Q&A: Why 3 Years Is a Weird Timeline for Money

24:15So substantially equal periodic payments are these very specific rules that you have to follow

24:22Paula Pant:to take money out of these IRAs pre-59 and a half. And as long as you follow them, there will be no penalty. There is a 10 % penalty and you're going to pay taxes if you made the money today if you take money before 59 and a half. There's still going to be the tax after 59 and a half on your pre-tax plans, but you won't pay that penalty. So this gets around the extra 10%. There are three different ways to calculate it. You also don't have to use all the money in your retirement plans when you calculate it. So what we would do, Paula, is if I had a client who had amassed a substantial amount of money and we were trying to do what Robert's doing.

25:09Substantially equal amount of money.

25:13I think separately equal amounts of money. I think if they want separate or substantial, it could be both. It could be both amounts of money. When they take that money out, what we would do is we would start off with how much money do you need?

25:30Paula Pant:and then we would go backward because the way the rule works is if you segregate that money into a separate IRA and then you take the entire IRA. So it has to be the entire IRA, which fools some people to think, oh, it has to be all my IRA money. Nope. Has to just be based on all of the money in that IRA account. So I will segregate the amount of money that I need to feed the amount of income that I'm looking for. And then that will create a payment that I want. And that payment, while the word equal appears, equal is defined three different ways. In some ways, the dividends interest, the changing amount in the account matters.

26:08Paula Pant:In other ways, it does not. So you can set it as a fluctuating number or you can set it as a set number. The only downside to SEPP is if something happens during the time that you're taking it and you need to violate the agreement. Then the IRS is like, we had a deal and you broke the deal. And so now you're going to see those penalties rear their ugly head again, which is why I also don't like using the entire account for SEPP. So if we want to take the money early, I like to try to leave some money in an IRA that's off to the side that maybe I could create a second SEPP with that, you know, I might be able to do something that gives me some flexibility, but that's SEPP substantially, as I was saying earlier, substantially equal periodic payments.

27:09Which if you think about what that means, it's basically just another way of saying the same amount of money. Yes. And the fact that it, it also, they kind of Paula, I'm joking,

27:20Paula Pant:but I'm not. What they're also alluding to is substantially equal means it can be a flat line or it can be a fluctuating line depending on how you look at it. So they could have said equal-ish. Equal-ish. Yeah. Periodic payments. Oh, kind of like how we do these episodes on Tuesday-ish. Ish, right? Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah, we do. This is like every other episode-ish, you and I. You know. Every other episode-ish, we answer listener questions. Every other one. Wouldn't they happen? Yeah, and they happened Tuesday-ish. Yeah. So that's the skinny on 72T. Yeah, you know me. Can't believe that song came out in 1991.

28:06I was like, that song might not be as young as we think it is. What was I listening to it on a Discman or something? You were, probably. Jeez. And by the way, you were walking with flat feet so it wouldn't skip. Yeah, that's right. I'm trying to walk very smoothly. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You don't want to scratch the CD. Oh, the disc, man. All right. Well, thank you, Robert, for the question. And congratulations on being so close to early retirement. We're going to take one more break to hear from the sponsors who make this possible. When we return, we're going to hear from an anonymous caller who is interested in nonprofit versus LLC.

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31:17Welcome back. Our final question today comes from Anonymous. Hi, Paula and Jo. Thank you for your wonderful podcast and especially your Q &As. I am Anonymous and I have a question about opening a business. I have an almost 30-year background in social work and am a parent to an adult with special needs. I live in a rural area and there are almost zero resources for disabled adults. Within an hour radius are two sheltered workshops and one residential group home. My dream is to open an adult day center and I have no idea where to start. I was thinking of doing an LLC or business model as a non-profit depends on government grants, which can differ from administration to administration, and also fundraising.

32:09I have a person in mind who is a special ed teacher who would run the actual program, but it would probably just be me and her as the initial staff. I have been to a training about becoming a provider paid through the state, and the process seems daunting to say the least. Any advice, resources, or things to think about for people with no actual business experience to start a business? Thank you so much for all of your help. Anonymous, I love the vision. I love the goal. I love the objective. I love the question. Let's give you a name.

