Ask Paula: Should We Drain Our Brokerage to Make a HUGE Down Payment?

28:35We got to ask Steve for some like bizarre celebration things just to just to push this guy. I don't think Steve gets pushed enough. You know what I mean? I mean, this guy's amazing, but we should really like Steve. Here's what I want for your celebration noise. I want it to be one of those old time car horns like the Oga. I want one of those, Steve.

29:02as if steve doesn't get enough grief just having to work with us anyway so here's what i like about jay's question then if jay truly is and like i said i don't know jay but if jay's doing what a lot of people do and he's just looking for more safety before he pulls it i will tell him jay you're looking in the right area because right now you have every dollar has has a has a reason every dollar which is fantastic the thing that i can hear in your question is you don't have any of this flexible money that if everything goes horribly, that you've got a place to go. Because every dollar already has a job and there's no, you know, I can't pull it from this fund because this is for my next car.

29:45When he mentioned he's even doing that, Paula, I'm like, that's fantastic. So having most of your retirement assets locked up into pre-tax programs is another weight because between real estate and IRS rules, you are a little bit chained up in how you get the money. There's consequences to taking any of those pots of money that you built. So if you're building anything in the future at all, build that non IRA brokerage account. Cause you can see with M our last caller, M has this brokerage account that maybe we don't know, but we're thinking it might be this money that is flexible. She might have to rearrange her goals and how she gets stuff, but it's in a spot where the tax consequences are not going to be onerous.

30:35For Jay, the tax consequence on that retirement bucket is going to be pretty onerous to get at. Right. So he, I mean, he's got$200 ,000 in cash reserves, but yes, I agree. The next move, Jay, is as you continue building your wealth, do build some brokerage assets. Don't put everything into a tax advantaged account. Remember the tax triangle that we talked about. There's tax deferred, there's tax exempt, and there's taxable. Build out those taxable brokerage assets. For people that are wondering how we think through this, Paula knows this. I had to listen to your question twice. And the second time I took out paper and I did what I did as a financial planner.

31:25And Paula, if it's all right with you, I'd like to teach everybody this because this is a nice tool. So I just drew what looks like a plus sign, just these four quadrants. And the top two quadrants, the quadrant on the left is reserves and short-term assets. What happens if I get into trouble? It also is where my budget lives. So do I have positive cashflow? So that upper left quadrant is this is my short-term health. Jay's very comfortable, very good short-term health. Now, upper right is my risk management. I didn't fill that in because this question didn't have anything to do with risk management, but this is where I put my insurances.

32:01If I pass away, how much does my son need? Jay talked about his son and his expenses. By the way, I feel like my kids are 90 % of my expenses, Jay, not 40 like yours. So you're doing well. Do I have my estate plan done? So all of my risk stuff is upper right. Then I've got a quadrant for short-term flexible money that I can grab for anything that's coming up in the next five to 15 years, whatever shorter term non-IRA investments. And then I have locked up, have to have some really jump through some hoops to get at the money. But it's good long-term returns. Your real estate goes there. Your IRA goes there.

32:49Now, we said that upper right quadrant with risk management, we didn't fill it in purpose. But what I didn't fill in, Paula, was anything in that flexible box. There's absolutely nothing there. And when I look at stuff as a financial planner and I'm looking for short-term wins, there's where it is, Jay. It's in that lower left hand. There's two boxes which you grow by. That lower left you grow by, by being able to be flexible and movable, having money in these brokerage accounts. The lower right is where I'm locked in. This is my financial independent stuff. And by the way, sometimes, Paula, those locks are great.

33:24because how many times have we seen people take money out of those for short-term, pretty stupid stuff. And then when I'm 70, I'm like, I wish I wouldn't have done that. Right. Yeah. Sometimes locking money away from yourself can be a wise financial move, particularly if you know yourself. Great behavioral thing. Right. And that's the beauty of the way that the retirement account system is structured, Right. We've got 401ks, 403bs, Roth IRAs. We've got these accounts where we get a tax advantage for promising not to withdraw money from it until we reach a certain age. And if we break that promise, we have to pay some serious tax consequences.

34:09And that keeps the money in those accounts. So, Jay, I say if if you want to go barista fire, do it. I don't see any reason why you shouldn't. And as you're thinking about how you direct your money from this point forward, have more of it available in flexible accounts that you can get at, particularly once you give yourself that pay cut and go to barista fire. But let's not bury the lead here. Great job. Yeah, amazing. Amazing job, Jay. Well, thank you, Jay, for asking that question and for being such an incredible role model and inspiration for everyone who's listening. You know, when I was a kid, I remember on Christmas morning, I got lots of toys, lots of books, lots of clothes, gifts.

