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00:01:34.600 | Hello and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading

00:01:40.960 | your life, money and travel all while spending less and saving more.

00:01:44.680 | I'm your host, Chris Hutchins, and I am excited to have you on my

00:01:48.040 | journey to find all the hacks.

00:01:49.440 | And today we're talking to Paula Pan, the founder and creator of Afford Anything,

00:01:54.240 | where she runs an award-winning personal finance website, a monthly newsletter

00:01:58.320 | with almost 100,000 subscribers, a top 50 podcast.

00:02:02.360 | She has an amazing story, starting her career as a journalist, making

00:02:05.960 | only $21,000 and building up her business and a portfolio of

00:02:09.520 | rental properties from scratch.

00:02:10.920 | We'll talk about breaking free from a traditional nine to five job.

00:02:14.480 | We'll talk about learning to value your time, taking mini retirements

00:02:18.280 | throughout your life, setting up streams of passive income, and how

00:02:21.440 | life is just one big set of trade-offs that allow you to afford anything you

00:02:24.800 | want, and at the end, I'll make sure to get some of Paula's favorite hacks.

00:02:28.920 | So let's jump in.

00:02:30.240 | Well, after I remind you that Chris Hutchins works at Wealthfront, all opinions

00:02:35.320 | expressed by Chris and his guests are solely their own opinions and do not

00:02:38.600 | reflect the opinion of Wealthfront.

00:02:40.120 | This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied

00:02:43.840 | upon for investment decisions.

00:02:45.280 | Paula, thank you for being here.

00:02:47.600 | Thank you so much for having me on the show.

00:02:49.640 | I'm excited to be here.

00:02:50.560 | Yeah.

00:02:51.320 | So I have to start with Afford Anything.

00:02:53.360 | So to some, I think it could sound like a get-rich-quick infomercial.

00:02:57.320 | I know it's so much more than that.

00:02:59.600 | Can you let people know what you mean when you say you can afford anything?

00:03:02.560 | Sure.

00:03:03.520 | The whole philosophy behind Afford Anything is that you can afford

00:03:06.480 | anything, but not everything.

00:03:08.480 | So every choice that you make is a trade-off against something else.

00:03:11.800 | And that doesn't just apply to your money.

00:03:13.840 | That applies to any limited resource that you need to manage, like your

00:03:17.440 | time, your focus, your energy, your attention.

00:03:20.440 | Fundamentally, the concept of Afford Anything is the concept of opportunity costs.

00:03:24.680 | It's so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that life is an endless series

00:03:29.600 | of ands, when in fact life is a series of ors.

00:03:33.680 | And are there specific things you think most people get wrong when they

00:03:38.160 | think about all of these trade-offs?

00:03:40.040 | Oh God, people do so much wrong.

00:03:42.960 | Where do I even begin?

00:03:43.880 | In terms of spending the money that you currently have, we'll start there.

00:03:47.320 | People often will, when they want to cut back on their spending, they

00:03:52.840 | chase the discretionary items, which provide a psychological victory of

00:04:00.120 | easy wins, but don't actually move the needle.

00:04:03.320 | So if you, for example, buy a cheap beer instead of a $14 martini, you can

00:04:09.680 | pat yourself on the back for the fact that you spent only three bucks on the

00:04:13.080 | beer instead of $14 on the martini, right?

00:04:16.000 | But what you're doing in that one, in that one instance, in that isolated

00:04:21.040 | incident, is you're giving yourself a veneer or a facade of having made a frugal

00:04:26.760 | decision without actually doing something substantive that would move

00:04:31.720 | the needle in the long run, right?

00:04:34.000 | If you were to put that same level of cognitive effort into, let's say putting

00:04:39.560 | more effort into a search for your next apartment so that you are renting

00:04:43.680 | something that is $350 a month cheaper with a similar square footage, or if you

00:04:49.160 | were to put that same level of effort into being more aggressive about finding

00:04:54.040 | discounts on the types of insurances that you have, for example, right?

00:04:57.720 | The non-sexy stuff, if you were to put that same level of effort into

00:05:01.160 | weatherproofing your home, you know, weather stripping and caulk, like that

00:05:05.920 | sort of thing actually moves the needle, but it doesn't provide the psychological

00:05:09.520 | victory, and so much of the time we're chasing the buzz, we're chasing the

00:05:13.640 | dopamine hit, rather than the efficacy.

