Q&A: We Want to Save Senior Dogs … But Should We Sell Our Rental to Do It?

27:55I really want the emphasis of your personal financial planning to be in retirement savings once you have an emergency fund. Well, clearly I think there needs to be this wall that a lot of entrepreneurs have trouble keeping between your personal investments and your personal financial situation and those of the business. So many entrepreneurs violate that consistently. It makes it very difficult for a lot of entrepreneurs to save for retirement because, quote, the business just needs a little more, just needs a little more, just needs a little more, just needs a little more. And it becomes this furnace, this insatiable.

28:32Right. Being able to have the business work for you versus you work for the business is a skill just like any other skill that people work on a muscle they build as they're building their business. I just realized I'm reading back through a transcript of her question right now. She said senior dogs and cats. I missed that on the first time. How did I miss that? I love cats. Because she's a cool cat. Senior dogs and cats. I love that. I love this even more. And I have definitely seen some Instagram videos from people who run specifically retirement home for cats. I would 100 % go on Instagram, find the people who run those and offer them a hundred bucks to have a Zoom call with you.

29:27Pay them for their time, but learn as much as you can from the people who have already done it. Or heck, if you could go there and help out. Yeah, be a volunteer there. Especially for some of these volunteer organizations, if you can spend a little bit of time volunteering. Yeah. See it from the inside. Well, Victoria, I hope that was helpful. I am so excited for this dream to come to fruition. I love this idea. I love this question. So best of luck. And please call us back and let us know which option you decide to go with. And I do think both option one and two are good. All right. We're going to take a moment to hear from the sponsors who make this show possible.

30:07When we return, we're going to hear from a 51-year-old who has questions about Roth conversions, and we're going to hear from a 25-year-old who wants to take a year off to go backpacking. Both of those are coming up right after this. Wondering if there's a better way to plan your retirement? Bolden lets you test scenarios, helps you see your future clearly and make smarter decisions all in one simple, powerful tool. With Bolden, you can run multiple scenarios side by side, see how different saving strategies affect your retirement, and even model social security and Roth conversions. You get detailed advisor-quality reports that can help make complex decisions easy to understand without having to hire a financial planner.

30:51It's built for people who want control and clarity. Whether you're testing what-if scenarios, adjusting timelines, or exploring different income strategies, Bolden helps you see exactly how your choices may impact your future. If you want a smarter, more powerful way to plan your retirement, check out go.bolden.com slash afford. That's go.bolden.com slash afford. The tool that helps make planning your retirement simpler, smarter, and fully in your control. Bolden is for informational and education purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.

31:36Welcome back. Our next caller is also anonymous. Hello, Paula and Joe. I'm anonymous and would love to hear what name you pick. A quick shout out to Paula for the diligence, details, and commitment you have to your offerings as these are top-notch. I was able to make the concrete decision that I do not want to be a landlord in your first rental property, and I signed my niece up for your next raise, as I know she's in good hands with you. My question is regarding Roth conversions. My background. I have a very conservative target to retire of$3.3 million, but I like my job and my team, so I plan to use the extra time working for heavier Roth conversions, even if it wasn't the most tax efficient.

32:18I see tax efficient conversions as a way to keep the base until RMDs as I would be converting mostly gains. I also like the idea of being done or very low just as my house is done and mine. I recently started a side business from a passion hobby. I wanted to obtain my certifications and gain years of experience while working my W-2 job so that I would have more expertise for this encore career when I step away. The side business is intended to provide supplemental income, an area to have community, keep me mentally challenged, and an avenue to explore new technologies in this field. This is a service business that I can see offering clinics one day, but I'm not interested in scaling to the masses at this point.

33:02Due to some job changes, I may no longer be with my W-2 job mid-2026. I'm looking for a framework to work through Roth conversions. I've heard a lot about the discussions regarding conversion implications with taxes, health insurance, IRMA, and such. Please include all of this in the framework too. But I want to look at this from the flip side. What if I didn't have money to convert? What are those pitfalls? How can I determine the ideal amount of traditional money to leave? After what age would money left to convert not be important? My numbers. I'm single, 51, and healthy, so plan for Social Security at 70.

