BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 66: Investing, Freelance, & Morning Routines With Paula Pant

Episode Date: April 1, 2019

Paula Pant has seen it all and learned a thing or two... thousand. Today, we sit down and chat with her about, well, everything. Paula shares her habits, her take on journaling, and her morning routine. We delve into her fascinating backstory with... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 66 with Paula Pant from Afford Anything. Because when you are not truly confident about your ability to earn, then even when you're doing well, you kind of think, well, this success that I'm having at the moment, this is just a fluke or this is just momentary. If I could do it over again, I would have just been more confident. And the decisions that would have stemmed from that would have reflected it. It's time for a new American dream, one that doesn't involve working in. in a cubicle for 40 years, barely scraping by. Whether you're looking to get your financial house in order, invest the money you already have, or discover new paths for wealth creation, you're in the right place. This show is for anyone who has money or wants more. This is the Bigger Pockets Money Podcast. How's it going, everybody? I'm Scott Trench. I'm here with my co-host,

Miss Mindy Jensen. How are you doing today, Mindy? Scott, it's a very chilly day in Denver today, but I am doing very well. How are you doing today? I am doing great. This is a fantastic interview. with Paul Pant, who's really one of the superstars, I think, in the whole financial independence movement in area. So it was a real privilege to get to chat with her today. She's got a great show over and program over at Afford Anything. So definitely encourage you to check that out for another great viewpoint on how we can go about all this stuff. And just a fantastic discussion about brutality, productivity, income. Everything. Portfolio management. Just like how she thinks about building wealth for herself and managing her financial.

position and, I mean, very few minds in the world as honed as hers on this subject, I think. You know, I've known Paula for years, and we're in this, we've run in the same circles, and I've just never had a chance to sit down and talk to her. A couple of weeks ago, FinCon came to Denver, and we all went skiing, and she was there, and I got to talk to her a little bit there, and I was really, really excited to talk to her today, because, like you said, she's one of the big names in this space, and she's so smart. She just, like, at the end of the show, I say, I learned like 17 things. I learned at least 17 things from Paula.

And I like to think I'm kind of informed, you know, on this whole money thing. But she's like, here's a tip, here's a tip, here's a tip, here's some more knowledge. Here's some great things you could do. Like, and she just starts off and goes for, I don't even know how long this show went, but it's amazing. Every minute of it, you got to listen to the whole thing. Yeah, I think it's fantastic. And you'll hear, this is the first time you're going to hear about it,

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Don't put this one off. Join thousands of small business owners who have streamlined their finances with Found. Audible has been a core part of my routine for more than a decade. I started listening years ago to make better use of drive time and workouts, and it stuck. At this point, I've logged over 229 audiobook completions on Audible alone, and I still regularly re-listen to the highest impact titles. Lately, I've been listening to Bigger Leen or Stronger for Fitness, the Anxious Generation for Parenting Perspective, and several Arthur Brooks' audiobooks that have been excellent for mental well-being. What makes

Audible so powerful is its breadth. Beyond audiobooks, you also get Audible Originals, podcasts, and a massive back catalog across business, health, parenting, and more, all accessible in one app. If you're looking to turn everyday moments into real progress, Audible has been indispensable for me over over 10 years. Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash BP Money. Paula Pant from Afford Anything, welcome to the Bigger Pockets of Money podcast. How are you today?

I'm fantastic. Thank you for inviting me here. I'm so happy you're right. here. How are you doing? I'm great. It's a good morning. So I have this morning routine in which I make a cup of coffee and I write in my journal. I have two different journals, one in which I kind of flow stream of consciousness and the other is a gratitude journal. And so I start the morning with that and that completely grounds me for the day. What are you grateful for today? Oh, so I'm grateful for having, this is what I wrote this morning, having a lot of friends like last

night. So we're recording on a Monday morning. And last night was Sunday night. And I had two different invitations to hang out with friends on a Sunday evening. Like one was a dinner party and the other was a movie that a bunch of people were going to. And so having that, like knowing that I'm tapped into a community, I was grateful for that, grateful for coffee, grateful for sunlight, grateful for the fact that business is going well and health. And I actually also wrote down for sweatpants. I really like sweatpants. They're comfortable.

I mean, why wouldn't you be grateful for them? I am also very grateful for coffee every single morning. Sometimes that is like I go to bed. In the morning I can get some coffee. My best friend said that one. She told me that she wakes up and the first thought that enters her mind is like, I'm awake. I can eat toast.

I will say that I am not nearly as a little. grateful for toast as I am for coffee. Coffee is my favorite. Okay, so instead of the Bigger Puckets Money story today, we're just going to talk about Bigger Pockets coffee. Well, no, I think it's a good point because I do the same exact thing every morning, right, where I have my little, it's not a journal, I have a sheet of paper I print out and I write three things I'm grateful for every morning.

So I just think it's like a funny overlap there. And I think that that's like a great, like not just for having a happier day, but it's kind of like a productivity tool in some ways. You start the day I'm feeling good about things. Absolutely. What are you grateful for this morning? So I said I was grateful for my wonderful girlfriend, Virginia. I was grateful for our awesome team here at Bicker Pockets.

And I was grateful that it's going to get warmer later in this week because it's miserably cold today. So that's kind of like a reverse gratitude. Backhanded gratitude. You know, I think this is really important that you are both extremely successful people and you are both writing down what you're grateful for. And I've seen Scott's little paper about like his goals and his just general how I run my life kind of paper.

Scott, we should link to that in the show notes because that is really, really helpful. I actually don't do this. I'm feeling really overwhelmed right now in my life. Just February is always my biggest, busiest month. And thank God it's over. We're recording this in March now. And it is no longer February. and I can kind of breathe again.

Of course, that's when the perfect rental property popped up around the corner from my house, and I just could not make it happen. I don't have the mental space. But this seems like a really interesting way to start a day. And these are the things I'm thankful for. I'm very thankful that I have healthy kids. I have really, really healthy kids. And a friend's daughter just broke her arm in four places.

That doesn't sound like a fun experience. I'm so glad I haven't had that experience. I should start writing these down more frequently. Like, every day sounds great. So thank you. I am grateful that I talked to Paula this morning and Scott and got a new thing to do to start my morning. Oh, that's great. Yeah, you know, and I hear that over and over again. I just need to do it. So there you go. Pro tip for everybody today. Is there something that you keep hearing that you should be doing and you know you should be doing it but you're not doing it? Do it. Right now, start today. And I'll add to that. So one thing that has helped and I think everyone listening might be able to benefit from this, there's this no way. that's called habit stacking. And that's this concept that if there's a habit that you already

have and you want to form a new habit, link the habit that already exists to the new habit. So, for example, I drink a cup of coffee every morning. That's a habit and I'm never going to forget to do it. There is a zero percent chance of me forgetting to drink a cup of coffee in the morning. And so when I wanted to start a journaling habit and a writing down gratitude habit, I linked it to my cup of coffee. So I make a cup of coffee and then I sit down and I journal. And I'll even say there are times when last week I was traveling, I was in Los Angeles. And for just various reasons due to routine changes, this sounds awful.

But there were a couple of mornings when I did not drink a cup of coffee. And those were the mornings that I did not write down any gratitude. So that's one way to like make sure that you're a new habit that you want to develop sticks is let the existing habit be the cue or the trigger that leads to the next one. While we're on this topic, do you have anything else? Like so you do a stream of consciousness journal and you do a gratitude journal, right? Are those linked to anything around your goals that you're trying to work towards? No, no, not at all.

I just let the stream of consciousness one, I just let it free flow. And so the stream of consciousness one, I actually, I use a day planner. and there's blank space for each day, and that limits the amount that I can write. It kind of sets the container. I can't go overboard and spend 45 minutes writing in it because there's only so much space for that day. At the same time, I'm not going to write too little in it because I feel the need to fill the allotted space for the day. And so using a day planner kind of gives me those parameters of this is exactly how much I'm writing for today. And there's no plan to that. Whatever comes out of the pen is what comes out of the pen.

