Ask Paula: What to Do with a Six-Figure Windfall?

30:06But because the amount of work that they have to do to manage each account is high, but the number of participants in a given account is low, it just makes sense that that fee is going to be higher because there's more account management per employee. It is frustrating. It is frustrating to me that a big company, my dad spent his whole career at General Motors, the fees that GM pays per person in that organization, I would bet is way, way, way lower than this organic farm. And the reason is also because Goldman Sachs or any Wall Street firm wants to manage the big bucks. And when you come across with, hey, we've got a few hundred thousand dollars in this fund or$50 ,000 or whatever it is, every money management firm goes, yeah, no thanks.

31:02Pass. Yeah. It's simply a matter of scale. The bigger you are, the better your negotiating power. Larger businesses just have an advantage and small businesses do get saddled with with bigger fees. And that's part of the trade-off that comes with running a small business or working for a small business. The administrative cost is still there. It is simply divided among a much smaller pool of employees. And therefore, every employee has to share a higher burden. Now, what you get in exchange for that are all of the advantages that come from working for a small business, right? Which there are many, but the costs are also higher.

31:47Yeah. There is the whole argument, which in every small business owner, I think is going to agree with me. Why is this a small business owner's problem in the first place? We've talked about the average person now changes jobs. I think the latest number I saw was seven times during their career. Why don't we just have a portable plan that everybody gets and you can just take and do your own thing? You know what I mean? You can decide between the different people out there Why is this the employer's job to do this? It'd be cool if I could just plug my thing into my employer when I start. I get direct deposit already.

32:21The fact that this is unfair is just a product of the type of system that we have, which is grossly inefficient for a small business person and for the company trying to service the small business person, which is why the fees went up for your 401k because they saw how hard it is to run these small 401k plans. Right. There's this quote from Oscar Wilde that a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. In this case, the value that you're getting is that as a small business employee, you have access to a tax advantaged 401k. And that is not something that a lot of small business employees have.

33:06A lot of small businesses don't offer retirement plans at all, again, because the fee structure associated with offering benefits to your employees is so onerous. And not just the fee structure, but the paperwork, the administration. I mean, the owner of a small business has to spend a lot of their time just handling admin, and that's time that they could otherwise be spending growing the business. So there's certainly a lot of opportunity cost when, as the owner of a small business, you are focused on what I call death by a thousand paper cuts. You're focused on admin rather than on growth, right?

33:40There's opportunity cost that happens there and that affects everybody. It affects the employees because now, you know, if the company were to grow, the employees - More money for raises. Right? Exactly. Or you could hire more employees to help reduce or share the workload among the existing employees. So it's in everybody's interest for a small business to grow. And yet that gets curtailed when the owner of a small business has to spend a lot of their time on admin. And that's what happens when a small business offers benefits. But at the same time, a good small business owner still chooses to offer benefits to their employees, right?

34:19Because... Which is probably why the owner of the farm said yes when James recommended it. Yeah. Or asked for it. Yeah. A good small business offers benefits to their employees, despite the fact that it's a giant pain in the butt to manage and administer. So yeah, there is going to be a fee for that because there's a workload for that. Yeah. The first thing that I may do if you don't like this is just look around and see other providers. If there's a different provider, don't stop putting money into a 401k. Yeah. And to boil this down to what does it mean for you and your wallet, in just sheer mathematical terms, the tax advantage that you get from having money inside of a 401k is significantly greater than the disadvantage that you suffer from having to pay this 1 % fee.

35:11So just if you were to spreadsheet it out, the math is quite clear. The compounding effect of that tax advantage over decades of your life is going to be much, much greater than the compounding effect of that fee over those same decades. Well, Joe, James said, I know you'll give it to me straight, and I think he got it. He might have. James, thank you for the call. Thank you for organic farming. I would love to visit your organic farm because, oh my goodness, eating local, so good. So, so good. It's time for Cyber Monday, Dell Technologies' biggest sale of the year. Enjoy the lowest prices of the year on select PCs like the Dell 16 Plus, featuring Intel Core Ultra processors.

