Ask Paula: "Should I Put My Dreams on Hold … and Buy a House Instead?"

28:32How does that model out when I look at it, let's say spending it when I'm 80 years old? I don't know what it's going to happen, but that's probably a good age to look at. Then if that is enough money, I would look at all my other goals and make sure, okay, I'm very comfortable setting this money aside and not using it for something else. If I'm not, maybe then I take part of the money then out of the 529 to use or allocate it toward other goals. And then I do some type of hybrid strategy later, like we talked about on episode 484. Or we had a caller that talked about a life insurance policy that had long-term care inside of it.

29:11Maybe I'd do something like that. I don't know. But what I do know is if you can do this and hopefully you don't use it, and this becomes intergenerational wealth for your family, which is a fabulous place to be. And Joe, I want to go back to something that you said earlier about any time that you are looking at an insurance question, ask yourself about risk management, not about insurance. I just want to elaborate on that for the sake of everyone who's listening. The reason for that is because you want to start not with product, but with strategy. Insurance is a product, but the goal is to manage risk.

29:54And so if the goal is to manage risk, then you start with, what is the strategy that I'm going to use to achieve that goal? Insurance can be a tool. It's a product, so it can be a tool that you use to execute your strategy that helps you reach that goal. But you want to start with first goal, risk management, and then strategy, and then only look at what tools are available. And the reason for that is insurance salespeople are never going to say that, right? Insurance salespeople will have you lead with product. Never lead with product, lead with strategy. So much, so much better, especially in that insurance realm.

30:36You know, Paula, I also want to reiterate something before we get a bunch of emails from people. To be very official, even when I said this, I went, you know, I probably need to explain this more. Medicare does not officially cover any long-term care. Let me tell you the reason why I say that you might get a quarter. My dad, as an example, had to have some rehab after recent surgery, Paula. So he went to a nursing home for that. He had coverage not because of the long-term care issue, but as a rehab, as part of his necessary skilled care. So he did get coverage, but that's the way that's every time I've seen a long-term care situation, it starts off as a rehab.

31:26It starts off as, I mean, nobody just, I don't see people busting down the door going, Hey, you know, I want to get into a long-term care facility. Maybe, maybe it is an Alzheimer's issue, as an example, that could be a reason to go to a nursing home. Maybe you don't have anybody close to you, no relatives close that can help you. So you end up at a nursing home. So there are reasons why Medicare won't cover any of it. Medicaid will cover long-term care stays in a long-term care facility that they approve. So you'll have to ask about Medicaid. Private insurance will probably cover anywhere. You want to look at the stipulations of your policy, but every policy I've seen will cover the place where you want to go.

32:10They'll just limit the amount that they pay. They won't limit the facility as long as they check some boxes for being truly a skilled, accredited place for you to stay. So I just want to work through the definitions there, because we may have Paula, some people in the industry going, nope, Medicare won't pay for that. Totally agree. But going back to the root of Luis's question, the fact that this is now the question on his mind, long-term financial planning is all based on the fact that his wife's side hustle has been so wildly successful that they've been able to pay off all their student loans, pay off their consumer debt, get themselves to a place where they're like, wow, what do we do now?

32:59How do we use more sophisticated strategies to manage our money? That's a question fundamentally that comes from a place of abundance and that abundance comes from having a very, very successful side hustle. So again, Luis, big, big congratulations to you and to your wife for going for it. Well, thank you, Luis, for that question. And by the way, I've been here at Afford Anything. We are planning on rolling out, potentially, if there is interest in it, we're going to be rolling out a Kickstarter to see whether or not people are interested in a course on how to start a side hustle, how to start a business.

33:45we've got the draft page already set up in Kickstarter. We are putting some of the finishing touches on it, but we're going to be looking for the first round of, of beta testers. We're going to be looking for the first round of people who will help shape and guide what that offering will be. So if that's something you're interested in, please sign up for our show notes because we're going to be emailing our email subscribers, people who are subscribed to the show notes. you're going to be the ones who hear about it first. So affordanything.com slash show notes to be the first to hear about this.

