LIVE EVENT Q&A: Episode 500, Part 2, with ChooseFI’s Brad Barrett

31:11Yeah. But my question is, you're both quite well-traveled and my girlfriend and I are digital nomads. What are places that you've traveled to around the world that you would recommend that all of us go to? Ooh. That's a great question.

31:55This is not for me. And so I think one of the beauties of like, take a class, immerse yourself in it. And from just taking a class, really figure out do I want is this right for me or not? And by virtue of doing that, you spare yourself tens of thousands of dollars and huge headaches on the other side, you know, doing it the like, F around and find out kind of way. Yeah. Naked land speculation. Also not a good idea. So, yeah, like a huge applause to you for really being thoughtful about is this for me and taking the time to dive into that question and then coming out with an informed answer. So I think that's amazing.

32:47Now to your actual question. All right. So I just came back from Mongolia, China and Egypt in the last it was a it was a whirlwind two week trip. But Mongolia. So I like I've been to Egypt before. It was my second time there. Egypt is great. China is great. Mongolia, I really fell in love with. It's huge. And it has a total population of, I believe, around three million. So it's incredibly sparsely populated. So, you know, it's just it's nature. It's just, it's the Gobi Desert. It's these huge mountains, beautiful culture, beautiful, just beautiful scenery. Mongolia is incredible. Yeah. So, yeah, I think anybody who listens to my show knows what my answer is going to be is Japan.

33:36It's my absolute favorite place I've ever visited. It's a remarkable, remarkable place. It's a remarkable culture. the people are just incredible and and it's just such an odd mix of like you know you have japanese game shows on the one hand which are just these wild like things you could never imagine what these crazy people are doing to just like the majesty of like of history and the grand sumo competitions and just seeing Kyoto and just all the temples. It's such a fascinating place, even though I was such a foreigner there and I stuck out like a sore thumb, but I felt at home there. And it just was a really, really special time.

34:28So yeah, if I were to ever live anywhere else, it would unquestionably be Japan. Yeah. I also advocate for, you know, just go to a lot of places, but also travel slowly. At least this is my personal opinion, take it or leave it. But I'm a big proponent of what I call slow travel, where you take your time and stay there for a while. I don't count myself as having been to a country unless I've spent at least a week there. And it can be a cumulative week across like I went to Singapore for three days and I'm going to go back again this fall because I've got a friend who just moved there. So the last time I was there, I was there for three days.

35:11If I'm going to go back again, I'll be there for probably like four days, five days. So, okay, cumulatively, that's a week. I'll count that. But the reason that I've implemented that rule for myself when it comes to my own personal sense of how many countries I've traveled to is I want to make sure that I'm not just like popping in, spending a day or two leaving and then being like, check. If I've only kind of grazed the surface of a place, then I want to give myself some type of a mental sense of that being incomplete in order to motivate myself to go back and to go back and to give it the time that it deserves.

35:53and one week is really even not that long but I've set that for myself as a minimum. Yeah. We're going to take one more moment to thank the sponsors who make it possible for our team to bring you information about financial literacy and financial independence available at no cost to you. Please join me in thanking our sponsors.

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38:41hi guys uh huge fan since of both podcasts since like 2018 so it's been really fun to piggyback on the recommendation question uh we're not going to talk about travel you both mentioned you love books, podcasts, and other content in the FIRE community. What are some of your favorites that are not based out of North America? It could be a podcast, it could be a FIRE book, something FIRE related. FIRE? I don't know FIRE content that's not North American based. I do know a guy who's based out of Australia who talks about dating, who's great. Yeah. Will Hitchens on Instagram. He's fantastic yeah i mean that is a really good question i do not follow any fire podcasts or blogs that are not in the u.s i think there's also like a like a fi europe or fire europe podcast that i listened to a couple times and you know it's it's good i think it might be maybe a similar issue from what i occasionally and i suspect this is you know maybe where the question comes from also is like get emails from people oh i live in germany i love your podcast but i wish you could have an episode about germany i'm like yeah i you know it's hard it it it is genuinely i i think in fairness we could do a better job but am i realistically going to have a phi germany a phi Malaysia episode, a Fai Uganda episode.

40:24I think and I hope those voices come from their particular countries. And I would love to see, and I think this is why, again, with our Chooseify local groups, we've tried, I think at last count there are 30 different countries where we have local groups, and it seems to be adding slowly but surely. I hope that those people become podcasters and bloggers, like, because they're intimately familiar, obviously, with their country. They're, by definition, going to do a better job than I can. So it doesn't really answer your question, unfortunately. But, like, you know, you got the essence of where it came from.