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37:13It'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.

37:52Prolonlife.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. Our next question comes from Remy. Hey, Paula. My name's Remy, and I really enjoyed listening to your podcast, especially hearing what you and Joe have to say about other people's financial questions. My husband and I have been trying to grow our family for the past two years, and it's looking more and more likely that we're going to need to do IVF. We don't have any insurance coverage for it, and it's about$30 ,000.

38:36We have close to$20 ,000 saved up in cash, and we need to figure out where the other$10 ,000 is going to come from. We bought an iBond last year for$10 ,000 when the rates were really high. And we also have about$60 ,000 in a brokerage account. Do you think we should take the money out of the brokerage account? Or should we get the money out of the iBond before the full maturity date? Thank you. Remy, thank you so much for the question. And Paula,$30 ,000 is so expensive. It's so expensive and so, so, so, so worth it. And also so such an emotional time. I know for a lot of people going through that, that period right now, this, this is probably from the financial end, maybe the easiest part of everything you're going to go through.

39:34because number one, if you're not beyond the 12 month mark, I would not do what would happen if you took out the I bond and forego all the interest. So the good news is no penalty. The bad news is you're going to lose all your interest. I wouldn't do that, especially since you grabbed onto a nice interest rate during that fleeting moment when we had a very phenomenal rate. If you're still in the early period though, you're still going to lose three months of interest. So I would look at the things that you are investing in inside of that brokerage account and see if there is something there with no penalty that you could use over the short term in your head.

40:15We talked earlier in the show, Paula, about creating these buckets in your mind. You are going to borrow that money from that bucket and you're going to then replace it with the I-Bond. When the I-Bond matures, it'll go into that bucket and replace that money. And then what happens is if you grabbed it at the right time, you got about 10%, which is phenomenal. And knowing that equities do about 10 % over long periods of time, there's going to be really no harm, no foul in keeping all of your interest. Again, I want to look at what you've got in those positions and what that money in the brokerage account is already allocated for.

40:55But if there's a likely suspect where you're not going to lose out on any interest by taking it, I like that strategy, Paula. I like a replacement strategy. So let's just simplify this. If the money in the I-bond has been there for less than 12 months, keep the money inside of the I-bond, right? You don't want to give that up. She said she bought the iBond last year. So we don't know if she said last year, was that 10 months ago? Was it 11 months ago or was it 13 months ago, right? Was it 10 months ago or was it 14 months ago? That's going to make a huge difference. Remy, if you have held on to that iBond for less than 12 months, keep the iBond, right?

41:38Don't give that up. If you have held the I-bond for more than 12 months, more than 12 months, but obviously less than five years, then, yeah, there's an argument to be made for as long as you've held the I-bond for a minimum of 12 months, then I'm not opposed to cashing in the I-bond after that point. because if you surrender the I-bond after 12 months, but prior to five years, then you'll lose the last three months of interest, but you'll still get the rest. But yeah, I mean, I'm with you, Joe. If you've got some money in a taxable brokerage account that you could also tap and that money in the taxable brokerage account is being invested in something that isn't paying as well as the I-bond is, might as well tap that money and then just later down the road, cash in the I-bond and put it into the taxable brokerage.

42:33If my default expectation on a stock-based mutual fund is 10 % anyway, and she scored the 9.xx on the I-bond at or near the top, then we're getting that rate of return. Yeah. But I mean, with an I-bond, there's less volatility than there would be with investing in equities. That's what I'm saying. That's what I like about it. Yeah, exactly. What I like about it is she locks that in. There is the point that the stock-based mutual fund could continue to go up and could beat that number. But we can't play that game because the second we start playing that game, then we get into speculating about where the market's at and we're always wrong.