34:45many other benefits like free shipping, price match guarantee, and expert support. They also have huge deals on accessories that pair perfectly with your Dell PC and make perfect gifts for everyone on your list. Shop now at dell.com slash deals.

35:04You know, we've all set health goals. Maybe we want to exercise more or eat better or lose weight, but without a plan, they often fade. That's where Prolon comes in. Its five-day fasting mimicking diet gives you a science-backed, structured approach to stay on track and see real results. So Prolon offers an injection-free way to get help to lose weight, get help to burn fat while protecting lean muscle. And in just five days, it can help activate fasting pathways to help support metabolic health and rejuvenate cells, all while letting you enjoy real food. Prolon is a plant-based nutrition program featuring soups, snacks, and beverages designed to help nourish the body while keeping it in a fasting state.

35:45It's been shown to support biological age reduction, metabolic health, fat loss, and energy. And NextGen builds on the original Prolon with 100 % organic soups and teas, a richer taste, and ready-to-eat meals. I have definitely eaten way too much junk food over Thanksgiving, and so I'm actually planning on starting the five-day program because I need a reset. For a limited time, Prolon is offering listeners 15 % off site-wide plus a$40 bonus gift, when you subscribe to their five-day program. Just visit prolonlife.com slash Paula. That's P-R-O-L-O-N-L-I-F-E dot com slash Paula to claim your 15 % discount and your bonus gift.

36:24Prolonlife.com slash Paula. These statements and products have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or condition.

36:46Turning our attention away from side hustles and towards homeownership, our next question comes from a voice that may sound familiar. Here's Steve. Hey, Paula and Joe. It's Steve. Long, long time listener. First time caller, though. My wife and I have plans to move out of state. We know the town and been patiently looking for the house, quote unquote, the house since 2019, but we feel like we're getting really close. To make the math easy for this question, I'm going to use round numbers to create the scenario. The purchase price of the house will be$500 ,000. Our down payment will be$100 ,000, which we already have put in cash on the side.

37:26Our current home is worth about$350 ,000 and there's no mortgage on it. It's paid off. The challenge. My wife doesn't want to sell our current house until we've closed on a new one. By my finger in the air calculations, a mortgage of$400 ,000, the$500 ,000 purchase price minus the down payment of$100 ,000, plus the insurance and property taxes we'll be paying, it's going to cost about$3 ,000 to$3 ,500 a month. I'm estimating on that on like a 30-year at 7.5%, blah, blah, blah. We have additional savings put aside to help us make that payment for a few months, but my income can't support that$3 ,500 monthly payment for too long.

38:02Knowing that our house will probably sell quickly once we do put it on the market, I anticipate we can knock on a huge chunk of that mortgage balance. However, it seems silly to refinance a mortgage that's only been in existence for a few months in order to get the remaining balance down to a manageable payment that we can actually afford. To complicate things even further, I don't borrow money for anything other than a mortgage. And I was actually hoping not to have that either, but here we are. So I will not borrow money from family, credit cards, banks, or even my own retirement accounts. A HELOC maybe, since that's kind of like having a mortgage on our current house.

38:34That just seems kind of silly too. I do have an idea, which I'll share with you next, but my real question is, if you were me, how would you go about this? I was thinking about doing an 80-20 type loan, which many people have done to avoid PMI. The 80 % would be paid off with the sale of our house, and the 20 % mortgage would then become our one and only mortgage that I can work on paying off as fast as I can. I'd love to know if you have a better solution. Signed with love, Steve and Vicki Stewart. P.S. If you answer this question on the show before we sign the contract, I'll buy you both a spindrift.

39:11He outed himself.

39:16I was about to say, hypothetically, if your spouse's name was Vicki, but he beat me to it. Steve, he beat us to it. Man, Steve really is a long time listener. I believe since prior to episode one. That is for people who's heard episode zero. For people that don't know, that's the amazing Steve Stewart who edits both the Afford Anything show and the Stacking Benjamin show. He knows our voices very, very well. I have one thought, Paula, about just Steve's math, which is always great to say to Steve because Steve always has great math, by the way. So to be able to catch Steve in a math assumption makes me a little giddy.