Do you do anything with that stream of consciousness journal? Does that sometimes turn into blog posts or show ideas or anything like that? Or is that just clearing out your headspace? Oh, so that's a really good question. That particular one, which I write with pen and paper, no, I don't do anything. That doesn't develop out. That's purely for me. But I do, if I want to write blog posts, and this is something that it's a very important realization that I had, in the past year, I used to try to write blog posts in the way that most people teach you to do so, which is this incredibly systematic, like survey what your audience wants and then give that to them, find out what questions they have, or look up keywords, and then write to that. And when I tried

to follow that approach, I found that I wasn't writing from a place of inspiration or authenticity, and it just started to feel like a drag and like a job and I didn't want to do it and it, wow, wow, wah, right? And so then I started writing stream of consciousness on my laptop with no particular purpose. And when I do that on a laptop, I found that then I often would stumble upon ideas that could be developed out into blog posts. And those were far more authentic and inspired and as a result, resonated with more people. They're not keyword optimized. They're not based on survey data.

But because they're from the heart, they connect with more people. And I think they have a bigger impact. Like, ironically, they have a bigger impact because they're not trying to have a bigger impact. That right there. That is pure gold. If you are a blogger, write that down. Because, yeah, when you try to write to a keyword, it comes across as authentic is a really great word. It comes across as very inauthentic when you're just trying to fill out the form

to get the most views. Okay, well, we normally ask you to walk us through where your journey with money begins, but this is fantastic. Walk us through your morning. I love the tip to take your current habit, which is drinking coffee. And you're just drinking coffee. I can write in a journal as I'm drinking coffee. Those are two things that can be like connected together. Yeah, absolutely. So this, that advice came from a writer by the name of James Clear, who wrote a book called Atomic Habits. Actually, it came from two people, James Clear, as well as Charles Duhigg, who wrote The Power of Habits. So that stemmed out of both of those books. And they're both great books. So for anyone listening, I recommend them both. But they very much make the point that a habit fundamentally is cue, action,

reward. And so whether you're trying to form a new habit or break a bad habit, break it down into those three elements. What's the cue? What's the action? What's the reward? So in Charles Duhigg's case, he found that the cue was that every day, at around 3.30, he would be at his desk and he would just start to feel a little bored or feel restless. So his cue was time, location and emotional state. Time was 3.30, location was desk, emotional state was boredom. Those were the cues. And then the action that he took was eating a chocolate chip cookie. And then the reward was that brief hit of dopamine that you get when you eat a chocolate chip cookie. Although ultimately that was a quote-unquote bad habit because he was starting to gain weight from all of those chocolate chip cookies. And so once he was able to take this chocolate chip cookie habit that he had and break it down into that granular level, he then kept the same cue. The cue was unavoidable, right? It's always going to be 3.30. He's going to be at his desk. He's going to feel bored. and he kept the same reward, which was that hit of dopamine in his brain, and found a different action that would lead from A to B. And so in his case, every day at 3.30, he gave himself permission

to get up from his desk, walk around, chat with colleagues, step outside if it was sunny or nice. Like, he gave himself permission to take that break. And so he still had that reward without the cookie. How have these habits kind of impacted your success? Like, what are some of other habits that you have maybe outside of writing. So I will say as a disclaimer that I, I in no way imply that I'm excellent at this or I'm highly imperfect. But there have been many times in my life where I've either temporarily formed habits that have served me well. So meditation is one that I've been off and on with. Yoga is one that I've been often on with exercise. And I realize that to people listening to this, they might be thinking, wait a minute, you just asked about success. Shouldn't my

answer be, you know, clacking on a laptop or looking through, I don't know, P&L statements, you know, but really these elements of healthy living are a huge, they're the cornerstone, I believe, to productivity. Ten years ago or 15 years ago, I think it was fashionable for people to believe that they were robots and to try to muscle through it or to power through it and think, you know, if I can just team no sleep, right? If I get up early and work late and run myself ragged, then that means that I will be successful. But truly, if you try that, you end up with diminishing returns.

You may be sitting in front of a laptop, but your mind is not there. Your mind is not focused. And people often blame social media or the internet for distraction. but the reality is before the social media or the internet existed, people still zoned out. People still sat at their desk and built a chain of paper clips. You remember when printer paper used to have those two sides on it? Like the little sides that you would have to peel off of each sheet of printer paper.

And then you could actually make little designs out of those. you could fold each one over the other and make little origami designs. Okay, anybody under the age of 30 has no idea what I'm talking about. Yeah, I'm thinking of myself, I don't think Paul is old enough to remember the dot matrix printer. I'm just barely old enough. Like if you're 35, then that was like an early childhood memory. What I think we're kind of getting at also is the sense that like in today's world, like, I remember when I was a kid, right?

there wasn't all these electronics everywhere. Like every waking moment now as an adult, if I want to, I can be entertained or educating or learning or doing something at all times. If I'm waiting in line at some place, I can be doing something. But like previously there was periods of boredom. You have to kind of fill with this kind of stuff, I think is kind of what I'm hearing. Right. Yeah. And so that's also a good point.

There's a writer by the name of Cal Newport who wrote a book called Deep. He's written many books, but the book, Paul, is the one which he talks about this concept. In order to focus, it's important to embrace those moments of those small moments of boredom. So for example, when you're in line at the grocery store, rather than checking your phone, just be in line and notice. Like pay attention to your surroundings, notice the people around you. When you're at the gate at an airport waiting for your zone to be called, don't be on your phone. Just sit there at the gate and people watch. When you press the elevator button and you're waiting for the elevator to show up,

don't get on your phone. Just wait for the elevator to show up. And by embracing these small moments of boredom, number one, there's no actual productivity hit that you're going to take. Like realistically, how much are you going to get done between when you press the elevator button and when the elevator shows up? Nothing. But by embracing these small moments of boredom, for lack of a better word, you train your mind to be better at focusing, to not constantly be jumping from entertaining stimuli to entertaining stimuli. And as a result, this is really a habit that allows you to focus for longer periods of time, which allows you to do the deep work necessary to excel at your profession, whether that profession is writing or for many of the

people who are listening, I'm sure, people have all sorts of professions that involve scrutinizing a spreadsheet for a long period of time or reading. a dense piece of material for a long period of time, whatever it is that you need to do that can make you excel at your job, that thing probably involves deep focus. And so you need to embrace deep focus as a practice. Yeah, it's okay to be bored. And I think that I was laughing when Scott said, oh, when I was a kid, there weren't all these electronic things. When I was a kid, there wasn't even any internet. So I remember getting the first Atari system and That was so cool. And I had pung, like the actual with the knobs. And you don't probably even know what that is, Scott. But yeah, there wasn't all this stuff. So you just found other ways to keep yourself busy. We would run around in the street or play with our friends or, you know, be outside or just look at the grass or lay on our backs and look up at the sky and see the clouds. And that one looks like a whale. And it's okay to be bored because that is when your creativity kind of takes over. I love your quote. There's no productivity.

hit by not getting on your phone in between the time that you push the elevator button and the door opens up. You're right. I'm not negotiating multimillion dollar deals in that four seconds of time or, you know, three minutes if it's a really long elevator ride. But that's a really great point. Right. I like that. I like that a lot. Right. Absolutely. And sometimes there's this fake productivity where you feel as though you're being productive because you're responding to a tweet or unsubscribing from some piece of junk mail that's cluttering your inbox. And so it can be tempting to think, look, I've made some type of incremental progress, therefore I'm being productive. But truly, the 80-20 of what you're doing is that deep work. So focus on that. Focus on that 80-20 of,

what are the few things that you can do that will deliver outsized results? And then sure, you can devote an hour of your day to, you know, responding to tweets or clearing out your inbox. Absolutely. That stuff has to be done. But don't get so caught up in it that you mistake busy work for true productivity. Oh, Alex has a little plaque on her desk. It says, don't be busy, be productive. And in that same vein of don't be busy, be productive, I think a lot of people also have this sense of fake frugality as well. And so for myself, when I was, was figuring out money, when I was learning what the world of money is, in my early years, I was really caught up in what I now, in hindsight, would refer to as fake frugality. And fake frugality

is when you think you're being frugal, but you're really just wasting time. So, for example, if I would like over scrutinize where your bananas are 30 cents a pack, cheaper at this grocery store rather than this other grocery store. Milk is 50 cents cheaper at this one grocery store versus this other. I would think to myself that I was being frugal by chasing these tiny, tiny, tiny pennies or by spending hours like just scrutinizing the smallest things when in reality, I just wasted an hour saving $2. Actually, this one time, I quite literally, I wasted an hour to save $3.60. I was buying something that was $100.

