Q&A: Is It REALLY Different This Time?

28:02Exactly. So those are two factors. The third of five factors is the length of your credit history. So how old is your oldest account? If you have a very, very old account, don't close it. Keep it open. Put a Netflix subscription on there and auto pay that off every month and just keep it active, even if you have to do it in a very perfunctory way, so that you have the age of oldest account be old. And Melanie knows this because she talked about this in her question. She said her oldest account got even older. The other factor is new credit. So have you recently applied for credit? Particularly, have you had any hard inquiries?

28:42If you have recently applied for credit, it actually adversely affects your score because it makes you look desperate. It makes you look like you need the money. Like, think about it. If a person is suddenly applying for lots of new credit, you need a new credit card and you also need a carload. It just, whether or not that's true, in the eyes of the credit reporting agencies, applying for a bunch of new credit lines in a short period of time makes it look like you need the money, which makes you look like a less reliable borrower. So that accounts for 10 % of your score. And then the mix of credit that you have, installment loans and revolving loans, that accounts for another 10 % of your score.

29:23So credit cards are revolving loans. Like you have a line of credit similar to a HELOC, but you can use it. You cannot. You can have a$10 ,000 line of credit and only put a Netflix subscription on there if you want to. Or you can use it to buy a salad and get some shoes and, you know, all those things that you do on a daily basis. You know how Paula likes to have fun. I'm going to go buy a salad and get some shoes. Yeah. Well, you know, the shoes allow you to walk to the salad store. So having a question that we always get is which one is better? They actually like to see a mix. If you've got a mix of different things, it shows that you can handle installment loans.

30:06You can handle a revolving credit. If you can handle all those that will look good on your credit report, because it makes you look very credit worthy. No matter what type of credit people throw at you, I can do it. Right. There are also a few different credit scores that you have. So there are three major credit reporting bureaus. There's Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. And each of them will separately give you a score. And in addition to all of that, you also have what's known as a FICO score. And so it can often be the case that you have very different scores through each of the different bureaus.

30:43You might have a 775 with Experian and a 785 with Equifax and a 790 with TransUnion. There can be some variation there. So ultimately, your FICO score is your one true score. But all three of those agencies in tandem with one another can be used as sort of a check and balance. It's like the three branches of the government. They're supposed to be a check and balance against one another. And one thing that you can do when you're looking at your credit score is look at all three to see if one of them is a wild outlier. Because if you do have two that are consistent and one that's a wild outlier, then you know that there might be something that got reported to that particular bureau that might be erroneous.

31:26And you can do some further digging. And there was a report by ABC News just a few years ago, Paula, that your credit report is wrong a surprising amount of the time. Looking into it and taking advantage of getting that credit report and looking through it once in a while is something you should do. And also just spending the time walking through and seeing your credit and thinking, contemplating your credit, I think also lends to more - Contemplating your credit? Contemplating. Contemplating. Like meditative Joe. Oh, 780. Then Joe. Oh, 815. How I love thee. Contemplating. But really thinking about, did I need to take out that loan?

32:07When I was getting my act together in the late 90s, just when I would go get my credit score, I would look through some of the mistakes that I made. And it was really cool to see that I had definitely cleaned things up and gone in the right direction. And it was good to look back and see how I had changed my habits. And by contemplating my credit score and my credit report, I think I solidified in my brain some of the positive actions I'd taken to do better, to be better. So I think contemplating, making fun of me. For those of you who are listening via audio, what you can see on YouTube is that every single time Joe says the word contemplating, I do like a...

32:53A zen. Yeah. and then I do a weird finger in the air. I don't know how that works. So go on, Joe, your contemplation. No, that was it. That was it. So I do then contemplating it. I mean, looking over it and going, hmm, what does this tell me? It's pretty cool. So speaking of what this tells you, cliffhanger, what do you think was the cause of Melanie's score drop because as she said, every criteria that she listed. Except one. Actually, let's go through them one by one. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Let's hear it in her own words. My total available credit went up. My total balance went down. My credit usage went down and my age of oldest accounts went up.

