Ask Paula: How To Prepare for A Layoff

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31:21Our next question comes from an anonymous caller. You know what that means, Paula? Every time we have an anonymous caller on the show, if you're new to the Afford Anything podcast, we have been naming after a journalist this year because Paula is currently at Columbia in this special journalism program. And we're celebrating journalists. So, Paula, who do you got? A few weeks ago on this show, I mentioned a fantastic BBC documentary about the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, and his role in the 2002 riots in Gujarat. That documentary has been incredibly censored to such an extent that people trade around the link to it like you're watching something pornographic, practically.

32:16Wow. I mean, yeah, exactly. I got a BBC documentary. Yeah, exactly. When the documentary came out, among other things, the Modi government decided to raid the BBC offices in New Delhi, Mumbai. Wow. Wow. Yeah. And so the International Press Institute, among other organizations, press organizations all around the world, of course, condemned that crackdown on free speech. I am going to name this anonymous caller after the director of advocacy at the International Press Institute. Her name is Amy, and she is symbolic of the many, many people around the world who are trying to simply stop the censorship of a documentary that was produced by, of all entities, the BBC.

33:10I mean, this is not a fringe group. This is such a mainstream channel. Right, yeah. So this next caller will be Amy. dear paul and joe i really enjoy your podcast even though i'm not part of fire or really interested in investment or real estate but it's really fun i have a question that i've not heard you discuss really and that's budgeting as a self-employed artist i'm an author actress playwright audiobook narrator professional writer mentor and recently i've added screenwriting to my long list i'm 54 and i've never had what you might call a traditional or even a full-time job My late husband was a musician, so there's never been a real regular paycheck in my household.

33:50That said, I own my house, free and clear, in a desirable vacation spot, but it is rural, so the taxes are reasonably low, which leaves me with just insurance, maintenance, and repairs, but so far nothing too big, although it will need a roof in the next couple of years. my entirement fund is negligible but I am putting stuff in it because I live in Canada I will have old age pension guaranteed income supplement plus a little bit of social security because I'm a dual citizen I'm not really worried about retirement because I plan to just keep working and writing and creating my whole life has been paycheck to paycheck and sometimes that can be 250 bucks and sometimes it can be$25 ,000.

34:31And I just don't really know. The problem is, is that when a paycheck comes in, I've been living off my line of credit, which is technically against my own savings. And when a paycheck comes in, I use it all and pay it off on the line of credit and start the cycle over. And so I'm always either at zero debt or in debt against my savings, but I never have any cash free and clear. So I was thinking of taking retirement and taxes and tithing off the top and then trying to live off the cash and make regular payments on the debt. But what do I do when, you know, the years where I just don't have very much income?

35:08Some years I have plenty and some years I don't. I know that increasing my income is a good idea and I'm working on that. I've cleared my line of credit twice since 2018 through income and then the cycle just starts over again. But right now I'm in real debt. And yeah, in addition to my using most of my savings, I have some credit card debt, I have some things I could cash out like gold and vintage instruments. And my accountant suggests I should. My living expenses are pretty low, I could get by$1 ,500 would be more comfortable on 2000. But I just don't know, like, how to organize this. What's the best thing to do with the money when I do get it?

35:53And I feel like I just need a plan. Thank you so much. Amy, thank you so much for the call. And Paula, I really feel for Amy because you can hear the tension. You can hear the frustration in Amy's voice. And it just reminds me why you and I do the show, right? If we can help her allay some of that. The big issue with a lot of people, and I guess I'll start here because there's 40 places to start, but if we're looking for foundational things that will help Amy alleviate stress, one of the best ones for people who have inconsistent income streams is to try to change that. Now, she's not going to change it by the way she works.

36:38We don't want to change Amy's vocation. Don't want to change the way that she makes money because she clearly likes it. She said she likes it so much, Paula, she's going to do it forever, right? So we definitely don't want to do that. But a lot of people who have inconsistent income, they live paycheck to paycheck because they don't know when the next paycheck is going to come. And so there's this boom bust lifestyle that I've found people over the years have lived. It's ramen noodle, ramen noodle. I get a huge paycheck, steak dinner, and I buy a big screen TV, ramen noodle, ramen noodle. So instead of that, if we can find a middle ground, that's where we want to start.