43:18And even if we are right, it's pretty lucky that we're right. So instead I got to go with what's the rate of return I need. This I bond for this little tiny moment is achieving what you need for the long-term goal. Anybody who's looking at more than a 9 % rate of return they need from their investments is asking for failure. So I like the fact that, I can stay in the I bond, have less volatility with this piece of my portfolio. It will perform near the long-term average of equities. And I don't have to worry about it. And I get to keep that three months interest. Right. Actually, the more we talk through it, the more I like the idea of just holding onto the I-bond and pulling the money out of the taxable brokerage.

44:01Because if you're going to get relatively equal returns from both, or at least if you're going to assume relatively equal returns from both, but the I-bond has less risk and less volatility, then pull the money out of the taxable brokerage, right? Because the I bond has better risk adjusted return. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, the more we talk through this, the more I say, you know what, pull the money out of the taxable brokerage. No, that's why I like this replacement strategy. What I want to caution Remy on is that this is not free of any penalty. If your stock-based fund, let's say, has done pretty well, you're still going to pay a capital gains tax on that money.

44:43So calculate what that would be versus the three months interest that you would lose before you make the move. So know what the cost is going to be. And the cost could be, there could be a backend fee on the end of the fund, probably not investing in one of those, but I would still ask the question. There could be trading fees, although those have long gone away for 99.9 % of investments out there that you'd use in a taxable brokerage. And the third is the tax ramifications of selling. So I would add up how much money that is compared to the three months. And then I'm betting though, that that's going to be a lower fee than that three month interest penalty.

45:21There's something else that I want to talk about as well though. And that is one round of IVF may or may not cut it. I have been through six rounds of egg freezing and several of those rounds have not gone well. So I have spent probably around$80 ,000 egg freezing, right? When it comes to fertility, you need to be prepared to go through multiple rounds because there are rounds that just fail or there are rounds that really underperform. So in the best case scenario, one round of IVF will work. But there's very much the possibility that you might need two, three, four rounds of IVF. And I think you need to start asking the question, where is that money going to come from?

46:19Plan for the worst, hope for the best. Yeah. Yeah. I've been through rounds. I mean, that have been complete failures. and you still have to outlay the money. You still have to pay for all of the medications, all of the drugs, all of the ultrasounds and then you just have to kind of scrape it and start over and do it again. Hope for the best but plan for the worst. Be prepared to have to lay out some serious cash more than just the initial$30 ,000 that you're thinking. right be prepared for needing to do a few rounds uh i think it's worth it you know it's absolutely worth it and if if having a family is something that you want if you don't do it now then you may regret that when you're 50 so i absolutely think it's worth it money cannot compare to the joy of having a family but kids are expensive yes they are yeah i figure whenever i have kids If they ask for money for college, I'll be like, dude, your college fund was that you exist.

47:30All right. I gave you money for living. Yeah. We front loaded that college fund by bringing you into the world. You're sending yourself to school. I paid for living expenses. Yeah, exactly.

47:48Precisely. You're lucky, kid. Yeah, it brings a whole new meaning to cost of living. So Remy, thank you for the question. And please feel free to call back as you go through the IVF process. Call back, leave a follow-up. I hope that one round does it. But start to think about how you're going to pay for round two. And please call us back and let us know how it turns out. So thank you for the question. All right. Our final caller today is Anonymous. And Joe, I named the last Anonymous caller. So why don't you name this next one? Oh, I just got done watching a great series on Amazon Prime called Reacher Season 2.

48:41Highly recommend it. And the star is a guy named Alan Richson. And he is a beast of a man, Paula. Just a beast of a man. Alan Richson is just huge. But wonderful series. Highly recommend Reacher. So let's call him Alan. All right. Well, then our final question today comes from Alan. Hey, Paul and Joe, anonymous calling from New Mexico. My partner and I have been living on the road in an RV for the past several years. We enjoy the lifestyle, but are wanting to lay down our roots and establish a home base where we can reside for part of the year. We're looking to purchase raw land and build a small, off-grid home.