00:05:15.920 | Yeah, I've heard you call this fake frugality at times, and it's something

00:05:20.080 | that I've definitely struggled with.

00:05:21.800 | Is there a way that you would recommend people, myself included, get over it?

00:05:28.080 | Because sometimes it's not as easy as just saying, "Well, yeah, of course it

00:05:30.920 | makes more rational sense to spend time on these big decisions, but I feel like

00:05:35.680 | saving money and optimizing at every point is so ingrained in my being that

00:05:41.000 | it's hard to not compare the prices of the beers at a restaurant and think, "Oh,

00:05:45.880 | maybe I should get the $7 one instead of the $9 one and save a couple dollars,"

00:05:50.360 | even though it doesn't move the needle.

00:05:51.640 | Exactly, exactly.

00:05:53.320 | It's difficult to do.

00:05:54.280 | I mean, fundamentally, you're asking a question about self-awareness, right?

00:05:57.720 | And it's difficult, and actually, really what you're asking is how to translate

00:06:02.160 | self-awareness into action, like how to bridge the awareness-action gap, which

00:06:06.720 | is the question that has plagued mankind since the dawn of history.

00:06:09.880 | So I don't expect us to have it solved by lunch.

00:06:12.480 | But where I would start would be in terms of saving money to focus on the big three,

00:06:21.320 | housing, transportation, and food.

00:06:23.320 | Those are the areas where you're likely to have the biggest wins.

00:06:27.480 | And in fact, if we want to extend that to the big four, it would be housing,

00:06:30.520 | transportation, food, taxes, right?

00:06:33.120 | If you can just nail those four things, you can get a lot of stuff wrong as long

00:06:38.760 | as you get those four things right.

00:06:40.400 | Beyond that, there's also, I think for most of the people who are listening to

00:06:44.600 | this podcast, a very strong argument that perhaps saving money is not the side of

00:06:53.280 | the spectrum that they should be focused on.

00:06:55.120 | One of the philosophies that I like to teach is a philosophy called "Grow the

00:06:58.920 | Gap," and what "Grow the Gap" means is that what we ultimately care about is the

00:07:04.240 | gap between what you earn and what you spend.

00:07:07.160 | And there are only two ways to grow that gap.

00:07:09.320 | You can either earn more, you can spend less, or you can do a combination of the

00:07:12.400 | two.

00:07:12.760 | And I would venture to say that the majority of people who are listening to

00:07:18.440 | this podcast are probably educated enough, skilled enough, experienced enough that

00:07:25.160 | their bigger win could be found on the earning side of that equation.

00:07:29.680 | Yeah, I think I've heard a lot of people say there's a lot more upside to earning

00:07:34.680 | than downside to cutting costs, because most people can't spend an unlimited

00:07:38.840 | amount of money, though I've seen people try.

00:07:40.760 | You can't shrink your way to greatness.

00:07:42.240 | I know.

00:07:42.880 | And I think sometimes if you're really not spending mindfully, there might be a

00:07:47.880 | lot of opportunity to cut there.

00:07:49.360 | But once you've done that, there's not that much more to go, and there's a lot

00:07:52.960 | more creativity that you can apply towards earning more.

00:07:57.040 | And I know you talk a lot about financial freedom.

00:07:59.280 | How do you think that applies to this equation of earning more, having to work

00:08:03.400 | to make money and cut costs?

00:08:05.280 | So as I see it, financial freedom gives you the ability to no longer have to do

00:08:12.160 | something purely for the paycheck and gives you the ability to choose the type

00:08:17.400 | of work that you do so that you can do the work that is most aligned with your

00:08:23.440 | skills, your talents, and what the world needs.

00:08:25.840 | For all of us, there was a time in our lives where we had to do stuff for a

00:08:29.800 | paycheck.

00:08:30.280 | I mean, I was 15 when I got my first job at the drive-thru of McDonald's, right?

00:08:34.000 | Like the vast majority of us, unless you come from a very wealthy family, there's

00:08:38.680 | a time in your life, even if it's high school, college, maybe your early 20s,

00:08:42.200 | where there's just stuff that you have to do.

