Ask Paula: “We Have $2 Million at 40 – Now What?”

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29:29Welcome back. Our next question comes from Jared. Good afternoon, Paula. Jared here. I'm one of those proverbial longtime listeners, first time callers. Leading with my question first, can I ask you to provide a job negotiation scenario that would apply to a teacher in public K-12 education? Providing more context to my question, I'm calling in response to your recent podcast episode titled How to Handle Seven Types of Hardball Negotiation Tactics. While I could readily connect with some of the examples, such as the car purchase negotiation, I found it very difficult to connect with examples about job offers and potential work, given my professional experience.

30:14My professional experience is entirely within the education sector. I've worked in both public and private education and both K-12 and higher education. For me, when I was a public K-12 school teacher, my salary schedule was governed by a union contract and not open to negotiation. There was no opportunity for vacation days, for remote work agreements, for equity, for stock options, or anything along those lines. I want to be clear that it's not just your examples that I'm reacting to. Overwhelmingly, across all the personal finance media I consume, people regularly go to tech sector jobs and freelance jobs when discussing job offer negotiations.

30:58The struggle that I have is these contexts have a lot of embedded assumptions in them about what's on the table, what the organization can and cannot do and be flexible about, etc. I would love some examples that are easier to map to my work experience. While focusing on public K-12 education may seem like a narrow view to some people, there are an estimated 3.2 million full-time education teachers in public elementary and secondary schools in the US, which is almost twice the estimated number of software developers at 1.7 million. But still, if we want a larger lens, perhaps we could pick some job negotiation examples that apply to the estimated 16.2 million workers in the U.S.

31:44who are represented by a union and or covered by a union contract. I hope that my question comes across as being in good faith. I do not want to set you up with an impossible task. And maybe your answer is that there aren't good scenarios for these types of positions. Whatever your answer is, thank you very much for your time in answering my question. And thank you as well for your amazing podcast. Jared, thank you for the question. And you are absolutely correct. You raise an excellent point, which is that when you join a union, you agree to collective bargaining. And by virtue of agreeing to collective bargaining, that means that necessarily what you give up is individual bargaining.

32:29So the lessons that we teach on negotiation, which are lessons directed towards individuals, are for people who do not have collective bargaining representation. representation. And this applies, I should say, not just to people in unions, but there are also government jobs. Like, for example, when you're in the military and Joe, you went to the Citadel. So you have familiarity with this. Oh, and you're drinking from a Citadel for those of you watching on YouTube. Citadel coffee mug, the military college of South Carolina. I do. In the military, there are very specific pay grades based on rank.

33:07If you're a private, if you're a second lieutenant, if you're a first lieutenant, et cetera. And the pay grades based on rank are the pay grades based on rank. And Joe, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but there's not really wiggle room there. You get the pay that you get based on the rank that you have. Yeah. And that's that. Yeah. All of that is predetermined. Set in stone. Right. Exactly. So specifically when it comes to job negotiation. We teach job negotiation to the people who do not have either a collective that is bargaining on behalf of a mass group of people or a predetermined policy-based hierarchy, such as what is in the military.

33:53Because if you are an individual just floating out there on the seas on your own, you need to learn something because there's nobody out there representing you and there's no rank out there. So you're floating out in the waters by yourself alone. You got to learn how to swim. So that's why we teach job negotiation for individuals who are out there on their own alone, trying to learn how to tread water and not just how to tread water, but how to be a better swimmer. Sure. I think also, Paula, when it comes to negotiation, it isn't always just about the job either. Negotiation shows up in so many different areas of your life.

34:34Yeah. Have you ever bought a car? Well, even if you're in a family, you don't necessarily think of it as negotiation, but if you have a roommate, who's going to make dinner? How are you going to discuss cleaning the house? I think negotiation has as much to do with how you address any conflict situation as much as it is negotiating for higher wages in the workplace. Right. Anyone who has either purchased or rented a place to live has had to negotiate. If you're buying a home, then obviously you negotiate that home sale. But if you're renting a home, you do the same. Every time that you rent, you have a negotiation with your landlords about the price of the rent, about the duration of the lease, about the pet fees, about the move-in, move-out cleaning fees, about the policies that apply to the unit, the number of people in the unit, the level of fixes that will be made to the unit prior to move-in.