33:42I have$1.2 million in taxable, which includes my emergency. I have$1 million in traditional,$1 million in Roth,$60 ,000 in an HSA. I'm projected to net another$150 ,000 from salary and retention bonus. My side business generated a whopping$500. So this is very early stages here. My certification targeted in December of 2025. From a long time of order, I want to say thank you for the wisdom you and Joe share to answer our questions. Thank you for your classes and thank you for your journalism style that is hard to capture into words. Insightful, probing or in-depth only scratch the surface. We all get to benefit from your gift to bring clarity from complexities.

34:27Even at times your interviewee gets this benefit. We appreciate you. Anonymous, thank you for the question. And before we start to answer, you need a name. She needs a name. You know, I love the way that we help people on this show, Paula. And by the way, thank you for all of the kind words. Yes, absolutely. I'm honored. It was very, very nice. I saw a movie that has gotten huge praise, absolutely huge praise. And I thought it sucked. Is it the SpongeBob movie? It's not. I think I'd love to see the SpongeBob movie. I saw the SpongeBob movie. And? Eh, it sucked. Yeah. I saw Marty Supreme, Timothy Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow.

35:18Oh, yeah. I've seen the ads for that. And he plays table tennis and she is an actor. Also, by the way, Kevin O 'Leary in this movie from Shark Tank, who isn't an actor. I mean, he's a businessman and he plays a shark in this film. So the actors, I really liked it. I thought they did a great job. I hated the script. I like empathetic characters. I like people that I want to be around. I didn't want to be around Timothy Chalamet's character. In fact, one of the reviews I read said it's a feel good movie. There is no feel good whatsoever in this movie, except the last three minutes. The last three minutes of the movie is feel good.

36:06The rest of it is a train wreck that I didn't want anything to do with. It's frenetic. It is so well done. It's just not something that I ever want to watch. But that said, the acting in this movie was amazing. Timothee Chalamet, fantastic. Gwyneth Paltrow, incredibly good. Incredibly good. So I think we call her Gwyneth. Gwyneth. Beautiful. All right, well, Gwyneth, the first question that I want to tackle, you said something that stood out and it was, what if you don't have money available to convert? And I'm interpreting that to mean, what if you don't have money available to pay the tax bill associated with conversion?

36:53So you're not able to convert anymore. Right. What does that ugliness look like? And what that means to me is it backs into a bigger question about cashflow planning, because if you are no longer with your current employer as of mid-2026, then I think the first thing to address, even before we talk Roth conversions, is overall cash flow planning, particularly because you have a side project that you hope will grow. And I have no doubt that it will, but we can't bank on that money just yet, given that it's made all of$500 so far. We can't bank on any of that just yet. And so the first thing that comes to my mind is how do we manage your cash flow once you depart from this job in mid-2026?

37:48And in the scope of that cash flow planning, there should be a very, very specific amount that you set aside for paying the tax bill associated with the conversions. And I think that any conversion strategy that you have will have to stem from that first and foremost. I love what Gwyneth said about the idea of just having it behind me. It might not be the most efficient thing, but the fact that I got the tax behind me, Paula, you know, I've got that behind me. I don't have to worry about it ever again. That's why I'm focusing on this. I don't think that's a bad move, especially since, you know, so many people want to optimize and yet we all lack the same piece of significant information, which is we don't know what tax rates are going to be in the future.

38:29We have no idea. So playing that optimization game too much, I think is more frustrating than just saying, listen, I want to pay the tax and never have to worry about it again. That is an awesome goal. But I look at what we call, Gwyneth, right now, your tax triangle. And the two pieces that we really want to make sure that we have, if we don't have the cash flow side that, Paula, you addressed, is I want to have as much money in the Roth side as I have in the pre-tax side. And she has that. So she has this ability to flex whatever the situation might be at the time. She doesn't want to use all her Roth money all at once, but she could draw from both of these places and essentially live on half of what she was living on if she was in the pre-tax position.

39:24And actually, even a little more because of the fact that the million dollars that's in after-tax, meaning the million dollars that's sitting in Roth money, she's going to get to use 100 % of that. She's not going to get to use 100 % of the money that's sitting in the pre-tax. So she's already in such a good place, really. I think, Gwyneth, you're in an awesome place because of the fact that you already have so much money sitting in the Roth position. Now, you can worry about Irma. You can worry about health care subsidies. You can worry about all those things. And you ask the question, when does it no longer matter?