34:58The books were always my favorite. I'd spent all of Christmas Day just reading and reading and reading. But, you know, none of those are things that I have anymore. They were wonderful in the moment. But decades later, I have no idea where any of those things went. But by contrast, when you give a gift that brings somebody financial security, that's something that lasts a lifetime. Now, when it comes to financial security, nearly half of American adults say that if they lost their primary income earner, they would suffer financial hardship within six months. And so if you want to secure your future before the new year begins, lock in your life insurance today because that's something that you don't buy for yourself.

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38:04Our next question comes from Tiffany.

38:10Hi, Paula and Jo. I was hoping that you could help me with the plan I've been working on. I'm 48 years old, and lately I've been thinking a lot about what it's going to take to semi-retire in 10 years with a totally different, lower-paying, part-time job. I was previously divorced, and I remarried about three years ago, but my current husband has worked for himself as a contractor and a plumber, and he has no retirement saved. I have about$300 ,000 so far in a floor through B, which is obviously not going to be enough for retirement. The thing I have in my favor is the equity in my home. It's currently worth around$1.1 million and my remaining loan balance is around$350 ,000.

38:46Instead of waiting until I send my retire to downsize, I'd like to use the next 10 years to leverage what I have now so that I have what I need at retirement age. My current plan is to split the equity four ways if possible and then use loans to make up the difference. The first chunk would be for a place my husband and I to live. I'm thinking something with two or three bedrooms that will be a fixed rubber and we can utilize my husband's skills. The second is a rental property near the college that I anticipate two of my children attending. The third is a cash amount of around$100 ,000 that will go towards a side business that I've wanted to start as well as renovations on the properties purchased.

39:27And finally, if it's possible, I would like to purchase an additional run of property. The problem I can't seem to work out is as follows. I want to retire a few hours south of where I'm currently living, where it's warmer. This means that the smaller home I purchase now will not be the home I end up in. However, once I leave my current job to semi-retire down south, I'll no longer be able to use my job in order to get a new loan. I had planned to take advantage of the primary home loan rate for the home we moved into when we sell my current home, but this would mean eventually selling the home with the best rate in order to move south and leaving the higher rate investment loans in place.

40:10I can't really move into the college location investment property for a while because it's a little too far from my job and I kind of wanted the second investment property to be down south where I think that we would do better with short-term rentals and it would just be easier to manage because we'd be close to it. I would also need the bulk of the equity to be in the home we move into because I wouldn't be able to get a new loan for the final home. Having two investment properties with large loans and higher loan rates doesn't seem smart, but I can't figure out another way to handle it. Do you have any ideas of a better way to do things or a totally different plan to help me reach my retirement goals.

40:55For calculation purposes, my current income allows for around$450 ,000 in loans. Thanks in advance. Tiffany, thank you for the question. There are a lot of moving parts here, so let's break this down. You currently have$750 ,000 worth of equity. You have a home that's worth$1.1 million. It has a loan balance of$350 ,000. So if you were to sell it, you would get around$750 ,000 minus the transaction costs, realtor fees, all of that. We'll say$700 ,000. You would like to use that money plus an additional$450 ,000 that you would borrow for this series of goals. Now let's talk about where that money would go because I have some concerns about some of the things that you have suggested.

41:42Number one, you've mentioned that you'd like to sell your current home, move into a smaller home, which is a fixer-upper, which you could buy on a primary residence mortgage. I think that's where that$450 ,000 loan would come in. And then you would have lower housing payments. You would theoretically have potentially a smaller mortgage, which would free up some cash flow, and you could gain some forced appreciation through renovations and improvements made to your new, smaller primary residence. All of that is great. However, you've also mentioned that you don't plan on being this primary residence for a long time because you do, in 10 years, intend to move further down south.

42:29If, therefore, given that there are very high transaction fees on selling a property. If you were to go through with this plan and if you were to sell your current home and buy a smaller primary residence, I would encourage you to buy a primary residence that you plan on holding for decades and decades to come through your retirement. Plan on buying a primary residence that you never sell, that you still have when you're 100 because that primary residence that you buy, A, you're going to ideally have forced appreciation on it based on the renovations that you do. B, you're going to have a primary residence mortgage on it.