35:38I've choked on some and I've had tenants who have really gotten a great end of the deal. I had one tenant who convinced me to all new paint and new carpeting prior to move in. I was not planning on doing that. She wanted new paint. She wanted new carpet. She made a strong case for it. She ultimately got to pick the paint color and pick the carpet. So I narrowed it down to an acceptable range, but she, of the five or so paint colors, she got to pick her favorite one. Same thing with the carpet. I narrowed it down to a handful of different carpet swatches. And she actually picked the carpet that went in.

36:19That's not something that I'd offer as a standard for most tenants, but she did a great job. Well, this is interesting too. I mean, Paula, in a collective bargaining situation, I'm thinking about him in K-12 education. Part of me wonders about negotiating for supplies in your classroom, negotiating, working with other teachers on projects. You know what I mean? Not negotiating the salary as much as negotiating day-to-day working conditions. I think that may also apply. It sounds to me, Joe, like what you're talking about are not formal negotiations that happen up the chain, but rather some of those informal conversations that happen laterally.

37:05Well, and it can even be up the chain. I completely agree with what you're saying. But if you're a teacher negotiating with the principal, I work best with XYZ and I'm struggling to come up with exactly the thing that we'd be negotiating. But I just think that in any job that I've had negotiating with my boss to make the job fit me better and make it so that we are more effective as an organization. I feel like often when people talk about negotiation, we make it this very narrow focus. And I just think that I negotiate every day. I negotiate with people around me every day. I just negotiated with a person to get my haircut.

37:49As an example, we were just working out what time works best for her, which time works best for me. And I know what everybody's thinking. You get your haircut. Yeah, I was about to say, Joe, which hair? Right. Why would you? That strand or that strand? You've got like three strands of, no offense, Joe. I can tell you how to save some money, Joe. Eliminate that person from your life. You don't really need them. But that also is interesting why I get my hair cut. But anyway, I just think there's so much negotiation that happens on a daily basis. It certainly happens within families when you're talking to siblings about how to caretake for aging parents.

38:32And negotiating with the aging parent about living conditions and about what financial moves they're going to make next or where they're going to live next. But to Jared's question, you know, Jared, you are correct in that when you choose to join a union, and I know that there are some jobs that make that membership mandatory, but when you choose either to join a union or to accept a job in which membership is a mandatory condition of joining, when you make that decision, then you give up some of that individual power for the sake of joining that collective. And that is the trade-off. Everything has a trade-off.

39:14That's the central thesis of this show. Every single decision comes with some type of a trade-off. Joe, you talked about some of those more informal negotiations that might happen in between a teacher and a principal. Are there analogs in a military context? In any context, negotiation is just a part of normal conversations or any work that happens, whether it's the military or you work for the railroad or you're in an automotive plant like my dad spent his life working on. Heck, you and I collaborating all the time. There's always subtle negotiation going on. So I don't think it's industry specific.

39:56But I do think with the military, like any job, think about getting promoted, changing your rank. People around you have to notice what you're doing. And I think there's a subtle piece of negotiation going on there, not just negotiation, but also a way to discuss your skills in a way that does not turn the person off to you. You and I were talking about an influencer who, as my mom says, toots their own horn a little loudly all the time. That can be a turnoff. But you still need to show your commanding officer that you are worthy of the promotion and that you want the promotion in the first place, right?

40:40That you want the additional responsibility. And by the way, and that happens in a school setting as well. I want to be considered for the next job to be a principal. How do I make that case and do it in a way that makes me more likely to be promoted in the future, which does lead to more money, even in a collective bargaining situation? Right. That higher rank leads to more cash. Exactly. You know, Paula, this is interesting, I think, from another level too, is that often, and I see this like you as a podcast creator when we decide to talk about entrepreneurship as an example. And I know that a lot of the people in the Stacking Benjamins universe, the Ford Anything universe, they're not entrepreneurs, right?