40:01These things, they're going to matter from the time that you are dependent on this income stream until you're not, which means forever. It's going to always matter. So in this case, being able to do more if you can do more is great. But I frankly would not be upset if you began retirement with this 50-50 split that you're sitting with right now. Yeah. Well, I mean, what strikes me, okay, so 1.2 in taxable, 1 million in traditional, and 1 million in Roth, that is a perfectly balanced tax triangle. It's beautiful. That is an equilateral triangle right there. And, Gwyneth, you mentioned that your conservative retirement target is$3.3 million.

40:54You have it. You have$3.26 million. You outlined$1.2 plus one plus one plus another$60 ,000. You're there. Like, you've reached your retirement target 19 years early. So your goal at this point is maintaining in nominal dollars. And here's the thing, because she has that significant portion already in the taxable part where she can get at that, those are liquid funds. Even if she didn't have any income stream, which I think is what she's worried about it. What if I don't have the income stream to be able to afford the tax later? I think she can pull from the after-tax money, Paula, to pay that tax.

41:43I think if she wanted to do that, number one, what's making me pause, I'm thinking about the fact that her income is going to go down significantly. Right. Most probably. So I think really putting together a robust strategy for those years where she set some money aside from the brokerage account to move money over to the Roth position from the pre-tax even more would be diligent, much more diligent than worrying about it in 2026 in a year when she's going to have higher income streams. Right. Because she'll be working for half of 2026. Yeah. She'll be with her W-2. I'd be much more worried about 2027.

42:30She can look at what the tax bracket line is in 2026 and play with that number. But I think that's going to be a smaller number. I think the big hurrah is going to be in 2027. Winner income is down even more depending on how the side hustle slash new encore career goes. So I'm thinking planning wise, this strategy would be focus this year on planning and next year on really rocking those Roth conversions. Well, Gwen, if you asked about pitfalls of leaving too much money in traditional, I mean, the biggest thing is RMD. Having to take RMDs when you don't want to really sucks. And the nature of RMDs means that you're a bit handcuffed when it comes to planning.

43:21Because the ideal amount that you would want to have is you want to be able to fill the lower tax brackets in retirement with money from traditional funds. The ideal unconverted amount is enough that you can fill those lower tax bracket buckets, but not so much that your RMDs push you into substantially higher brackets or push you into IRMA surcharges. And I think if at all possible, and I would do some planning on this, don't just take my word for it. It may be a diligent strategy to stop putting money in pre-tax altogether beginning now. Because with the money that you're going to gain over the next 10 years, you're already sitting at a much higher number than you're at today.

44:11And so you're going to compound the problem. If there ends up being a problem, you're going to compound the problem by putting more money into pre-tax. Yeah. I'm really excited about where she is. I think to your point as well, Paula about RMDs, because RMDs aren't going to start until into her seventies, many people will delay taking money from pre-tax accounts early to control those RMDs. She's going to want to create a stream of income from the pre-tax money at the beginning of her retirement years. When she's eligible to take that money, I would be siphoning money off so that at the very least, they don't grow a lot more so that she's not creating a problem that she can't control.

45:00So don't save the money in the pre-tax account until you have to take it out. Let's try to keep a lid on how large your pre-tax problem would be by using that money first, maybe using it to the top of the lowest tax bracket at the time, and then use your money from other positions after that. The final thing I would say, Gwyneth, is that what I'm excited about with regard to this next chapter, you're 51, you plan on working until you're 70. You've got 19 years ahead of you to do something that is purpose-driven, mission-driven, that is, I think, reflective of your calling, that is a good fit with your lifestyle, that creates the impact that you want to create.

45:43So I'm incredibly excited for what's going to unfold over these next two decades, because it's clear that you have a lot of passion around this new venture. And I love being able to see people do the things that they want to do and not the things that they have to do. I think that is a big purpose of this podcast and a big part of why we devote so much of our time to helping people get good with money. So thank you, Gwyneth, for the question. Best of luck with that next chapter. We're going to take one final break to hear from the sponsors who make the show possible. And when we return, we're going to hear from a 25-year-old who also has questions about Roth conversions.