40:00I'm pretty excited that I caught something. All right, let's hear it. Well, he says it's$3 ,000 to$3 ,500 a month, and that's the cash flow. But Paula, that's not the true cost. The true cost, if he does this strategy, is just going to be the interest on the loan during the time that he holds the two houses, right? So he's going to have this one loan and he'll have just the interest payment because the principal payment's going toward the value of the property plus the cost of the insurance and property taxes on the first house. So based on the size properties he's talking about, I think that while the cash flow is going to be$3 ,500, really the cost of Vicky's desire to have more certainty in her life is going to be well shy of$3 ,500.

41:00Interesting. It's interesting you picked up on the monthly payment piece because that was not the piece that was in my head at all. The piece that was in my head. So thinking about the big numbers, right? They want a home that's$500 ,000. They have$100 ,000 in cash sitting, just sitting there waiting to be deployed on a home. Right? So that gap that they need to plug is$400 ,000. Now, the value of their current property is$350 ,000 after, let's say, an 8 % haircut. So they're going to pay 6 % for realtor fees and then maybe another 2 % for a bunch of other miscellaneous. So times 0.08, we'll say$28 ,000 is going to be the haircut, which means that after paying realtor fees and other expenses associated with selling their home, they will probably be left with ballpark around$322 ,000.

41:55Let's just say$320 ,000 for the sake of round numbers, right? $320 ,000 after they sell their home. So here's what I'm imagining. They make an offer on this$500 ,000 home with a home sale contingency, right? So in the contract, they put in a home sale contingency that's, you know, for we'll say 60 days, right? They then, once they're under contract for this home, they now have 60 days to sell their current home, get that$320 ,000, that plus the$100 ,000 that they've got. Now they've got$420 ,000. The amount that they need to borrow is only$80 ,000. Yeah, they'll pay a 7 % interest rate on an$80 ,000 mortgage.

42:43But at that point, with an$80 ,000 mortgage, that monthly payment on that mortgage is going to be so small that they wouldn't even ever have to refi that. They can just shovel money towards that and have that paid off pretty quickly. The very first note that I took when I first heard Steve's question was contingency loan. That was my very first note, Paula. So I'm definitely on board with that. Obviously, the only issue with a contingency loan is that if there's two competing offers, one's contingency, one's not, that makes it a little more difficult if it's a super competitive market. But with markets maybe cooling down a little bit, a contingency won't be looked at as harshly as maybe two years ago.

43:28I mean, home sale contingencies are so common, right? So many people are only able to buy a home if they sell their current home. So I think it's incredibly common for a buyer to receive a contract that has both a financing. He would want to have two contingencies in there. He would want to have both a financing contingency as well as a home sale contingency. The financing contingency would be the financing that he gets from the bank for that$80 ,000 gap. And then the home sale contingency would be, of course, for the sale of his own. Sure. He just wanted to know the downside. And I think that's potentially an Achilles heel.

44:09To your point, I think it is very common. I don't think it's something I'd stay up at night worrying about, but I do know that contingency offers get beat by cash offers. Yeah, that's true. If this were the year 2020 or 2021, remember at that time, the housing market was incredibly competitive and homes that were listed would often get multiple offers on the day that they were listed. People foregoing inspections. Right. Exactly. People were foregoing inspections. People were foregoing all contingencies. If you want quantitative data around this, there's a metric called average days on market.

44:47And in some markets like Boise, Idaho, the average days on market was eight. Eight. It is historically never in the single digits, right? But eight days on market from the time of properties listed to the time that it is under contract. 2020 and 2021, when interest rates were rock bottom low, those were eras in which home buyers flooded into the market and you had a hyper, hyper competitive home buying atmosphere. Today, with interest rates high, we have the opposite issue. Today, home buying is at its lowest point since 1996, which means if you are a buyer, you are in an incredibly strong position today because you're not facing much competition.

45:39So if there was ever a time to be buying a home with multiple contingencies, a financing contingency and a home sale contingency, this is the time to do it because this is the time in which you are not squaring off against a whole bunch of other buyers. Just wait until interest rates drop. Just wait until we are back to, we'll say, 5 % mortgage interest rates. What do you think is going to happen to the home buying market? It's likely going to get a heck of a lot more competitive, which means that you'll be squaring off against very aggressive buyers who are making very aggressive offers. Yeah, definitely a better time to make a contingency offer now than two years ago.