37:19So here, Amy, is a strategy that's worked for a lot of people. When you get paid your first larger than normal amount of money for the very first time, put that in an account that is not going to be your main checking account, but a separate account. This account is going to be your holding tank account as the business owner of Amy. And what we're going to do is we're going to use, you know, Paula, earlier you were talking about your divorce and divorce can be horrible, but this is a divorce that's great. We're going to divorce your paychecks coming in from your clients with the amount of money you give to yourself.

38:02We want to take those two actions and make them separate. That's the first thing. The way that we do that is we're going to take a number that you know you're going to be able to sustain until the next big paycheck, or there's a high probability you're going to be able to sustain that then in whatever timeframe works best for you and your budget, weekly, biweekly, monthly, semi-monthly, whatever, create a paycheck where you're going to go to this other account and grab the same exact amount of money every week or every two weeks or every month, whatever it might be. And you're going to create a paycheck now that is the same.

38:39And that Amy, that single thing alone is going to change everything for you because where you couldn't budget before, now you will be able to budget. You'll also won't feel that, that hunger paying that makes you, when you get a big paycheck, go out and spend it. And I'm not even saying that you're spending money, um, uh, on, on stake stakes and big screens are metaphors. Yes. Right. They're not meant to be taken literally. Yeah. Right. Not that you're doing anything dumb with your money. It's just, I've worked with plenty of people and I have no idea how it works. It just works. If you turn budget every week.

39:15And now we can do things like you can take your grocery bill, you know, the same amount of groceries you can buy every week. You can now set that budget to be the same. You can set the budget amount you send to your credit cards to be the same. You can make it be this so you can have a payoff strategy for your credit cards. You can plan out vacations. You can plan out all this stuff that's so difficult when it's this boom bust lifestyle. I think Paula, that one move is going to solve a lot It won't solve them all, but I think that's a good place to start. Right. Because with that move, Amy, what you're doing is you're essentially mimicking the experience of having a regular, stable, steady paycheck.

39:54You're creating a system in which your business, and you don't worry about like it doesn't have to be formal or fancy, but conceptually, your business earns sporadic volatile income. but you, Amy, the individual, Amy, the employee of that business, so to speak, you earn a steady paycheck. Maybe it's$350 a week or$400 a week. Start with that. And then you know that I, Amy, regardless of what my business does, I, Amy, make$400 every week. And that's what I'm budgeting from. It's pretty exciting. And when money then accumulates in that account, give yourself maybe two dates a year, four dates a year, whatever amount you want, whatever timeframe you want, and pay yourself a bonus if there's extra money.

40:50And what's funny is a lot of people that I used to work with when I was a planner, Paula, and they'd have inconsistent income, they would get so excited about the boss giving them a bonus and the boss is them, right? Right. But it's so empowering. It changes a lot. So that's an accidental emergency fund that we build up then. But then take some of that money you're budgeting and build a real emergency fund. That's going to be step number two. Emergency funds in some ways stink because your money is in a savings account that's earning less than inflation, what inflation is. So it loses a little bit of earning power, but you know that if things go wrong and you actually go over that budget, that you just created this amount of money you're paying yourself, that you have this well of money that will get you through those tough times.

41:41And then you can also take advantage of some opportunities if they come around. I don't like it to just be for emergencies. I like, hey, if there's something I want to do, I'm going to dip in there and I'm going to grab some of that money and I'm going to do it. If there's a great deal and it's something that really fills me full of joy, I am going to spend my money on that. And I know some people feel guilty about that, but that's what that money truly is for, which is why I prefer the term cash reserve, but that's splitting hairs. But I would do that second, Paula. That's the second thing. The third thing that I would do is I would begin analyzing the business of the art that you make, the things that you do, and see if there are opportunities to increase your income.

42:26Most people look at ways to cut. It sounds like, Amy, you've found 50 million ways to cut. I believe just from your voice, you have cut so much. You're asking your accountant about other ways you can make money. I would not go selling assets, by the way. It sounds like you're at the point where you're going to start selling off stuff. And don't get me wrong. I agree, Paul. I saw a Gary Vee video recently saying, there's enough stuff in the average person's home or you can get by for a couple months. right? You can just put that stuff on eBay and resell it and you can make some money. So yes, if it's vintage instruments that you don't want anymore, things that are just sitting in a closet that nobody's ever looking at, you're not looking at, then go sell it.