33:41I got caught up the first times I heard it in her list of four things. I believe, Melanie, the credit card company did not share with you the real reason why your credit took a hit. Oh, wait, wait, wait. I have a guess, actually. I have a guess. I'm going backwards in that order of four. Here's my guess. And Joe, let's see if our guesses match. So she talked about how the length of the oldest account went up. So the oldest account got older, which was good. That's wonderful. That's exactly what we want to see. She talked about how her credit usage dropped. Excellent. Excellent. That's a lower utilization ratio.

34:15Again, exactly what we want to see. She talked about how her total balance went down, okay, related to the utilization ratio improving. Excellent. That's what we want to see. And then she said that her available credit went up, which makes me wonder if her available credit went up, does that mean that her credit limit on a credit card increased, which would then code as an application for new credit? Right. She mentions before any of those four things that she applied for a couple new loans. And that is 100 percent, I believe, where it is, because when you get the new credit, as you're saying, Paula, we 100 percent agree.

34:56When you apply for new credit, especially if you apply for two things or three things, very, very in close succession. When you do that, credit companies freak out a little bit. They're like, why is she applying for so much credit all at one time? Does this mean something bad's happening? Again, their goal is to help these creditors protect themselves against you not repaying. And so common thing that people will tell you to do is do all of your homework around which loans you might want before you apply and only apply for loans that you think you're going to take. Because if they do a hard credit pull, two or three companies do a hard credit pull, now those are all going to show up and it will hit your credit score.

35:43But Joe, I'm going to push back on you because she said that her credit score took a serious hit when she had to take out a couple of loans for a car and some unexpected home repairs. There it is. There's the loans. But the way that she phrased it made it sound like that happened way in the past. I think it's her phrasing. I don't think so, because when I listened to it the second time, I didn't get that dichotomy that I felt like the first time. But she follows it up by saying, recently, my credit score was moving up. So my interpretation is that the car loan and the unexpected home repair loans, those were way in the past, like 2024.

36:19But she follows it up by saying that she had more available credit. So I think that those loans she got is the new available credit. You're saying it might be something else, but no matter what it is, I think it's on the new credit side. It's definitely on the new credit Yeah. So my interpretation of if she has more available credit is maybe the credit limit on one of her credit cards increased and that codes as new credit. Because it just sounds to me as though the car loan and the new home loans were like relics of 2024 or prior. Well, this is where we're parsing stuff that she didn't say. Right.

36:55We truly don't know because she did say she applied for loans early on. And then later on, she said the credit company told her that she had new credit. So I put the two of those together. Maybe they're not together. I think it's irrelevant. I think the thing that is relevant is it's got to be the new credit piece. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, Joe, so you and I are in agreement that somehow there's a new credit coding. Yes. We're just in disagreement as to how and when and where that happened. I think that reasoning, by the way, is computer generated. It cranked out some reasons, but I don't think it was thorough enough.

37:31Right. I think that if you dive in more, you're going to find that the true reason wasn't listed. Yeah. All right. So is that a Sherlock Holmes semi-solved mystery? I think it very much is. It's elementary. Ah, my dear Watson. Instead of Watson. Pant. It's elementary, pant. It's elementary, Sal C. High. So one other thing. If Paul and I are right, Melanie, this is the cool thing. That 20 plus point credit drop is going to bounce back very quickly. Yeah. It's nothing to worry about. It'll bounce back very fast. And in fact, the fact that you have more credit available and your utilization number now will be lower, because you have more credit available, you will also see your credit score go up faster because you've more available that you're not using.

38:26So you're going to get a short-term ding and a long-term nice high five from the credit agencies. Right. And I will also add one other thing, which is in the personal finance world, it can be tempting to treat your credit score like this pristine treasure that must be preserved at all times. But your score is... It's not? it's there for you to use. It's there to be used. And so if you do need new credit, or you do want to take a short-term hit for the sake of a long-term benefit, it's there for you to do that. And so, you know, I sometimes hear from people who say, I don't want to take out a rewards credit card because opening up that credit card is going to my credit.