46:24Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's why so time and time again, and I cannot say this enough, when people say, oh, interest rates are high, therefore I don't want to buy a home. Are you freaking kidding me? What do you think is going to happen when interest rates drop? If you are waiting to buy a home while rates are high, guess what? You're waiting along with everybody else. And that means that when interest rates decline, you are competing against all of those other people who have also waited. And if you can afford the house at seven and a half percent or whatever the prevailing interest rate is on the day that you buy it and interest rates drop, you already own the home that you bought less competitively, which meant you were probably able to negotiate a better price tag on the house.

47:15And you've got this cool little tool you can use called a refinance. Yep. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And then the house just becomes more affordable. Right. Exactly. And then you can put that money toward the mortgage, toward other goals, toward whatever you, whatever you want. So if you can afford it at seven and a half. Yeah. Then you'll be sitting pretty when you refi into five. Although Steve, Steve, in your case, I wouldn't bother refining. I would take out the smallest mortgage possible. Get her done. Yeah, exactly. Get your dream house under contract with a financing contingency and a home sale contingency.

47:54Once it's under contract, sell your home. Use the proceeds from the sale of that home plus the$100 ,000 that you've saved to make a gigantic payment. We'll say you're making a$420 ,000 payment on this$500 ,000 property. And then the only mortgage that you need to take out is going to be 80 grand, maybe 100 grand. It's going to be such a small mortgage that you'll never have to think about refying it because why would you? It's such a tiny mortgage that you can just shovel money towards it and pay it off super fast. But yeah, for everyone else who's listening, if you are thinking about waiting until interest rates decline, don't.

48:33Obviously, don't spread yourself too thin. Don't be house poor. All the basic personal finance classic principles, don't go away. Those are always there no matter what. But if you have the means to buy a home and you're thinking to yourself, I'm just going to sit on the sidelines until rates come down. Man, when that happens, likely you are going to be competing with a heck of a lot of other people who also share that same pent up demand. Let's widen that a little bit, Paula. 16 years as a financial planner, 15 years doing this financial media stuff. The phrase I hear more often every year that has persisted, never goes away is timing timing.

49:22And the thing that kicks people's ass over and over and over is timing. Like I hear so many negative stories later about people trying to time. Well, it's not a good time to buy a house. It's not a good time to buy the stock. It's not a good time to buy. It's whenever we try to time, we get in trouble and it doesn't go away. I'll see it on three different pieces on popular websites today. Either the realest good timing isn't good, the crypto timing isn't good. Like some reason, some author is telling you that you need to wait. And this is one area where I think people get in trouble trying to time it out.

50:04And Steve's like, what does that have to do with me? It doesn't, Steve. I'm just going, okay? Well, you know, timing only applies in one context, which is the timing in your personal life. Yes. Yes. But the authors are never talking about that when they're talking about timing. They're always talking about, well, you know what the Fed might do. You know what's going to happen with the election. Prices are at all time highs or whatever the goofy thing is that they're talking about. This idea of timing that you read, you just got to put on the blinders and block that off. Right. Exactly. Timing matters when it comes to your life, your budget, your income, your debts, your competing priorities.

50:48That's where it matters. What matters is, does this fit into your personal budget? But if it does, man, never hesitate based on macro factors. because you know what two asset classes reliably go up over the long term? Stocks and real estate. But Steve, one other suggestion. So let me float an alternative plan, all right? Because the drawback with this home sale contingency idea is that it then forces you to have to sell your home rapidly. And if you're in a position where you have to sell your home rapidly, then there's the risk that you might be forced to accept a lower offer than you otherwise would have been able to get if you had held out for another couple of months.

51:41So let me propose an alternative idea. And that alternative idea is you make an offer on this$500 ,000 home. You put the$100 ,000 that you've saved towards that home. You take out a mortgage for$400 ,000 So you make an offer with only one contingency, which is a financing contingency, right? You finance that$400 ,000 gap, close on the home. Once you have closed on the home, then you sell your current home. And then when you sell that current home and you've got the$320 ,000, which theoretically is going to take only a few months, maybe three months, four months. Like, let's say that rather than having the, you know, if you have a home sale contingency, you've got the time pressure to do this in 60 days-ish, maybe even less, right?