43:06But as an example, you mentioned the gold. Well, gold's an asset that goes up in value. Not my favorite asset to accumulate, but if you sell gold, you're mortgaging your future for today. And I don't love that. I would highly analyze finding other income streams. The study after study shows that there often is money available out there. There are employers that will pay you more. There's clients that will pay you more. There's opportunities to do your craft in a different way that will pay you more. So I think looking at income streams, Paula, is the third thing I do. Yeah, that was what struck me because what I heard in Amy's question were a few different problems that I think should be distinguished from one another.

43:51She started the voicemail by saying that inconsistent income was an issue. And Joe, I think you've done a great job of solving that with the structure of mimicking the experience of getting a regular paycheck. But it also strikes me, you know, she said that her expenses can be as low as$1 ,500 a month, $2 ,000 a month would be more comfortable. Given that, it struck me that inconsistent income would not be an issue if she was living on$2 ,000 and she was inconsistently earning somewhere between$4 ,000 to$6 ,000 a month after taxes, right? Right. The gap between what she earns and what she spends, that fundamentally is the issue.

44:35And the fact that the income is also inconsistent exacerbates that issue, but the issue itself is not the inconsistency. I mean, to use a more extreme example, Amy, if you were making somewhere between$10 ,000 to$20 ,000 every month and living on$2 ,000 a month, again, the inconsistency of I don't know if I'm going to make$10 ,000 this month or$20 ,000 this month, not a problem. And so that goes to highlight that the gap between what she spends and what she earns needs to widen. And there are only two ways to widen that gap, either earn more or spend less. And Amy, given the fact that you're already living on as little as$1 ,500 a month, you really can't frugal down any further.

45:20The fact that you can live on that little shows me that you likely don't have a spending problem. You likely have an income problem. So I think the one-two punch of leaning into your most profitable forms of art. You mentioned you do a lot of different things. I assume that within this basket of things that you do, some are more profitable than others. So leaning into the ones that pay more, at least temporarily, combined with Joe's strategy of mimicking the experience of having a regular paycheck. And I think, Amy, I think it should start as a weekly paycheck. When you're first learning how to budget off of a stable, steady paycheck, I think a weekly budget is a very good one to give yourself because it gives you rapid feedback.

46:24If you go over budget this week, you can very rapidly see what's happened and adjust course. Can we talk about looking at her income streams, the ones that pay more? And you said, at least temporarily do the ones that pay more? Yeah. So I think evaluating which work she does brings in the most money is a phenomenal exercise. And a lot of business owners don't know that. In fact, I remember the first time, Paula, when I was a fairly new business owner, somebody said, how much money do you need to make every day to keep the lights on. And I went, oh, I have no idea. That was aha number one. Then aha number two was of these different processes I do, which one brings in the most in the least amount of time?

47:10Where's the low hanging fruit? You mean which most and least amount of money for your time? No, which one in the least amount of time? So which one can I do quickest to bring in money now? Right? Got it. So least amount of work brings in the most money, which are great. But I would also say that just, especially if Amy's creative, I think focusing a ton on that single task is probably going to be incredibly monotonous and may take the joy out of something that she wants to do forever and make it so that she doesn't want to do forever. So what I would do, Paula, is only modify it slightly. I would make sure that there is enough of the high-paying gigs to finance the time that you're going to spend doing the low paying gigs that may give you an equal amount of joy so that you're able to sustain the pace.

48:02Because I see this as a marathon, right? And if it's a marathon and she creates a pace, she might be able to temporarily do this and have some short-term pain for long-term gain, but she might be able to long-term have both, where she knows that X pays so much money. So I'll give you an example, a Hollywood example, since she talks about doing acting. Actors will do a studio movie and then they'll go do Broadway and they'll do a little tiny movie that is poorly funded. And that Broadway experience and the tiny movie give them joy. And they get a fair amount of joy from doing the big Hollywood blockbuster, but not quite as much.

48:41It's much more of a corporate gig. But that corporate gig buys them the time the rest of the month, the rest of the year, the rest of whatever amount of time to do those projects that give them that along the way. So it's almost like she's getting her sabbaticals of doing the cool stuff. You know, every third gig, she's doing the cool thing, but she's bringing in enough with the corporate gigs that it subsidizes that and she can continue that pace for a good long time. Right. You know, Amy, the other red flags that I hear, the things that worry me, one is that we were pretty deep into your voicemail before you mentioned the credit card debt.

