Paula Pant Quit Her Job with $25K (Now She’s FI in NYC)

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2:39Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast. Today, we've got our second bonus episode. Scott and I are highlighting real stories from real New York City residents who have achieved financial independence, proving you don't have to leave a high cost of living city to achieve FI. Today, we're talking to the Paula Pant from Afford Anything. Paula walked away from her$31 ,000 job in 2008, before she'd ever even heard of FIIR, with just$25 ,000 saved to travel the world. When she came back, she started freelancing and bought a triplex to Househack, a decision that changed everything.

3:17Today, she's living in New York City, fully financially independent through real estate, all starting from a career that never topped$32 ,000. Let's get into her story. Paula, you moved to New York City a few years ago, despite knowing how expensive it is to live there. You were living in a much lower cost of living area. So let's set the record straight. Why did you move to New York City? So for my entire adult life, I'd always wanted to live in New York, but I never allowed myself to do so because it has a high cost of living. And so I couldn't rationalize the decision. Given that I work remotely, given that I work for myself, and so I don't need to make job-related connections, I could not find a rational, you know, make sense on paper reason to do it.

4:03And there were plenty of make sense on paper reasons to not. Before New York City, I was living in Las Vegas, where you've got a very low cost of living, relatively speaking. You have no state income tax. You've got mild winters. You've got relatively not that much traffic. Most people who live in Las Vegas would argue against that, but my stance is there's the traffic's not that bad. You know, for all of these reasons, Las Vegas really made sense on paper. Before Las Vegas, I was living in Atlanta. I grew up in Cincinnati. I've always lived in these relatively low cost of living cities. The only reason to move to New York was the fact that I wanted to.

4:40There was no other reason. And because that was the only reason, I couldn't justify doing it. And then the pandemic hit. And when that happened, I realized life is short. None of us, I know that's a cliche, but none of us are guaranteed to live to be 120. If there is something that you really want to do and you have the money to do it, don't cheap out on it. Like I don't want to be on my deathbed thinking, man, I never lived in the city that I wanted to live in. How does living in New York City impact your finances? So that's the thing that caught me by surprise. I had braced myself before moving here, braced myself for the expectation that life was about to get a lot more expensive.

5:23And I was actually shocked to discover that my cost of living in New York is about the same as my cost of living in Las Vegas. And here's how that breaks down. I'll use real numbers. In Las Vegas, on a 15-year mortgage, on a condo with about 1 ,700 square feet, my mortgage was around$3 ,500,$3 ,600 a month. In New York City, I have a one-bedroom apartment. It is$4 ,700 a month. I'm letting a friend live with me, and I'm giving her a sweetheart deal. So my friend pays$1 ,100 a month. I've studioed the living room, so we don't have a couch, right? I live in the living room as a studio apartment sort of a thing.

5:59She takes the bedroom. It's$4 ,700 a month minus her$1 ,100 contribution. So my out-of-pocket is$3 ,600 a month. That means my rent in New York is similar to what I was paying for my condo in Vegas. You can certainly argue that from a wealth-building point of view, they're not comparable. In Vegas, I was building equity on a 15-year mortgage. In New York, I'm a renter. In Vegas, I was getting 1 ,700 square feet. In New York, I'm getting half of 600 square feet. So those are the trade-offs, but the actual cash flow impact is the same. How much time do you spend in your apartment in New York City compared to what you spent in your condo in Las Vegas?

6:41A lot. One thing that I love about my condo and part of the reason that I chose it, A, it's got these big floor-to-ceiling windows with this absolutely gorgeous view, like bonkers beautiful view. Can I show you guys? That's great. And this doesn't really do it justice, but like, that's the view. It's insane. Sunset is just, it's, it's ridiculous. It's so pretty that last night, right at sunset, I actually came to my section of room and sat on my dresser and just watched the sunset from there. Like for 30 minutes, that was what I did. I just sat there and watched the sunset. It's a beautiful place.

7:19I really enjoy being here. And in the building that I live in, so this is a newer building that was built in 2012. This building has on the fifth floor, 80 ,000 square feet of amenities. So it has an indoor pool, an outdoor pool, a steam room, a sauna, half-sized basketball court, cycling studio, yoga studio, boxing studio. I say that and I do like the same thing. I do the elliptical every time, you know, but I could take boxing classes if I want to. But the point is I have basically an Equinox level luxury gym that is in my building. And so between the beautiful view from the floor to ceiling windows, plus the incredible luxury gym and also that gym has like a co-working space area that i normally work from came to my apartment to do this interview because it's quieter but normally i'm down in the co-working space between all of those things i very rarely leave my building and when i do leave my building the other thing that's been really nice is the building hosts all these social events and so i've become friends with a bunch of people who also live in the same building and so because a lot of my good friends live in my building it's it's basically like the grown-up version of living in the college dorms.