52:29If you don't have a home sale contingency, maybe you take longer and you hold out for the right buyer. So maybe selling your home takes three months or four months or heck, five, six months. Let's go crazy. Let's say it takes six months. Even if it takes six months, once that home is sold, you'll have ballpark$320 ,000 that you would then use to make a gigantic lump sum payment against this mortgage. And then with that huge lump sum payment made, the remaining balance on that mortgage is still going to be so small that again, I don't think there's any point in refi-ing it. On the amortization table, you are way out there, right?

53:14On the amortization table of that For originally$400 ,000 mortgage, you have now paid off so much principal that most of your remaining payments are going to go primarily to principal. So again, the monthly payment is going to be high, but it's almost all going to be principal payment because you've made a big lump sum that's like carried you into the far, far latter half of the amortization chart. What I love about it is that the monthly payment is based on a higher number, which just forces you to get it done. Yeah. Yeah. And most of that's going to go to principal. Yeah. And if you make it that lump sum principal payment, your monthly payment obligation stays high.

54:00It gives you this forced savings, which I dig. So, yep. Yeah. Yeah. Now, the drawback to this second plan, the one that I've just outlined, is that your loan origination fees are going to be higher because you're borrowing a higher amount. So you're going to have to pay another – an extra few thousand there. But the trade-off for paying an extra few thousand in those loan origination fees is that you get the benefit of time to sell your current home in the optimal way rather than being time pressured to sell your current home in between going under contract and waiting for the closing. So actually, now that I'm saying this out loud, I like the second plan better.

54:50no i do now now that i've heard myself say both of those out loud because when i originally heard his question both of those plans popped into my head at once and now that i hear myself speaking the words out loud i do like the second plan better uh certainly there will be higher loan origination fees to pay but i think that that is a a worthwhile fee for having uh the leeway to hold out for the right buyer. What's interesting is I like it better too for me. I've known Steve for a long time. I think he likes it worse because of his aversion to larger amounts of debt. Yeah. And to be clear, I mean, again, both of those plans popped into my head at once.

55:31I think they are both perfectly fine viable plans, but we've outlined what the pros and cons are in terms of the contingencies versus the loan origination, the size of the mortgage that you take out. That's what you wanted, Steve. There it is. Send me my spin drift.

55:51Well, thank you, Steve, for the question and for editing both of our shows for so many years. Steve Stewart is the engine that makes both of our shows possible. The little engine that could often. And the guy that has heard so much, Paula, talk between the pieces that actually make it to the show. Yeah. Yeah. He's got so much on the cutting room floor. Steve's got some dirt. Yeah. That's tip number three. You could just blackmail us with all the dirt that's on the cutting room floor. That'll plug the gap. Oh, make sure you cut that part, Steve. Steve, cut that part. I do not like that. I don't like strategy number three.

56:36Very bad. Do you want him to actually cut that? No.

56:45Well, our final question today comes from Greta. Hi, Paula. My question is whether it makes sense to roll money from an IRA into a 401k. So a bit of background. I have a Vanguard IRA that has both Roth and traditional IRAs at Vanguard. This IRA money is money that I rolled from old 401ks into an IRA. However, I now have a 401k with Fidelity that has good low cost options. And I'm wondering if it would make sense to roll my traditional IRA at Vanguard into my traditional 401k at Fidelity in order to potentially in the future be able to do a backdoor Roth at Vanguard. Currently with my current employer, I can do a mega backdoor Roth at Fidelity.

57:59So I'm not currently needing to do a backdoor Roth at Vanguard, but I'm wondering if in the future, if I wanted to do a backdoor Roth, if it would make sense to get rid of the traditional IRA money there in order to avoid the pro rata rule. Seems like mostly people are rolling 401ks into IRAs, but wondering if in this case, it might ever make sense to roll an IRA back into a 401k, given that my 401k right now has great investment options. Thanks for your advice and everything you do. Greta, thank you so much for that question. And by the way, congratulations on, it sounds like the new 401k is a pretty great place to be.