41:07Because I'm originally from Cameroon and I have family living in France. And I tell them they know how excited I am about fire. but they always tell me oh it only works because you're in the u.s now and so i'm always trying to find a way like okay are they actual famous podcasters bloggers outside that i can share with them so it'd be nice to have those resources anyone in the audience no oh alan and katie donagan yeah yeah yeah oh i shouldn't have forgotten yeah oh barney the escape artist yeah yeah yeah so definitely okay so yeah we completely forgot our friends in the uk so sorry guys alan and katie are like some of my best friends in the whole world and i literally forget them i am going to vegas with them next week and i forgot them That's incredible.

42:07So yeah, you can see how hard it is to answer questions live. Oh, no, no, that's going to stay. We're keeping that in. We're keeping that in. I also wanted to add, there's this awards thing called the Plutus Awards. The Plutus Awards honors like best personal finance content. They have a category for best Canadian personal finance content. If you just Google Plutus Awards, you can look through every year because they have the awards listed by year. and you can see not just the winners, but also all of the nominees. And so then you can check that for best Canadian personal finance blogs. So that's a good way.

42:45Like anytime that someone from the audience reaches out to me and says, hey, what are the good Canadian personal finance blogs out there or podcasts or content creators? I just checked the Plutus Awards website. I just want to say that I think this is better than Swifties Concerts because this is like, I mean it, I mean it. I'm geeking out big time. I've been feeling like literally high for the last several weeks since I bought the tickets because I just saw it on your Facebook and this is like amazing. So I love you both and you've changed my life and so many lives in an amazing way. And I do have questions, but I just wanted you, I want to be able to tell you this.

43:24You've opened like the doors into so many books and libraries and podcasts for me to get educated on things that I didn't, I would have not known. I'm an immigrant. I'm from Russia. So like my family, you know, all they told me is just pay off your credit card every month. That's it. So question for you is, I want to know what you're feeling about the real estate is. I know the market is crazy and all that stuff. I'm a cheater, and he's a very slow turtle. So I want to buy all the houses today and tomorrow. And he keeps saying the market is best. So we have conversations. And we also have a 14-year-old daughter.

44:05What if there's any like classes that I could sign her up for with other like 14-year-olds? You know, because it's different when you like, this is amazing. Like, I'll never forget this. The energy, the everything. Like, I want her to experience that. And also for both of you, is there any like master classes or camps you are doing where people can get together and just geek out for like three days, like solid? In whatever way. Like FinCon, I know hasn't done it in a while, but like anything that you're planning or doing or know of. That third question, I'll start there, because that to me is the easiest of the bunch.

44:42So there are a ton, actually, of these five community gatherings, which is wonderful. So I just got back from the Economy Conference in Cincinnati, which doesn't sound like a five community event, But it is the largest FI event in the world. And it is, yeah, basically a three-day weekend of geeking out. And you obviously, you learn a lot. And there are main stage speakers and breakout rooms. But it's the enjoyment for me, and I think for a lot of the attendees, is the time in between. It's the time to, you use the word master class. And I think it's important to learn, obviously, knowledge is wonderful.

45:32Nobody's saying otherwise. But for me, these events are about being amongst this energy and about seeing that you're not the only person pursuing FI. Because in your life, there's a reasonable chance that you are the only person that you know who is pursuing FI. And you, right? I'm like, I'm just going to stick with me. Right. Her friends are sick of her. And I think a lot of us, you can ask my friends in the back, like, you know, am I like the weird one? So I think that's normal for us. But I think when you're amidst and amongst like-minded people, it's just very energizing. so yeah economy so that's uh me at the end not my uh economy conference there's camp fi i think a lot of people get caught up in the camp as if you're like roughing it it's a three-day weekend basically at like a retreat center so there's no roughing involved there's an event that i'm going to this year in bali actually so this is uh amy minkley has something called the five freedom retreat.

46:42And that's obviously a much more involved event to fly across the world and, and stay there for a week or two. Uh, but that's much more immersive. It's akin to the Chautauquas, which don't really exist anymore, unfortunately. Um, yeah. So, and then little events pop up, you know, something like this, the choose of my local groups, hopefully are, are having more group, more events on a regular basis and not just, Hey, we're getting together at a brewery, but we're going to have a case study where someone is brave enough to stand up and talk about their own personal finances and, and get help from the group.