46:35Welcome back. Our final question today comes from Soyman. Hi, Paul and Joe. My trail name is Soymond, and I love listening to your thoughtful answers on Q &A episodes. And I have a bit of a fun situation for you, I think. The high level is that I'm planning on not working for an entire year in 2027 to go backpacking and attempt what's known as a calendar year triple crown. This is my dream to attempt and probably fail, and I would do it regardless of any tax implications. But it does seem to me to be an incredible opportunity. By my math, I can get nearly$30 ,000 into Roth accounts at a negative tax rate.

47:13Here's my current numbers. I'm 25, and I'm making$70 ,000 gross in a high cost of living city, but I'm keeping my expenses under$2 ,000 a month. So I'm saving$38 ,000 a year by maxing out my traditional 401k and Roth IRA and putting$7 ,500 into a brokerage. I currently have$60 ,000 invested and no debt. So by the time I leave for my hike, I project$100K invested in total market index funds, with 60 % being in 401k. Here's my 2027 plan. I want to earn exactly enough to max out a Roth IRA through side hustles, then convert$21K from traditional to Roth, and then max out an HSA. My state would not tax Roth conversions, and with the standard deduction and savers credit, I would have no tax liability.

47:57With a premium tax credit, I project actually receiving$3 ,000 for an effective tax rate of negative 10 % on Roth contributions? I know Joe would ask, so I think that my Achilles heel is that I keep very little cash on hand. Besides a two-month emergency fund, I'm just planning to build up a$3 ,000 hiking fund. My budget for the year would be$10 ,000, so to cover the difference, I would have to sell$7 ,000 from a brokerage of under$20 ,000. My logic here is that if the market goes up, any capital gains are at a 0 % tax rate, And if the market goes down, my conversions are even more valuable. And I can tax loss harvest for even more Roth conversions at a 0 % tax rate.

48:38So it seems to me to be a win-win. I know you guys talk about only having money in equities if it's for a longer-term time horizon. But I want to have enough to buy farmland in about 10 years, and I'm worried about missing out on some growth. Is it okay to have such a small buffer with my small spending? Should I not be investing in a brokerage at all and instead just put$10 ,000 in a one-year CD or maybe buy bonds? Should I not be playing these tax games at all and just max out a Roth 401k at 12 % instead of trying for some elusive 0 % tax rate? Is there some other Achilles heel that I'm not seeing here because I'm just letting the tax tail wag the dog?

49:14Thanks for your insight as always, Paul and Joe, and happy trails. This is such an awesome question. This is so much fun. Oh my God, I love this question. This is such an awesome, awesome question. Thanks for calling this one in. Yeah. That was fun just to listen to. On the surface, the numbers, I mean, I'd run it through some tax software or talk to some tax professionals, but like on the surface, those numbers sound solid. Sure. I think the big question here is investing in equities when you're going to do this a short time from now? Do I invest in equities knowing that I'm going to, I'm going to be converting this money over, over a short timeframe?

49:56That's the key question is how do I invest the money? Well, I guess I hear too quick, cause there's the question of the immediate short-term question of this, this one year spent hiking. And then there's the 10 year question of the farmland. Well, and this is the thing, Paula, the goal with this particular money is around the 10 year issue. And if that's the case, even though you're going to convert the money, what you're going to do, Soymann, is you're going to buy a 10-year investment. You're going to sell it to meet the goal. And like you said, with your income being zero, you're going to have minimal to no.

50:38I'll give you minimal to no. Just me saying zero, me getting behind that, you are going to need a tax professional to tell you that, but minimal to no tax issue. And then you're just going to buy it back in the Roth. So it truly 100 % is a 10 year goal. It's not a one year goal. So I don't think you need to buy a CD for that. Now I am concerned like you are Paula about going hiking and not having that much money liquid, but here's the thing. You're 27 years old, 25. Your bonus. You went back two years. Paula just gave you two years that I didn't give you. I apparently prematurely aged you, but you're 25 years old.