8:26When we want to go out, we just go to a bar that's like on the corner, which means if I do leave the building, I'm going to the corner bar. I'm going to the corner hairdresser. Like I'm very rarely leaving like three to four block radius of the building. Awesome. So this sounds fantastic. And so what about other expenses? Like do you continue to have a car here in New York City? Nope, no car. I moved here with a car and I actually found that my quality of life improved once I got rid of it when I had a car initially you can park on the streets for free but if you do that you need to move the car twice a week and moving that car requires because you have to move it for street sweeping requires like getting there at a certain time a very fixed time and then like figuring out what to do for two hours and then coming back right at the exact time that you'd like compete for an open spot doing that twice a week it was turning into a part-time job.

9:20Then I was like, all right, I'm going to stop doing that. I'm just going to pay for a spot in a parking garage. And that was 600 a month. And so paying for that, I was like, well, now I need to use this car enough to justify paying that. So then I just started like manufacturing unnecessary trips purely so that I could feel like I could justify the parking garage spot. And so for like, I was like, this is, this is dumb. Having a car is actually impeding my quality of life because it's just too much work, too much money, too stressful. So I got rid of the car. And now I mean, I pretty much everywhere I go, I can walk to and if I'm not walking, there's a bus stop that's immediately in front of my apartment, which I resisted for a long time, because I have these notions in my mind of buses being really inefficient, because that was the case every other place that I've lived.

10:09But the bus stop out here, there's a bus that comes by every 10 minutes. It's like an Uber, but for$3. That bus will take me right down 57th Avenue to a bunch of different subway stops. So I can take the bus to the subway. And it's just, it's easy. It's super easy. That's another way in which my cost of living actually, you know, in housing, the cash flow stayed the same. In transportation, my costs dramatically decreased. How about food? How about the other big categories? Food and fun. Is it much more expensive to enjoy all the things that you want in New York City? So groceries. If you buy groceries from a brick and mortar grocery store, don't because brick and mortar grocery stores here are very expensive.

10:49But Amazon Fresh, and I also use this service. It's called Imperfect Foods. It was recently purchased by Misfit Market. It sells, quote unquote, ugly produce like overstock or misshapen produce or overstock or misshapen items in general. So between Amazon Fresh and Imperfect Foods, my friend calls it mangled meals. Between those two, my grocery costs are about like between 80 to 100 a week. You live in a really nice building in a really nice place with all these amenities. And it really is not expensive between those big three categories to run your life here. It probably was much more in Las Vegas, I'd imagine.

11:26Yeah. Yeah. Because in Las Vegas, I was thinking about this this morning in Vegas and prior to that in Atlanta, my friends were spread out all over the city. So I didn't have, you know, here I have this concentration of friends who live literally under the same roof in my building. In Vegas, my friends are spread out all over the city. So if I wanted to go out, I would have to drive, you know, so I'm spending time and gas money driving to wherever they are. We're meeting up at some restaurant somewhere. If we have a bunch of drinks, I might Uber home and then like Uber back to the parking lot again the next morning to pick up my car, right?

12:01That's all cost versus here. Everyone lives in my building. We can all just hang out at someone's apartment if we want to, or we can go to a local dive bar where beers are like seven or eight bucks and then, and we're walking, you know, so we don't even have to worry about Ubering anywhere. Like we can just walk there, walk back. So in all of those ways, things here, you know, it's funny, I'd really braced myself for things being more expensive. And that has, with the exception of taxes, that has turned out to not be the case. Now, taxes are definitely a lot higher. Do you track the difference between what you were spending in Atlanta and in Las Vegas versus what you're spending in New York?

12:37Just in the way that I've outlined it. That's my main tracking. But there are also like differences. So, for example, coming to New York, I had over the past year, I had massive veterinary bills. Now, that's not a function of living in New York. That's a function of having a 15 year old cat. That would have happened anywhere. For those reasons, it's not as simple as saying, oh, here are my expenses in 2025 versus in 2015. because the types of things that I'm doing with my life and the types of non-geographic related circumstances are also going to be dynamic. So it sounds like you're absolutely delighted by living in New York City, but I want you to say those words specifically.