43:09And so that's a mortgage that you can hold for the next 30 years. And a primary residence mortgage is going to be better than the terms that you could get on a investor loan and see the cost of transaction on a home is so high that you want to be quite careful about any time that you sell a home, given that you're taking at least a 6 % haircut each time that you make a sale. And that actually kind of leads me back to questioning the premise a little bit, because there's part of me that wonders if selling your current home right now is the right move. I don't know what type of interest rate you have on this home, but if you bought it at any time within the last 10 years, I'm assuming that this interest rate is probably going to be quite favorable, more favorable than anything that you could get.

44:03meaning the delta, the difference of what you're paying for your current home and what you would be paying for your next home is probably, I mean, maybe you would save a little bit on your monthly payment, but probably not a huge amount. That's interesting. And on top of that, given that you ultimately plan on moving 10 years from now anyway, there's part of me that wonders if perhaps the move might be to stay in your current home until you're ready to move into your next forever home, that retirement forever home down south. You talked about wanting to buy a rental property near the college that you anticipate two of your children attending.

44:47That, to me, set off some red flags because going through the college application and admissions process, you know, I've gone through it for myself. Joe, you've gone through it not just for yourself, but for your two kids, for your twins. There's a lot of uncertainty around where somebody is going to go to college. There's uncertainty around where they want to go, what they want to study, and if that particular school has a good program for that particular major or field. There's a lot of uncertainty around whether or not they get accepted. And if they do get accepted, what type of financial aid package they get from that school.

45:27there's a huge amount of not knowing where somebody is going to ultimately end up going to college, and particularly two children, right? Until you reach the point where they're sending in their deposit to kick off their freshman year, I think it's premature to buy a rental property in that area in anticipation of two of your children eventually going to college there. If there was a comma in that sentence, though, or even a semicolon in that sentence where she wants to buy property in that town because she thinks it's a great opportunity. Right. And it doesn't matter that the kids go there, comma, semicolon.

46:16By the way, my kids might go there. You know what I mean? which if they did, that makes it a better opportunity. If it doesn't, it's still a great opportunity, then that shouldn't cloud things. When you were talking about the primary residence and about this cost of transaction, which includes the huge difference in interest rates now versus just 12 to 18 months ago, I think there may be, and I'll get into what I'm thinking later, but I think there may be for some of these shorter term things then, home equity line of credit opportunity for structuring loans instead. Yeah. And I think that would be a much better play.

46:59Minimize the number of buy-sell transactions. Unless you are a professional home flipper, in which case that is baked into your spreadsheets, minimize the number of buy and sell. Well, specifically minimize the number of sell transactions. Buy all day. To quote Nick Majuli, just keep buying. Buy homes all day long. Buy homes until you're blue in the face, but minimize the number of times that you sell a home so that you can avoid that steep, steep haircut that comes with selling a home. And if you need to pull the cash out, some of that equity out in order to reinvest it, pull out what you can, but avoid the huge transaction fees unless there's a really good reason.

47:43And to me, when she moves down south in 10 years, that's going to be that really good reason. But as long as she's staying in the same town, I don't see a great reason to sell her current home. I also have hesitations. I've talked about my hesitations around buying a rental in the area where she anticipates to children going to college because they may not end up going there. I also have hesitations around putting some of this money into a business venture, which she talked about doing. I, as you know, love side businesses. I love entrepreneurial ventures. However, I strongly believe that these should be bootstrapped.

48:29These should be self-funded. And what that means is that you don't sell a given asset such as your home and use that money to invest in an idea that you don't know is going to work. Instead, what you do is you commit a very small amount of money. And by very small, I mean$1 ,000 or less. Right. You commit a three-digit sum of money, a few hundred bucks to pre-validating an idea, and then you use the money that comes from that pre-validation to fund the business that you're trying to start. I like the idea of pre-validation and just to use the medium that we have that we're using right now, podcasting.

49:15A lot of people are like, you know, I've got a podcast I want to do. I've got a thing. I feel like everybody's got a podcast, right? the average number of episodes, the average podcast has, do you know the stat Paula average number of seven? It's seven, seven. I do know the stat. Look at that. And the reason is, and it's not just podcasting. It's every time I talk to a would be entrepreneur, there's an excitement level. There is a, this is a phenomenal thing. And then you get past this original idea, which you thought was brilliant and life sustaining. and you get seven episodes deep, six months deep, whatever it is.

49:53And you go, holy crap, this is a whole different thing than I thought that it was going to be. And then you shut it down. And I think that overcoming the great idea with playtesting is so important. It's so important. I think a lot of sweat equity into the business at first. And whenever an entrepreneur gives me an amount of time they think it's going to take for that business to be viable, I always recommend that you double it. you need to double that. Yeah. It's going to be way longer to get that runway moving than you think it's going to be. Well, and not just that, but there's also the question of does the market support this?