It was a window for a rental property. Or no, it was a something for a rental property. I think a window or a door, whatever. It doesn't matter. And it cost $100. And I called this little mom and pop outlet that I, was outlet store that I was buying it from. And I tried to make a payment by phone. And they said, oh, you know, if you make this payment by credit card, which is what I would be doing if I made the

payment by phone, we'll charge a 3% surcharge. But if you can write a check or pay in cash, then there is no surcharge. And so in my mind, I was like, cool, I can avoid a 3% surcharge. If I just drive 20 minutes there, pay by check, and then drive 20 minutes back. And I it wasn't until later that I realized that's fake frugality because a 20 minute drive there, then 20 minutes to process the transaction, then 20 minutes back, that's an hour of my time and a 3% surcharge on a $100 purchase is $3. So I just wasted an hour of my time to save $3. I did the math and it worked out to $3.60 exactly was what I saved. And that is a perfect example of fake frugality. And I did that so much when I was.

I was younger. And I think that that really stemmed from honestly a place of insecurity because I, at a fundamental level, didn't believe that my time was worth very much. And so when your time is worth nothing, then devoting it to penny pinching seems like the rational choice. Because if at a deep level, you don't believe in your ability to earn more and to advance, then of course you'll just want to pick up the pennies at the bottom. And so in hindsight, fake frugality, fake productivity, those are all pulled from the same cloth, so to speak. That's really, really important that you said you didn't think your time was worth money. And I do a lot of the rehabs on my house myself and with my husband. And what I hear over and over from people is, oh, well, your time could be better spent.

Well, yes and no, it depends on what I'm doing and what is it going to cost versus what does it cost me to do. But that's really, really important. Your time does have a value because your time is limited. And you know, you only get 24 hours in the day. I have not yet found the loophole that gives you more than that. I need it, but that's the only amount that you have. The fake frugality, that's really funny. I did that with gas. Gas prices. I would drive across town to save two cents on a gallon of gas until one day I finally figured out there's like 10-ish gallons in my car. And I just saved $2 by driving all the way across town. And I sat at all the stoplights and I sat there and got frustrated and, oh, why is this taking so long?

And $2. No, no, no. That's $0.20. That's $0.20. That's $0.20. $0.20. It took a cost. So, yeah, no.

Now I would just, wherever I go, I don't even pay attention to the cost of gas. I need gas. It's not like I can go without it. My car won't run on banana peels or, you know, whatever they did in the, Back to the Future part three, it only runs on gas. So I just go to the gas station and put it in there and whatever, because my time is worth more than 20 cents. First of all, there's a Back to the Future part three?

Yeah, it's a trilogy. What? Second of all, it's funny that you give that example of the gas station because literally just the other day, I went through exactly that thought process. But for me, the two gas stations weren't across, town, they were across the street. Because you know how they often build competing gas stations at the same intersection?

So I was at an intersection. I pulled into one station. I looked across the street and I noticed that the station across the street had gas that was two cents a gallon cheaper. And I thought about, I'd already parked my car at a gas pump. So I thought about getting back into my car, starting the car, pulling away from the pump and crossing the street. And then I realized it would be 20 cents.

So I made the conscious decision not to do that. Yeah. When I come across those two, I decide, okay, which one do I not have to make a left turn out of? I don't care how much the gas costs. I don't want to make a left turn. Sorry, we keep stepping over Scott. No, no. I just want to kind of point out when I'm thinking about this from, you know,

because I remember a couple years ago, I was going through the same sorts of things. Like, how much is my time worth and where should it be spent? what is that dollar value of my time? And, and, like, understand that that's a fluid number, right? Like, that number is lower for you, right? You should be spending more time on saving money or working extra hours or whatever it is when your time is less valuable. And as you move toward financial freedom, your time, as in a financial sense, does become more valuable, right? Because you can command more earning power. You do have more income coming from passive assets, all that kind of stuff. So how do you kind of think about that and how is that evolved over time?

Oh, that's a really good question. So one thing that I struggled with a lot is that when I'm honest with myself, I see all of my inefficiencies. And so I can see all of the moments where I'm zoning out. I see all of the moments. I'm not necessarily watching TV or any of those examples that people often cherry pick as time wasters. But I'll still spend far too long. I'll spend five extra minutes in the shower above and beyond what's like, strictly speaking, necessary. Or I'll spend just a little bit too long getting dressed. Or I'll just kind of zone out and get distracted. And then the next thing I know, 15 minutes have gone by. And so for the long time, I had a really hard time outsourcing things. And I still do, to be honest. I still struggle with this every single day.

A very hard time outsourcing things and a very hard time saying no. to income producing opportunities like freelance assignments or gigs that I could possibly get because I would just think to myself, well, if I could just improve my productivity, then I could do it all. And if I say no to this gig or if I say no to this income producing opportunity, am I actually going, or if I outsource and save a couple of hours, am I actually going to spend that time doing income producing work, or will my number of working hours stay the same, but now I'm just paying extra? And the best piece of advice that I came to about this came from an author by the name of Laura Vandercam who she made the suggestion. She said,

first, fill your schedule with all of the things that cannot be outsourced, regardless of whether or not they produce an income. So for example, calling your mom. You cannot pay somebody to call your mom on your behalf, right? Exercising. As much as you want to, you can't pay somebody to exercise on your behalf. So fill your schedule first with all of those things and then if there's time remaining, then fill your schedule with the things that can be outsourced. But that I thought was a much better framework than this narrow framework of if I outsource two hours, can I then replace those with two income producing hours? Because maybe the answer is no, I'm not going to replace those with two income producing hours, but I will spend those two hours working out and talking

on the phone with my parents. And those are far more valuable. That's really powerful. I'm thinking, as you're saying this, I'm thinking to myself, spend time with my kids. I can't really outsource that. I mean, I can. I can have somebody watch my kids, but then I'm not getting the interaction with them that I want to have. And exercise always gets pushed to the back corner. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And those are, those are the unique things that only you can do. Like, somebody else can mow the lawn. Somebody else can scrub the inside of the oven. Although, apparently, ovens are self-cleaning now. I just learned that. But somebody else can do those things, but only you can have the emotional heart-to-heart conversation

with the people that you love. Only you can lift weights. Nobody else can do that for you. No, I love it. And I think that this is fundamental to kind of building a scaling infrastructure for your time management, right? Which is directly correlated to your other goals in life,

including your financial goals and all that kind of stuff, right? Like, absolutely right. You have to exercise. You have to have relationships with the ones that you love and put the time into those things. But then within the rest of that bucket, right, those things that can be outsourced that you can place a dollar value on, right?

Like, I don't know, painting a rental property, right? One of the great things about this business of rental property investing or that kind of stuff is that you can kind of make that determination at that point and say, hey, my time is worth $20, $30 an hour right now. Right? So it is worth my time because I have to pay somebody more than that to do this particular task.

But as time evolves, maybe that becomes less and less true. My time is now worth maybe $100 or whatever it is that you kind of judge as time goes on. Now it's time to hire those things out and kind of insource them. So I love this thought process and kind of how you can fill up first with the things that can't be outsourced and then move on to those next things and make a conscious decision about that. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And the other piece of it that I often think about is what is more scalable? So I came to this crossroads where, as some background,

I brief background about my job history. So I graduated from college in 2005. And I went to work at a newspaper. My starting salary was $21,000 a year. That was in 2005, as I like to joke. So often I hear people say like, oh, yeah, I also made $21,000 a year starting salary. It was in 1975. Yeah, I'm like,

Very different $21,000 back in 1975. You could buy a house for that. Exactly. Gotta say, you can still buy a house for $21,000 these days. Just depends on where. Not in Colorado. Well, where and in what condition? You might be able to find some in, I don't know about Denver proper,

but maybe in Aurora. I don't know. I haven't looked in a while. I haven't looked in Colorado in a while. Certainly in the Atlanta area, where everybody claims that you cannot meet the 1% rule, there are still $20,000 houses there. It just depends on what neighborhood you're looking in.