00:08:45.160 | You got to do what you got to do, right?

00:08:46.920 | Like you do what you need to in order to pay the bills.

00:08:49.520 | You do what you need to in order to survive.

00:08:52.080 | Financial independence, as I see it, is building enough of a safety net such that

00:08:59.200 | your basic survival is taken care of.

00:09:03.640 | That doesn't necessarily mean that you are "retired," as you call it, the

00:09:08.080 | cessation of work, right?

00:09:10.440 | Which is a beautiful way of describing it.

00:09:12.520 | It is not the cessation of income-producing activity.

00:09:14.880 | It is simply building enough of a safety net that if everything goes to hell, you

00:09:20.520 | know that you can survive, you know that you can be okay.

00:09:23.200 | When you have that confidence, when you have that safety net built underneath

00:09:27.000 | you, then you no longer have to worry about keeping the lights on and you're

00:09:31.640 | free to take bigger risks.

00:09:33.240 | I know you talk a lot about breaking free from this kind of nine-to-five life where

00:09:39.400 | you're working for 40 years straight, getting a couple weeks of vacation.

00:09:42.760 | Do you think that you can obtain this kind of freedom that lets you live life

00:09:47.840 | on your own terms while you're still working a job for someone else?

00:09:51.320 | Or do you have to work for yourself to do this?

00:09:53.160 | Oh, no, you don't have to work for yourself.

00:09:55.600 | You mean in order to reach financial independence?

00:09:57.760 | Yeah, and have that freedom.

00:09:59.800 | You don't have to work for yourself in order to do it.

00:10:03.680 | I think oftentimes, even when I talk about escaping the nine-to-five, the

00:10:08.400 | nine-to-five is a metaphor, right?

00:10:11.440 | The nine-to-five, or when I talk about escaping the cubicle, those are metaphors

00:10:16.680 | for sucky jobs that you're in, not because you want to be in them, but because you

00:10:21.920 | feel like you have to in order to pay the bills.

00:10:23.920 | I have no objection to working your dream job at a company or a nonprofit or some

00:10:33.800 | sort of enterprise that genuinely thrills you and makes optimum use of your talent

00:10:40.960 | and time and skills, you know, something where you know that you are building a

00:10:45.480 | legacy and you will know that you are leaving an asset behind, like that type

00:10:51.720 | of work, the ownership is less important than whether or not you are achieving

00:10:58.560 | autonomy, mastery, and purpose through the work that you do.

00:11:02.040 | And what research shows is that if you have that sense of autonomy, mastery,

00:11:06.920 | and purpose in your work, then you are highly likely to enjoy that form of work.

00:11:13.080 | And so when I talk about escaping the nine-to-five, I'm using nine-to-five as a

00:11:16.520 | metaphor for those jobs that don't give you proper autonomy, perhaps they

00:11:21.600 | micromanage you, they don't give you mastery, perhaps they're a poor fit for

00:11:25.640 | your skillset, and they don't give you a sense of purpose, you know, you're not in

00:11:30.040 | alignment with the type of legacy that you want to be leaving behind.

00:11:33.480 | Yeah, I think I'm fortunate that after many years of discovery and searching, I

00:11:39.720 | found something where I actually really enjoy working for someone else and

00:11:43.680 | fulfilling autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

00:11:46.080 | And I, but I know it seems to be, and this is unfortunate, but the norm when I talk

00:11:52.240 | to people is that they haven't found a job that they all love in that way.

00:11:56.160 | And that working for yourself is something so many people seem to aspire to.

00:12:00.680 | So what advice would you give to someone who's at a job that kind of falls into

00:12:06.040 | that metaphor of a nine-to-five, something they're not loving and fulfilled by?

00:12:10.240 | If the goal is to grow a sufficient safety net, such that they then have more

00:12:15.880 | options, more flexibility, the first thing that I would ask that person is, what is

00:12:20.800 | the most effective way for you to grow that gap, grow the gap between what you

00:12:25.160 | earn and what you spend?

00:12:26.160 | Now, for some people, particularly if you're already a high income earner, and

00:12:32.160 | you live in a large home, you drive a newer car, if there's obvious low-hanging

00:12:39.200 | fruit that you can cut from your lifestyle, then cut the low-hanging fruit

00:12:43.560 | first, because it does give you that initial win, and that initial win does

00:12:48.840 | provide that psychological motivation to continue on the path.