50:31Ultimately, the purpose of a business is to serve a base of customers or clients. So the reason that you pre-validate an idea is because ultimately the market does not care whether or not you like the idea. The market cares about whether or not your customers, your clients, whether or not the people whom you serve like it enough that they're willing to pay for it. Ultimately, a business is an entity that solves a problem in exchange for compensation. And so if you, you know, approach it by validating it, by saying, hey, I see that this problem exists, here's my proposed solution. Do you like this proposal enough that you are willing to make a deposit on it?

51:19And I'll give you a discount. I'll give you some added bells and whistles. But are you willing to make a deposit on this idea? And if you get enough customers or clients or whoever, whoever you're trying to serve, if you get enough people who do that, that's great. Now you validated the idea and now you have the initial seed money to develop it out. But selling a primary residence and putting that into an untested side business, I think that's a very dangerous idea. On that note, Paula, I looked at all these and my ADD meter went off because it was four things. And in my head, they're all happening at once.

51:58And that's a lot of chaos to throw into your life. So I think there's also an order of operations here. What am I going to do first? What am I going to do second, third, and fourth? And what was Amazing to me, when I looked at the four things that Tiffany wants to do, none of those is the thing that I would do first. Because I think there's some hidden stuff. And this is going to be a little bit difficult. But I think the fact that her husband's business has produced no retirement assets is the place to begin. Tons of entrepreneurs always have another thing that needs to be fixed. Another person needs to be hired.

52:37Another vehicle that needs to be maintained. Whatever it is, there's always another reason why you don't come first. So the first thing that I would do is you and your husband need to read a book. And I would write this down and I would – audiobook of it is great too. It's called Profit First. And I would adopt – We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. And I would adopt for your husband's business a profit first mentality. before dime one gets spent on anything. He makes sure the business is working for him. This is not your husband. This is entrepreneurs all over the place.

53:14You build this business to work for you. And instead what ends up happening is you become an employee of a business, which is dictating everything. You're not dictating anything. Entrepreneurs in mass need to turn that around and need the business to serve you. and your profit is why he began that business in the first place. And so when I hear that he doesn't have any money in retirement, it's because he needs to switch that around. And the author is Mike Michalowicz. Yeah, super guy. Very easy read. Easy to listen to. Great philosophy. When I talk to great entrepreneurs, Paula, by and large, they've read that book.

54:00and they've read another book called The E-Myth. Oh, you talk about The E-Myth all the time. Yeah, those are two. E-Myth is probably my number two talk about behind Stephen Covey, right? It is, it is. Those are the two I get to. I've read it. I haven't read Prophet First, but I've read The E-Myth. Yeah, Prophet First is, you can tell by the title what it's about, though. And he's got a system of how to make that happen, which is a powerful thing. But I would start there. I would also then Paula begin playtesting this business when the stakes are low. I love the idea of being able to bootstrap the business on the side while you're doing something else.

54:38Because A, you've got time on your side now. You can tinker with it. You can build the website. You can take your time. You can get your thoughts together. You can join communities. You can put a couple ideas out there and see what sticks, what doesn't. You can get an idea of what the tools are, the levers of the business. because after that, when it goes to 11 and every business at some point goes to 11, you're not completely overwhelmed with, I don't understand WordPress. I don't get what the hell's going on on Facebook. I know I need a community. I know I need all these 50 million things. And if you at least know the levers and the priorities before you get to that point, I would begin that on your end right now.

55:17Tiffany, there was something else that you said that also raised a bit of a red flag for me. You said that you wanted the second investment property to be down south. That's great. But then you said that it's because you believe that you would do better with short-term rentals there. And that also raised a red flag because short-term rentals are very different from long-term rentals. Long-term rentals, you have a commodity and you are exchanging access to that commodity for limited periods of time, right? You've got a commodity and you're letting people have exclusive access to that particular commodity for one year increments.

55:57With a short-term rental, you are running a hospitality business that is competing with hotels, right? You are responsible for consumables such as dish detergent, trash bags, vacuum cleaner bags, toilet paper, having a plunger on site, right? Your tenants are never going to call you to say, we need more toilet paper. So a few things come to mind right away. Number one, the fact that you kind of just threw that in there. You were talking about rental properties and then you just kind of threw in the short term. that signaled to me that I'm not sure, and this is just an assumption I'm making, I'm not sure that I'm hearing, at least in the way that you phrased the question, that you have a really strong understanding of the vast difference between long-term versus short-term.