41:24But these skills that the person who I'm having on the show to mentor us on these entrepreneurial skills, these translate to a nine to five jobs where you're working for, quote, the man, right? You're working for somebody else. You still need to be a person who advocates for yourself. Nobody is going to promote your career more than you. So to some degree, whether you work for somebody else or you don't, these entrepreneurial skills translate to whatever job you're working in. I think it's the same for negotiation. But I think that with any of these skills we talk about, if you just zoom out from where you're at a little bit, you're able to see how these, maybe not in the same context, work for you as well.

42:13And let me tell you how I really like to learn. I like to learn from companies that are in a different industry than I'm in. I mean, often we just look at people doing the same exact thing we're doing, and then we don't create any innovation. We don't get as excited about what we do. I remember a book I read a long time ago called All Businesses Show Business. I was a financial planner. And this guy's, his thesis was, it doesn't matter if you're a financial planner, if you're the Walt Disney Company, if you own a movie theater, or if you drive a UPS vehicle. How you interact with other people is going to be show business.

42:56People are going to think about you and your company in a certain way based on the relationship we have with each other. I mean, have you ever went and bought an ice cream cone as an example? And the person working there clearly does not like their job. They don't want to be serving you ice cream and they just kind of stick the ice cream cone and shove it at you. And you think negatively about it, but think about this. I went in there to buy ice cream. I didn't go in there to be entertained by the person. However, the degree to which the person dishing the ice cream entertained me made me think differently about the product.

43:36The UPS person, if the UPS woman comes to my front door with the package and goes, Hey, great to see you. How's your day going? That's fantastic versus shoving it at me. I think differently about UPS. If they just shoved the package at me versus a warm smile and a wink and a, Hey, have a great day. Wow. UPS is a great company. Right? So I think by zooming out from negotiation, where do you negotiate? How do these skills help me regardless of my working condition, I think can be hugely beneficial to your bottom line, no matter what it is you do. Well, thank you, Jared, for asking the question. And thank you for dedicating your life to teaching, which is such a critical role.

44:18Before we get to the final question today, let's hear a comment, a follow-up from a previous caller. His name is Steve, and you might recognize him as the audio engineer extraordinaire who is the behind-the-scenes magic behind both the Afford Anything and Stacking Benjamin's podcast. He called many, many months ago with a question about moving. He was moving from one home to another and wasn't quite sure how to transition his mortgage in the handoff. He has called back with an update. Hey, Paula and Joe, it's Steve, that guy who does stuff for Paula, I wanted to call and give you an update on the scenario I posed back in episode 487.

45:06For those who may not have heard the story, my wife and I were moving from Missouri to Colorado. We were going to buy the house in Colorado first, then put up the Missouri house for sale, take the equity, pay down the Colorado mortgage. And I didn't want to have to do a refi or anything stupid like that for just a couple of months. I didn't know what to do. And everybody said, Hey, Steve, just do a recast. I'd never heard of a recast before. And they were right. You are all right. It worked. Actually, I'd asked the loan officer. I said, Hey, I'm thinking about doing this recast. He said, yeah, that's easy.

45:35It might take about 90 days. It took a month. It only took a month. So I'm very, very happy with how this all turned out. We've got a reasonable mortgage right now that I'm actually going to pound on and hopefully get rid of that quickly. We're living in an area, Joe, Paula, you've both seen pictures and video from where I live. And I'm going to give the video editor some, some video so you can put it into the video of this episode. Fantastic. Life is fantastic. Thank you, Afford Anything audience and Paula and Joe for giving me the solution that I needed. Thank you so much. Oh, goodness, Paula.

46:08First, I have to deal with you bragging about spending time with Paul Merriman. Now I got to deal with Steve bragging about living near the mountains. And it's beautiful every day. You know, on Slack, he will send us these gorgeous photos, just breathtaking, breathtaking photos of his view as he's working, his view as he's editing the podcast. Wow. They make me so ill. I mean, who could stand to live in all that beauty? Gross. Recasting your mortgage, though, Paula, is not something that is just for Steve's situation. As we saw the Federal Reserve beginning to lower interest rates, Sometimes that translates to mortgages.