00:12:51.720 | So particularly for high income earners, I would start with downsizing to a less

00:12:57.680 | expensive home, downsizing to vehicles or transportation that is functional

00:13:03.800 | rather than luxurious.

00:13:05.120 | I would start there.

00:13:06.320 | Once that's done, I would not endlessly iterate that, because that I think is

00:13:12.880 | where a lot of people go wrong, where they get so caught up in over-optimizing

00:13:17.760 | that they, you know, when you hit the point where you're like unscrewing the

00:13:22.320 | oven light to save like, you know, two cents worth of electricity, you've gone

00:13:27.400 | too far.

00:13:27.920 | Before that, you've gone too far.

00:13:29.800 | Exactly, exactly.

00:13:32.400 | And I use that example because that's literally an example that I read on a

00:13:35.120 | website once.

00:13:36.000 | The same person who also recommended tearing dryer sheets in half in order to

00:13:40.680 | make a box go twice as far, you know, like when you're bisecting your dryer

00:13:44.880 | sheet, you know, you've crossed the line.

00:13:47.000 | So don't become obsessive about extreme frugality.

00:13:51.040 | Pick the low-hanging fruit and then shift your focus and find a way that you can

00:13:57.200 | earn more.

00:13:57.720 | Now, depending on the career that you're currently in, this could come in three

00:14:01.400 | different forms.

00:14:02.320 | Either you look for a promotion in your current line of work, whether that means

00:14:09.440 | getting promoted in your own company or creating a bidding war amongst many

00:14:13.320 | employers so that, you know, making a lateral move or even a vertical move into

00:14:17.440 | another company, right?

00:14:19.080 | So it could be a promotion within your own line of work.

00:14:21.960 | That's option number one.

00:14:23.800 | It could be retraining into a career change and retraining into a different

00:14:30.240 | line of work, ideally without going to grad school or without going back to grad

00:14:34.880 | school.

00:14:35.280 | And the reason that I say ideally without grad school, it's not because of grad

00:14:38.080 | school itself.

00:14:38.520 | It's because of student debt avoidance, right?

00:14:40.320 | So retraining with a new skill set in a way that does not incur student debt.

00:14:47.560 | That would be option number two or starting some type of entrepreneurial

00:14:52.520 | enterprise, some sort of side hustle.

00:14:54.320 | That would be option number three.

00:14:55.560 | So depending on your current line of work, one of those three options would be

00:15:00.040 | ideal for you.

00:15:01.160 | And which one is right for you depends on what you're doing.

00:15:04.720 | If you're an anesthesiologist, obviously picking up a few extra shifts at the

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00:15:32.480 | emerge.

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00:18:33.880 | Yeah.

00:18:34.080 | So we had a Nick Loper on the show from Side Hustle Nation, and we talked a lot

00:18:38.080 | about some of the side hustles you can do to earn some extra income, but I don't

00:18:42.120 | think we spent as much time on how to transition side hustles into working for

00:18:47.280 | yourself and how to actually start a business.

00:18:49.520 | And I know that's something you've done.

00:18:51.360 | That's something you've talked about.

00:18:52.560 | You've interviewed lots of people.

00:18:53.920 | When someone kind of has that idea in their mind of, "I think I want to work for

00:18:58.280 | myself at some point," do you have a plan that you would share with them or a path

00:19:04.360 | or a process that someone should go through to try to make that happen?

00:19:07.320 | Yeah, absolutely.

00:19:08.760 | So first of all, when we talk about the world of side hustles, I want to

00:19:11.880 | distinguish between two forms of side hustles.

00:19:14.360 | First, you've got what I refer to as gig economy side hustles, things like driving

00:19:18.560 | for Uber, driving for DoorDash, walking dogs.

00:19:21.000 | This is the low-hanging fruit of side hustles because you can start earning

00:19:23.880 | money immediately, but you're fundamentally not really growing your own

00:19:28.680 | business, right?

00:19:29.800 | You are fundamentally a dog walker on Rover or a driver for Uber.

00:19:34.280 | Great if you need a quick hit of cash, but it's not something that's, I think,

00:19:38.160 | scalable for the long term.