49:19In fact, you mentioned the line of credit first before you mentioned the credit card, and the credit card necessarily is going to have a much higher interest rate and greater danger overall. So I'd like to see you, within the context of the budget that you're going to make for yourself when you mimic the experience of having a regular weekly paycheck, I'd like to see you pay off that credit card and then chop it up. Because I think that cutting yourself off from the temptation to reach for it is a good move. And eventually, I'd like to see you cut yourself off from that line of credit as well.

50:01That's what I had to do. When I had my money issues in the 90s, I had to live an all-cash lifestyle. Yeah. Yeah, once you remove the option, your mind figures out a way to make it work. I'd like to see you just remove those options from yourself. This will be interesting on this show, especially because do you know where the inspiration that I had came from for that? I am not a fan of a lot of things that this person says, but I absolutely love this from their first book. Susie Orman, in her first book, talks about organizing the dollar bills inside of your wallet because too many people, and this was me, I didn't have enough respect for a dollar and what it took to earn a dollar, the work it took to earn a dollar and how I needed to respect that and how I spent that dollar.

50:52Like this, you know, Vicki Robin thing of trading time for money. Fine. But when Susie talked about organizing your money and just spending time with it and going, you know what? I'm kissing this money goodbye forever. On what? On what? And when I did that exercise, it led me to, I need more respect for my cash. I could not out earn my bad spending habits. I couldn't do it. And I'm not saying Amy has bad spending habits. I did. I had horrible spending habits. So I couldn't out earn them. I needed more respect. So I cut myself off from credit. I got a healthy respect for money. I lived without any credit or credit cards for six years, maybe.

51:34And then I went back. And when I went back, now it was with a much, much different approach. And then pay off the credit card in full, get the maximum points that I can get, get myself as much free stuff, use the hell out of these people that abused me back when I didn't understand money. Abuse them back so that I can claw back some of this money they took from me. So I love the idea, regardless though, of going all cash. Right. Right. In fact, if I can request a cameo from our producer, Steve. Steve, you have lived debt-free, without a credit card, without any loans at all. For how long has it been now?

52:16Hey, everybody. It's Steve, that guy who does stuff for Paula. Paula, that's right. Cut up the credit cards in 2008. Have no credit since then. Paid off the mortgage in 2015. My wife quit her toxic job in 2021. and up until last month was basically retired and now is working a dream job three minutes from our house at the local library. She loves it. And I love what I do. So, hey, no complaints. Living a cash-free lifestyle, great for us. Highly recommend it. So there's a lot to be said for removing the option because once you don't have a credit card, once you don't have a line of credit, once those choices are just not available, we figure it out.

53:00Final thing that I'll say is I love that you want to work forever, but most retirements are involuntary. Most people are forced to retire earlier than they would prefer to because of a health condition. So I absolutely love the ethos of wanting to work into your 70s, your 80s, your 90s. I share the same goal. My hope and prayer is that I remain healthy enough to work when I am 105 and that I love the work that I do and want to do that and do it purely out of the fact that my work brings me joy. But retirement funds are a form of self-insurance against the possibility that you might not be able to work even if you want to.

53:57And I know you have dual citizenship and can get Social Security from the U.S. and a pension from Canada. But I would sit down and crunch through those numbers and add a little bit more of a defensive buffer to be sure that you have enough. Because you're still young, 54, super young. You have time on your side right now that you won't have when you're 84. So take care of your 84-year-old self. Well, thank you, Amy, for that question. Best of luck on the new budget, the debt payoff, and the joy of living your calling.

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57:41Our final question today comes from Stacey. Hi, Paula. Thanks for taking my call. Let me share a little bit about my situation and my question. I'm a senior executive assistant in tech based in the Bay Area, California. My previous company had an IPO back in September 2021 at the height of the market, and I had exercised my shares far in advance because I knew the company had the potential to go public. I only exercised the stock at about$1.50 a share back then. At one point, it had gone all the way up to$70, and as of today, it's now at a measly$12 a share. I was lucky enough to have sold about$70 ,000 worth of stock back in December 2021 to pay off all of our credit card debt.

58:28I have no idea if or when the stock price will go back up to where it was a year ago. However, I only spent about$15 ,000 total exercising all of my shares, so I figure I'm still winning even if I sell at this point. I now have 11 ,000 shares, 9 ,000 of which I could sell anytime, 2 ,000 shares which I need to wait another six months until I could sell for tax purposes. I have wanted to buy a short-term rental for the longest time. I know I'd be great at this because it's something I'm super passionate about. I have a hospitality background, and out of all the real estate routes, this is the most intriguing to me.