32:49Paula Pant:I have a name for her, Paula. And as soon as I heard her question, I thought of this person. Back in November, we helped raise money for an organization that teaches kids about money. And what I love about Anonymous's mission is that this is community-driven. She's doing it because she truly sees a need. I mean, don't get me wrong. She wants to make money. But I didn't hear so much make money as I heard, let's fill this need that I have that nobody's addressing in my community. This woman's name is Karen Holland. She has a wonderful 501c3 called Gifting Sense that's fantastic. And it teaches kids at that age when those dopamine hits hit really hard, hit really, really hard to learn, to ask themselves, does this purchase make sense before I go out and ask my parents for it or I ask a relative for it or I save money for it or whatever it is.

33:48Paula Pant:And it really helps kids learn the basics of spending. So I would love to call her Karen because Karen, same thing, saw this need in her backyard. The kids are not getting what they need. Was she somebody that you interviewed on the Stacking Benjamins podcast? She's somebody we actually raised money for in November. And we actually beat a bunch of other podcasts. Oh. And we actually won this trophy. Oh. For those of you listening on audio, go to the YouTube channel because Joe is holding up his trophy. Yes. So we won. The 2025 Ultimate Voice for Good. Ultimate Voices for Good. Wow. Raising money to help kids learn about money.

34:26Paula Pant:And what was cool was a lot of the podcasts we were up against were big iHeart podcasts that had celebrities on them. We beat a bunch of celebrity podcasts because people in personal finance are such badasses and gave money to a cause we all think is pretty important. Take that, Conan O 'Brien. Bam.

34:47Paula Pant:So I think that the fact that she's community oriented, I just, I don't know, I'm inspired and we'll call her Karen, I guess. I'm very inspired by Karen's mission and her drive to get this done. Right. Great. So in, in honor of a role model in the world of creating organizations that do good in the community. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. All right, Karen, I want to answer the initial, the piece about, do you form this as an LLC or do you form it as a nonprofit? And your answer to that is going to depend on how you plan on raising money and how you plan on funding this, particularly in its early years.

35:29Because when something is formed as a business, as an LLC, the, I mean, the benefit to that is it's from an administrative perspective, from a paperwork perspective, it's actually very simple. One of the great things about LLCs, one of the great things really, you know, you look at the paperwork requirements in some other countries around starting a business, it can be quite onerous. And I think one of the great things about the United States is that in every state, and different states have different requirements, but in every state, starting a business is actually relatively simple, relatively cheap, very straightforward, and takes an hour or less, depending on what state you're in.

36:16If you go the LLC route, the great news is that it's very, very simple and easy and cheap to do to get established. The drawback is that it's up to you to come up with all of the money. And that means that you're going to have to put some of your own money as initial seed money to get the ball rolling. And then the products or services that you offer, in your case, it would be services, the revenue from those services will need to pay for any expansion. And so it's very bootstrapped. It's fueled entirely by initially by owner contribution. And then from after the initial seed owner contribution, it then grows through that revenue.

37:01And that can be hard and It can be spotty. And there are times when the revenue is not enough to keep the operations going. And then you need more funds coming in from the owner, more owner contributions in order to maintain operations or in order to grow. The bootstrap route is, I should say, simple but not easy.

37:24Paula Pant:Yeah, I think that if you go 501c3, which is, you know, jargon again for if you're a nonprofit. That doesn't mean, by the way, that you can't pay yourself and you can't make money on it. You can personally, but there are very specific rules around nonprofits. And also, you have to convince people in the community to fund your organization. The IRS has some very simple but difficult to follow rules if you're not thinking about marketing. And really what we're talking about here, Paula, I think is the key no matter what you do. Because my initial thought, I'm glad you brought this up at first because it wasn't where I was going to go.

38:07Paula Pant:And like so many answers to questions, we kind of attack it from different ways. Because I was like, I don't know that I would even start with LLC. I can see why you did because you're getting to the place that I would start, which is how are you going to fund the business and how are you going to market the business because that is going to be the key to your success no matter what. When you start to put some numbers in place, you begin building spreadsheets about what you're going to need and how long you're going to have to fund the operation before it runs itself. I think there's a couple things that longtime entrepreneurs will tell you.