58:53And Paula, I think I have a short answer for Greta and I have a longer answer for Greta. Which one do you want first? Ooh, okay. Let's start with the short answer. Yeah. The short answer is never, ever, ever do this. Don't swim upstream. and we're done. Unless you want the longer answer. Yes. Let's hear the longer answer. Why is that? The longer answer is because of two things. Number one is management changes at any company often come with cost cutting measures and things that sometimes aren't great for employees. And a great place for a management team that is in cost cutting mode to cut is those favorable conditions on the 401k.

59:39It's expensive to manage a 401k. And while fees have definitely dipped over the past 30 years, have gotten smaller and smaller, that doesn't mean they'll always be that way. That also doesn't mean that you'll always have great options. And if you roll it to a 401k now, you're going to have to roll it back later. Now, the cool thing is, is that 401ks, even with good options, often cap those options so that there's maybe 10 or 20 or 30 so they don't confuse people. And even if they have 30, they don't have the same number that Schwab has or Fidelity has or Vanguard has where you've got everything available.

1:00:17So no matter how great your 401k is, use the IRA as an opportunity to diversify around it. So what I'm talking about is this. Let's say you've got a 401k that's very strong in large companies and small companies, and you want those funds in your portfolio, but you also, let's say, want some international and your 401k has horrible international options, but Vanguard has a good one. Use Vanguard to get that better international exposure that you want. Use the 401k to do the small company and large company funds. And if somebody from the outside looks at your stuff, they'll go, well, this isn't diversified.

1:01:01Why are you all international? But when they look at the entire picture, all the things that you're trying to do, Greta, you've got better diversification because of the fact that you controlled your fees, you gave yourself better upside by having the best of whatever was available. So I always like the two table option with that IRA and whatever your 401k is. And I generally have a mistrust of maybe not this current management team you work for, but that your company will always continue to do the right thing because you often see that the company doesn't do the right thing in the future. The other piece is, even for people that think that they have a very low cost 401k, Often they don't, but you don't see it.

1:01:47Companies are very good at hiding fees, and I'll show you how they do this. If you look at the fund that you have and you go to Morningstar.com, you'll see on Morningstar that when you invest through Vanguard or through Fidelity or through Schwab in a mutual fund, You'll often use an investment that is, let's say it's the Vanguard S &P 500 investment class. They may use a different class of the same fund inside your 401k that has higher expenses that allows the management team to pass the cost of administering the 401k onto you in a hidden way. because the internal cost of the fund is different than what you may look up.

1:02:34Often, I would meet with people and they would go look up their fund. They're like, oh, this is decent. And I would say, no, you don't have that class fund. You have this class. Then we go look up that one. And surprise, surprise, management team has hidden fees behind your back. So maybe that's the case. Maybe not. We're also seeing that shell game happening in fewer companies. We see it more in small companies than in large companies. Small companies are less likely to get pushback on the 401k options and frankly also are more strapped for cash. So on both sides of the equation, small companies are much more likely to pass on the fee than a big company is.

1:03:19And also large companies have economies of scale where investment companies that run 401ks are much more likely to go, oh, you've got a billion dollars. We'd love to manage that. We'll cut our fees by a lot where they won't do that for a small employer. So for all those reasons, I would not ever, ever, ever swim the opposite way. I would always leave my IRA money in an IRA. And when I leave an employer, I'm much more likely to not pay attention to what's going on at that company anymore. And I would always roll that into this parent IRA. So I've got this IRA from all of my different jobs that I've had, and I'm constantly adding to it when I change jobs.

1:04:06So this master IRA, and then I have the 401k where I'm working now. And that's the way I like to run it. Hmm. That makes sense. And frankly, simplifying your structure generally, this is a tip really for everyone who's listening, simplifying your investment structures makes you more likely to do well in the long run. I think one pitfall that many people in this community often face is the temptation to over-optimize. And sometimes over-optimization can actually be counterproductive. we've been talking about that even internally here at afford anything we have some processes that we have over optimized and it's actually in the big picture i think been to our detriment so for example within our newsletter right we have all of these various segments you know we've got 78 ,000 people on our newsletter who subscribe to our newsletter.