39:09And I'm like, oh, you know, are you planning on buying a home soon or a car soon? and they're like, no, no, no plans on using any credit at all, anytime in the future. But I still don't want to dig my credit by opening up a rewards credit card. And I'm like, all right, what are you preserving it for? We had a science experiment on Stacky Benjamins that you took part in, Paula. It was a roundtable episode where we weren't asking what is the better move. We asked the question, which makes you happier? Remember that episode? Yeah, yeah. And one of the questions I posed to you and Jesse and OG was, does it make you happier to high five yourself that you have a high credit score or does it make you happier to completely ignore your credit score?

39:55And I believe it was unanimous. We wanted to not think about it at all. Right. The big goal was I want to be in a place that I don't have to think about this at all, which to your point, I mean, we have credit to use it. And if I have a decent credit score and I'm not getting dinged any money because of my credit score, but it's high enough that I can use it if I get into an emergency in a spot that I need it, then use it and ignore it. Yeah. I think that's, for me, the happiest place to be, too. Just go, yeah. I don't even think about my credit score. Right. Yeah. Again, when I was in my 20s, I used to see it as a point of personal pride.

40:30Right. It was like a flex to have a credit score over 800. I think though, too, there's something to be said about different things at different ages, because even though your opinion of that has changed, where then you probably would have said it makes me happier to gloat that I have a high score. There also is the feeling that I've got a lot of credit usage possibly in front of me, right? Yeah. I've got a whole life in front of me. Exactly. As we get older and we've used our credit more often and the threat that something might happen that I don't have enough assets to cover diminishes as we get closer to financial freedom.

41:09We then begin to go from, I glow over it and I love it and I want to high five myself to, I really just want to ignore it. That's very insightful, Joe. But don't you think that's true? I mean, it rings true. I don't know. I haven't done any science there, but it certainly to me feels like that would be a story arc for most of our lives. Yeah, absolutely makes sense. When you're young, you don't have a lot. You don't have assets. You don't have experience. You don't have the confidence that comes from having had experience. You don't have connections. You don't have friends who have done or achieved or purchased anything, built anything, bought anything, right?

41:47You have big dreams, but everything in your life is just a hypothetical. So you have all of the anxieties that come with the fact that you just haven't been tested yet. Well, and it goes back though to the threats and dangers, the threat that you may have to tap that credit at any point, I think is there's, there actually is even a real threat there because you don't have rich friends who can borrow from to go back to, you don't have the connections you can leverage. The reasons you need to borrow money are many, many, many more early in your life. That absolutely makes sense in the way that the importance of credit score tracks along the human life story arc.

42:25That's the type of insight that comes from contemplation. Contemplation. Can you show that finger on YouTube? I think people that didn't see it on YouTube even know which finger that was. Yeah. Joe is pointing a very specific finger at me right now. Paul is number one. Melanie, thank you for the question.

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44:40our final question today comes from anonymous hey paul i'm joe my husband and i are pursuing financial independence through real estate investing and we're wondering if we should prioritize paying off one of our properties or if we should purchase our next one instead here's our situation we're both 34 we have no kids, and we both work full-time. We earn about$200 ,000 combined annually. We have no debt aside from$12 ,000 remaining on a car loan at about 8.29 % interest. We have about four years left on a six-year loan, and we pay roughly$250 per month. Neither of us has any plans to stop working, but we would like to make work optional within the next 10 years or so.

45:22We currently own two rental properties, and we've calculated that we'll need to acquire three more to reach financial independence. We currently have$85 ,000 saved in cash, and we add$4 ,000 of our take-home pay to this account each month. We also have about$20 ,000 in a taxable brokerage account that we can access if needed. Here's a breakdown of our two properties. Our first one we purchased in 2018, and it rents for$1 ,600 per month. We have$90 ,000 left on the mortgage at a 4.875 % interest rate. With$85 ,000 in cash, we could wipe out this mortgage within a month or two, significantly increasing our monthly cash flow.

45:59However, the majority of the mortgage payments are now being applied to the principal and the interest rate is lower than our second property, so we think it may be better to let this one sit. Our second property we purchased in 2022 and it rents for$1 ,500 per month. We have$131 ,000 left on the mortgage at a 7.125 % interest rate. Due to a significant jump in property taxes and insurance rates at the beginning of this year, we're now paying$140 out of pocket each month to cover the mortgage. If we continued saving$4 ,000 per month, in addition to the$85 ,000 we currently have, we would be able to wipe out this mortgage in about a year.