46:50Sometimes it doesn't. Often it does, however. And if we see interest rates lower, I think it may be a great opportunity for people to call their lending institution and see if there is the possibility of recasting your mortgage at the lower rate, not doing a full refinance. I know that some credit unions do that. There are some lending institutions, some banks that do that. But if you can keep your term the same on your mortgage, pay maybe a small fee. I know one institution that I know of charges like a$250 fee to recast. And think about a$250 fee to get an interest rate that's potentially maybe a whole point lower, like how quickly you make back that fee.

47:38And you don't have to do the entire mortgage again. So recasting your mortgage, I think, is an opportunity that is overlooked often by people. And to Steve's point, when he's like, I didn't even know what it was. And I talked to my lender and they go, oh, yeah, sure. Your lender knows what it is. Could be a good opportunity. And I think the broader lesson here for everyone is never stop optimizing. Never stop looking for ways to optimize your finances. Not in the coupon clipping, tripping over dollars to pick up pennies sense of the word. There's inefficient optimizing, which comes with an over focus on the penny pinching side of the equation.

48:19But when it comes to structurally things like your insurance, your mortgage, these are the big wins. So when it comes to the big wins, the decisions that have multi-thousand dollar reverberations, never stop optimizing there. In fact, as a litmus test, I often like to ask myself, is this a decision that's going to have$1 ,000 or more worth of consequence? If it is, I'm likely to pursue it. If it's not, let it go. Yeah. And for me, I've chosen that number to be$1 ,000. for you, depending on where you are in that journey, it could be a different number. My number has not always been a thousand. When I was younger, that number was like 20 bucks, right?

49:07That's what I was going to say. At one point for me, it was like 50, right? Yeah. When I was younger, it was literally$20. I actually did have that math and$20 was that number. And I had to choose 20 as that number because I was wasting so much time making$3, $4 decisions that eventually I had to be like, no, Paula, stop it. If it's not going to net you at least 20 bucks, then let it go. So when I was younger, it was a lower number. And as I've gotten older, it's turned into a higher number. And for some of you who are listening, maybe your number is 5 ,000 or 10 ,000. And for others of you, it's still 20 bucks as it was for me at one time.

49:47But know what that number is. And above that number, never stop optimizing. All right, We're going to take one final break to hear from the sponsors who make this show possible. And when we return, we'll hear from someone who owns real estate overseas and is dealing with a set of numbers you have probably never heard before. And that's coming up right after this. I want to shout out to all the small business owners out there. You wear a million hats. You're doing a lot of things. And you show up for your team every single day. Gusto can help you take some of that load off, especially when it comes to payroll, benefits, and compliance.

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51:04I've been using Gusto since 2017 or 18. It's been a long time. I remember I was living in Las Vegas at the time and I brought on my first team member, a woman by the name of Erin, who ended up working with us for six years. That was when I got on Gusto and I'm still there today. Try Gusto today at gusto.com slash paula and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com slash paula. One more time, gusto.com slash paula, G-U-S-T-O dot com slash P-A-U-L-A. This episode is brought to you by Marshalls, where you never have to compromise between quality and price.

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52:09Welcome back. Our final question today comes from Sam. Hi Paula and Joe. This is Sam. First, I would like to thank you for all what you do. With your guidance, my financial awareness has been better. I have a question regarding an overseas rental property. I need a framework of ideas which I can use as a guide for taking my decision. Prices mentioned are in U.S. dollars. The rental property is a condo which is fully paid, bought in 2011 with 80k. Its current market value is 45k. The monthly rent is$100 which is below market value but in return I'm not responsible for any expenses incurred or associated with keeping up the unit.

52:56Also back there I have a house for my personal use. The purchase price in 2022 was 589k. Its current price is 433k and I am still owing 74k. The economy in the country where the properties are located is not stable for the past decade and for the past five years the local currency has been devalued a few times. Local banks offer three-year term CDs with 21.5 % annual return. Due to the economic situation, CD values or purchase power will be less than its original value at the end of its term or when there is devaluation of the currency. I am looking at first option is to keep the rental property and pay off the house for my income.