47:24Because I think it really is about this community. And, and it's just really neat to see. I've seen like a little, little like green sprouts of these like case studies popping up in, I think at last check, it was a couple dozen of our local groups. Now I've had people again, being brave enough. And could you imagine standing up for most people standing up in front of friends and neighbors and talking about your actual numbers? Like that's a really scary thing. But I think what we've seen is once you get that first person in your local group, who's brave enough to do it, almost invariably a handful of other people jump up and say, I want to do that because I know in our local Richmond group, we had one and it was great.

48:12And then somebody else said, okay, three weeks from now, I want to do a presentation. And that couple literally realized they reached financial independence and they put in their notice at their job, like from a case study. and that was just one of those really wild things so anyway very long story short there are lots of these events there really are and i think more and more of them are popping up i think and somebody could correct me there's uh fin talks i think is uh another one is it oh there's a cruise right amber lee grant has a cruise so yeah there's like a lot of these things that are popping up we'll try to get like a better resource on on our website yeah one thing that uh we at afford anything we are planning on doing, like broadly planning on doing, but we don't have specifics yet.

48:58So we're not ready to like announce it, but we're planning on having online one day workshops for that are digital. So anybody across the nation can attend as well as in-person events here in New York. So we don't have specifics yet, but like that's very high on our list. We also really want to do like a one week, you know, in the absence of Chautauqua, because both you and I have been to many of the Chautauquas and they've been great. And in the absence of that, one of the things that we've been talking about doing as Afford Anything is planning a one week retreat. We've been discussing doing it in Peru.

49:37Nothing is set in stone yet. That's just behind, it's behind the scenes. These are the conversations that our team is having internally to see what we can do. So yeah, that the wheels are turning there. You heard it in here first. That's cool. Yeah, exactly. You know, again, a lot of these things, I think, and I heard somebody say this earlier, I think a lot of us, especially after the, you know, the horrible COVID years, we want to get out and about and we want to meet people. We want to have more of this. And I think you're seeing these, you know, these sprouts of it. So I'm actually, again, I'm going to Vegas next week with the Donaghan.

50:14Yeah. Sorry. Um, and we just opened this event at, this was essentially a last minute plan where like Alan came to me and said, do you want to do something awesome? I'm like, well, how do you say no to that? Right? Like, so yes. And he had this idea for let's do a five event in the least five place in the world, Vegas. Right. So, so we basically just put this together and alan and katie so this is not like you know total fly by the cedar pants thing uh they have long experience with chautauqua and such so but anyway i mean we put this together and within 10 days we open it up to the public and it sold out in a day we sold 80 tickets to this thing and it was it was proof of concept and i think we're planning on doing more of these and And we're like, oh, wouldn't Hawaii be cool?

51:10We're going to do it in Vegas again because that's just, okay, where are there easy places for people to go to? So very long story short, I think you're going to see a lot more of these pop up because it's just, it's super energizing. So rental property in the world of residential real estate, residential real estate, there is unfortunately a huge shortage of housing. And what that means is that there is market pressure for home prices to continue to rise. and that is going to be true until more housing supply is created and we are unfortunately a very, very long way from new housing supply, sufficient housing supply being created.

51:52And so because of the imbalance between supply and demand, we just simply do not have enough homes to meet the demand. Because of that, that is a fundamental market pressure that's going to keep home prices rising. Now, I'll asterisk this with obviously every market is local. And so what's true in broadly as a nationwide aggregate may not apply to Youngstown, Ohio. There are going to be isolated local pockets that have unique real estate circumstances. But speaking broadly nationwide, residential home prices are going to continue to likely going to continue to rise. And so I'm very bullish on investing in properties.

52:40I think that in particular, if you can invest in properties and then increase housing supply, you know, like be part of the solution. If you can buy a single family home and turn it into a duplex, you then do two things. You, number one, contribute to the solution of increasing housing supply because now you've taken what was once one property and you've turned it into two. And you also make more money by virtue of doing that because now you're collecting two different incomes rather than just one, right? So the style of real estate investing that earns you the most amount of money is also the thing that actually helps solve the problem.

53:24And that comes from increasing supply either by creating new units or by increasing density by increasing the number of bedrooms per unit. So if you can do either of those two things, that in particular is good for you and good for the market in general. Cheetah all the way. All right. What time? Let's make this the last question. I've got a quick one. Yeah. Rental properties are great, in our opinion. And then there's the market. What do you or anybody in the room have for ideas of other ways to invest money? Oh, so many. One thing that I think we don't talk about enough is making money through the ownership of businesses.

54:19And that can either come from starting a business yourself, which is typically done by starting a side hustle and then growing it on the side until it has enough momentum that you can quit your job and do it full time, very much like we did. You know, so either either by starting a business or by buying a business. And I don't think that we talk about the buying a business portion of it enough. There's a lot of opportunity there. But but the ownership of private businesses, whether it's one that you have created or whether it's one that you've purchased is a huge opportunity. And in particular, purchasing businesses right now and over the span of the next decade, as, you know, there's going to be a huge number of baby boomers who are retiring.