46:37Our third option would be to let both properties sit and to use our savings to purchase our third property, which would get us closer to our goal of five properties in total. So what are your thoughts? Should we wipe out a mortgage to increase cash flow and then put the extra income toward a down payment? Should we focus on acquiring our properties first and then worry about paying them off? Should we consider paying off our car loan first given the high interest rate? Or should we be leveraging our taxable brokerage account more strategically? We would love to hear your thoughts and we appreciate your guidance in helping us think through our options.

47:10Anonymous, this is a really interesting question. This is a fun puzzle. And And before we start looking at the rubrics cube of all sides of this, the first thing we need to do is give you a name. We have a job to do. We have an important job and we take it seriously. So I'd like to give a shout out to the first woman who obtained a real estate license in the United States. Guess what year it was? It was, hmm, I wonder when real estate licenses started. Let's say 1840. It was 1903. Wow. 1903. So first woman who got a real estate license. It was in 1903 and her name was Elizabeth J. McCormick. It's amazing.

47:53She could broker these properties now that most people buy using leverage. And yet it wasn't until the 1970s that she could get the leverage herself. Right. I'm laughing because it's so not funny. Yeah. It's like, what? Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I was thinking 1903, she became a broker before she could vote. Yeah, right. I didn't even think about the vote. So in honor of her anonymous, we're going to name you Elizabeth. So what do you think for Elizabeth? I'll lay out a couple of things right off the bat. Number one, when the goal is property accumulation and when the goal is cash flow, I actually do not think about interest rates, especially if it's a single digit interest rate.

48:40I mean, if we're talking really egregious double-digit interest rates, all right, different topic. But if we're anywhere in the single digits, it's not interest rate that I'm going to prioritize. It is the smallest balance that I would prioritize because wiping out a debt increases cash flow. And what, if I'm in Elizabeth's shoes, what I'm optimizing for is cash flow rather than interest rate, which is total interest paid. But there's a question even before that, Paula, which is, should she just ignore the debt and just go use that money then to buy another house? Are you headed there next? Yeah.

49:18Not to give away the ending, but all of the possibilities, that's the one that I like the most. That's funny. That's the one I like the second most. Ooh. So the reason that I like it the most is because given that the ultimate goal is to buy a total of five properties and she's got two out of five and they've run the numbers, they've done the calculations, they know that they're going to need five properties in order to reach their FI goal. My objective is for her to get these properties as soon as possible, because the longer she waits, likely the more housing prices are going to rise. In the short term, there might be some volatility or some softening, but probabilistically speaking, over the long term, home prices are likely to rise.

50:02And I want to see her get into the properties as quickly as she can, amass the portfolio that she wants to build as quickly as she can. And then once she has that portfolio, then turn her attention to paying it down. And so there's going to be the question that Elizabeth is going to run into as to how much money a financial institution will allow her to borrow. Eventually, she's going to tap out both the front end and back end ratio of what the banks will approve her for. In fact, based on the numbers that she's given, she might be pretty close to that. So there's a chance that the next house she buys, the third house, might be the last house that a financial institution will approve her to buy.

50:45So there's a chance that she might only be able to buy one more before she starts paying them off. But what I'd like her to do is buy as many as the financial institutions will allow her to buy. And then once she hits that ultimate limit and the banks start waving their finger and saying no more, that's the time when she should turn her attention, in my view, to the loan that has the smallest balance and therefore will free up the most cash flow, which in this case would be the car loan first, because that's going to free up$250 a month. and after that turn the attention to the lower interest home because it's got a smaller balance and she'll be able to pay it off faster.

51:27But first I'd buy that third house. Can we back up the bus for a second? Yeah. Well, my first question, Paula, is a question I think a lot of people might have that are listening, which is why five? And you ran right over that. They've already done the work. They've done the numbers. They've done that. And I'm just very curious. And I think a lot of people are curious, like what numbers are you running that you know that five is the number? So my assumption is that she probably wants to target homes at a particular price point in a particular geographic location or a particular neighborhood. Because certainly, just to use some extreme examples, certainly it's the case that if you buy Taylor Swift's old home for, I don't know, Obviously, that's unrealistic.

