Afford Anything Podcast

Build Financial Independence, Escape the 9-to-5, and Live Your Boldest Dreams

#156: How to Build Incredible Habits – with James Clear

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James Clear Afford Anything PodcastJames Clear wanted to start flossing, but he never managed to follow through. Despite his best intentions, his dental floss sat unused in a bathroom drawer.

Fortunately, James had learned a thing or two about human behavior and habit formation. As a self-improvement writer, he’d spent hours pouring over scientific data about behavior changes. He decided to apply a few of these concepts to his own quest.

First, he placed the floss on the bathroom counter, rather than tucking it inside a drawer. He made the floss visible.
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#155: Ask Paula & Joe – How Can I Send My Four Children to College?

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Paula Pant Ask Paula How can I afford to send four kids to collegeHow can a schoolteacher dad and stay-at-home mom send their four kids to college? Where should a 23-year-old keep the savings that she’s accumulating to buy a home by the time she’s 27 or 28?

What should a listener know about retirement planning if he has a pension? And should a listener rollover his 401k from my his former employer?

Former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I tackle these four questions in this week’s episode. Here are the details.

Miguel asks:
When I hear friends and coworkers talking about college tuition for their kids, all I can think about is how in the world am I going to send my four kids to college? I think I have a plan – I’d love to hear your opinion.

From what I hear, college can be between $20,000 to $50,000 per year.
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#154: You’ll Need at Least $10 Million to Retire Early, says Suze Orman

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Want to retire early? You’ll need at least $5 million, more likely $10 million, says famous financial personality Suze Orman.

I should know. She said that to me, directly, on this podcast.

I asked Suze for her opinion about a frugal, flexible person who wants to retire early with a $2 million portfolio. She warned that retiring would be a massive mistake.

“Two million dollars is nothing,” Suze said. “It’s nothing. It’s pennies in today’s world, to tell you the truth.”

Wait, what?
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#153: Why I Hate the FIRE Movement, says Suze Orman

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Suze Orman Afford Anything Podcast I Hate the FIRE MovementA 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.

“Duh,” I replied.

Suze 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 read her latest book in preparation for the interview, but I felt at a loss for what to ask her. So I turned to my audience, knowing that many of the people who read my blog and listen to my podcast are also Suze fans.
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#152: How to Make Better Decisions — with Dr. Brian Portnoy

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Dr. Brian PortnoyDr. Brian Portnoy is an expert in making decisions.

He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, he’s a Chartered Financial Analyst, and he’s the Director of Investment Education at Virtus Investment Partners.

Dr. Portnoy joins me on the podcast to discuss how to make smarter decisions — not only about investments, but also generally in life. How do we sharpen our decision-making skills? How do we improve our critical thinking processes?

Here are some of the takeaways from our conversation.

1. Beware of resulting.
Great results can come from poorly-planned decisions. And wise decisions can lead to good results on occasion.

Don’t judge a decision based on its results; judge a decision based on the soundness of the thinking process through which you made that choice.

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#151: Ask Paula – “I Feel Like I Don’t Deserve My Success. What Should I Do?”

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Ask Paula Pant Afford Anything Episode 104We’re back with another “Ask Paula” episode of the show! As usual, my friend and former financial advisor, Joe Saul-Sehy joins me in answering your questions!

Let’s dive right in.

Hailey:
I just graduated from college with a major in Computer Science and minor in Graphic Design. The whole time – it was rough. I come from a family that didn’t have a lot to give me going into this journey of getting a college degree. So I did it basically on my own – they gave me things here and there – but college is expensive. I wound up getting scholarships and taking on student loans to get through. It was a lot of hard work. Some days, I wanted to quit. I felt like I was never ever going to see the benefits of what I was doing.

Well, I am now at a point in my life where I was able to secure a job (I started a week after graduation) making $80k a year. Obviously, this is great – this is what you’re supposed to do when you graduate with a Comp Sci degree. But for some reason, I don’t know if it’s guilt or shame, but I feel bad watching my friends and family struggle, while I don’t have those struggles anymore. I find myself asking if I deserve this – to have a nice apartment, to have nice things. Inherently I know I deserve it because I worked so hard, but I don’t know …

My question is – do you have any advice for me to help me understand what it is I’m feeling? How I can feel better about it?

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#150: How I Reached Financial Independence through Real Estate – with Chad Carson

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Chad Carson - Afford Anything PodcastChad Carson’s friends called him a “nerdjock.”

When former college football linebacker Chad Carson graduated from Clemson University, he decided to start a business. But he didn’t have any money.

He was a 235-pound athlete who attended college on a football scholarship. He graduated debt-free with $1,000 in savings from various odd jobs. He wanted to become an entrepreneur, and he knew he was starting from zero.

As Chad viewed it, starting from zero meant he had nothing to lose.

He started jogging around local neighborhoods near the university. Whenever he noticed a property in disrepair, he’d ask if it was for sale.

If he noticed a ‘For Sale by Owner’ sign in the yard, for example, he’d dial the number.

If he noticed a home with an overgrown lawn and no curtains in the windows, he’d leave a note on the door, or he’d knock on the neighbor’s doors to get the owner’s phone number.

By doing this, Chad started a real estate wholesaling business. He’d find off-market properties, enter into a sales contract with the owner, and then ‘flip’ the contract to an investor. He earned around $5,000 for each deal.

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#149: Tell me about something that scared you — from Camp FI

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Welcome to the September 2018 First Friday bonus episode!

We recorded this episode at Camp FI, which stands for Camp Financial Independence. It’s a gathering of people who are pursuing financial independence; we spend a few days eating, drinking, and having late-night poolside conversations about money. There are several Camp FI’s throughout the year; I recorded this bonus episode at the Camp FI at Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California in early August.

I invited several of the people at Camp FI to come to the microphone and share one thing: “Tell me a story about something you did that scared you.”

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#148: Ask Paula – Should I Sell My House and Invest the Equity?

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Welcome to a special episode of Ask Paula!

Today I’m answering questions about real estate investing, and I’ve brought a special guest on the show to join me.

His name is Lucas Hall, and he’s a landlord with 5 properties in three locations (D.C., Virginia and Colorado). He’s also the founder of Landlordology and head of investor relations with Cozy. We met about five or six years ago through blogging about rental properties, and I invited him on the show today to answer questions alongside me.

Anonymous asks:

If you have significant equity in a home due to market appreciation, what’s the best way to leverage the value of this equity? Should you sell? Refinance? Something else?

Here’s a quick snapshot of the answer:

You have three options: sell, cash-out refinance, or take out a HELOC.

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#147: How to Believe Your Time is Abundant, with Laura Vanderkam

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Which of the following two attitudes describes you?

  • “I’m crunched for time.” — or —
  • “I have all the time in the world.”

I’m guessing your answer is the first, rather than the second. But what if you could feel like your time is expansive and abundant, without drastic changes to your schedule?

Most of us want to feel “off the clock,” enjoying an existence in which we can linger, without feeling pressure from the demands and stresses on our schedules. According to Laura Vanderkam, even the busiest, most-scheduled people can achieve this feeling. We can live off-the-clock.

Laura is a time management expert, but her latest book isn’t about management in the traditional sense of the word. Rather, it focuses on time perception — getting into the headspace of believing time is abundant, regardless of the demands imposed upon it.

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