38:48Paula Pant:Number one is whatever numbers you come up with, number one, you already know they're going to be wrong. It doesn't mean I wouldn't do it. I would 100 % do it. Because once you have an expectation of what the numbers are, the way they're wrong is going to help you then pivot. Because we don't know how they're going to be wrong. We just know they're going to be wrong. And as wrong data comes in and you're comparing it to what you thought, it's just going to make your data better if you come in with some ideas and you've done some research. And also just the time it spends talking to entrepreneurs that are already doing in other areas, what you do, going online and looking at people that do what you do, it gives some thoughtfulness to the process of building the business.

39:33Paula Pant:And you're much more likely to spot holes ahead of time if you do that legwork of coming up with numbers, even if you know they're going to be wrong. But whatever number you come up with, every entrepreneur will tell you, you need to either double that number or triple that number. Specifically in two areas, your startup costs are going to be about double. The number you come up with is going to be about half to one third of what you really need. Every entrepreneur will tell you this. And then the second thing is the runway to profitability. If you think it's going to be 18 months, you need to double or triple that as well.

40:07Paula Pant:It's going to be 36 months, 72. too. And by the way, when we talk about profitability, because I think that is a term that's often misunderstood, profitability simply means you cover your operating expenses plus$1 more. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And that$1 more is just a dollar that you then can spend doing some type of marketing or outreach that you have not previously done. Maybe you cover your costs plus$1 more and that extra dollar, you decide I'm going to put that into a Facebook ads or I'm going to put that into t-shirts or stickers or flyers. Profitability just means it means money to grow. That's what profitability really means.

40:50And I think it is misunderstood and much in some circles maligned word because there are people who think, oh, profit. No, no. Profitability means you cover. Because if you think about an operation in two phases, there's maintenance and then there's growth. Profitability simply means you've covered maintenance and now you have some additional money outside of just the bare bones that you need to maintain what you're already doing. You've got something on top of that that you can use for growth.

41:23Paula Pant:There was a wonderful mentor I had in one of the first businesses that I ran who put this very simply, Karen, very simply, he said, you need to calculate how much it's going to cost you to just turn on the lights in the morning. So if you walk in and you need to turn on the lights another day, what does that cost? Meaning the people that work, they all need to be paid. Payroll. Yeah. The electricity, the rent, the whatever, like what does it cost to turn on the lights? That's the number. And if you're thinking, well, we're not going to rent a space or at least not initially, if you're running this remotely, software costs are enormous.

42:02I mean, this morning I was looking through AffordAnything's credit card bill and I was like, what the hell did this get? You know, what the hell are we buying? It's Dropbox. It's ClickUp. You know, there's so many different. And I know people in the age of AI are talking about the death of SaaS, software as a service. but we pay for so much sass. I mean, it is incredible.

42:29Paula Pant:I'm paying AI agents now. Yeah, exactly. Every month. You know, we pay for Riverside and for Loom and for all just Airtable. We pay for all these things. So there's payroll costs, there's huge payroll costs, and then there's software costs. That tech stack, especially if you're brick and mortar, then you pay the brick and mortar costs. And if you're not brick and mortar, if you're remote, then you have a pretty expensive tech stack in order to support that remote operation. I cautioned everyone earlier, we both did, I guess, Paula, about using jargon, about us using jargon. In this case, I like the fact that people that don't know the business like you and I do of what we do, you just gave them a bunch of jargon.

43:11Paula Pant:They have no idea what Airtable is or what any of these. Riverside, like what the hell is that? This is how intimate you want to become with the business. You want to know what some of these things are. So you're going to want to go to other communities and talk to people that already have these costs that are hidden from people. I mean, heck, everybody listening, I'd say 95 % of people listening have no idea of these costs that Paula just talked about. And yet, if you were going to create your own podcast doing what we do, you need to know what these things are because we don't buy them unless they're important to making sure that we can make this end product.

43:48Paula Pant:And so often a business owner has a great idea and will open up the business without knowing what those hidden costs are. And they're like, why am I not getting this done? And then some business owner, they happen to meet up with six months later and like, oh, you're doing that? Why wouldn't you just have this thing, but you pay$40 a month for it, but it takes care of that. And now you, A, you drop some costs, but you incur another cost that's not going to go away. How many times a day, Paula, does a marketer tell you about another cost that you're like, yeah, that would be really cool, but it's not mission criticals and I can't afford it.