52:18But here's the question. Will it? And the reason I ask that is because let's say she buys a$30 million home. She buys it on a 90-year mortgage. Yeah. It's going to be very difficult to take more equity out of the house. You could buy this huge thing. And if there's no cash flow and it's difficult to get at the equity, it really doesn't help you toward your goal of financial independence, which is why my question then is, is she optimizing then for cash flow as she's buying the next house? Is she optimizing to buy the house and pay off the mortgage so then she has the equity in the house that she can then either liquidate or once she has the mortgage paid off, then it cash flows and then she has the equity behind it?

53:03Like exactly how do you think through this number of houses that gets you to financial independence? Well, so my assumption of what Elizabeth has done based on the fact that she says that she's done the calculation. Sure. Yeah. I'm not doubting, by the way, that Elizabeth has done that. My question is much more for everybody else listening. Right. What did she do? Yeah. What exactly are we talking about here? Yeah. So my assumption is that she is targeting a home at a particular price point that she knows roughly what it's going to cost and she knows roughly what it's going to rent for. And she knows roughly what the operating expenses are going to be, which means she knows roughly what the cash flow is going to be and what the cap rate is going to be.

53:43And so based on that set of assumptions, which if you narrow your search to a very specific geographic area and you're targeting homes within that area, you can pretty reliably count on that same basket of numbers because you're looking at the same area. It becomes a machine. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Then it's just lather, rinse, repeat. And so my assumption is that by virtue of narrowing her search to price point X, rent Y, operating expense Z, cap rate A, cash flow B, right? By narrowing it to that set of variables, she's done the math to find out that she needs three more in order to achieve her FI goals.

54:23That makes a lot of sense. So it truly is, when it's all said and done, cash flow that I can live on. Right. Right. And with the Taylor Swift example, I'm using, again, the assumption that if you were to buy Taylor Swift's home, it would meet the cap rate and cash flow requirements that you would need. It is funny, though, how that would have some unique circumstances, though, because, I mean, then you're worried about just the number of people that are going to rent that property. You know, I mean, you could do all the calculations you want, but then there's the other factor of who's going to be able to afford to rent that house.

54:54In that case, it's similar to Airbnb in that you have to adjust the occupancy ratio. Right. Yeah. When you're running your estimate on what you think vacancy slash occupancy is going to be similar to an Airbnb, you have to really make some big adjustments because you might have some strong, long vacancies. But anyway, she's not buying Taylor Swift's home. Agreed. Well, I think there's two interesting things in what you said. And before I get to that, I agree with everything there, except that car loan to me is at a high enough interest rate. And it's a small enough balance. Yeah. It's a small enough balance.

55:28I would wipe that out. My original feeling for Elizabeth was why? Like why? I frankly, I get the properties. I don't get the car loan. So wipe out the car loan and then everything else is great. And I think that capturing that$250 a month and then you don't have that 8.29 hanging over your head, like both of those things I think are fantastic. But the rest of it then, let's go buy the next one. Well, and the thing about the$250 a month is that you can mentally, if you want to associate the car loan with house number two, if you want to mentally group those together, all right, if she frees up$250 a month and house number two is costing like what, ballpark$150 a month out of pocket, she said?

56:09Yeah. Then cool. Then free up$250 a month. Yeah. She's net positive. Now she's net positive by a ballpark$100 a month, right? So if you mentally bucket the car and house number two together, then the$250 a month that she frees up by paying off the car loan covers the shortcoming of house number two. And granted, that's mental gymnastics. And it's sure I can hear mere Statman, who's a behavioral economist who we interviewed at the Morningstar conference last summer. You can hear that in our archives. I can hear him in my head right now being like that. But a dollar is a dollar is a dollar is a dollar, no matter where it comes from, no matter where it goes.

56:47Let's just talk about the cost of money. Yeah, because she's going to take that money and she's going to borrow it again. in the form of the new house. So let's say she gets that at 7%. She's getting it for 1.29 % cheaper. Right. But while that is factually true, I mean, that's just math. I go back to my biggest concern with her and my biggest priority with her is cashflow rather than interest rate. And I find that to be interesting because this isn't just for real estate investors. When I was a financial planner to widen it out to the rest of the audience that really isn't looking at buying real estate, the first thing I was always interested in, Paula, was always cash flow.