00:19:39.600 | So I want to distinguish between that gig economy form of side hustle versus

00:19:44.560 | starting your own business.

00:19:48.840 | And when you start your own business, you can either sell a service or sell a

00:19:53.480 | product.

00:19:54.080 | A lot of people start as service providers because there's a low cost of capital in

00:19:59.720 | doing so.

00:20:00.360 | And, you know, so for example, perhaps you have a skill that you can sell as a

00:20:06.920 | freelancer, right?

00:20:08.320 | Whether that skill is writing, web design, coding, logo design, whatever that skill

00:20:13.760 | may be, perhaps there's a skill that you can sell as a freelancer or as a

00:20:18.280 | consultant.

00:20:18.960 | That is a low cost of capital way to start.

00:20:22.320 | And a lot of people begin there and that will allow you to become self-employed.

00:20:30.200 | But there's a distinction between being self-employed versus being an

00:20:33.960 | entrepreneur.

00:20:34.680 | And if you do your job well and you are successful at selling the service that

00:20:43.520 | you are offering, there will eventually come a point where you have to make the

00:20:47.640 | decision, do I want to become an agency, meaning do I want to be an agency that

00:20:53.440 | sells this service, or do I want to transition into product development and

00:20:58.960 | sales?

00:20:59.520 | And by the time that happens, you will be far enough into self-employment.

00:21:05.800 | You will be far enough into selling the service that you offer that I think

00:21:09.520 | you'll have a clear idea of which of the two paths you want to go in.

00:21:12.320 | I'll give you an example from my own life.

00:21:14.120 | So I used to be a newspaper reporter.

00:21:16.320 | I made $21,000 a year and those are 2005 dollars, right?

00:21:21.440 | That's not like in 1942, I made 21,000.

00:21:25.800 | So I graduated from college 2005.

00:21:28.400 | I first job out of school.

00:21:29.920 | I made $21,000 a year as an entry level newspaper reporter.

00:21:33.160 | I worked at that newspaper for three years.

00:21:35.360 | And at the time that I quit, my ending salary was $31,000 per year.

00:21:40.000 | So that is what my honors diploma got me.

00:21:43.240 | And 2008, I was like the last person to get the memo that print newspapers are

00:21:48.600 | not the way of the future.

00:21:49.840 | I was going to conferences and everyone at newspaper conferences back in 2008,

00:21:56.120 | like people were showing photos of Craig Newmark, I think the guy who invented

00:22:00.280 | Craigslist.

00:22:00.920 | People would show his photos on slide decks and they'd be like, this guy killed

00:22:04.920 | newspapers.

00:22:05.840 | You know, this guy destroyed classified ad revenue.

00:22:08.560 | And so it was clear that the whole industry was collapsing.

00:22:12.200 | A lot of major newspapers were shutting down.

00:22:14.440 | McClatchy was on a hiring freeze.

00:22:16.520 | The Seattle Post-Intelligencer had gone to online only, I believe.

00:22:19.480 | Rocky Mountain News shut down.

00:22:21.080 | So it was clear to me that the future was going to be freelance and online.

00:22:24.920 | And so my thinking in 2008 was I've got to transition into being an independent

00:22:31.760 | journalist.

00:22:32.200 | I need to be freelance.

00:22:32.960 | I need to be online.

00:22:33.880 | I wasn't thinking about starting a business.

00:22:35.760 | I wasn't yet aware that there was a distinction between self-employment and

00:22:40.400 | entrepreneurship.

00:22:41.200 | And so my thought process at the time was simply, can I create a job for

00:22:45.400 | myself?

00:22:46.040 | And so I began my career as a freelance personal finance writer, freelance

00:22:52.120 | personal finance journalist.

00:22:53.520 | I specialized in that niche, knowing that like specializing in a niche would be the

00:22:57.640 | key to getting freelance gigs.

00:22:59.080 | And I did that for a number of years.

00:23:01.280 | And I eventually just hit the point where the work that I was getting wasn't just

00:23:05.560 | coming from news organizations.

00:23:07.560 | A lot of it was coming from fintech companies because fintech companies needed

00:23:12.760 | content on their websites and they didn't necessarily have enough staffing to have

00:23:18.600 | an in-house content creator.