51:22If you do the rule of 72 on the money that you've already saved toward a normal retirement vision, you're looking great. Yeah. You're looking fantastic. So even if you back that down a little bit over the short run to get more cash in case your spending is higher when you're on your hiking trip than it is now for whatever reason, I would do that in a heartbeat. I think the hiking goal, not waiting until you're older to do the fun stuff makes sense to me. Yeah. I love that. I think the fact though, that you saved and probably worked your ass off to get to this point makes sense to me. It's like you picked your shot.

52:06You didn't try to have fun every single day of every single year, you picked a moment and now you're going to experience that moment. And then I'm guessing then you'll go back to work. Right. You know, the one thing, stepping out of tax strategy and tax planning and more broadly into 10 years from now, when he looks back on this, what will he either be glad he did and or regret? I love the strategy, but broadly, big picture speaking, don't be so hung up on doing everything in the financially optimized way that you undercut or undersell this year that you spend hiking. If you've got to earn a little bit more or realize a little bit more gains in order to adequately live, have the, yeah, just have the year that you want to have.

52:59because so much of the time, and I did this in my 20s. I spent a little over two years backpacking. There were decisions that I made at the time. They were the decisions that saved a little bit of money. Like for example, when I was in Egypt, it would have cost me probably about a hundred dollars to go to Petra in Jordan. And I didn't do it because I didn't want to spend the extra hundred bucks. And to this day, I have never been to Petra in Jordan. And I so regret that. At the time, it would have been a hundred dollars. You know, riding the cheapest buses and staying in hostels, it would have been a hundred bucks.

53:40That's the thing that I want to warn you again. Don't make that mistake. If for an amount of money that your future self will regard as a rounding error, you can do something that is going to be a core life memory, do it. I love that everyone who called in today has big goals. Yeah. I'm trying to think of anything more that we can tell you. I mean, everything that you've outlined tax-wise on the surface from where Joe and I are sitting, it sounds solid. Again, neither of us are tax professionals, so we don't have the authority to rubber stamp it. Yeah. I think investing that money, like it's 10-year money, I don't think you need a CD?

54:18Yeah, yeah, I agree. You don't need a CD. You've got so much flexibility with your plans that when the timeline on a particular goal is hard and fixed, like the way that many people regard going to college, for example, they want their kid to go to college at 18. Not that you have to, but some families feel that way. And so because that timeline is so fixed into one very specific year, it forces a more conservative investment approach because there's no flexibility around the timeline. But for you, with buying this farmland, it sounds to me, I mean, 10 years is a rough ballpark. You might buy it in 9, 11.

55:00In the relatively near midterm future, you want to buy this land, you've got flexibility in the timeline, and that means you can be more aggressive in your investments. And maybe we should define for a minute why we think you don't need a CD, even though these are going to be two different accounts, because a lot of people don't understand this. This is a question I've gotten throughout my career, Paula, which is when you get ready to sell the investment that you put the money into before it's going to go into the Roth, you're basing it on the time that you're actually going to spend the dollar.

55:39And so if that's a 10-year goal to buy farmland, then invest it as if there's 10 years. Now, when you sell it, let's say that that investment is high, you're going to sell it. And immediately within hopefully hours, maybe let's say two days, you're going to buy the same exact investment inside of the tax shelter. So unless something huge happens in the little bit of time between those two investments, you're still on the same swing that you were on before. If the swing is high, the swing was high for the first investment. It was also high for the second. It's so funny. I would have people sometimes, Paula, doing this and they would sell and they go, well, wait a minute, the investment's high right now.

56:25Well, you're still in the same investment you were in before. We're not taking the money. We're just changing the tax strategy. Same thing if it's low, they're like, well, should I sell it? It's low. Well, yeah, you want to do this Roth thing. Guess what we're going to do? We're going to buy it back when it's low. So you're selling it and buying it again for the same exact price, which is the danger is that you don't follow through with that because you start second guessing your strategy. You go, well, it's low right now. Or well, it's high right now. Well, it's in the middle. We can make up some reason not to do the right thing, whether it's high, low, anywhere.

57:01our brain will come up with 50 reasons why we shouldn't follow through. Don't think about it. Just sell it, buy it, stay in the same investment, give it 10 years. And you know what? With a 10 year timeframe, I think you're historically, you're looking good. Which is funny because I had to talk myself into that answer, Paula. Because my initial gut reaction was, oh God, it's funny. Everybody else is worried about all the things going on in the market right now and the chance that we might have problems in 2026. And will there be an AI bubble? And Fidelity now, a couple of weeks ago, coming out saying, no, we think we're going to be able to smooth out the AI bubble and you're not going to see stocks retreat.