57:26And if cash flow was good, then we go to interest rate. If cash flow wasn't good, the first thing was to get that heart beating much better. And it's the same thing we were talking about with Melanie when it came to your credit score, right? Yeah. When investors look at a company, they look for free cash flow because it's the number one sign of health. Number one sign of health for any individual is free cash flow. So cash flow is always in the hierarchy for me, always number one. And if we can check off that cash flow is fine, then I go to the cost of money. Right. But I think that's super important for people to get because I feel like in the popular press, and I think it's always easy to beat on, quote, the popular press.

58:08But I do think that we hear this messaging over and over, interest rate, interest rate, interest rate, interest rate. And it's simply, while it is true, it's not the most true. I think free cash flow is something we hear about much less, but is much more important. Yeah. Which is why I also think the snowball method works, even though people have run numbers to show that if you go for the highest interest rate first, I think it works not just behaviorally, But it also works because when I free up cash flow, I think getting that momentum of the ball rolling downhill gives me the ability then to tweak my strategy whenever I want.

58:51If I go debt avalanche and I'm paying off the highest interest rate first, and it's a huge number, I can't deviate from that plan. And the key to a free cash flow analysis is the fact that this is money I can deploy now to do whatever the heck I want. So from a financial planning standpoint, where we know that things might come up in the future that would make us possibly have to take out more debt, by freeing up cash flow more quickly, it reduces the chance that I may have to take out debt in the future, which I think destroys this idea of the debt avalanche where everything has to go perfectly.

59:26and we all know as humans, there's going to be a muffler dragging behind the car. There's going to be a refrigerator that breaks down. There's going to be some reason that I need this money. And man, if I'm using this extra$250 to apply to some other loan and I can stop it for a month to fix the fridge instead, that's a loan I didn't have to take, which is great. And that alone beats the debt avalanche strategy. Right, so cashflow is king. Free cashflow is absolutely king. It's exciting to me to look at this. And I love that you were able to break down. Why five? Because I think when you look at the fact she's already got two and she's only got three to go, it's pretty exciting, especially at 34 years old, to be able to know that you're almost halfway there at 34.

1:00:12I don't disagree, Joe, with your assessment of pay off the car loan. I like the fact that it's a tiny balance. It's only$12 ,000. It's not going to take a huge chunk of the cash that she's got. I like the fact that it's going to free up$250 a month. But what I don't like is the fact that$250 a month over the span of 48 months equals$12 ,000. So if she wants to get$12 ,000 in cash, again, it's going to take that$250 a month for four years before she gets that same$12 ,000 back. And I don't like that element of it because I want to see her get into this next house as soon as she can, because what are the prices of homes right now versus the prices of homes four years from now?

1:01:02And so again, I'll reiterate with the knowledge that institutional lending is likely going to tap her out pretty soon. And I mean, yes, she can turn to creative financing. She can turn to private lending. There are other options. But institutional lending is everybody's favorite, certainly my favorite. I want to see her use that up to its limit as fast as she can. That just sounds so funny for people that aren't comfortable with leverage. Use all that leverage. Go get every dollar. Well, when it's a healthy cap rate. Absolutely. Yeah. No, it's a change in your thinking. Yeah. Responsible borrowing.

1:01:38So, Elizabeth, you've got two answers, one from me and one from Joe. I say keep all of the debts that you have, buy the third house. After that, you probably won't be able to buy anymore. So then shift your focus to paying off the debts, starting with the car. And Joe says pay off the car first and then shift your focus to buying the third house. And so you've got two different answers, one from each of us. And honestly, I think both are valid answers. So pick whichever one resonates more with you. Because even though the answers are different, they're actually not too far off. No, truly not. Yeah.

1:02:15The order of operations of basically step one and step two, car versus house number three, that's the only I rank one, two, and Joe ranks two, one. But either way, notice how neither of us want you to pay off house number one. Neither of us want you to pay off house number two. And I felt like that was definitely Elizabeth's main question. Do I put this toward the houses? Yeah, neither of us are fans of that. No. Not if the goal is to grow. No. The time for doing that is once you've tapped out of institutional lending. That's the time to pay off the houses. Thank you, Elizabeth, for the question.