59:08My question is, do you think it's a good idea to sell my shares to put a down payment on a short-term rental? My idea is that I could sell the 9 ,000 shares and hold on to the other 2 ,000 shares indefinitely until maybe someday the stock price does go back up. I'm really eager to get started with real estate investing, and I know this is a good time for people to buy that are not scared to invest during this time. Some other facts about me. I'm married. I make$164 ,000 a year at my current company, and my husband makes$125 ,000 annually. We have zero debt. We max out our 401ks. We have about$16 ,000 in single stocks like Apple and Google that we dollar cost average, and we own our own home with a comfortable mortgage.

59:53I do have stock options at my current company, so the hope is that maybe I'll get another small windfall in a few years. I'm scared I'll have major regret selling most of my shares if the stock price does go back up a huge amount. But I also know that it's out of my control. So I just wanted to ask my question to someone outside of our personal circle for a sanity check. Thanks for all that you do, Paula. I look forward to hearing from you. Stacey, thank you for that question. I love, A, your enthusiasm, and B, that you have a background in hospitality. That line jumped out at me because many people, when they enter the short-term rental market, don't have the hospitality background, so they don't have a good sense of what they're getting into.

1:00:39I'm saying this for the sake of everyone who's listening. I've seen many people get into the short-term rental market thinking that it will be analogous to having a rental property, when, in fact, as you know, it's far more analogous to the hospitality sector. So the fact that you know that, the fact that you have that background, the fact that you're so enthusiastic about it, I love it. And I agree, this is such a good time to acquire houses. Remember in 2020 when listings were flying off the market, a home would get listed and within 15 minutes, it would be tied up, right? Back then, sure, interest rates were low, but the moment a property hit the MLS, it would instantly go into a bidding war.

1:01:30Realistically, the bidding war started before the property hit the MLS as a pocket listing. And so you'd have these homes that sell within a day of getting listed at 30, 40, 50 grand higher than the asking price, you know, when money was practically free, when the inflation-adjusted cost of capital was essentially zero, assets were getting leveraged up and people had license to speculate. And now that money costs money, now that money is expensive to obtain, there's less incentive for speculation, There's less incentive or fuel for an asset bubble. One of my professors calls it asset inflation.

1:02:13She says we had asset inflation before we had cost of living inflation. There's less fuel for that. And there's more of a drive for true fundamental long-term investing. I love your enthusiasm for short-term rentals. And I love that you recognize that this is a very good time to buy real estate. Let's pause for a second before we go into the next step, Paula, on decision making. Because I think Stacey brings up a really important point, which is whenever we make a decision or we fear making a decision because history is going to prove that we made the wrong decision. And then she's going to sell these shares of this company and the stock price is going to go up.

1:02:58And I think all of us have had this happen to us. And you wonder, so how do I make the optimal decision? And after tons of reading and interviews and speaking with smart people in the financial planning industry, the approach that I have adopted and that I think served my clients really well was, let's go into this as if we made the wrong decision. Regret minimization. Absolutely. Whichever decision we make, we're going to make the wrong one. And how does that make us feel that we made the wrong one? And I will go back and forth between both of these and say, if this was the wrong one or if this was the wrong one, which gives us the least regret and with the most upside.

1:03:43And my feeling is the stock market in a one year period of time is very close to 50-50. Now, over long periods of time, it's closer to 70-30 up, like over a 10 year time frame. And even more so 70-30 if we look at 20, 30, 40 years that we get much more consistency. But over the short run, it is a lot less consistent. So I think it is a safer bet to take that money out now and do the things she's excited about, especially since she still gets to leave some money there. I think the fact that she has to leave some money there for at least another six months gives her this mitigation of this risk that she's going to lose out on upside because she's still going to own a little bit of this position.

1:04:26She's still going to share in the upside, just not as much. and frankly by doing this Paula she has more upside which is that she is going to be diversifying her positions which I also like instead of having all this money in one risk now she's taking two different risks with that so I think we have to factor in all the other risks I believe we get fixated so much on one risk we don't back up and think about all the other risk let's give her another one real estate she was thinking about buying continues to go up in price all the time If she doesn't buy it today, there is also the risk that the real estate she was going to buy goes up faster than the stock she was going to use to buy it with.