49:21We both have hands-on experience with building and are fully confident this living situation suits our desires. Some additional background. I'm 30 years old and my salary job brings in$180 ,000 a year. I have$300 ,000 in various investment accounts, mostly positioned in broad-based passive index funds. I contribute the maximum to these accounts each year. I also have around$125 ,000 in essentially cash positions and other non-retirement accounts, not including my emergency fund. My partner is finishing up university and expects to bring in around$60 ,000 a year when she enters the workforce. Several years ago, she acquired a lump sum of$80 ,000, which she invested into a taxable brokerage account.

50:05It's now valued around$130 ,000. We have no debt. Our goal requires making two large purchases. First is the raw land. Second is everything else needed for building the off-grid home. We expect to perform a fair bit of the labor ourselves, so the majority of the cost will be for materials and equipment. We're aiming to spend around$300 ,000 in total. I will be using my cash position to fund as much as possible, but I'd like to know your thoughts on leveraging the money in the taxable brokerage account. I'm well aware of the debate between paying outright for a large purchase versus taking a loan and investing the rest.

50:44Assuming the average rate of return of the taxable brokerage account exceeds the interest of the loan, I can see the argument for taking the loan and letting the money grow. But we are very debt-averse and like the idea of being able to take mini-retirements from time to time. It seems that having a loan would make that situation harder to achieve. Also, it's worth pointing out that we don't have to buy the raw land and develop it out at the same time. Our timeline is flexible. Assuming that leveraging the money in the taxable brokerage account is the preferred option, what implications do we need to be aware of?

51:18Conversely, if we want to take a loan, what kind of loans should we look into? I suspect that a traditional mortgage will not apply in this situation. Anything else come to mind that we've overlooked? Lastly, and unrelated to our situation, I'm curious about your thoughts on raw land as a conservative investment option. Thanks so much for any recommendations you can offer. I love the show. Keep on keeping on. Anonymous Allen, thank you for your question. A couple of things come to mind right away. Number one, with a new question, you touched on the debate between paying cash for a large purchase, such as a home, versus taking out a mortgage and arbitraging the difference.

51:58I think that that debate is absolutely overplayed on the Internet and that people who sit there on Twitter or on blogs and finger wag about, oh, why are you paying off a home? You could be investing that money. But it's incredibly reductive reasoning. Sure, everyone with half a brain cell understands that if you take out a mortgage at 3%, let's just say back in the old days, right? If you take out a mortgage at 3 % and you invest money in the markets at 8%, then you arbitrage the difference and you end up with an extra 5 % in your pocket. Everyone gets that, right? A fourth grader could get that.

52:46But what that does not take into account is the rest of your life. What that does not take into account is the level of security or risk that you have in your occupation, right? Because some people are tenured professors who have a huge amount of job security, while other people are traveling musicians who have a very low amount of job security, right? So that doesn't take that into account. It doesn't take into account the level of risk in your other investments. Some people have fairly conservative other investments within their portfolio. Other people do not. Other people have a huge amount of risk in their other investments.

53:30Maybe they're not even in public markets. Maybe they are investing in private businesses entirely, which is incredibly risky. I'm not advocating that, but, you know, what I'm stating is that the whole picture of your life, the level of risk in your other investments, the level of job security that you have or income security that you have, the level of obligations that you have to other people. Some people are immigrants who have to send money home to Bangladesh to support their family. All of those factors are going to play a role in whether or not you choose to embrace leverage risk in a home.

54:12And so I think that the people on Twitter and elsewhere on the internet who say that it doesn't make sense to pay cash for a home or to own a home free and clear, and they put forth this leverage argument, are willfully ignoring the fact that a decision is not made in a vacuum and that the choice that you make about how you pay for your home needs to be contextualized within the wider picture of your life. And so in your case, as you've stated, you're very debt averse. You want to take a bunch of mini retirements. There are a huge number of reasons why, based on your lifestyle, it makes sense to own something in cash or to own something outright.