56:55They are in no way the same field. They're in no way the same practice at all. That's the first thing. The second thing is in the world of short-term rentals, you have a completely different set of legislative risks. City councils can often change their policies around short-term rentals on a dime. Neighborhoods, if there's a neighborhood HOA, they can change their policies. There are, in all of those ways, different policy-related risks to your business model. On top of that, there's also a very different competitive structure in terms of occupancy, in terms of vacancy, in terms of the competition that you're facing from other, not just short-term rental owners, hosts, but also hotels, motels, other hospitality providers.

57:52So if you are going to go the short-term rental route, it needs to be with a property that could also function as a long-term rental. And finding that Venn diagram intersection of properties, something that would work both as a short-term and a long-term rental, is more challenging now than it ever has been. So I'm not saying don't do short-term rentals. There are many, many people in this audience, many people who are listening to this right now who have had enormous success with short-term rentals, but it requires a totally different level of market analysis, of risk analysis, of understanding the world of hospitality, of understanding what's happening with city council and what the debates are, what's happening with the HOA.

58:41It just requires a completely different skill set and it needs a plan B, right? That's why the property in the worst case, if you can't use it as a short-term rental, you need multiple exit strategies. You can't just only have one plan for a property, right? And any good game plan has multiple exit strategies. When I look at real estate strategies across the board, on one hand, on one end is long-term rentals as more passive, right? People talk about real estate as passive income. That's baloney. Go ahead and leave your real estate alone for five years and see what happens. There's no such thing, right?

59:26But on the passive. I'd call it residual income. So much better. On the passive continuum, though, I see long-term rentals as the most passive or close to the most passive. I see flippers as a full-time job, right? Oh, yeah. So I've got flipping as full-time job, and I've got long-term rental on the other side. I've got not even in the middle, but closer to flipper land is where a lot of the short-term rental people are. Now you can create systems that mitigate that where you use automation for your benefit. You can use outsourcing your benefit, but that'll cost you money. The automation might not cost you much money, but outsourcing certainly does.

1:00:08But you have to have systems and processes. You're not competing against a long-term market anymore. You're competing against Marriott and IHG and Hyatt. So yeah, you need to create this experience. Don't get me wrong. I think it can be really fun. I love creating experiences. But when you talk about doing that and doing a side business, I consider that to be a side business. Right, right. Exactly. And I say this as somebody who was an Airbnb super host. So super host is a designation that Airbnb. Airbnb didn't call Paula that. She called herself that. But anyway. No, Airbnb called me that. I know.

1:00:44I'm kidding. I had a thing on my page. Right. It's a designation. I call myself Paula super podcaster. I'm Joe super podcaster. It's a designation awarded by Airbnb for hosts who have hosted a certain number of stays over a certain period of time with a something star, four star, five star, whatever. They have their criteria. And so I was an Airbnb super host. I have been in this game long enough to understand – at a minimum, I certainly understand there is no comparison between a short-term versus long-term rental. It is the difference between running a Hilton hotel versus letting a stranger live in your house for a year for money.

1:01:32I would definitely put an order of operations on these, Tiffany. What's first? What's second? What's third? What's fourth? That'll decrease the overwhelm, number one, which is cool. Number two is you can then really hone in and focus, which is the important thing when you're going after any goal this big, on getting the little things right. Because it's always the friction in the little things that make the difference. Not the big idea. It's the little implementation steps. That said, we spent some time, Paula, maybe beating Tiffany up a little bit. Not purposefully. And what I'll say that I love about your question, I love the fact that you're thinking about this 10 years ahead of time.

1:02:13Yeah. Because these rocks that Paul and I are throwing, you've got tons of time. Time is right now your asset. And taking advantage of those 10 years, there's nothing you can't do. I mean, people overestimate what they can do in a day. You've heard this before. They underestimate what they can do in a year, in a decade. If you're thinking about this with 10 years to go, that is monster fantastic. Right. You know, I know we sound negative because we're striking down a lot of ideas. We're poking holes in a lot of ideas. But what you have right now is such a great asset, right? You have$750 ,000 worth of equity in your home.