53:46Second option is to sell the rental property and use the cash towards paying off the house. Third option is to sell the rental property and use its value to buy a CD and pay off the house for my income? Which option is better for preservation of my assets? Would your decision be different if the income from the rent or CD was used for monthly expenses? Should I consider the rental property as a stock which fluctuates in value? Is it better to sell what I have overseas and invest in the U.S. real estate market? I am dual citizen living and working in the U.S. I'm not planning to return back, maybe to retire there.

54:25My house in the U.S. is paid off, no retirement accounts. I have a business loan and cash as emergency funds, which is equivalent to the loan. Paying off my overseas house from my income will not cause any strains on my budget. I am worried about losing monetary value of these properties. I'm sorry for the lengthy question. Your insights are highly appreciated. Please dedicate an episode to talk about dual citizens and how to benefit from dual citizenship status. Thank you. Sam, thank you for the question. I want to highlight a couple of things from the question that you just asked. You mentioned that you purchased two homes, one of which you purchased in 2011, the other you purchased in 2022.

55:10The one that you purchased in 2022 has already lost some significant value, largely due to the devaluation of the local currency. And there was a number that you stated that I think told the whole story. It was when you said that in your home country, the local bank offers three-year term CDs at a 21.5 % rate. Now, the only reason that a bank would offer a CD at a 21.5 % rate is when you have enormously high inflation. Right. Right. Right. Because I know a lot of people, Paula, are thinking, put your money there. That's a great deal. Not a great deal. I know this because the same happened in Nepal.

56:00The banks in Nepal were offering CDs at, geez, I think at one point, the CDs were going at somewhere between 12 to 15%, something like that, if my memory is correct. When we had the huge inflation here, remember how for one brief moment in time, you could get very close to 10 % on a treasury. Remember that? Mm-hmm. So anytime I hear something like that, when you say the bank is offering three-year term CDs at a 21.5 % rate, what I immediately know is that you have hyperinflation. You have enormously, enormously high inflation in whatever country it is that you're referring to. It's even worse than that with the currency being devalued several times.

56:46Exactly. Yeah. Hyperinflation, currency devaluation. Yeah, we're talking about a confluence of really tough economic standards. I don't know about for you, Paula. I think this must be where you're going. That definitely clouds my opinion of what Sam should think about. So what do you think? Because you and I have not actually discussed this in advance. If you were him, would you pay off that house that he bought in 2022? My answer is going to be broader than that. Oh, okay. because I'm not sure specifically what I would do, but directionally, I often will tell people who are dual citizens or who are intimately familiar with another economy to leave money in that economy and invest in that economy.

57:40Back when I was a financial planner, I had clients that were from Ireland. They invested in Ireland. I had clients from India. They invested in India. I often on this show have told people invest in that economy because you're very familiar with it. You're very comfortable with it. And having two different economic engines going, I think is nice diversification as long as your understanding of what's going on is great. That assumes though, Paula, the economy that we're talking about has some stability. Mm-hmm. So directionally, my whole thing is invest in this economy as little as possible. Yep.

58:22Any move that moves you away from this economy is a good move because while we often in the United States, as an example, will think that the stock market goes down, I want to buy, right? I want to buy. I want to buy when it's low. That assumes economic conditions are going to get better. Right. But when I can't depend on the forces that control those economic conditions, and that's not predictable, what levers we're going to have pulled, then I can't invest because there's so much uncertainty. I'm not saying that the U.S. government is the end-all, be-all or that the Federal Reserve System is the end-all, be-all.

59:02However, what we've seen historically is that not just Jerome Powell and this Fed or our people that run the Treasury over the past several years and even during the heck, even our government during the time of the pandemic. And we look at that 10 percent number that we could get on a Treasury for a quick moment in time. The government was reacting in predictable ways. I remember some Republicans who historically don't advocate throwing money at people saying, no, no, no, no, no. Remember this thinking, Paula, we're either going to bail out companies later or we give them money to stay afloat now.