54:58It makes sense to not have debt if you can avoid it, if that is financially feasible for you, which it sounds like it is. And so don't listen to the voices on Twitter who make the arbitrage argument, because frankly, I think a lot of them learned the word arbitrage last week and now feel all high and mighty about themselves. And so they want to show off online to prove that, oh, I've just figured this thing out. But there's the other side, which is there's there's there's no free lunch, which was which was what I was thinking, Paula. it's okay to be debt averse. And I totally agree with everything you said, but the other way is not free either.

55:38If you devote a bunch of money to this, you know, you talk about taking, he talks about taking many vacations. If, if you take so much money and put it toward this property, that's less money for other stuff. That also is not in a vacuum, meaning that you may need to catch up if you have these goals that you're trying to reach. And instead of taking the mini vacation because you decided to dedicate so much money toward the certainty of owning the property instead of using leverage, well, then we also still have an issue. So I'm with you in the fact that they paint this idea that it's just, oh, it's magic.

56:16We just use leverage. This is other people's money. OPM, baby. There is a price to every move that you make. And the true key to a great financial plan isn't finding the utopia where there is no price because that's ludicrous. The key to a great plan is knowing what the Achilles heel is in your plan and minimizing it because there always is one. There never is not a risk. When you make a move, there's ultimately always going to be the other end of that stick. Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah, it's true. By virtue of tying money up into this property, he's necessarily not going to be contributing as much to equities.

56:54He's not going to be likely developing out his own business or other various business ideas. He's not going to be investing money into commodities or into private startup ventures. He's not going to be using the money for any number of alternative purposes. But it also sounds as though he doesn't want to, right? He wants to have the security of a home and he wants to travel and take mini retirements. And so assuming that he can float both of those, and there may need to be some trade-off in the types of mini retirements that he takes. Maybe he can only go to countries where the dollar exchange rate really works in his favor.

57:34So France is out, Cambodia is in, right? That's probably a piece of it. Cambodia is the new France. I should say Laos because the French, they speak French in Laos. But part of that equation is knowing, hey, you've got less money for travel or you've got less money for mini retirements. And so, therefore, we're going to choose where we go with the economics of the dollar exchange rate being top of mind, with geo arbitrage being top of mind. Or we're going to just stick around domestically and continue to travel in the RV. So his two questions, I think we can handle the raw land first. What do you think about raw land as an investment?

58:19It's speculative. So if you think of any investment, right, any investment makes money in one of two ways. There is the appreciation of the asset, and then there is the dividend or the income stream that it pays out. When you have an asset like a company, that company makes money and therefore pays a dividend. If you have a rental property, that rental property collects money, it collects rent, and therefore it pays the equivalent of a dividend. It pays an income stream, right? When you have, however, something that does not produce income, like a piece of art or Bitcoin, something that inherently does not produce income, then its value is speculative.

59:01And so when it comes to raw land, there are two types of raw land. There's raw land that does produce income, such as raw land that has trees where you can harvest some percentage of those trees and sell that to a lumber mill. Sure, that's one form of raw land investing. But if you're buying a bare piece of land that does not have any method of income production, then it is purely a speculative investment. And you've got the holding cost. Yeah, exactly. That's the first thing I think of is can you afford the holding cost? Exactly. You're paying these holding costs and you don't know if that thing will ever appreciate.

59:47A speculative investment by definition means that it's worth whatever other people are willing to pay. And this idea that like, well, they're not making any more land is bogus. That's not how. They are making more land? Well, technically, yes, that is also true. Just look at Dubai, right? Look at the artificial islands that they're building. So yes, they are making more land. I'm going to go buy the seafloor. That's what I'm going to buy. But in addition to that, the land is not so scarce. Our human population is not so great that we are clamoring over underlying square footage. There's lots of raw land that has decreased in value over time.