1:02:57And you have$300 ,000 in a 403B. So you're a millionaire, right? You are a millionaire and you're trying to figure out what you need to do in the next decade to be able to retire. And the bulk of your assets right now are in your primary residence. So the most important thing is to preserve what you have while growing in a thoughtful and sustainable way. And so the plan to sell your greatest asset and then divide it into a bunch of untested assets, that makes me nervous. But it's just like what we told Jay earlier. There's no such thing as safety. Just knowing where the risk is, is the key to success.

1:03:53Tiffany, congratulations on building what you have. Congratulations on the primary residence that you own. Congratulations on building$300 ,000 in a 403B. And congrats on having the foresight to look 10 years out into the future and say, what is it that I need to do now to be able to be in a really good spot, an even better spot in 10 years? Huge congrats to you on all of that. And as Joe said, your next steps, do one thing at a time, just one thing at a time and move with caution. Joe, we've done it again. We have. Wow, that was fun. You know, I love these. I love these questions where we're talking about big strategy, like putting it all out there and saying, how do these how do these things affect each other?

1:04:43It's so important because I think too often do we look at things too myopically. Exactly. Well, Joe, before we started recording, we made a decision. Do we want to announce it? Oh, well, that's up to you. Yeah, you know, I think we should announce it here. Oh. It's here and now. So this particular episode is episode 482, which means that Afford Anything's episode 500 is coming up relatively soon. Whoa. 18 episodes from now, we're going to be celebrating episode 500. And that episode is going to air on April 24th. After episode 500, we have decided to go twice a week. What? The Ford Anything podcast is going to be a twice a week podcast.

1:05:43That's crazy. Two episodes a week, starting after episode 500, which is starting after April 24. 4-24-24. Starting after 4-24-24. We already get goodness. Or if you're from the UK. If you're from the UK, it would be 24-4-24. You just doubled the goodness, Paula. I think 4-24-24 better. Yeah, I do too. Yes. Yes. Double the fun. Double the fun. So, Joe, you're going to be joining me every week. Once a week, every week, we're going to be answering these questions. It's amazing what happens when Paula takes my arm and pushes it behind my back and says, do it, do it. I'm like, okay, fine. Stop.

1:06:30So, yes, you've heard it here first. starting, please, episode 500 is going to be amazing. It's going to be spectacular. Put it on your calendars right now to tune in for that. It's going to be an incredible episode. We're planning some big stuff. That episode is airing 4-24-24. And then after that, we're going to be a twice-a-week show. Fantastic. Yeah. Congratulations. Well, Joe, thank you for joining me. Thank you for being a weekly fixture here in Afford Anything. My pleasure. These are always great fun. Well, Joe, in the meantime, where can people find you if they'd like to hear more of you?

1:07:12I'd like to shine a light on what we did over at Stacking Benjamins week number one of 2024, because it was a fantastic week. An amazing human being named Eric Qualman joins us on New Year's Day to talk about focus. And I think if there's anything we can do with all the distractions, we have more distractions every year. If we can learn to focus in 2024, he did a deal called the Focus Project where every month he focused on one thing. By the way, a funny story. He tried to ramp up to this. Initially said, I'm going to focus two hours a day, every single day on one thing. and during his preamble where he was just trying to get the machinery together, he realized that two hours was going to be with all the commitments he has, like doing it for 30 minutes every day.

1:08:02Paula was going to be super big, which is what he ended up doing. And I'll let him tell that story. But a story that I will tell you is that month of December where he tried to get the ball rolling, he was only able to do not 30 minutes, but only 18 minutes, but not 18 minutes a day. he was able to focus 18 minutes the entire month on that thing that he was going to focus on, which shows you how hard this is. And this was his point was that it isn't just about willing yourself to do it. You have to have a system. We follow up that focus then on Wednesday with John Acuff, the amazing John Acuff talking about better goal setting.

1:08:37Everybody gets freaked out when we talk about purpose. He's got this neat way to think about purpose in a way that doesn't freak you out. Don't look forward and go, what am I going to be when I grow up? That is so hard for so many of us, he's got a better way. So we go better goals, better focus in 2024 on stacking Benjamins. Go join us. Fantastic. Well, thank you, Joe. And thank you to all of you who are listening to this, who are part of this community. Thank you for joining us. Please, if you have feedback, if you're listening on Spotify, you can leave a note in on every Spotify episode to talk about what you thought about this episode.

1:09:13You can also leave a comment in our community, affordanything.com slash community. And please make sure that you are subscribed to slash following this podcast and your favorite podcast player. And while you're there, please leave us a review. So thank you so much for being part of this community. I'm Paula Pant. I'm Joe Celcihai. And we will catch you in the next episode. And we will catch you weekly starting after 42424. episode 500