00:23:20.160 | And so they would have some harried overworked marketing person who would

00:23:25.040 | contract with me to write articles.

00:23:26.680 | So I began doing that and then I realized that this harried overworked marketing

00:23:31.680 | person didn't really have the bandwidth to even manage me.

00:23:34.960 | And so then I just scaled up and was like, tell you what, I will provide turnkey

00:23:40.200 | content management services.

00:23:42.240 | And I became an agency and I started hiring writers under me and became content

00:23:47.120 | management for hire for certified financial planners, for accountants, for

00:23:51.040 | small fintech companies.

00:23:52.240 | This was maybe 2012, 2013.

00:23:54.720 | And that was the transition from self-employment to entrepreneurship.

00:23:58.200 | And it happened very organically.

00:24:00.120 | There was never a plan.

00:24:01.360 | It was never a goal.

00:24:02.920 | I just sort of kept seeing where the needs were and what the pain points were in the

00:24:07.440 | market and then continually responded to those.

00:24:11.120 | And then in parallel, I was also building out AffordAnything and I was growing this

00:24:17.320 | audience at AffordAnything and this audience kept asking me questions about

00:24:20.680 | investing, specifically real estate investing, because I was doing that with

00:24:24.160 | the money that I was making.

00:24:25.200 | And so there were enough questions coming from the AffordAnything audience that it

00:24:30.600 | was clear that there was demand for an online course.

00:24:33.920 | And I hit the point where I was like, I can't do both.

00:24:36.760 | I can't be a service agency and also develop a product.

00:24:42.160 | I'm going to have to do one of the two.

00:24:44.040 | And neither of these are built out enough that I could sell either company.

00:24:48.200 | So one of them, I'm just going to have to pull the plug on.

00:24:51.040 | And that was terrifying.

00:24:52.960 | To grow a six-figure business and then just pull the plug on it was like

00:24:59.160 | absolutely terrifying.

00:25:00.480 | But I pulled the plug on the service agency, cut all of that and went entirely

00:25:06.240 | into product development and built this course for AffordAnything.

00:25:09.800 | And I assume the course, when you first made that decision, wasn't already

00:25:14.880 | generating six figures that it could easily replace the service business.

00:25:18.680 | Is that correct?

00:25:19.680 | Correct.

00:25:20.200 | Yeah, it was not.

00:25:20.880 | So I feel like that decision might be very similar to the decision of many people

00:25:26.360 | who are working at a six-figure job.

00:25:28.440 | And thinking about a business they could run, thinking about starting something

00:25:32.320 | on their own and are terrified with the idea of basically losing their income

00:25:36.880 | and starting something and taking a risk.

00:25:38.720 | And so is there anything you learned from going through that, that you would tell

00:25:42.600 | someone facing that same kind of terrifying decision of giving up the known

00:25:47.880 | for the higher upside, more enjoyment unknown?

00:25:51.240 | Yeah, absolutely.

00:25:52.840 | So I was absolutely terrified and I probably delayed making that transition

00:25:57.560 | by a year longer than I should have.

00:25:59.600 | What gave me a lot of peace was knowing that if I could do it

00:26:03.240 | once, I could do it again.

00:26:04.480 | So I wanted to take this, this moonshot.

00:26:07.640 | I wanted to see if I could grow AffordAnything to become as big as it

00:26:10.760 | could be and I knew that if it flopped, if it didn't work out, I had already

00:26:14.920 | grown a six-figure service business once.

00:26:17.080 | There's nothing stopping me from being able to do it again.

00:26:20.440 | I was talking to a friend who worked at Google and they were considering whether

00:26:24.680 | they left to start a business on the side and I gave them kind of a similar

00:26:30.160 | piece of advice, which was, do you think that if this didn't work and you went

00:26:34.600 | back, you could get hired again?

00:26:36.040 | And their answer was like, of course, like everyone is trying to hire talented

00:26:40.040 | people, my performance reviews have been great, I'm sure that in a year, if I left

00:26:44.320 | this job and things didn't work out and I reached out to my manager and said, Hey,

00:26:47.800 | could I come back?

00:26:48.640 | They would absolutely say yes.

00:26:50.840 | And what it did was it changed the perspective of, it's not giving up my

00:26:55.720 | career to go try something.