Yeah. Okay, so you started as a journalist at $21 whopping $1,000 a year. Exactly, exactly. And I think this is where a lot of my, like, penny-pinching habits really formed. Like, if I forgot to bring lunch to work, then rather than buy lunch, I would go to the grocery store

and just walk in laps around the aisle, eating the free samples that people were handing out. Oh, man. What was your position like at that point? Does you have like student loans or was that where you kind of... No, fortunately, I did not have student loans. So I had that big advantage going for me as a 21-year-old. I do believe that I still could have done everything that I've done if I had had student loans, but it would have taken longer, right? That would have been the first hurdle to clear. So fortunately, I didn't have to clear that hurdle. But I was starting with a $21,000 salary.

And I eventually bought a $400 car. And when I say that, people are like, you mean $400 a month? And I'm like, no, no, no. I mean $400. That was the cost of the car. He wanted $450 for it, but I negotiated down.

Did it run? It did. It ran. It was older than me at the time. It was a 23-year-old Toyota. It was in, Colorado, I was living in Boulder, and it was so rusted through that there were, like the body was so rusted through that you could sit inside of the car and reach your hand out of parts

of the body and reach the outside world. And so in Colorado, as you can imagine, when it snowed, I mean, it was winter wonderland inside of the car because the car is not weatherproof. So anytime it snowed, I was just like sitting on these really wet seats. The seatbelt, the this is not recommended because this is very dangerous, but the seatbelt had frayed to the point where it no longer existed. And, oh, and it was a four-speed manual. And I'd never driven a stick before. So that was the car on which I learned how to drive a stick. Where were you living for this? Like what part of Colorado? What city? So I was in Boulder, Colorado. I lived with a bunch of roommates in an apartment. My share of the rent was $400 a month. Yeah. And I was fortunately, like,

walking distance to work. So I didn't actually have to drive that car very often. But I joined, oh God, I joined the Denver Press Club, which met in downtown Denver. And so for trips like that, sometimes I'd take the bus if it was snowy outside, but other times I would drive that little rust bucket of a car to these networking events at the Denver Press Club on the hopes that, you know, maybe one of these would allow me to escalate up to a high, job like working at the Rocky Mountain News, which eventually collapsed. What was your like trajectory like over the first, like how, for how long did this situation go on? Ah, okay. So while I was, so this is actually, in hindsight, this is how I started to escalate.

So I mentioned I would go to these networking events at the Denver Press Club, and that was where I learned about this organization called the Society of Professional Journalists. And so making $21,000 a year, I saved enough money to pay for myself to go to conferences. They had an annual conference, and I would send myself to their conferences. That was me investing in myself and investing in my career. And when I was at these conferences, the way that the tracks were broken out was newspaper, magazine, radio, TV, and then they had this track called Freelance. And I had never heard of that before, that concept.

And so out of curiosity, I just started going to popping into some of these conference tracks that were on the freelance track. And that was when I discovered at a conceptual level that it was possible to earn money outside of W2 employment. That concept was totally new to me. I had no idea that that was a thing. And so once I learned that, I thought, huh, that's interesting. And so I started contacting various journalists in the Denver Boulder area and inviting them to go out to coffee and just asking them how they got started. And from that, I started landing my first couple of freelance assignments. And once I started doing that, I was a freelance writer.

I was writing for, I wrote for Boulder Women's Magazine for a little bit. I wrote for Dining Out magazine. I wrote for Awards and Engraving magazine, which is like an industry publication for people in the engraving. industry. So I just took whatever I could get. But the pay was significantly better. I was making the equivalent of between $50 to $75 an hour doing this freelance work. Whereas in my normal day job, I was making $21,000 a year. So I could see very quickly that I had better opportunities for income and better opportunities for quote unquote advancement, so to speak, through freelance work. And so by By virtue of doing this, really this did two things.

Number one, I made extra money that I could save up so that eventually I could quit my job. And number two, by doing this freelance work, I saw that it was possible. And while working a day job developed the confidence to believe that I could be a full-time freelancer. And so I quit my job in 2008. And at the time that I quit, I was making $31,000 a year. And that's the highest salary that I ever earned as somebody else's W-2 employee. But during those three years, I'd also been freelancing, making up to $75 an hour as a freelancer. And that was instrumental for both of those reasons that I just named, for the savings that

it allowed me to accumulate and for the confidence that it allowed me to build. And so 2008 to 2010, I didn't really do a whole lot. I traveled. I worked a little, like I freelanced a little bit, but I wasn't really throwing myself into it. And in 2010, that was when I threw myself fully into this idea of, I'm really going to develop a career out of this. I'm really going to go for it. I'm going to be a full-time freelancer. And from the point at which I started taking it seriously, it took from that point, 18 months into the future of that, that I actually started making six figures as a freelancer,

which was mind-blowing to, you know, take this kid from, who had been making $21,000 a year driving a $400 car to now making six figures self-employed, that was mind-blowing. And to me, that was proof of concept of the power of self-employment, the power of entrepreneurship. What I find interesting is that you quit your job in 2008. I don't know if you know this, but there was some things going on in the world. And quitting a job in 2008 was not necessarily the smartest move from somebody looking outward on your choices. How much money had you saved up? Because you said you didn't really

throw yourself into the freelancing for a couple of years. And I know a little bit about your story. I know enough that you were traveling. Where were you traveling? How much money did you have? How much money did you like had you saved up for this? And like did you ever feel a sense of like impending doom? Oh my goodness. Where's my next? You know, what am I going to do for money? Because those are all the questions that I get on a regular basis. Oh, I can't quit my job because what happens if? Yes. So I had about $25,000 at the time that I quit my job. I went to countries where the dollar exchange rate really worked in my favor. So Egypt, India, Cambodia, Lowe, those are places where the U.S. dollar goes a lot further. And I still, even now, in the back of my mind, I always know like,

all right, if I'm in trouble, if things get rough, I can always go to a nation where the dollar exchange rate works in my favor. And maybe I can't live there forever. But if I just, if things get rough and I need to cash up, I'll go to VNTN Lao and spend six months there. That's always an option. And there's a certain psychological relief

that comes from knowing that that possibility is out there. And I know that for the people who are listening to this, that might sound intimidating, but things are only intimidating if you haven't done them before. Yeah, that's true of buying rental properties. That's true of starting your own business. And that's true of spending three months in Goa or in Kerala or some part of the world where the dollar just goes a lot further in Myanmar. And this is, you know, this is something that Christy and Bryce said in episode 55, they do the same thing. When something happens to their portfolio,

They just look at where they want to be. Oh, okay, we really like Thailand. Let's go there for a few months. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So what brought you back to the United States? I just wanted to be back. You know what was what I missed that I didn't expect to miss?

I missed Costco. I got to the point where I just, I really missed Costco. And I missed having a water kettle from which I could make my own tea. And I wanted a cat. Like those little comforts of having an established home. rather than constantly hopping from guest house to guest house. That was what I wanted, you know, by the time I came back. And when was that? What year was that? That was 2010. 2010, okay. And so kind of what, what do your situation look like once you moved back to the

States? So I moved to Atlanta and I did very, very briefly work at another company for a few months, but my heart wasn't really in it. I really wanted to freelance. And so I left that company and began freelancing. And for a long time, so I started out writing these articles for ehow.com that paid $15 an article. And my goal was to see if I could write three articles in an hour, which tells you something about the quality of my work. But I usually couldn't get it to that much. But I was able to pretty consistently get myself up to two articles an hour. So that ended. up being $30 an hour. And then I got my quote unquote big break, which was I got hired by About.com. And they put me on a contract that paid $800 a month. And then I was like, whew,

I've got some stable income coming in, $800 a month. And I was living as one of five people in a three-bedroom apartment. So my personal individual share of that rent was $200 a month. So that's where I was in 2010. How much do they charge for cat rent? Oh, so the landlord charged like a $250 cat fee, but I never told him about the cat. But then upon move out, it turned out that he knew about it anyway because he would come by to mow the lawn and he would see the cat in the window. And so he knew about the cat and he was nice enough to just not charge the fee. Oh, fair enough. I think if I had been a problem tenant or if we'd been problem tenants, he might have enforced it, but he was willing to look the other way.