44:27Paula Pant:I would say I get 50 of those a day and I now have filters that I pay for. Another thing I pay for, I pay for filters to make sure that I don't see them because I get marketed so much. These products that would make it even better for me, another subscription. I think there's a cautionary tale here too, though, Paula, that I was thinking of, which is the entrepreneur's journey. I'm sure we're not the only people that you're talking to about this idea. I know when people get excited about an idea, they tell their friends, they tell everyone. Your friends are generally the wrong people to talk to about your business.

45:07I agree. Don't take advice from anyone who doesn't have the results that you want, specifically the results that you want in the particular domain, which is to say, for this goal, don't take advice from anyone who isn't already a successful founder of a small business or founder of a nonprofit. Those are the only people that you should be taking advice from because anyone who hasn't founded either a small business or a nonprofit doesn't know what the F they're talking about.

45:43Paula Pant:Yeah. My spouse, Cheryl, will tell you like just during our whole marriage together, there's things that I tell her that I'm doing. She's like, are you sure you want to do that? I'm like, we need to do that. Here's what we need to do. And then six months later, she's like, I would have never done that. And I can see how that was, but she's not an entrepreneur. She is not an entrepreneur. And that's why she doesn't give me advice about the business is because she's not an entrepreneur. And, you know, when I talk to my mom about the business, which I do sometimes, my mom's always like, Ooh, that sounds or whatever.

46:14Paula Pant:And I take it and it's well-meaning your relatives don't want you to get hurt. Your friends don't want you to get hurt. There are things that you have to do as an entrepreneur. There are things that you won't do as an entrepreneur. People are like, well, it's obvious you should do that. No, I shouldn't do that. But they don't understand the entrepreneurial journey. A book that I like that I've been reading recently, and I've dog eared the crap out of this, is from a guy who created, and people in the Midwest will know this chain, a chain called Big B Coffee. Big B, huge in the Midwest, non-existent elsewhere, but he has a great book for entrepreneurs.

46:49Paula Pant:You can see, I actually have it here on video, but it's called Grind. Ooh, a no BS approach to take your business from concept to cashflow. Grimed by Michael J. McFall. And this is a gentleman who's been there. And you know what he talks about, Paula? What's that? He talks about the importance of getting rid of everything. I mean, this is my big takeaway from the book, and he goes much deeper into it. You need to think about marketing nonstop, non, nonstop. It doesn't matter what business you have. And he said the same thing that most people think is, I'm not good at marketing. I'm not great at marketing.

47:30Paula Pant:You have to learn what marketing really is. And you have to think about how do I market my business? Because one more customer today in your business is the chance for that person to tell five other people for them to become your marketing. And soon you're going to learn a term called net promoter score. Yeah. Yeah. But, but you need to just think marketing all the time. And he is a guy, by the way, a big B is a franchise. And so he speaks to franchisees, potential franchisees, and he walks through franchises that fail. And he says almost every big B coffee that's failed is a lack of marketing.

48:12Paula Pant:It's where the person thought they were too good for marketing. No, I'm making coffee. I'm not marketing. Well, if you don't have anybody buy your coffee, nothing else matters. You have to, have to, have to think grind, which by the way, grind, you can see because he makes coffee is a double in Tundra, grind. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But a really good, just very blunt book about how rough it's going to be your first couple of years. And I think if you go in thinking that the first couple of years are going to be pretty rough, I think Paula, then you set the standard for every day's a blessing. And anytime something good happens, that's fantastic.

48:46Like we're going to celebrate the small wins then, which I think if you don't go in thinking it's going to be hard, that's why businesses fail. Yeah. The fact that you've got somebody else who is also in this with you from day one and who shares the same vision, the same goals, the same objective, that's important. It's particularly going to be important if the two of you have different but complementary skill sets. If that person can compensate for your weaknesses, their strengths are the opposite of your weaknesses and vice versa. If your strengths are the opposite of their weaknesses, because naturally there are just going to be some things you're good at and some things you're not.

49:28And same with them. There are going to be some things they're good at and some things they're not. And if those things are different from one another, then you can split the workload because it's going to be a big, big, big hurdle ahead and everything takes longer than you expect it will. And logistics are just sometimes onerous. They're tiring. And so there's the emotional support that you get from having somebody else who's in the trenches with you every single day. There's also just, if you can split the workload in a way in which you, you're both in your zone of genius and you're both doing what you do best.