1:00:35Or failed to appreciate. Look at huge swaths of northern Ohio. The value of that underlying land in some parts of northern Ohio has collapsed. Right. Compare that to a place like Manhattan. The value of every square inch of underlying land is so great that what do they do? They build on top of it. Right. So when you're not making more land in a case like Manhattan, it's an island. When you can't scale outwards, what do you do? You scale upwards. So this whole like they're not making more land again is reductive. It's simplistic and it ignores the reality of how the economics of land acquisition actually works.

1:01:12Some places are desirable. And if a place is desirable, then the value of the underlying land grows. Some places lose their desirability. And when that happens, the value of the underlying land recedes. recedes. Kabul, Afghanistan, used to be the Paris of the Middle East. It used to be a vacation destination. Tourists who went backpacking would go to Kabul for the food and the nightlife and the music, right? What do you think has happened to the value, to land values there between when And it was the Paris of its region versus today. And obviously, I'm not suggesting that the place where you're buying land is comparable to Kabul.

1:02:03But I'm illustrating the point that just because they are, quote unquote, not making any more land does not mean that the value of that particular geographic location is going to rise. I think that answers his first question. Yeah. I think it does. I mean, obviously, there are pieces of land that go up in value, but I think you clearly define what the, we talked about Achilles heel, of that speculation might be, which brings up the second question, which is loans, if he's looking at loans. There are a handful of loans out there for. Like a building loan? Yeah, building loans and new construction loans.

1:02:50But what's going to be challenging is, you know, you're going to need, you mentioned that you want to do a lot of this work yourself. You're going to need detailed architectural plans. You're going to need an engineer stamp of approval on these plans. You know, you're going to be going through some very rigorous permitting processes. And the approval of the loan is going to be tied up in a lot of that. So you're going to have to work with a loan officer who is very, very well versed in this because this is highly nontraditional. The other thing that I also wanted to say on that same front, you have a job that pays you$180 ,000.

1:03:29When are you going to have time to build a house? Because building a home, first of all, the work required is very full time. Very, very full time. And this is not the type of work where you can dip in for an hour or two. There are very long, long eight to ten hour days where you and a crew, because frankly, a lot of the work required is going to necessarily require multiple hands. If you're laying a foundation, if you are framing, if you're insulating, if you're laying subfloor and then flooring, all of that requires a lot of setup, a lot of cleanup, multiple hands on deck, a crew that you manage, multiple days of waiting for inspection.

1:04:30Right. Because there's the inspector is going to have to come throughout the process to sign off on each step of the way. I know that there are people who are like, well, I'm just going to do this under the table and I'm not going to get the proper permitting. And good luck with a loan if you do it that way. Yeah, that was my thought. Yeah. Right. That's not going to fly if you borrow the money. This is where doing it yourself really is the downside, Paula, because you walk into a bank and say, hey, I'm comfortable building most of this myself. I'd like a loan to do it. The loan officer to be responsible to their bank is going to say, so what are your qualifications?

1:05:14What do you do? How much have you built? What's your licensing? What are the things you've done? Are you bonded and insured? Because they're trying to protect their investment. No loan officer is going to want to cover that. So certainly if you're taking out a loan, this has to be done with proper permitting and all of the proper channels. And even if you are paying for it in cash, just wait until you get your first stop work order. because the inspectors, they drive around. Their job is to slap stop work orders onto homes. The moment that they see a porta potty out in the yard or the moment that they see that toilet that you haven't had time to install and so it's sitting at the edge of the property, you're going to need a dumpster.