And was Costco everything that you remembered it being? You know, a place where you can get a huge bag of organic frozen blueberries for $9. I mean, that's worth coming back to the United States for. Nice. So, you know, one of the things I want to point out here about this is that throughout this entire timeline, your entire adult life up to this point, you have really done an effective job at keeping your housing expense to a bare minimum, which is kind of a little. I think allowed for the freedom to do some of this stuff, right? Whereas I presume some of your peers

were probably moving into fancy places or nice homes or buying their first house and all that kind of stuff. You're living with roommates at very cheap rates, I presume, that is enabling you to pursue these adventures in income front. That's a good observation. I would say that the number one thing that I did throughout my entire 20s was that assisted in my financial, success is live with roommates. And so I lived with the roommates until I was 31. And by the time I stopped living with roommates, I was married and I had a net worth of more than a million dollars. And I was still living with roommates. I kept that habit up after marriage, after hitting seven figure status, I still maintained that habit until the age of 31. So, yeah. No, I think it's a critical point. I think that that if you hadn't done that, you would have needed to be. pursue a more stable source of income. Exactly. That would have prevented you from experimenting in some of these ways and all that kind of stuff.

So, sorry, going out to where you, you're at the $800 a month. You just hit the lottery and what happens next? No, I think you hit the, you hit the nail on the head when you said I would have needed a more stable source of income. I think you're absolutely right. If I had needed to pay $1,200 a month for rent rather than $200, yeah, I would have needed a more stable source of income. And so I would have sought traditional W2 employment. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but for me and my story, particularly in the field that I was in, which was journalism, like that wasn't going to be my ticket to extreme success. Now, you know,

just for the people who are listening to this, sure, if you are an anesthesiologist, get, keep your day job. That's, that's, you're going to make more there than you will writing for ehow.com. But, But for my field and for the work that I was doing, let me put it this way. The newspaper that I worked at from 2005 to 2008, the highest paid person in the company was earning around $60,000 a year, the managing editor. And so I knew that I was never going to make six figures there because nobody in the entire company was making six figures other than possibly I don't know what the owner was making. but none of the employees were making that.

So it was clear, at least in my situation, that self-employment was going to be the way to go and keeping my cost of living low, particularly my housing cost, as you mentioned, was going to be the key to that. And there are so many people who I talk to now who are like, oh, I can't because of X, and it'll be, oh, because I'm married,

or even, oh, because I have kids. But I have plenty of friends with kids who still live with roommates. And to be honest, most of them are doing it out of a necessity. They wouldn't prefer to be doing it, but they don't have, financially speaking, another option. And so they do it because they have to. And so I very strongly want to send that message. There's a difference between can't versus choose not to and never conflate those two, you know, don't confuse those two. There are a lot of people who can do things that you

yourself believe that you can't. Yeah. What is that quote? You are capable of of more than you could possibly think. Yeah, you can do it. I could have roommates right now. I choose not to. But instead of having a great big giant house, I have a small house. I don't have a tiny house. I have a small house. And that's okay. My mortgage payment is $1,100 a month. And I really like having a small mortgage payment. So I choose, you know, I do a different, I don't have the great big house. I have the small one instead. But, you know, same general concept. My housing costs are very low. And don't forget, your transportation costs were also very low with your one-time fee of $400. Exactly. For the pre-air-conditioned car. Oh, that's a great way of describing it.

Yeah. I think the lesson that I'm the taking away, though, is that you want to make it big, like Paula Pant, you got to put in the dues with the low lifestyle expenses for as long as it takes to kind of get yourself, get your foundation set in a scalable income path, right? Right. That scalable income all. always comes with uncertainty, right? Almost every single circumstance, unless you become a doctor, in which case it becomes with nine years of, or whatever, you want to come to bed school and residency.

It's a really long time. Right, right. That said, though, so part of the takeaway is, yeah, the frugality, keeping your expenses, particularly your housing costs and other fixed costs, keeping those low, can definitely create the parameters that allow, allow for success. But that being said, as I just mentioned, I have a lot of friends who have a very, very cheap lifestyle and they're not making six-figure incomes or building seven-figure portfolios, right? Like frugality is necessary, but not sufficient. So it's that combination of living as

cheaply as possible while also escalating your earnings and focusing on the income side. It's that one-to-punch. of it as a sports metaphor, playing defense and playing offense. I have a lot of friends who play a very strong defense. They're living very frugally, but they're also not making much and they have at this point in their lives no sign that they will ever make more. So that super frugal lifestyle alone is not going to help them advance. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going, and more importantly,

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and your generating income based on your, you know, the articles that you're making. You, it doesn't sound like you stayed writing for EHOW for $15 an article because that's not really necessarily scalable. How did you scale? In 2011, I started a blog. And then in 2000 and, oh, geez, was it 15, 16? sometime after that I started a podcast. The brand is called Afford Anything. It's Afford Anything.com. And that on a parallel track also began over time to develop an audience and the blog developed a readership and then the podcast developed a listenership.

And so I kind of had these two parallel businesses that were going both at the same time, one in which I was a freelance writer and I was writing for mostly on various online websites. So I wrote for AOL Daily Finance and I wrote for gemstep.com, which was a registered investment advisor based out of Silicon Valley. I wrote a bunch of, you know, wrote and edited a lot of blog articles for them. I wrote for a company called Bill Guard. Like I just, I just accumulated a lot of clients that needed writing for their websites, whether it was a startup that needed somebody to write for its blog or whether it was a more traditional sort of news outlet-y sort of thing. And I developed a freelance writing career. So that was this one business that I had.

I called it Catalyst Digital Marketing. And I eventually realized that in addition to actually writing the blog articles, I could serve my clients better if I also offered to manage their editorial calendar and to do their social media posting. And so I kind of escalated from quote unquote just being a freelance writer to offering full service digital marketing services. So, hey, I'm not just going to write your blog posts. I'll also manage your whole content calendar. You don't have to worry about it because you're a brand new startup. Just outsource your content calendar to me and my team,

and we will handle it and it'll cost you three grand a month, right? So I scaled the business to that. And once you are doing that and you're serving multiple clients and those clients all have funding and they've got backing and they can they can pay three thousand dollars a month to just hand all of their content management to you well hey guess what now you've got a six figure business doing content management for all of these companies and that's awesome so i was doing that and that was this one business that i had how long did i take to get from start to six figures i'm sorry to uh 18 months from the time i started taking it seriously 18 months so i was doing it kind a little bit without taking it very seriously for five years before that,

but for actually taking it seriously 18 months. Okay. I'll say approximately 18 months. I don't mean like 18 to the day. But I remember there were these two particular clients that I landed. One paid $3,000 a month and the other paid $2,000 a month. And both of those contracts hit almost exactly the same time. And so those two contracts, five grand a month,

in addition to the about five-ish that I was already making, that was the moment. That was the first time that I ever experienced a five-figure gross revenue month. And that was an eye-opener for me. Like that was such a game changer, that something like that was possible for someone who used to make $21,000 a year. And how much time were you spending doing this? Did your six-figure income come from 60-hour work weeks, 80-hour work weeks? Oh, yeah, all the time.

I was a stressed-out basket case. And that was when I was really going through a lot of my like mental looping around what's my time worth because I couldn't let go of the identity of the person who made 21,000 a year. And that's always been one of my big financial struggles. It still is. Your image of yourself is often lags the current reality of yourself because your image of yourself was formed from the several previous years. and those several previous years are a lagging or trailing indicator of your current situation,

but it's hard to mentally catch up. And so that first five-figure month that I had, that first month that my gross revenue topped 10,000, I still had this image of myself as somebody who made, you know, 30 grand a year. And so I was just burning the candle at every end because here I am running this business and then also trying to grow a blog, and then also driving to five different grocery stores because bananas are cheaper at one and milk is cheaper at the other, and refusing to outsource any of the logistics of my daily life. To be honest, it was exhausting. And if I could do it again, I would have valued my time more, but really at the core of that, that means that I would have had more

confidence. Because when you are not truly confident about your ability to earn, then even when you're doing well, you kind of think, well, this success that I'm having at the moment, this is just a fluke or this is just momentary. And this isn't going to last. So I need to clutch on to every penny for as long as I can, as hard as I can and as much as I can because this is just a fluke. And I've got big imposter syndrome. And any moment now, this is all going to go away. So, yeah, I mean, if I could do it over again, I would have just been more confident. And the decisions that would have stemmed from that would have reflected it. In terms of like a timeline in years, how long did this kind of state continue for? You know, so you got the, when did you get those two contracts and how long did this kind of like hustle and bustle of like, yeah, you're earning good money, but also really stressed out on every front?