13:16Are you excited that you moved to New York? Do you have any regrets at all that you left Las Vegas? I mean, no offense to Las Vegas, it's a beautiful place. I love the desert, great hiking and camping and climbing. and during the season of my life when I was really into being outdoors, Vegas was a great fit for that season of life. Now I'm in a season of life where I kind of prefer being indoors and New York is a much better fit. So New York, I love living in New York and it is a great fit for where I am at this time in my life. I think the message that I want to send to people is if you're holding yourself back from doing something that you want to do or living in a place where you want to live because you're worried it's going to be very expensive, go for it.

13:59Because once you get there, you might discover it's not actually that much more expensive anyway. So help us understand, because you've painted a picture of a really wonderful building that you live in, great friends, good amenities nearby where you live. What about the broader New York area? Is this experience very consistent across many people in different buildings? Is there other things about New York City, and I think you're in Manhattan, that you particularly like, that you particularly enjoy about being in the city besides the building? Yeah, yeah, definitely. So I mean, one of the things I love about New York is that you have this cross section, you know, it's a meeting point of the world.

14:35There are parts of New York, like in Flushing, Queens, you walk around there and it feels like you're in China, like the street signs are all in Chinese, or you go to Jackson Heights, Queens, and it feels like depending on what part you're in, like India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, like you've got this cross section of the South Asian diaspora that's all right there. I made a bunch of friends who are all Albanian. And like, once you meet one Albanian, you meet like seven of them or eight of them because they, you know, they all hang out together. And they were like, oh, we'll take you to these Albanian restaurants, right?

15:09Like, there's this meeting point of the world that happens here that I haven't experienced anywhere else. I mean, I'm sure that exists in other places, but it's certainly very visible here. One of the things that I was mentioning when I issued this challenge for New York City is not so much that it was impossible to fire in New York City, but just that there is more headwinds in the form of taxes and expenses to becoming fire and less of an appeal to living the fire lifestyle because of all of the wonderful things to spend money on in Manhattan, right? It seems like you can exchange money for experiences or better quality basically up an infinite ladder and that the more money you have the more enjoyment you get pretty incrementally pretty linearly out of the new york city experience in a way that i don't think is the same here in highlands ranch colorado right like i live in a suburb you know there's some good restaurants and good grocery stores nearby and they're skiing but it's not like if i spend a lot more money on skiing i'm gonna have a better experience it's i get a pass i have my skis i have a wonderful time every time I go, as long as the snow is not as bad as it is this year.

16:11And that was more of my take on New York City fires. I think if I lived in Manhattan, I would want to just earn a buku amount of money because that would enable me to experience all of the wonderful things that the city has to offer in a bigger way. But I've, again, been very thoughtfully challenged on that. And folks are disagreeing and have very different lived experiences than that in New York City. Can you walk me through how you feel about that observation? Is there an appeal to making large amounts of money in New York City that draws you in in order to spend that on the finer things? I guess the short answer is there is an appeal to doubling down on work, but not for the financial element, for the seeing what I can produce if I really apply myself element, the personal satisfaction of creation.

16:59I'll talk more about that in a second, but first I want to directly address your question. So I think that if you come to New York as a tourist and spend your money on expensive tourist things like Michelin star restaurants and Broadway show tickets, sure, you can have a condensed four or five days where all your money goes to that and then you leave. If you live here, then I mean, you'll go to a Broadway show maybe once or twice a year. You know, that's not really life changing enough. You know, for many people, that's just not going to make a big dent in your budget if you go to a show for your birthday.

17:34The other element of it also is that depending on where you live and depending on who you meet, sometimes you have friends who are involved in those productions and you then get discounted tickets. So one of my friends, for example, is the understudy for Velma in the Broadway musical Chicago. She's been able to give me discounted tickets, the friends and family deal. So sometimes you do get to access those at the friends and family rates as well. So the cost of accessing New York things as a local can sometimes be cheaper than the cost of accessing it as a tourist. When it comes to like fancy restaurants, again, it's like a very occasional thing.

18:09It's not a regular thing. On a like regular weekly basis, especially when it's cold and especially if it's raining. Remember, we don't have cars. Most New Yorkers don't have cars. I don't want to put on rain boots and get an umbrella and then wear like a hat and scarf and earmuffs and mittens and take the bus to the subway 40 minutes to go to some inconvenient place that might happen to be fancy. If I'm going to leave my apartment at all, it's going to be to walk to like the local corner because that's the most convenient location. And also I know that the guy who works there is named Eddie, you know, and I know that they have tacos, like crispy tacos that they sell for like 14 bucks.