1:02:53Joe, we've done it again. I can't believe it. And it was, it was a potpourri episode. Yeah. We were all over the place. Exactly. We talked about this time it's different. We talked about credit scores and we talked about buy more rentals or pay down the debt. And I think the rubric around your thinking around when to pay off debt and when to invest. Right. This time it's different is also the thinking rubric as well. It completely is. Yeah. Absolutely. So maybe this is the thinking rubric episode. The rubric episode. The rubric episode. You know what? Rubric episode. Didn't I use the analogy of a rubrics cube earlier?

1:03:32No, but it's a rubrics cube, but we could call it the rubrics cube in the title. We should call it the rubrics cube. That's true. That's a rubic cube. Yeah, it's rubic. I'm pretty sure I said rubric cube or rubric, probably pronounced it rubric. No, I'm pretty sure I used the analogy at some point. Well, we'll check the transcript. We will. We'll go back to the tape. Yes. Roll the tape. Well, Joe, where can people find you if they would like to contemplate their life choices? Easy, easy. We had a very special Memorial Day episode, two great interviews. We normally only do interviews most Wednesdays, every once in a while on a Monday.

1:04:13But the first half of the episode is the former vice chairwoman of NBC Universal, Bonnie Hammer, talking about the lies women are told at work. And you know what, Paula? If you're a dude like I am, these are lies that men are told, too. These are lies we're all told. When I was early in my career, I read a great book by a guy named Henry Rogers called Rogers Rules for Success. I feel like Bonnie Hammer's new book is really the same thing. And I know a lot of people are graduating. I interview a lot of people like you do. There are very few books that I'm like, that's a book young people need to read.

1:04:50This is an interview young people need to hear. And I think it's also a book that she is talking about these lies that we're told at work. They are things like follow your passion. And Bonnie turns that into follow the opportunity, which I think is frankly a better thing. And you hear all kinds of follow your curiosity, right? Yeah. And I think I agree with follow the opportunity even more than your curiosity because where curiosity meets opportunity is truly where the river's going to head. So that's one of many of the things that we talk about. It's interesting also that she says over her career, she was much more likely to hire you if you had a great attitude than because of your skill set.

1:05:35which from a woman who was the vice chairperson of NBC universal to say that. And she also tried to gravitate toward hard bosses where now a lot of people are turning their hard boss in because they think that the boss is toxic. She said, there are toxic bosses, not disagreeing, but Bonnie also says, there's just some people that really are in your corner, but they're going to push you ahead. And if you can't see that they're behind you trying to push you to do everything you can, it's bad for you if you don't follow them. So anyway, Bonnie Hammer in the first half, and then we're talking to people that have a lot of debt.

1:06:13One of my favorite psychologists, Dr. Erica Rasher from Beyond Finance joins us, and she's been on the show before. And Dr. Erica has this great holistic way to look at debt that I really like. So that's our special Memorial Day episode of the Stacky Benjamin Show. Wow. Those both sound like amazing interviews. It's a good one-two punch. Oh, that's amazing. Well, thank you to all of you for being Afforders. Thank you for being part of this community. If you have any questions that you'd like to ask, affordanything.com slash voicemail is the place to go. That's affordanything.com slash voicemail.

1:06:44Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed the episode, please share this with your friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, the people that you meet on your biking and walking trail in your local city. Joe's laughing because we were just having a conversation about that. Share this with your city manager. Share this with... The people at the custard stand. Oh, yeah. The custard stand. Frozen custard stand. Frozen custard. Right? Yes. Share this with all of those people. It's the single most important way that you spread the message of FIIRE. Also, make sure that you are subscribed to our newsletter, affordanything.com slash newsletter, where we send loads of goodies your way.

1:07:23and please open up your favorite podcast playing app and leave us up to a five-star review and write a few words. Tell us what you like about the show. Thank you so much for being an afforder. I'm Paula Pant. I'm Joe Solzhi. And we'll meet you in the next episode.