50:06I think that's a great way to start.

50:08Paula Pant:Long-time afforders have the bingo card out, so I'll make sure that you get the square because we need to mention this book. It's so important when it comes to - Oh boy, he's going to say the E-myth. I wasn't going to mention it until you brought up partners because I think what the E-myth does really well, the book is called the E-myth, so now you get the square. Everybody gets the square and the bingo card that we did mention the E-myth. But the reason I think this is important, Paula, is that what Michael Gerber talks about there is clearly defined roles, clearly defined roles. And I think that especially in a partnership, the reason I see partnerships fail, I knew this.

50:43Paula Pant:And we started a podcast called Stacking Deeds with two people that were running it for us, right? I did not create roles ahead of time. And these two wonderful people ended up stepping on each other. And then there was a power struggle. And then we had to have a really difficult discussion about the future of the podcast, which is if you follow my brand, you know, Stacking Deeds is not a podcast we have anymore. And one of our hosts is gone. He's a super guy. And it's really as much my fault as it is their fault that we did not have something I knew about ahead of time. How many times I mentioned the e-myth?

51:27Paula Pant:We didn't have predefined roles. Yeah. And I love it when somebody is the CEO, where somebody's got to be the CEO, where if we disagree, we're doing what I say. And it's not an ego thing. It's defining it ahead of time. Yeah, it's authority. Because when there's unclear authority, people push the boundaries to discover where they are. Everything turns into a negotiation. I actually posted about this on Twitter a while ago. So one of the mistakes that I made early in business was I didn't want to, I was uncomfortable stepping into authority and I didn't want to be dictatorial. I didn't want to be one of those people who just pulled rank and was one of those, oh, because I said so type of people.

52:12And so I overcorrected and made everything a discussion and everything felt negotiable. And as a result, we didn't have proper standards. We took way too long to make decisions. Everything got just so watered down. It created more chaos and confusion and ultimately was worse for the organization. Leila Hormozy just posted, she said something I really liked. She said, you know, your role is not to be agreeable. Your role is to do the things that are mission critical. I'm paraphrasing. I don't remember her exact words, but it was, yeah, your role is not to be agreeable. Your role is to execute the mission.

52:52Paula Pant:And that doesn't mean that you have to be somebody who terrorizes your employees. No, we're doing it my way. I mean, my management style is very much, we have our team meeting. We talk about the why behind a lot of stuff because of the way adults learn. And I also get input during those meetings and people feel, I want people to feel comfortable with me, giving me their input. But they also know that Joe's deciding. Yeah, yeah. If you're like me, if you're the personality type, who's a bit of a people pleaser, if you have the flaw of being too agreeable, that can really bite you and it can bite the company.

53:27It's something that you have to really learn to keep in check. Yeah.

53:32Paula Pant:It was funny because even on something as ridiculous as being podcast co-host, like it became a power struggle and ridiculous. So predefined roles. I will tell you long-term people, I did not want to mention the E-Myth. I was very proud of myself that I was not mentioning the E-Myth, but then Paula brought it up. She made me mention it. But I think that book though, Paula, you'll agree does a better job than any other book about entrepreneurship of talking about clearly defined SOPs. You know, I'd say there's another one. It's called Who. It's really more about hiring, but who, let me see who are the authors.

54:11Who are the authors of who. Jeff Smart, Jeff G-E-O-F-F, Jeff with a G, Jeff Smart and Randy Street. They're the authors of a book called Who? The A Method for Hiring. It talks about how to build a scorecard and it talks about how to clearly define outcomes for a role. I strongly recommend that book. That book was actually recommended to me by Scott Trench, the former CEO of BiggerPockets. The most important thing that you're going to do is hire. As a leader, your job is really three things. It's number one, hire the right people. Number two, don't run out of money to pay them and to pay for all of your software and operational expenses.

54:57And number three, set the vision, set the goal, set the objective, set the vision. Those are the three things you do. You hire the people, you don't run out of money and you set the vision, set the course.

55:10Paula Pant:I know some entrepreneurs I've seen kind of roll their eyes, set the vision, but that is, that is hugely important because people like to come to work feeling like they have meaning. And the meaning is bigger than I just go to work to make money. This isn't everybody, but this is most people that I've hired. They want to be a part of something that is impacting and truly caring what you're doing is going to have a big impact. So when you start to hire people, you get to see the results because you're working with your end users all the time. But a lot of people that work for you don't get to see that.