57:43And is it good? Are stocks going to retreat? Are they not going to retreat? What's going on? And Soymann, Mr. Badass here, is like, I'm going to miss out on some gains. And I'm like, whoa, easy, buddy. You're the one person who's not worried about what everybody else is worried about. And then I had to remind myself, this is a 10-year goal. Who cares about an AI bubble? Who cares about what's going on in 2026, January 2026? We want to think about what's happening in January of 2036. You know, he also asks, should he skip the tax strategies and just focus on maxing out his Roth 401k? No. I mean, Roth 401ks are great.

58:23I love them. but you've got a blend of short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals. 100%. Don't rob from your short-term or medium-term in order to fund the long-term, especially when you've set yourself up so well already. This is, at a behavioral level, the Achilles heel of being a super saver in your 20s, being quote-unquote good with money when you're in your 20s. the Achilles heel is that sometimes instead of planning for the future, there's a tendency to live in the future, you know, live in the future at the expense of the present. That's something that I just want you to be mindful of plan for the future.

59:08Yes, but don't live in it. Can I ask a question? Yeah. If people now phrase things, if they kind of like something, you know, the phrase is a low key kind of like it, right? A low key kind of like it. Low key. Yeah. What's the opposite of that? Cause I don't low key kind of like this. You high key, you high key, like hiking. I don't know what the opposite is, but I want to know. Cause I want to be one of the cool people. So whatever the opposite is, somebody could tell us what the opposite of is of a low key kind of like it would be in this. I want photos of the hiking. Yeah. And if you've got time, make it over to Nepal.

59:50There's incredible hiking there. Just bring really, really warm boots. I've done it. That's right. I've done it. Yeah. You were there just recently, like a year ago. Yes. Did the Marty Hamal hike. We got to see Annapurna up close. Oh, nice. Pretty awesome. The last time I was there, I went, no, two times ago that I was there, I did the Annapurna base camp hike. Sweet. Yeah. That's higher elevation than we went. Yeah, yeah. That is crazy. To be at 14 ,000 feet looking up another 14 ,000 to the summit. I was about to tell you that my friend Todd, who went on the trip with us, Paula, said the same thing.

1:00:31He goes, I've been at 14 ,000 feet a number of times. He feels lucky that he's done that. Right. But to be looking up. Yeah, to be looking up an additional extra 14 ,000 of vertical ascent while you're already standing at 14. I think to go to Annapurta Base Camp, I think you took a similar, maybe even part of it was the same trek I took and you went another day. I think there's one more day. Yeah, it was 10 days starting in Polkara, then you go to Poon Hill and then up to ABC from there. Yeah. That's really cool. It's funny because friends of mine have done Everest Base Camp, which I heard is pretty.

1:01:10It's beautiful, but I've also heard from everyone I know from Nepal that if you're going to go to Nepal, don't do the Everest hikes, do the Annapurna National Park hikes. Yeah, I agree. My dad hiked Everest Base Camp when he was in his younger, I say when he was in his younger years, when he was in his 60s. When he was in his 60s, he hiked Everest Base Camp. That's pretty cool. Man, when we went, the rhododendrons were out and they were so beautiful. Oh, that's the national flower of Nepal. Everything was red. Everything. You go through these groves of flowers, of flowering bushes and flowering trees.

1:01:50I don't know if they're bushes or trees, but they were beautiful. And you get up on these ridges and everything, the whole countryside would be red. Anyway, so as you can see from this conversation, we're really excited about the goal. I love the tax strategies. I don't think that you should set aside this tax strategies for the sake of investing in your Roth 401k because that is setting aside this really cool opportunity to optimize. When else will you have an opportunity to do a triple crown? I would go for that. When it comes to the money that you want in 10 years, if you have flexibility around the date, you don't need CDs or bonds, especially not at this stage.