1:05:08And now even if the stock goes up, it goes up less than the real estate and she loses out that way. So she ends up having less money to put down on it. For me, that's what I think. But I would, Stacey, go through this, which one makes me feel less bad, assuming that I made the wrong decision. You know, the other thing, Stacey, that what we don't know is how much that short-term rental property is going to cost and therefore how much money you're going to need for a down payment and closing costs as well as any upfront repairs that you might need to make. We don't know what those numbers are. And so it's possible that you might be able to take a split approach.

1:05:50You have 11 ,000 shares outstanding. you're eligible to sell 9 ,000 of those right now, but that doesn't mean you have to sell all 9 ,000. If the property that you end up buying requires only selling maybe 5 ,000 or 6 ,000 shares, then essentially you can sell half of your holdings, hold the other half, and that way you get both. I was going to say you get to have your cake and eat it too, but that expression never made any sense. If you have your cake, you might as well eat it. Yeah, exactly. I mean, come on. I'm not going to sit here on the cake. Right. Exactly. Yeah. What else would you do with cake?

1:06:26Obviously, you have cake. You're going to eat it. Anyway, so. If only there were a device where we could look up what that really means. Wouldn't that be cool? Yes. It's called a fork. And I use it to transport cake into my mouth. That's the device. So, Stacey, you, depending on the cost of real estate, might not have to choose. You might be able to split the difference, hedge your bets, keep some company stock, and also get this property. I'm also wondering if there might be other solutions. She listed off her assets in her income stream. With income streams as nice as she and her husband have, I wonder if there's a way to maybe cash flow, bankroll some of this, build up a fund to help buy it over a short amount of time.

1:07:15Like, is there another answer outside of this single asset that she's looking at that she's worried about maybe giving up on? Right. I was thinking that as well, because they have a combined income of$289 ,000. They have no debt other than a very reasonable mortgage on their primary residence. Their credit card debt is totally paid off. They max out their 401ks. So it seems as though, if not all, then perhaps some of that down payment might be able to come from old-fashioned savings, especially now that their credit card is paid off. And Stacey, if you know yourself better than anyone, so this is an introspective question, but noticing that your credit card debt was$70 ,000, which is quite high, is there any risk that you might go back into credit card debt again?

1:08:12This is a behavioral question. Maintenance is harder than achieving a specific goal. For example, reaching a certain body weight or reaching a certain fat muscle composition is tough, but maintaining that for the long term is much harder. And similarly, paying off all your credit card debt, becoming debt free, that's tough, but maintaining that forever, much harder. So this is a know thyself question because I don't know what the source of your previous credit card debt was. Maybe you had a big medical emergency. That was a one-time thing. But if you think that there is a risk of it, then you might want to heed the same advice that we gave to Amy and live card-free for a little while.

1:09:06because the situation that I don't want to see you in, like right now, we're talking about choosing between two really good options, keeping your company stock, which has upside potential, or getting a short-term rental property, which you're really excited about. So we're talking about choosing between two assets. And anytime we're talking about which asset should I hold, it's a win either way. The question fundamentally is which is more of a win? Magnitude, yeah. Yeah, exactly. By contrast, you mentioned that you sold a bunch of stock in December 2021 to pay off credit card debt. The situation that I don't want to see you in is that you end up needing to do that again.

1:09:55If you do sell this company stock, trade an asset for another asset. Don't trade an asset to offset a future liability that you don't have yet. And the way to make sure that that happens is to protect yourself from the risk of that liability forming, which is to say, get rid of the credit card. Stacey, I was thinking about what great advice Paula just gave you, and that's much better advice than you would have gotten from Max Tailwagger right there. Way, well, maybe marginally better. I don't know. I mean, Max Tailwagger, I bet Max Tailwagger is a pretty good financial planner. Yes. He's got very much a demeanor about him.

1:10:38It's excited and happy to see you. Fun to be around. He's got that bedside manner, Paula. What a good advisor needs. Thanks for throwing me a bone joke. Oh, but can we get a... We've already done that sound in this episode. We need a new sound. 18 times. Well, I only have a few and this one doesn't. Oh, that was the sound that opened the episode. It's so sad. We need different sounds throughout. We do. Yeah, yeah. I think repeating a sound in an episode is just boring. We need a fresh sound effect every time. Yes. We got to pretend we're a high budget podcast. Well, thanks for playing fetch with me, Paula.