How long was that, does that go on? So I landed those two contracts, the $2,000 and $3,000 contract in 2000, in late 2012. And that hustle and bustle probably from 2012 to 2015. Those were really hard years, constantly stressed out years. And I remember, so there's this conference that all three of us all go to called FinCon. And I remember being at FinCon. And this must have been approximately 2015. And I was at the point where I wasn't really monetizing the blog very much.

And I knew that it had potential. And I knew that it was more scalable than this content marketing business that I was running. and that if I, realistically, I couldn't do them both. At that point, I'd been running my blog for about four years. I'd always wanted to podcast but hadn't started one yet. And I was thinking to myself, if I could just kill this content marketing company, I would have enough time to focus on afford anything. But at the same time, as we discussed earlier in this podcast,

I also, to be honest with myself, saw all of the inefficiencies in my life. I saw all of the times that it took me 10 minutes to wash my face at night, or all of the times that I would be cleaning up and I would pick up an old book or an old magazine and then I would absentmindedly flip through it and 10 minutes or 15 minutes would go by. Like to be totally honest with myself, you know, I saw all of those and I just thought, I shouldn't have to kill both businesses. If only I were more productive, if only I were more efficient. If only I could make more efficient trips to the grocery store instead of mindlessly wandering the aisles, then I could do them both. And I remember talking to this guy by the name of Leslie

Samuel at FinCon. And FinCon had just ended. So it was like a Sunday morning or a Sunday afternoon. We were all sitting in a hallway of the hotel waiting for transportation back to the airport. and I was telling him this. I was telling him like, I've got this six-figure business and then I've got this other brand that has potential and I want to do them both and I believe that I can do them both and I just need to be a more productive,

more efficient person. And he just looked me straight in the eye and he said, how long have you been telling yourself that? And yeah, right? That just hit me. As soon as he said that, as soon as he said that I knew what I had.

had to do. And so from that point forward, I began the very slow process of dismantling my content marketing business. And what that looked like in reality, it was not a one and done deal. It was the process of gradually dropping clients over time. It probably took me about two years to just drop, slowly drop clients and move my focus over to building this other brand, that was more scalable. During this period, sorry, this is a great story. My mind's going on a different topic right now. What were you doing with your assets?

Because I know you were investing in real estate during this period as well. So what were you kind of doing from your other financial position while you were earning and saving and hustle, bustle in these years? So from the money that I was making, because I was still living very cheaply, I was saving a lot. And so those assets went into a combination of real estate investments as well as 401K and IRA contributions. So every year, and I guess most remembered or most known for my real estate investments, I think because to a lot of people that's unique, now I understand in the bigger pockets community,

there's nothing particularly unique or special or different about buying some rental properties. Like, welcome to the club. you're one of many people who have done it. But in a mainstream society context, to a lot of people, I was the only person that they knew who owned rental properties or the only person that they knew who was investing in real estate. And so for some reason, that's what a lot of people seem to associate me with or what people remember me for or know me for. But the actual numbers of it, real estate was just one of many slices of the pie. So I also had a Roth solo 401k, and I maxed that out every year. That was at the time that I started at 18,000 a year, now in 2019,

that limit is 19,000 a year. I also had a Roth IRA at the time that I started. You could max that out at 5,000 a year. Now it's 6,000 a year. Now I can no longer do a rock, I can do a backdoor Roth contribution. So I do that. I max that out every year. I have an HSA. That's another 3,400 a year. And then, of course, because I run my own business, there's the employer side of what myself as my own employer can contribute to my 401k. And that's 25% of some complicated calculation, 25% of the very complicated IRS calculation of what my quote unquote compensation is. And so I was doing all of those things as well. And that's also a huge part of my net worth. And that, that doesn't generate the same level of attention as my rental property investments. I think,

I don't know, I have many theories about this, partially because rental properties are more unique or different, but partially also because rental properties are tangible. You can take pictures of them. You can post data about them. Like, it's this many bedrooms and this many bathrooms and I bought it for this much. Like, it's more of a talking point than, hey, I maxed out my 401K this year. But that doesn't mean that it's any more or less important. Like your 401K, your IRA, your HSA, those are still massively important. And there's a huge part of my portfolio.

No, I think that that's a fantastic answer. And I think that what I'm trying to get at is just how are you thinking about asset management and portfolio design, all that kind of stuff as you're going through this period of earning a lot of money. And it sounds like your approach is, I'm going to be efficient in every area. I'm going to take advantage of all my tax-advantaged accounts first. Then I'm going to do HSA, getting tax-advantaged, all that kind of stuff. Then I'm going to have this pile of cash left over. And rental properties is one of several efficient things I can do with this large surplus of cash. I'm going to accumulate a bunch of this. Is that a right way to understand it?

Absolutely. Spot on. Yeah. And I think that a lot of folks that are listening to bigger pockets in the show, you think, hey, oh, the real estate. is the central part of a portfolio, right? Well, I'm the same way as you, Paul. I'm, you know, real estate is one important part of my portfolio, but one of many parts, right? That's going on in my overall wealth building plan. And I think that's true of most real estate investors, right? Very few people that I've talked to only or have the vast majority of their net worth only in real estate. It's about the output of financial freedom and flexibility, not about which specific path you go down.

Right, right, exactly. So in the world of traditional retirement planning, people often talk about traditional retirement. We're talking about retirement age 59 and a half plus. They talk about it in terms of the three-legged stool, which was your tax advantage retirement accounts as one leg of that stool, your social security as the other leg, and then any pension that you might receive as the other leg. And so financial planners often talk about this three-legged stool. Well, for us, for you and me and probably a lot of the people who are listening to this podcast, that is a multi-legged stool that consists of real estate and also tax-adavaged retirement accounts

and also maybe some other businesses that you own that are a source of passive or semi-passive income. And also your mentality, the fact that you embrace. brace the flexibility of I'm just going to go spend, rent out my primary home and spend six months in Medellin, Colombia, if things go bad or if I'm in a tough state. And I think that that combination of all of the above is what creates true security. Okay, I'm going to go back to this just a moment ago. You said, oh, I don't know why everybody associates me with real estate so much because there's so many other things. I know exactly why people associate you with real estate.

It's because you're a woman and women don't invest in real estate according to, I don't know what, but there is this overwhelming feeling that women don't invest in real estate. And I get questions all the time and people send me notes all the time. It's so nice to hear from you another woman who invest in real estate. And the Bigger Pockets membership skews totally male. And to see somebody who not only is a real estate investor, but a successful real estate investor and female is different. It's odd. It's the yellow sock or whatever, the pink sock and the red sock and the white load.

It stands out because it's different. And I want to say that you can be a successful female real estate investor. Look, here's one right. Here's two. 66% of the people on this podcast are successful female real estate investors. 100% of the people on this podcast are successful real estate investors. But also, you know, real estate has this aura where you buy a property and you are instantly a millionaire. And that's not necessarily true, but it's a lot sexier than, oh, I maxed out my 401k.

Like you said earlier, you know, that's not so exciting. And real estate is very exciting. So I think that's why it really sticks with you. But also like, you're successful real estate investor and there's a lot of people who lose money doing it because they don't do it right. Right. How many properties do you own? So between myself and Will, we have seven rental units plus a primary residence. Okay. And does that, does the income from your rental units cover what you need to live? So in 2017, the rental units grossed 125,000 and netted 43,000 after all expenses, including debt servicing and all other operating costs. Okay.

And you are around there? Like, do you, are you comfortable saying how much you spend? Oh, I mean, how much I spend is kind of a moving target. Okay. But I would consider myself financially independent because $43,000 is, well, first of all, that's only the cash flow for my rental properties. That doesn't include the size of my other portfolio, right? So just putting it out there.

as of July of 2018, between myself and Will combined, our combined portfolio was around $2.2 million. That includes equity in the rental properties as well as all 401K, all other investment assets. So about $1.1 million per person is, you know, regardless of cash flow from rental properties, like that's, if I'm 35 and healthy, and I can't figure it out on a million dollars, I've got some problems.

I'm glad you said that. I totally agree. But with the cash flow just from the rental property, I am married and have two kids and a fairly frugal, ish. And we spend around $40,000 a year. So I'm assuming that you, in your situation, in your life, you would be able to live off of $40,000 a year. Yeah, there's no reason why I wouldn't be able to live on $40,000 a year. Well, sure, there is. You could have a big house and a big car and a brand new cell phone with an expensive cell plan and all the clothes you want and, you know, $1,000 makeup jobs and all that stuff. You can pay $1,000 for a makeup job? I don't know, clearly.