1:05:08But we have a specific segment for people who are interested in learning about side hustles in small business. We have a specific segment for people who are interested in learning about real estate. We have a specific segment for people who want the podcast show notes. We have all these various specific segments. Then we've got the overall newsletter, right? And what this means is that we have to create and manage separate content for the people who want specifically side hustle content, the people who want specifically real estate content, the people who want specifically just general personal finance, right?

1:05:45So we're creating more and more and what we're creating is seen by fewer and fewer, right? So rather than investing our time into creating just one thing for everyone, we're creating four things for one fourth of the people. And that has a severe limitation on how much we can actually create. And it results in sometimes people end up getting emails from our archives that are older. They're like, hey, I got this email, but it was written four years ago. You know, and I'm like, sorry, that's from one of our many, many segment, you know, like, so anyway, the point of all of that is that sometimes over optimizing and trying to over deliver and trying to over perfect everything actually leads to a worse end result.

1:06:33And that happens in business. It happens in investing. It happens in almost any facet, at least any facet of financial and professional life. It's funny because you think about delivery and systems. And as I hear that, the aha that business owners have, that it sounds like you're having right now, Paula, is that if we stop a lot of that, we could even offer 50 % more content, 50 % better, more often, whatever the definition of better is. And because you're decreasing things by 75%, you can give this one greater whole, a bigger thing. It's easier for you to deliver. People get more value out of it.

1:07:26Everybody wins by de-segmenting. Exactly. And so think of your investments like that. Think of your investments in terms of the overall portfolio, that greater whole, right? The wholeness of it. That's what you're aiming to create. And the more complexity that you add into that portfolio, the more distraction there is from nurturing the overall basket, that big, big picture. Thank you, Greta, for the question. And I'm glad we were able to give a, we gave a clear and unambiguous answer. Don't do it. All right. Well, Joe, we have done it. We've done it again. I can't believe it. The time always goes so fast.

1:08:13It does. It flies. It really does. Joe, where can people find you if they want to hear more of you? Oh, three days a week at the Stack and Benjamin Show, the greatest money and personal finance show on earth. We call it that because of our segments and it's a little bit of a circus. What's coming to the circus, by the way, Paula, is our mutual friend, Shannon McClay. She's the owner of the Financial Gym. Shannon loves to talk about as a longtime financial advisor, the dirty underbelly of financial advising. What truly happens on the other side of those tables? And Shannon and I are going to discuss hiring better financial help.

1:08:56So for people that want better financial advisors, you will hear, and Paula, you know Shannon, she doesn't mince words. She will tell you exactly the ugliness. But she also believes, like a lot of people do, that, man, if you can find the right professional for people that truly need one, that could be great. It could be horrible and it can be great. So Shannon joins us for what's going to be a pretty wild discussion. Excellent. Well, that is at the Stacking Benjamins podcast, where finer podcasts can be found. Finer. Only the finest. And we are going, so you guys are three days a week. We here at Afford Anything are going to move to twice a week after.

1:09:37Yes. What? It's true. It's true. And Joe, you're going to be joining us on a weekly basis. What? It's true. The good news is, everybody, I get time and a half now. Ah, nice. Excellent. What is 1.5 times zero? Damn it. But yes, that change is going to go into effect after episode 500. And episode 500 is going to air on 4-24-24, April 24th, 2024. 24. So we're going to have a big party extravaganza for episode 500. It's going to be an amazing show. And then after episode 500, starting with episode 501, we are going to go to a two day per week schedule. So that is what is happening here at Afford Anything.

1:10:25So make sure that you are signed up for our show notes. I've talked about that a few times on this episode, but I cannot emphasize it enough, sign up for our show notes, affordanything.com slash show notes. You will get updates of every episode that we produce. You will get our special newsletter, which we are going to be producing more often now that we're reducing our sub-segments and really focusing on serving our overall newsletter audience. Sign up for our show notes. You're going to hear all about episode 500 and the twice a week episodes that are to come. That's at affordanything.com slash show notes.

1:11:06Well, thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Paula Pant. I'm Joe Salcihai. And we will catch you in the next episode.