1:06:02The moment they see a dumpster, they're going to slap a stop work order on that. I'm just thinking of a neighbor that was remodeling his basement. On day two, there was a knock on the door. Yeah. It was the tax assessor. Yeah. We got a stop work order once. We weren't even doing any work, but we had an old dishwasher and we took it out. We put it at the edge of the driveway and boom, the next day we got a stop work order. And we're like, we're not doing any work. We just literally all we did was just swap out a dishwasher. But they saw that and that was for them sufficient evidence that there might be work going on.

1:06:44And so then it became up to us to have to deal with that. You know, and you're going to be dealing with, well, you said this is off grid, so you won't necessarily be dealing with an electrical box. But, you know, even if this is a straw bale house, there's a lot of equipment. There's a lot of supplies. There's no way that this will fly under the radar of county inspectors. So you're going to need plans drawn up. You're going to need a stamp from an engineer. You're going to need all of that to get the approvals to get this started. If your job is going to give you the time to do that, great. Maybe you work a four-day week, and then you can spend three days a week on this.

1:07:35But then you're working seven days a week, and it's going to go very slowly. The progress is going to be incredibly incremental. And meanwhile, the holding costs will continue to accrue. I'm not saying that to discourage you from doing it, but speaking as somebody who has tried to do the work myself on rental properties and has tried to do that while also working full time and has seen all of the challenges there, I have very much learned the hard way what it truly means to attempt to do the work yourself. What the true cost is. Yeah, exactly what the true cost is. Yeah. But I don't know, maybe he's a GC.

1:08:25But even if he is, I mean, even if he is a GC, it's actually relatively easy to get a GC license, right? It's not that hard to pass the exam or to meet the qualifications for the licensure. It's another thing entirely to manage a crew on a day-to-day basis, particularly if you're also balancing that with a full-time job. If you weren't working full-time, right, if your work allows you to take a one-year sabbatical, that's a different story entirely, right? If this is your full-time job, all right, cool. If it's your full-time job, man, go ahead. But if you're balancing this with working full-time, that's...

1:09:08Whole different story. Yeah. And Alan, by the way, I know that the, what the unstated question was, was, um, would we come out and have a look when you're finished? And, um, and maybe, you know, I love New Mexico. New Mexico is so beautiful. So yes. Yeah. Yeah. We'll come. Well, absolutely. I'll get Paula to bring the show stuff and we'll, um, we'll, we'll do an offsite episode. I mean, we have to. That would be fun. And the good news is Paula told me ahead of time she would pay for the whole thing. What? Which is great. I'm just going to keep throwing this stuff out there. But overall, Alan, I also, I just want to congratulate you on the intentionality of your lifestyle, right?

1:10:00You're living in an RV. You're in a beautiful part of the country. New Mexico is just gorgeous. You know what you want, this off-grid home. You have a great job that pays you a ton of money. You want to take mini retirements. You have an incredible lifestyle. So congratulations on building all of that. And I can't wait to see what you do next. Well, Joe, we've done it again. I can't believe we're done already. It goes by so fast. Joe, where can people find you if they would like to hear more of you? You will find me every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at the Stacking Benjamin Show, where I often appear alongside the Paula Pant on our Friday episodes.

1:10:48And interesting mentors on Monday, Wednesday, join OG and my mom's neighbor, Doug, mom's basement for some riveting discussions of all things, from productivity to money management to legacy building across the board. We talk about a lot of stuff. And that is at the Stacking Benjamins podcast, available wherever the finer, the finest of all podcasts can be found. Exquisite. Yes. And so speaking of where you find great podcasts, open up, please, your favorite podcast playing app, Spotify, Pandora, Apple Podcasts. Open up that app. Make sure that you are following this show. And while you're there, please leave us a review.

1:11:34But most importantly, tell your friends and family about this show and join our community, affordanything.com slash community completely free. You can chat with other like-minded people about all of these topics, affordanything.com slash community. Thank you for tuning in. This is the Afford Anything podcast. I'm Paula Pant. I'm Joe Salcihai. And we will catch you in the next episode.

1:12:04Thank you.