Clearly, I don't know. I drive an 11-year-old Honda Civic and I live in a two-bedroom condo, 1,600 square feet. Which is, to be honest, that's really big. for my needs. I could live in half of this side. I love this discussion. It's like a compound effect of how do I maximize my income? How do I keep my expenses reasonable? And then they will grow over time as your financial position. The point of this is to live a comfortable life on your terms exactly as you want, right? And then I'm going to have a holistic approach to wealth management from there. Where do you kind of think, once you wound down that business, like what was

kind of the output of that exercise of kind of getting your priorities figured out from a business and financial perspective. What did the situation look like maybe a couple years following that crucial discussion at FinCon? Fortunately, the risk that I took paid off. And it was a risk, but when I wound down my content marketing business,

I put more and more time into developing out, Afford Anything, and both the blog and the podcast. And that has paid off. I've run the Afford Anything podcast for about three years now. And last year, I'm just throwing all the numbers out there.

And I want to explain to the audience, like, this is not me. The reason that I'm doing this is that I hope that this added transparency will provide an educational component. It's the opening the kimono. Ooh, well, that's a visual. Show us what's under your kimono. No, this is not you bragging. Oh, I made $14 off my podcast last year. It's not you bragging about this.

look what I can do. Look what I did as a self-employed person. And, you know, maybe somebody's not going to start another podcast, but maybe they do, oh, I could do this. And I could take my passion and put it this way. And you never know what's going to inspire. So please, please share. It's an inspirational share. Oh, good. Good. Excellent. So last year, Afford Anything, the entire brand of Afford Anything. So the blog, the podcast, the YouTube channel, the, like the whole soup of it, growth. 285,000, yeah, 285, and netted 113,000 after expenses. And I say that because I want to communicate to people. A lot of people have the, basically I want to clear misconceptions. So number one, a lot of people have this misconception that the majority of my money comes

from the cash flow from rental properties. I don't know why people think that. It does not. I'm going to state flat out that it does not. But still, and I've said that many, many times, and yet people seem to continue to think it anyway. I don't know why. I really don't know why so many people place more emphasis on the rentals than I think is appropriate. They're one meaningful contributor to your overall income. Exactly.

They're not insignificant, but they're definitely not the whole show, it sounds like. Exactly. Exactly. And I think probably a lot of rental investors who are listening to this are probably nodding their heads, because I imagine many people in the audience have the same experience where you're a multifaceted

entrepreneur and investor and you do a lot of things and some of those things are headline grabbers. Some of those things are tangible and visceral, like a house, and those are the things that people tend to remember, but really it's one of many. It's one slice of a bigger pie.

So maybe bigger pocket should be called bigger pies. Yeah. It's about bigger pockets. It's not just about real estate, right? It's all facets of wealth creation, right? And here on the money show, right, we're not focusing on real estate because it is about the personal financial position that moves toward financial freedom. Now that said, probably most of you listening have real estate is an interest in one component or other of your overall plan. But you're right. Yeah, you're right.

You can, bigger pockets is a perfect analogy because you can put multiple things inside of your pocket. But yeah, but I say that also because a lot of people have the impression And I can see this when I go to cocktail parties or, yeah, and somebody says, what do you do? And I say, I'm a podcaster. And everyone's like, can you make money at that? So I do want to communicate to people that, yes, there are opportunities to make good money online. And particularly if you, as I started off, if you are in the type of industry or have the type of profession where you don't realistically see yourself making a six-figure income in the next five years, then you might be able to make more striking it out on your own and developing an

online business. And you can make good money doing that. I love that point. That I think is critical is assessing the reality of your current career track, right? Because when I was at my first job, I was making $48,000 a year, which is much better than $21,000 a year. But it's still the career path was not going to get me to where I wanted to go. I knew that the best I could hope for in about 10 years was become a director, making it around 110. And I was like, that is not an acceptable best case scenario for what I'm trying to do. How do I go along another career track that has more scalable opportunity there? And I think this is a really important point for people who are not in love with their current job. If you love your job, you know, there's a lot of good jobs out there that

are not going to have a huge income, but have a really rewarding experience. That's one thing. But If you don't love your job and there's no career potential, why are you not coming up with a plan of action to move on to a different thing? Not immediately. Don't quit tomorrow with no plan, but over the next six months to a year. Yeah, absolutely. I know multiple people, as do you, Paula, as do you, Scott, who make six figures or very high five figures a month on their online business.

And I'm going to say they didn't whip up their website today and, you know, tomorrow they're pulling in five figures. It does take time. It does take, it takes quality content. Over and over you here, content is king. Are you making boring content on your podcast, Paula? No. I hope not. I am going to go and I'm going to bring her in to this conversation.

Didn't you just interview somebody that went ridiculously viral because of the content? a little podcast called what episode number was it, 153? Ah, the Susie Orman episode. Yeah, I think I love the Susie Orman. Yes, this was so difficult to listen to when I was hearing her. I'm like, I have to admire your poise and your restraint because I am not the same kind of interviewer that you are. And I would have been like, what are you talking about Susie?

Yes, you can do this. I'm living proof you can do this. What are you talking about? But every single thing she said, I was like, no. And then she contradicted herself. And that was a very, very powerful interview because you gave her all of this rope to hang herself and she just kept taking it from you. But, you know, that went crazy.

And it didn't go crazy just because of what she was saying. It went crazy because of the way that you were allowing her to say it. And that takes skill. And that is never something I could have pulled off. And that was a really great content interview as well. Thank you. Thank you so much. I really loved that.

That was like I loved it and I hated it. And that went crazy in a lot of different ways. But it was also really, really good information. And here's, you know, a counterpoint to what all these other people are talking about. And, you know, every single one of her points could be shot down pretty easily. I don't want a private island. Yeah. And for those of you who are.

are maybe not familiar with the podcast, right? This is episode 153 of Afford Anything featuring Susie Orman. Susie Orman has written nine books, I believe. Her latest book is called Women and Money, but she's best known for being the host of the Susie Orman show. Oh, that's right. So Susie basically says, hey, I hate the fire movement because you really need, five, ten, 30 million dollars before you can feel comfortable retiring early, right? I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. It's the exact quote. An interesting perspective that I think a lot of us that our work in the fire movement, you know, and all this kind of stuff, talk about money, would disagree with a lot of her points. But it was an interesting, different perspective. And I think it was a great list. And to Mindy's

great point, you do a fantastic job, Paula, of hosting the interview and asking great questions and making it clear, I don't agree necessarily with these things. My job is the interviewer. Thank you. Yeah, so go go ahead and listen to that show. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, and there were follow-up shows. But the point I'm trying to make is you need to make good content in order to make money off of your online business. So first, you know, be interesting.

You can have a blog, you can have a podcast. And if nobody listens and nobody reads and it doesn't really matter, you're not going to make very much money off of that. So, you know, be interesting. And this circles back perfectly to what we were talking about at the beginning of this interview, which is writing from a place of inspiration and authenticity, not just writing for the keywords or the search strings or surveying your audience and writing whatever they want you to say. If writing is the physical manifestation of your thoughts and feelings,

then what's going to emerge is going to be much higher quality than something that you have tried to do in a formulaic way. Love it. Perfect. You don't get, you don't stir up a debate of a lot of questions if you're writing about something that you think is going to be the keyword of the day. You get that when you write about something that people disagree with strongly with you and you have a point that you want to defend just as strongly on whatever it is, right? Right. If you have a message, if you have a philosophy, if you have an idea that is worth spreading to borrow from the TED Talk slogan, you know, that's how you get noticed. And I should say also for the people who are listening, any type of an online business,

it doesn't have to be a blog or a podcast necessarily. Whatever it is that you're doing, if you're selling windshield wipers on Amazon, if you're selling candles on Etsy, if you're whatever it is that you're doing, if you're a teacher and you're selling lesson plans, no matter what, be the best. Like if you deliver quality, if you deliver value, then it will take a while. It's not going to be 10 years to overnight success. But over time, people will recognize that value. Yeah, I love it. I love it.