1:11:23Anytime. I'll jump through hoops.

1:11:28Joe, speaking of jumping through hoops, where can people find you and the three-ring circus that you put on every week? Oh, when I'm trying to have fun, I hang out here with Paula. And when I can't, I do my own circus, to your point, at the Stacking Benjamins show over Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Really a one-on-one guide to podcasts, to the headlines, ways to think about your money. And then we get the deeper conversations over here and afford anything. Absolutely. Yeah, Stacking Benjamins is fun and light. And in approximately 52 days, I will be back on it. Which we're so looking forward to.

1:12:06I detect a note of sarcasm, but I'll let it go. I did not mean that. I got halfway through that. I'm like, this doesn't sound as enthusiastic as I totally mean for it to sound. That's not good. Yes. Yes. We wholeheartedly welcome you with open arms. Well, thank you, Joe, for being part of this show. and thanks to all of you for being part of the Afford Anything community. We mentioned a bunch of resources during this episode. We talked about our episode with Michael Kitsis, our episode with Sophia Berra. We talked about... Investopedia list. Yes, and the Forbes article about Max Tailwagger. And you can find links to all of those by subscribing to our show notes.

1:12:48It's free. Sign up at affordanything.com slash show notes. Thanks again for tuning in. You can find me on Instagram at Paula Pant, P-A-U-L-A, P-A-N-T. Make sure that you hit subscribe in your favorite podcast playing app. Share this episode with a friend or a family member. And please leave us a review. I want to give a shout out to a couple recent reviewers. Farmer Kisha left us a five star, Joe. We got a five star. Ta-ding. That says, Afford Anything's approach to finance highlights the importance of a balanced life. The podcast is more than a finance podcast and a welcome departure from the old financial model of suffering on our way to fire.

1:13:30Aw, thank you. Thank you. I'm glad you hear that. And Kevbot said, very entertaining and educational podcast. Afford anything is amazing. Thank you. Oh, Joe, and you're in this one. What? Terry 22 says Paula, along with Joe on the Q &A episodes, provides entertainment while giving accurate and useful financial and life info. Highly recommend. This is not a boring money show. Fantastic. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Thank you for including me. The true star of the show, Joe. Absolutely. Yeah, right. Sure. You are. You are. You are. You hold it together for us. Stop. Keep going. Stop. Keep going. Thank you to everyone who's left us a review.

1:14:13If you haven't done so yet, please do so in your favorite podcast playing app. Thank you so much. This is the Afford Anything Podcast. I'm Paula Pant. I'm Joe Salcihai. And we will catch you in the next episode.

1:14:29Here is an important disclaimer. There's a distinction between financial media and financial advice. Financial media includes everything that you read on the internet, hear on a podcast, see on social media that relates to finance. All of this is financial media. That includes the Afford Anything podcast, this podcast, as well as everything Afford Anything produces. And financial media is not a regulated industry. There are no licensure requirements. There are no mandatory credentials. There's no oversight board or review board. The financial media, including this show, is fundamentally part of the media.

1:15:07And the media is never a substitute for professional advice. That means anytime you make a financial decision or a tax decision or a business decision, anytime you make any type of decision, you should be consulting with licensed credential experts, including but not limited to attorneys, tax professionals, certified financial planners, or certified financial advisors. Always, always, always consult with them before you make any decision. Never use anything in the financial media, and that includes this show, And that includes everything that I say and do. Never use the financial media as a substitute for actual professional advice.

1:15:51All right. There's your disclaimer. Have a great day.

1:15:59Stacey, thank you for the question. And Paula, before you get too far, I don't know about Stacey, but I heard Stacey's mom has got it going on. Oh, no. Oh. Oh, Stacey, I'm sorry for this guy who's on the show with me. I just heard that. It was a song. No idea. Stacey, I'm so sorry. Wow. Why, that her mom is cool? You're sad that Stacey's mom is cool. Stacey sounds cool. Why can't her mom be cool too? Hey, Joe. Yeah. Do you have cotton in your eye? No comment. No comment. Where'd you come from, Joe? Where'd you go? Cotton-eyed Joe. Why do I feel like line dancing all of a sudden? Do you feel like line dancing?

1:16:43No. No? The one I always get is, Hey Joe, where are you going with the gun in your hand? From Jimi Hendrix. I don't know that song. Song about Vietnam. Yeah.