55:47Paula Pant:If somebody is in the stock room or whatever, but they need the vision as much as anybody, that stacking these things is important so that we're able to do this thing. So I found myself over the years during our team meetings, I've had to become, Paul, a little bit of a storyteller, tell people about the wins that we had because of the important work that they do. Because it took me a while to realize that every employee you have does not get to see. They don't get the accolade of, oh, thank goodness you guys do this for us. I'm so happy that we do this. And if I don't pass it to them, then it makes it more difficult for them to come to work.

56:21Paula Pant:They're like, what am I doing? Right, right. Well, and vision is, it's beyond just that. It's how do you respond to changing times? In the world of AI, vision could be something as fundamental as what roles are we hiring for versus what roles are we building agentic AI for? And your employees want to know that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Someone's got to make that decision, right? And as the CEO, that's your job. Vision could be, if you're thinking about your revenue streams, all right, here are five different ways that we could diversify our revenue streams. Which of these, we can't do all five, which of these five are we choosing and why?

57:02You know, that's vision. Vision is, I mean, even if you look at the history of Afford Anything, we iterated from a blog to a podcast, to an audio-only podcast, to now a video podcast in which our guest interviews are all in person, in studio. So that every single step of that was setting the vision. You know, for five years, Afford Anything was a blog. We don't blog anymore. That's outdated now, right? Now we're a podcast. And now not only are we a podcast, we're a podcast that insists that if you are going to come and be a guest on this show, and Joe, this doesn't, of course, qualify because you and I do the Q &As.

57:46This isn't a guest interview. But if you are going to come and be a guest, then you have to show up in person. We have to do this face-to-face. People have flown to New York to do interviews with us. I say that to emphasize how much we insist on that, how unwilling we are to make exceptions. And it's because we are committed to getting the best possible interview. and the interviews that you get with somebody face-to-face do not hold a candle to the interviews that you do remotely. Just as an interviewer, you can feel it. You can feel how different it is. There's a lot of friction with that. And so to execute that vision, there's a lot of cost.

58:30There's a lot of friction. There's a lot of administrative burden. And so you have to have conviction. You have to have conviction and you have to have resolve because people are going to fight you on it every step of the way. That's where vision comes in. Like that's commitment to vision is conviction. And that's what a great leader needs. A great leader needs conviction. I think that was a convincing way to answer her question. You answered that with a lot of conviction. Oh, I thank you. Well, I thank you. So yeah, in terms of do you form as an LLC versus a nonprofit? it totally just depends on how you want to raise those initial funds.

59:13Yeah. I think, uh, what's the old phrase form follows function, right? Yeah. Will it be owner contributions or will it be outside fundraising? That's going to be the deciding factor there at the size that you are operating at. You will not be forming a certified B Corp. You might hear some people talk about that. That is appropriate for much larger organizations. It's not really something that a smaller organization would do. There are just too many costs associated with the B Corp certification process. So while you might be a B Corp in your heart, you will not actually be paying all of the costs to go through that process.

59:53Build an org chart. When you're filling in the org chart, even if it's just you and that one other person, you should still build the org chart just to outline what all of the roles are so that you can say, look, here are 12 different jobs. And yeah, right now we're filling in the names of two people. But when you build the org chart, you build it based on roles, not based on the individuals filling the roles. So building that org chart in advance will show you what the roles are and then have a job description for every single one of those roles, have a set of ideal outcomes for every single one of those roles.

1:00:30I mean, for the people listening, even if you're starting without somebody, you might have an org chart with 12 roles and you've got the same person in all 12. But if you have that org chart and corresponding job descriptions, corresponding ideal outcomes, corresponding KPIs for every single role, you know what success in each role looks like. And that's going to be really important as you grow and as you start to bring in more people to fill in those roles. These are fun discussions. You know, we don't talk about the letter E enough in the F-I-R-E. So I love these questions because this is my favorite topic.