59:46You mean during the pandemic? No matter what, during the pandemic, we are going to have to give people money. We're either going to have to help them later or we're going to help them now. So we decide we're going to help them now. Well, it created inflation. Created inflation, which is why the Federal Reserve then raised interest rates. And it's also why now that we've seen more data and where we're at today, we now slow down the economy so much that now we saw the half point decrease a few weeks ago. All of this is to some degree predictable. We don't know exactly what's going to happen, but you see this engine moving and you go, okay, I get it.

1:00:26I understand why that happens. But we're devaluing the currency over and over and over. I bought a house for 500 something thousand and now it's worth 400 something thousand. Right. And that's only in two years. Yeah. I don't want anything to do with that. Well, and Joe, I think the broader point that you're making is that the US is the world's reserve currency for a reason. Good point. And we are still the world's reserve currency for a reason. The US dollar is the most stable currency on the planet, period. And I know that there's been a lot of talk and speculation about is the U.S. going to stop being the world's reserve currency?

1:01:03And we can speculate about what might happen in the future all day long. But the fact of the matter is that at the present moment, we are. And for many, many decades leading up to the present moment, we have been. So when it comes to major world superpowers, there are two. There is the U.S. and China. And while we do have to continually compete with China to maintain our superpower status, we are a thousand percent the world's reserve currency. And where that becomes relevant in this context is that, and I know this from experience because coming from Nepal, I understand what it is to have very, very close affiliation with a nation that is highly economically unstable.

1:01:49or unstable. And Joe, to your point, when you said, hey, if you are intimately familiar with another country, you are the best qualified person to invest there. Nepalese Americans are, I think, better suited than most others to invest a portion of their portfolio in Nepal. Makes total sense to me. The problem is the Nepalese rupee, like I mentioned earlier, we also had CDs that were going for jaw-droppingly, eye-poppingly high APYs. I remember looking at the APY on a CD coming out of the Nepalese banks and seeing that number and my knee-jerk reaction was, wow, that'd be a great rate. And then after five seconds of thought, I then realized, oh, no, that's not.

1:02:42Because that is a lagging indicator, not even a leading one. It is a lagging indicator of inflationary data. And so whenever you see CDs with a high APY, it's a red flag. It's a red flag, and it's telling you to run in the opposite direction. So I agree with you, Joe, that it's best for him to have as much money in U.S. dollars as possible. That being said, he bought the home in 2022 for his personal use. This is not an investment. It's something that is available for him to personally use. It's a home. Homes are an inflationary environment. Tangible assets such as real estate, gold, art, any type of tangible asset is what you want to hold on to when inflation is strong.

1:03:27So, Sam, any local currency that you have there, converting that local currency into mortgage payoff, which is another way of saying converting local currency into tangible asset, do that with all your local currency. Don't hold on to any of the local currency. Use it to continue to pay off that tangible asset, that house that you purchased. Now, in terms of spending U.S. dollars on repaying the rest of that, I'm neutral on it. He's got some type of a mortgage with some type of a payment schedule. Well, I think this is where, Paula, the other goals matter, right? Yeah. Because I could make a case based on what you just said that that's the best use of money.

1:04:12But are the other goals funded? If other goals are also not funded enough, then I need to weigh this versus what else he's trying to achieve. Nations that tend to be highly economically unstable are often politically unstable and often lack due process. And so my question to you, Sam, is what is the risk that the government might seize your assets? I would take that into consideration before determining whether or not to pay off the home. Because if there is a high degree of risk of government asset seizure with no due process, then that needs to be factored in. particularly if you are openly critical of the government or if somebody in your family is openly critical of the government.

1:04:57And remember, you might never say anything critical of them, but what if you have a cousin who does? And then as an intimidation tactic, your assets can be seized. So that's something that you will want to think about before you decide to pay off this home. What is the risk of that seizure? And how are taxes there collected? I mean, because that's the thing about asset seizure is you might have to bribe a bureaucrat to give you a receipt that shows that you have paid your tax bill. And if you're not there and you can't pay that bribe, you might not get that receipt. Then there's going to be a paper trail claiming that you haven't paid the taxes.