1:02:35Maybe when we're three years out from the date, four years out from the date, we can revisit the bond conversation. But 10 years out, you don't need it. You can stick with equities. And then for the money, my biggest concern for you is that I don't want you to shortchange this hiking trip. Give yourself the cash that you need in order to do it the way that you want to do it. Don't do it the way that makes sense. Do it the way that you want to do it. which is another way of saying, let the heart lead and the mind follow. Let the heart lead and the mind execute, not vice versa, which is what so many people have a tendency to do.

1:03:14People who are good with money in their 20s have a tendency to do the opposite, have a tendency to do what makes sense at the cost of doing what they want. So I encourage you not to do the thing that makes sense.

1:03:29Avoid that. All right. Well, thank you for the question. Thanks to everyone who called in today. I think these are three amazing questions. What a powerful financial planning day. Right? We're saving senior dogs and cats. We're traveling the world. We are leaving a W-2 job at the age of 51 in order to pursue something that is much more purposeful. I love her phrase, the encore career. Yeah. This is incredible. The stories from the Afforder community are so inspiring. So Joe, where can people find you if they'd like to learn more? You know what? Something I don't talk about because the Afford Anything show, obviously a very well-produced, thoughtful show.

1:04:14Stacking Benjamins, the same. I have a side project that is something that, frankly, Soymann, after you go on your hike, we'd love to maybe have you as a guest. It's called Stacking Adventures. Our mutual friend, Crystal Hammond and I, we have a weekly show that comes out whenever I get to it each week. We hear stories about travel from regular people. We have maybe three or four big time travel expert guests a year, but the rest of the time are stories about your travel and my travel. And so we talk about going to the Christmas markets or Crystal's trip to Barbados or listeners, Nathan and Catherine's trip to France.

1:04:58We have been around the world. Cosette went to Japan and we talked to her about her amazing adventure to Japan. So once a week you can find me when I'm not stacking Benjamins at Stacking Adventures, which is a fun little show that we do because Paula, I can't stop thinking about travel. It's super fun. Do you have any trips you're looking forward to in 2026, Joe? I am headed to Alaska this year. Oh, when? In September, I will be on a float plane landing in Lake Clark National Park. We have this group tent site on this remote lake, and then we're kayaking and hiking for several days. And so, yeah, getting another national park, Lake Clark National Park should be a great time.

1:05:56I can't wait to go to Alaska again. The last time I was there was just so beautiful. We went to Denali that time. So getting some of these other parks, it was going to be a great time. How about you? Wow. So I, you know, I've been to 46 out of the 50 states, but Alaska is one of the four that I have never been to. It was incredible. I would have never gone if my son, Nick, who you know, Nick hadn't done a charity ride from Austin, Texas to Anchorage with a group of University of Texas students. It's called the Texas 4000, another great, by the way, 501c3 organization doing phenomenal work. They're not just raising money for cancer research, but also teaching leadership to a bunch of college students.

1:06:39Wow. Worthwhile organization. That's incredible. I'm heading to Singapore at the end of February. That's fantastic. I'll be gone for two weeks. I've only been to the airport, but oh my God, I'd love to go to Singapore. And the food, I can't wait to hear about the food. I've been there once before, but it was 12 years ago. So I am looking forward to going back. And the last time I was there, I didn't know anyone there. This time I've got two really good friends who both live there. Sweet. And I think that makes a huge difference. Huge difference. if I have one request, and you'll have to be on Stacking Adventures telling us about your Singapore adventure.

1:07:17That'll be a super time. The only place that I know of that has Michelin star food stands. Oh, is Singapore. Is Singapore. Wow. All right. I'll have to find some of those food stands. You'll have to eat Michelin star street food. Wow. All right. Done and done. Thanks to all of you for being part of this community. This is like family. I love the Affordor community. Happy 2026 to everyone. As you think through the year ahead, as you set your financial goals for the year ahead, we have a free handout, affordanything.com slash financial goals that can help you get there. So check that out. Affordanything.com slash financial goals.

1:08:00sort of walks you through the 52 weeks of the year and helps you make some tweaks to your budget so that you can free up a little bit here and there. It's very tactical. It's our beginning of the year 52-week challenge. So again, affordanything.com slash financial goals. Thank you so much for being an Afforder. I'm Paula Pant. I'm Joe Salcihai. And we'll meet you in the next episode.