1:01:06It's what I think about all day, every day. And it is incredibly gratifying to run an organization that is based around a mission of improving people's lives. That's the fun for me. Yeah. Thank you for the question and congratulations on the vision that you have. Congratulations on finding somebody who will be in it with you from day one. And congratulations on everything that's about to follow. You are about to create something incredible in this world that will change lives. What a beautiful thing. All right, Joe, we did it again.

1:01:41Paula Pant:We did. We did. We did. We found a way to really, I mean, three people doing fantastic stuff. Like this was really cool to see what different things people are doing in the community, but all great. I mean, this idea of just going to do the thing you want to do three years from now is fantastic. Taking time off of work and planning for that ahead of time. That's powerful. Saving enough money that you're doing SEPPs, separate or substantially equal payments, you choose. doing that and really doing some great forward planning, I think is amazing. And then, you know, seeing this hole that, you know, that you uniquely can fill you and a partner can fill that hole and, you know, becoming an entrepreneur.

1:02:30Paula Pant:I think those are all just amazing stuff people are doing. Yeah. So the theme of today's episode is all three of our callers, the next three years are going to be incredibly exciting. Yeah. 2029. All three of our callers are going to have great 2029s. And I'm just thinking the song OPP will be 38 years old.

1:02:54Our baby's grown up. Well, Joe, where can people find you if they'd like to hear more?

1:02:59Paula Pant:You know, a fun place to find you and me and a fantastic group of other contributors is our roundtable recording session on Monday afternoons. It's funny because we get to pretend it's Friday on Monday, which is always great. That's 3.30 Eastern-ish, 3.30, 3.45. We gather and then we go live as soon as we can between 3.30, 3.45. So we just have YouTube, the Stacking Benjamins channel on, and you've subscribed and alert you that when we go live. But man, we have some fun times. We just had Paul Merriman join us, Paula. We also had on that same episode, Paula Pant won her first round of trivia for 2026.

1:03:42I did. I did.

1:03:44Paula Pant:That was huge. Incredible. She's on the board. And so between Paula and our other frequent contributor, Jesse Kramer, OG, and these brilliant people that come join us every week, you get a few surprises, but also enthusiastic people in the comments. Like Paula, half the fun is watching what looks like financial beach balls being passed around in the comments as enthusiastic people are joining us. It feels like getting together with a bunch of friends. So come join us, Stacking Benjamins, live recording of the Friday episodes, Monday afternoons, 3.30 to 3.45-ish Eastern time, 12.30, 12.45-ish Pacific.

1:04:27Thank you, Joe. And thanks to all of you for being afforders. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share this with the person who runs your money market fund. With those well-meaning relatives that want to tell you how to run your business when they're not entrepreneurs. Share this with the people at Treasury Direct. Share this with your accountant who you're running your SEPP payment strategy by. Share it with the people at the bank, the bank tellers, the branch managers, all of the people who work at the bank who have that high yield savings account or that laddered CD that doesn't pay anything.

1:05:02Share it with that partner you're going to go into business with. Oh, share it with the person who helps you form the nonprofit entity. Share it with Michael Gerber who wrote the E-Myth and tell him we mentioned him again. Share it with Conan O 'Brien. Tell him we mentioned him. We did. He hasn't had 15 minutes yet. Share it with all of those people and more because that is the single most important way that you spread the message of F-I-I-R-E. Also, subscribe to our newsletter. It's completely free. And Joe, what do I say? I learned this from you? Yes, it is 100 % free and worth every penny. So that is at affordanything.com slash newsletter.

1:05:44Finally, open up your favorite podcast playing app. Hit the follow button so you don't miss any of our amazing upcoming episodes. While you're there, please leave us up to a five-star review. And you know what? can I throw in a fourth thing? Go to our YouTube page, youtube.com slash afford anything. Follow us there. Hit the follow button, hit the bell, leave a comment on a video, engage with our YouTube page. I think that's a great way to see our faces in addition to hearing our voices and help support this channel. Thank you to all of you for being part of the Affordert community. I'm Paula Pant.

1:06:18I'm Joe Salcihai. And we'll meet you in the next episode.

1:06:25Well, it's sadness because they had so much joy for about 45 minutes and they wanted it to continue. I love pontificating about how much people should love us.

1:06:42You know, there's a title of a book. It's called Work Won't Love You Back. I haven't read it, but I think the title pretty much, you know, conveys the thesis. It does sound like a book that I might not even need to read to get the, yeah.