Is there anything else about your story that you want to cover before we begin kind of transitioning to the famous four here? I think we've done it. Okay. It is now time for our famous four questions. So the same five questions we ask all of our guests, four questions and a demand. Up first, what is your favorite finance book? So strictly speaking, this is not a financial book, but seven habits of highly effective people by Stephen Covey. It is one of the books that I go back

to at least once a year and reread. And the most important piece of it, I mean, I get new pieces from it every time I reread it. But one of the most important pieces of this book is when he talks about your circle of influence versus your circle of concern. And essentially he talks about the importance of maintaining a locus of control. So I highly recommend that book to everybody. Don't get it from the library. Buy it so that that way you can take notes and you can mark it up and you can go back and reread it or reread sections of it over and over and over again. Yep. Love it. That's, I mean, that's been a perennial bestseller for a very long time for a very good reason. So I haven't read it in a couple of years, maybe it was eight years now. So I'm going to go back and re-rate it as well.

Awesome. All right. What was your biggest money mistake? So actually, it was fake frugality. It was what we were talking about earlier. It was getting so stuck in this mindset that I have to do everything myself and I have to say yes to every income producing opportunity, every gig, every new job, no matter how well or how poorly it pays, say yes to every article that's offered to me, say yes to everything, like because I was afraid, really I had a scarcity mindset and I was afraid that there was not going to be enough. And that often what you fear is what you manifest. And so the fear that there won't be enough can sometimes lead you to making decisions that inhibit your growth thereby resulting in less. Perfect. What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out?

So I would suggest what I call growing the gap. People often get caught up in this debate over, is it more important to earn more or spend less? Which side should I focus on the earning side or the saving side? And my compromise, compromise isn't really the right word. When you take a step back and you ask, what's the actual objective here? What are we trying to do? What we're trying to do is increase the gap, grow the gap, between what you make and what you spend. And of course, there are only two ways to increase that gap, earn more, spend less, or some combination of both. But at the end of the day, what is important is not to pick a side like it's a sports team. I'm on the earning camp or I'm on the saving camp. What matters is the size of that gap.

Love it. Yeah, I think that, and I would even, I'll throw in there as well, like what the piece there is, it's about creating passive income, right? So you can earn more, spend less, or you can create a blog or an asset, right, and focus your time on that kind of stuff as well, right? I just think, yeah, there's no reason to choose size. It's how do I optimize every part of the funnel, spend less, earn more, income out or asset allocation, all that kind of stuff.

I love that. Right. That is the best answer to that, which side of the, which team should I take? That's the best answer I have ever heard. Oh, thank you. I love that a lot. Yeah.

Okay. What is your favorite joke to tell? at parties is the most difficult question of the famous what did the caveman say when his suit got altered really fast I don't know Taylor Swift Oh my goodness

Throwing that out to J.D. Roth, the big Taylor Swift fan And Jim Wang I believe is also a big T.S. fan And Mr. Money Moustache also a big Taylor Swift fan. Lots of people in the fire community, big Taylor Swift fans. Well, actually, today, a bunch of companies are rebranding, you know, to your good point about how bigger pockets could have more money coming in there, we're actually rebranding to wider pockets. And I think J.D., his site, Get Rich slowly, I think he's rebranding that to get rich swiftly. Yeah, just throwing that out there. Taylor's face on the turtle.

Okay. Our last is not a question. It is a command. Tell me where people can find out more about you. So I'm the host of the Afford Anything podcast. You can download that anywhere that you listen to podcasts. And I suggest hitting the subscribe button so you don't miss any of our awesome episodes. I also have a blog at Afford Anything.com and a free ebook at Affordanithing.com slash escape. It's a 77-page e-book all about escaping the 9-to-5 and designing your lifestyle in a way that you want to, but in a way that's also money-smart. Awesome. We will include links to all of these in the show notes for this episode, which is found at biggerpockets.com slash money show 66.

That's biggerpockets.com slash money show 66. Paula, this was fabulous. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to share all of this amazing stuff with us. I don't even know what I'm going to call this episode. Absolutely everything with Paula Pant. Ah, well, thank you. But I learned like 17 things. Oh, things I need to do, books I need to read.

So this has personally been very, very helpful. Oh, that's fantastic. We've covered so much ground, like habits and productivity and morning routines. and, you know, and that very, very important piece that we talked about at the end that I think a lot of people can relate to the, you know, real estate is one of many things that I do, but it's one of many items in my very large pocket. In your wide pocket, wide pocket. Gigantic pockets.

Ooh, let's see if that one's available. We better get to it before this air. otherwise it won't be available anymore. Okay, we're going to get out of here. Thanks again, Paula. Have a great day. You too. Okay, we'll talk to you soon.

Bye. Bye. All right, that was Paula Pant from Afford Anything. Mindy, what do you think? Oh, my goodness. I just didn't learn a thing. Terrible show. It's not something I can say about this episode because it was amazing.

I love Paula's story. I love her mindset. I'm thinking everything she's saying. I'm like, I should be doing that. I should be doing that. I need to do that too. I need to read that book. Oh, I've never read that book. I've been meaning to. Like just over and over everything she says. I'm like, yeah, I need to be more like Paula. Yeah, I think she has some really good perspective that we haven't gotten before. Like, I think a lot of the, maybe the listeners of this show can really relate to,

like fake frugality, right? How many times, you know, I know I've done this in the past where I've just tried to over-optimize something that just wasn't really meaningful. It was a waste of time, right? And it seems like such an obvious concept, but it's probably something that a lot of people can relate to here. And it really is a time suck if you're trying to be too productive and too over-optimized in every category where it doesn't really matter. Yeah. You know, what I find myself doing when I'm trying to be really, really productive

is sometimes I catch myself just being busy. And that's not the same thing. And I took, what, 97 tips from Paula today that I can implement the journaling. I just sit there and drink my coffee. And I mean, like check my email or Twitter or whatever, but I could be writing down what I'm grateful for. And I don't think about it enough. What I am grateful for, the health of my children is just,

I really take that for granted. And I need to stop. And, you know, I've got really great kids. I've got a really great marriage. I've got a really great life. I need to be more focused on what I'm thankful for. And I love that gratitude journal. That from the very beginning of the show,

I'm like that is starting tomorrow. Yep. I think that, you know, relationships and gratitude are just central to overall well-being and that kind of stuff. And it's so easy and it takes so little time to write things to say, I'm grateful for this, this and this and just a way better way to start your day. And I think there's just like that positivity helps with other things. Very simple thing.

Like on my sheet, I've got three, my three goals. And then the first thing I do before I start working on those goals, I write down through things I'm grateful for, then I start making progress towards my kind of most important actions for the day. Yep. And we're going to have that sheet in the show notes at biggerpockets.com. Widerpockets.com. Widerpockets.com slash money show 66.

Or the old one will probably still work, biggerpockets.com slash money show 66, where we will link to Scott's document. You can take it and make it your own. You can take it and use it exactly how Scott does. You could be like Scott. But I mean, I think you hit the nail right on the head. Starting off your day with a delicious cup of coffee and a list of things you're grateful for cannot make your day suck. Yeah.

And I think it's just kind of funny, a little tip that Paul and I share in terms of how we kind of start our day and go about things. And I think it does make a difference over time. Well, I kid you about your age, but you're super, super smart and very successful. And I have to say that at least some of this is attributable to keeping your goals and writing down your goals and keeping them forefront in your mind. And with so much going on in the world, it's so easy to forget about one thing that you were supposed to do. And then you're like, oh, crap. Yep. It's never a time commitment.

It's not really a time factor to make that progress for your goal is literally the phone call or the simple action you to take that just has to get done. Yep. Anyway, should we get out of here? We should. From episode 66 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, from episode 66 of the wider pockets money podcast, this is Mr. Scott Trench and Mindy Jensen, and we are gone.

Bye-bye. Bye. P.S. April Fools were obviously not rebranding as wider pockets. Although, do we still have that link up, Bigger Pockets love? No, the links don't work on any of that. The links don't work, but the article is still there, and the article is hilarious. A few years ago, Scott wrote an article for April Fool's Day called Bigger Pockets Love,

where he pretended we were going to start a dating service because who wants a cash flow negative spouse? That can really cripple your real estate aspirations, I think. Yes, or your financial independence aspirations, a cash flow negative spouse, not the best choice. So, yeah, we'll link to that in the show notes too. It's very funny read. You should read it.

Okay, now for real, let's get out of here. Bye, Scott. Bye-bye.