and grow a company.

I want to do that. I think that's exciting. As a result, I make money from doing that, which means that I don't actually need the income from the rental properties, which means all of that gets reinvested. I think that that addresses the second aspect of Susie's objection. Her objection being drawing down from your portfolio when you're young could be a mistake. and my response being, fire does not necessarily mean that you are going to draw down, and fire does not necessarily mean that you are going to stop making contributions.

All it means is that you could. You heard her say, people first, then money, then things. Well, the point of fire is people first. The point of fire is that if you have a family member with a terminal illness or if your children are young, or if there is some circumstance in your life for which you need to or want to drop everything so that you can focus on family or friends or self-care, so that you can focus on something that matters more than money. The point of fire is that you have the ability to do that without getting bankrupted by that. If you need to take time out to be able to focus on your health, whether that's physical, mental, emotional, or the health of somebody that you love, you can do that. And you're not going to accumulate debt by virtue of doing that.

That's the purpose of fire. And that is aligned with people first, then money, then things. Remember, fire does not obligate you to stop working. It does not obligate you to quit your job. And if you do quit your job, you are not under any obligation to draw down. from your portfolio or to stop making contributions. All of that is optional. That's the purpose of fire is that it gives you options.

That's all it does. And so sometimes it's hard for me to understand how anybody could be anti-having more options. But then when I listen to the objections to fire, it becomes clear to me that the people who object to fire are ones who misunderstand it. And I suppose as one of the voices out there who advocates for fire, I, I suppose, I, I am partially responsible for that. Apparently, I'm not explaining fire as well as I could be. Apparently, this message is getting distorted somewhere along the way. I know my mission now. I am going to keep advocating for fire because fire gives you choices. And why would you not want choices? So that is Paula's take. I'd love to know what you think. Here are three places where you can join in this conversation. Number one, go to afford anything.com slash episode one. That's where you'll find the show notes for today's episode. And I invite you to please leave comments, start a discussion in those show notes.

Number two, if you go to Facebook.com slash afford anything. That is the Afford Anything page on Facebook. We're going to have a thread about this. Please, let's have a discussion there. And number three, on Instagram, there will be a post with a photo of Susie Orman. Please leave comments, remarks. Let's have a discussion there too. So those are three places, the show notes, Facebook, Instagram. To leave your remarks about what you liked and what you didn't. What made you happy? What made you upset? What did you think? And how did this make you feel? I would love to know. And this whole community can create a conversation. And that conversation that comes from this community will be amplified and will over time help spread the fire. The fire movement is small and misunderstood.

It's growing, but it is still small. It is still a niche, a subculture. You are the trailblazers. Let's keep blazing the trail. Let's keep spreading this fire. My name is Paula Pant. I'm the host of the Afford Anything podcast. I'll catch you in the next episode.