55:07This is a trend that's already begun. And as baby boomers retire, a lot of them are small business owners who they need a successor and their children don't necessarily want to take over the family business. I mean, you know, logically, just because you have an HVAC company doesn't necessarily mean that your kids have a dream of running that HVAC company, right? So if you're a small business owner, your kids don't want the business, well, you have to sell it if you ever want to retire. And so there's going to be a, and this is already starting, a lot of small businesses that are coming on the market that are very like healthy, long-term viable businesses that the owners just want to exit out of because they're 60 or they're 65 and it's time to do something different.

55:57yeah it's funny i literally just got a pitch from somebody about this it was a they used an acronym i never heard so eta so entrepreneurship through acquisition and i'm sure both of us get hundreds of these random people sending us emails all the time but something about that one just really stuck out to me so that's an episode we're gonna have in the future i think uh that's really really interesting another person cody sanchez you've had her on right oh she hasn't been on yet okay She's another person to follow in that sphere. I found her especially interesting. You can find her if you just Google Cody Sanchez podcast.

56:33You can listen to a number of episodes. She's been on various podcasts. I asked this of Joe Salcihi a couple of years ago at the book signing. And I'm actually curious of Paula's answer first. So if you would answer second. As a board gamer, this is a board game question. So nothing too hard. uh you're kick-starting tomorrow your dream board game you've been working on what type of mechanics is it what's the theme what's it like oh wow okay a dream board game the first thing that's popping into my head is like some combination of clue with chutes and ladders.

57:17All right. If I'm just, I'm just brainstorming out loud here. If I were to come up with a board game, of course it would, it would have to have some type of money related lesson. There are two board games that I know of that teach about money. One is, uh, was created by Robert Kiyosaki. It's, um, cashflow. Yeah. The rat race one. Yeah. The other is Franklin's, I think it's called Franklin's Folly. Yeah. Franklin's Folly. So the reason that Clue comes to mind is that I like the structure of assembling a little bit of a whodunit. And I would somehow try to find a way to create like a murder mystery whodunit sort of a theme into finance concepts.

58:07I don't know exactly how that would happen. but that would be like the ultimate board game who killed somebody over the will or something yeah oh i can see this actually turning into an escape room you know what this would be maybe better as an escape room than it would be as a board game you know yeah i like that a lot so oh and you have to solve personal finance questions to find the clues to get out of the escape room yeah the total market just went down total adjustable market so we're a big board game family our favorite mechanism i guess is uh deck building so dominion is our all-time favorite uh dominion is also the game that ruined board games for us actually like uh we we wound up so we probably played this at the beginning of the pandemic maybe a thousand times like not hyperbole probably a thousand times and we the four of us loved it and then we made the cardinal sin of playing online and we actually learned like how deep the strategy went and it was like once you've seen it you can't unsee it essentially uh so it more or less ruined board game for us but that said this would still be my my choice i would come up with i have not been able to find another deck building game on par with dominion so maybe we could talk afterwards if uh if you have any options so yeah i don't have any like cute answer personal finance or not but i would love to build a deck building game that has the replayability of dominion but doesn't ruin board gaming for us forever.

59:55All right. Well, thank you for coming to episode 500.

1:00:06I hope you enjoyed this live audience Q &A featuring special guest Brad Barrett from the Choose Fi podcast, as well as myself, recorded live on stage in Brooklyn in celebration of episode 500. So what you've just heard is part two of episode 500. I want to thank everyone who has been part of this community, whether you've been listening for eight years or whether you've been listening for eight days or any amount of time in between. I want to thank everyone who is part of this Afford Anything community and who's part of the ChooseFI community because this community broadly, this community of people who are interested in financial literacy, financial independence, in a devotion to the pursuit of healthy personal finance habits, this is a lifetime practice.

1:01:00And this type of lifestyle is made more fun with friends. And these digital communities, these online spaces are how we form the connections that keep us motivated. Whether we're trying to earn more or spend less or invest more wisely, these are pursuits that are best done with the camaraderie and support of others. So a big thanks to all of you. In fact, Steve, can I get a round of applause for you, for you who are listening right now? I want all of you who are part of this community to be really, really proud of yourself for being proactive about bettering your life, for not accepting the default, for not accepting the status quo, and for being thoughtful about focusing on what matters most to you.

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1:03:35Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything Podcast, and I'll meet you in the next episode.