18:52and they're actually super good. And Eddie will get you the extra salsa. So it's just a very local sort of a thing. And I think that, you know, I live in Hell's Kitchen, but I think that any neighborhood that you're in, New York is a very neighborhood centric place. And in most neighborhoods, at least anecdotally, it seems like I see a lot of my friends having similar experiences. So my friend Valerie, she threw a birthday party in the Upper East Side, which is a neighborhood that I almost never go to. And so I went there and almost every single person I met at that birthday party lived in the Upper East Side.

19:27And it was clear they all lived within a couple block radius of each other. And they were all Upper East Side friends and they all had their like standard haunts that they tend to go to. And so I think that for a lot of people, you know, you live in Astoria, you've got your handful of favorite Astoria places. You know, I think for a lot of people, you kind of find community in a very, very localized neighborhood and tend to kind of occupy that unless it's a special occasion like a birthday or unless you've got friends or family who are visiting and they want to do the touristy sort of things. You know how the change in seasons hits and suddenly you just want to declutter the garage, clean out the closets, and get everything all organized?

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21:42Get your free quote at ethos.com slash bpmoney. That is E-T-H-O-S dot com slash bpmoney. Application times may vary and rates may vary. Let me flip the script here and ask about, you mentioned taxes. So we just know those are much higher in New York City than they would be in Las Vegas. But what about business opportunities? You are a podcaster and I know that you record from your apartment, but I presume that you also get some advantages from in that business being in New York City, which would be the true of almost every type of business you could imagine. But can you walk us through that and how that's impacted your career as a podcaster?

22:21Oh, absolutely. And actually when I record interviews, I record interviews face to face. So I've got a, with my podcast network, they have a podcast studio down in the financial district in Lower Manhattan. And so I have started insisting that all of our interviews be face to face. And so, you know, a lot of the people that I interview are authors who are on book tour. Almost every author on book tour is going to make a stop through New York because they're going to run the Good Morning America Today show circuit. And so when those authors are coming to New York as part of their book tour, I'm able to meet them in person.

22:57And then we sit down and we have a two hour interview. And so that's been incredible. And I don't know, other than maybe LA, I don't really know what other city I could do that in. I'm in that group. I met you at the studio to record a show, what, two, three years ago. Oh, and you were in the old space. You were in like that shoe closet. It was like right after lockdown ended. So it was this huge, fancy building that was very intimidating and it was completely empty. Exactly. Yeah. Like the CEO of your studio opened the door for me. He was the only one there. That's right. That's right. Yeah. And that was a bit of a shoe closet.

23:34So we're in a much bigger studio now. So the one that you were in, we had like a webcam that we were using to record. And now we have a full setup with like multi, you know, we've got three cameras and lighting and there's a studio operator who's like right there in the room. That's incredible. It's like a real full-scale production. If you had to take a stab at it, how would you quantify or how would you articulate that increased opportunity that being in New York City offers? And it's going to be so variant by every type of work, but it seems real. And it's certainly been very real for the other folks that we've talked to about fire in Manhattan.

24:08And it seems like it is real to some extent for you. It's hard to quantify it because, for example, if I had a sales job, I could very easily say by virtue of meeting 100 people in person, that has led to me closing X number of deals. I have the job of a podcast host in which there's a soft advantage that comes with forming face-to-face relationships. But I think that advantage is very hard to quantify. I interviewed Nick Majuli, who I think I'm sure you guys know, he's the author of Just Keep Buying, and then his latest book is The Wealth Ladder. and after talking to him, I thought to myself, you know what?

24:45I know that Nick works for Barry Ritholtz and Barry is the head of Ritholtz Wealth Management, which is a very, very impressive firm that has attracted a lot of top talent. I was like, you know what? Let me, let me reach out to Barry. Like I just had that idea after talking to Nick. So I reached out to Barry and he was like, yeah, sure. Happy to swing by. And so he, he swung by. Now, would he have done that? Like, I don't know the counterfactual. Would he have done that if I'd emailed him from a different location and said, hey, will you meet me on Zoom? Maybe, probably, I guess so. But it's different when I can actually shake his hand and look him in the eye and tell him that I'm a huge fan of the work that he's done and the company that he's built.

25:27And that I hope to learn as much from him as possible, because I think that there's a lot that all of us can learn from him. I think there's something different to be able to look at somebody and say that. One last question here. Sorry to change it on a dime here, but you said you spent 80 to 100 bucks a week on groceries. And I think that for me, the way I'm wired, that would be impossible. Like if the best bagel in the world is like right around the corner from me, I'm getting bagels for breakfast most morning. I forget fancy restaurants. I get that you're not going out every night to a fancy restaurant, but I'd be like, oh, wow, that place has one of the best sandwiches in the world.