1:05:34The whole thing becomes a big mess. And that basically it turns into a smokescreen, which just justifies increasing levels of bribery. But honestly, even that is the best case scenario, because with bribery, at least you can pay some people off and you get to keep your asset versus with a politically motivated seizure. You're just kind of out of luck. There's really nothing that you can do other than maybe like very publicly pledge fealty to the reigning regime. And again, Sam, I don't know what country you come from, but it is not lost on me that there is likely a reason that you haven't told us, because one would not want to publicly even hint at government criticism.

1:06:16That being said, Sam, I know you said that when you retire, you might want to go back there for a while. You want to live in the U.S., but you don't want to break your ties to your home, which I fully understand. So if you think that there is a low risk of asset seizure, yeah, it's nice to have a house there. And that's why I'm 50-50 on should you use U.S. dollars to pay it off sooner than later. A lot of this is going to depend on your assumptions around if the local currency will continue to be devalued, if inflation will continue to be skyrocketingly high, if the U.S. dollar will continue to buy more and more of the local currency, if the U.S.

1:07:02dollar will continually be stronger and stronger. If that's the case, and it sounds like there's a pretty strong case for that happening, it makes sense to wait. And it makes sense to make the minimum payments because as we move further and further into the future, the U.S. dollar will go further and further and further into payoff. You think that the U.S. dollar will continually get stronger against the local currency, then pay off the home as slowly as possible. By contrast, if having an outstanding mortgage leaves you susceptible to needing to bribe the loan officer, that's the complicating factor.

1:07:45To broaden this out a little bit, Paula, this is also difficult in a different way. It's often when you have an asset that's not performing, like knowing when to get off that train. Do I wait a little longer? Do I try to shore it up? Do I hope things are going to change or do I exit? It's one of the most difficult questions in personal finance is I have an expectation around my asset. It's not doing what I needed to do, what I wanted to do. Do I sell? Do I hold? That's difficult. Now, another reason why buying indexes is easy because it solves a problem ahead of time. Because with an index and that type of investment, when do I sell it question is self-solving.

1:08:32So Sam, I hope this was helpful. I think that the key that Joe and I both keep coming back to is keep as much of your money in U.S. dollars as possible. Well, or not in that economy. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever other economy this is, don't have it there. Yeah. When you're retired, you can always go rent there and you can always go spend there. Right. Assuming they let you back in, which you're a dual citizen. So assuming that they don't revoke your citizenship or revoke your passport, then you can always go back. And the more money that you have in U.S. dollars, the more power you have to do that, to go back there as a renter and as a spender.

1:09:12That said, if you are going to own any assets there at all, tangible assets like real estate are the best things to have. Assuming you can keep it. Yeah, assuming you can keep it. And given the inflation rate, paying it off as slowly as possible makes the most sense. If you think that the U.S. dollar is going to be stronger, increasingly stronger and stronger, barring all of those other mitigating factors. But for the most part, stick to U.S. dollars, stick to the world reserve currency. So Sam, thank you for the question and best of luck with whatever you decide to do. Well, Joe, we've done it.

1:09:47Ta-da! Where can people find you if they would like to hear more from you? Every Monday, Wednesday, Friday at the Stacking Benjamin Show, the greatest money show on earth. We've got a cool one, a great mentor who stopped by Mom's Basement where we record our episodes. Downtown Josh Brown, one of the managing partners at Ritz Holtz Wealth Management. He also is one of the hosts of the CNBC Halftime Report. And we talked to Josh Brown about the lessons that we learned about inflation during the pandemic and about capitalism during the pandemic. Also, we talked about robots coming for our jobs. Are the robots coming for our jobs?

1:10:30If you know Josh Brown, you know he talks a mile a minute and he always has great takes about everything. And we talked to him recently. So go listen to my discussion with Josh Brown. Excellent. And that is on the Stacking Benjamins podcast. Wherever finer podcasts are distributed. Awesome. Well, thank you, Joe. And thank you all for tuning in. This is the Afford Anything podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please do three things. First, subscribe to our newsletter, affordanything.com slash newsletter. Absolutely no cost. And remember, if you sign up for the newsletter, we will email you to tell you about Joe's free training that he's going to be offering on YouTube at some point during the month of November on how to use Morningstar's portfolio visualizer to find where you fit on the efficient frontier.

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