00:26:57.920 | It's taking a year off and knowing that the downside isn't a career, it's however

00:27:04.920 | many months of income I would lose by taking this risk.

00:27:08.280 | And so they'd saved enough money that, you know, they could do that.

00:27:12.040 | And they said, okay, I'm going to take a year off.

00:27:13.640 | And if it doesn't work, I might know after three months, I might know after six

00:27:16.880 | months, so it's a relatively low risk.

00:27:19.160 | And some companies, if you're transparent, might even just let you take a

00:27:22.920 | sabbatical.

00:27:23.560 | You might not even have to leave to go explore this.

00:27:26.200 | If you work in a field where, you know, your services are so in demand that

00:27:30.520 | companies would kind of do all kinds of things to try to make sure that they

00:27:34.360 | accommodate you.

00:27:35.080 | So you can do this, even if you've never started a business before, you've got

00:27:39.040 | hired before.

00:27:39.800 | So it could be that your, that is your opportunity cost as well.

00:27:43.440 | Absolutely.

00:27:44.760 | Absolutely.

00:27:46.080 | And what I love about the opportunity cost, as you just described, when you

00:27:50.480 | have a runway, then fundamentally the only thing that you're risking is that

00:27:56.280 | you are living more frugally than you otherwise would be.

00:27:59.520 | And when that's the worst case scenario, that's not that bad.

00:28:03.920 | No, especially if you're doing something you're passionate about.

00:28:08.360 | It is so hard if you're working a job you hate to maybe give up a few of the

00:28:15.200 | joys you have in life, but if you're giving up the job you hate to go do

00:28:19.720 | something you're incredibly passionate about, and every day you're excited to

00:28:23.800 | be doing what you're doing, it's way easier to maybe give up the vacation

00:28:27.640 | that year or a nicer car because you have this thing you're so passionate

00:28:32.080 | about to focus on.

00:28:33.120 | And so I think it's easier to be frugal in your life when you're doing it

00:28:38.240 | because you get to do something that fulfills you more.

00:28:40.560 | Exactly.

00:28:41.720 | Exactly.

00:28:43.720 | So one of the things you mentioned was that you had started investing in real

00:28:48.000 | estate, and earlier we talked about how you could get a promotion, you could

00:28:54.520 | find a new career, you could start a business or generate your own income.

00:28:58.200 | We didn't talk much about the idea of passive income, but I know you sometimes

00:29:03.280 | talk about the long game, about ways that you can start to apply your time,

00:29:07.800 | skills, and money towards generating kind of really sustaining long-term

00:29:12.640 | financial returns.

00:29:13.880 | What do you think about passive income versus active income, and should

00:29:18.320 | everyone be focused on it to some extent?

00:29:20.320 | So the first thing that I would say about passive income is I want to

00:29:24.400 | emphasize that passive income is not a euphemism for free money.

00:29:28.480 | Passive income, or its synonym residual income, is front-loading the workload.

00:29:39.240 | And it refers to the type of income that you make from any project in which you

00:29:45.040 | do a ton of work up front so that you can enjoy that residual stream later.

00:29:52.400 | That could be writing a piece of software or a book or a piece of

00:29:56.160 | music that provides royalties.

00:29:57.680 | That could be building out a YouTube channel or a website or a podcast where

00:30:04.520 | you're still monetizing the back catalog, making money off of episodes

00:30:08.920 | that you created or articles that you created years ago, right?

00:30:12.760 | It could be buying rental properties where you front-load that workload of

00:30:18.280 | searching for the property, renovating it, getting it ready for those first

00:30:22.120 | tenants, finding a great property manager, building out the systems and

00:30:25.960 | putting that in place.

00:30:26.960 | That is another example of passive or residual income.

00:30:31.840 | But I do think it's important to emphasize that it is in no way a

00:30:35.800 | euphemism for free money and building out streams of passive income requires

00:30:41.920 | a significant amount of work.

00:30:43.400 | That said, what I love about passive income is that it separates time from

00:30:49.200 | money.

00:30:49.600 | So much of the time we frame money in the context of time.

00:30:53.120 | So we might say I charge X per hour or he or she makes Y per year.

00:30:59.680 | And so this link between time and money is very held together in our minds.

00:31:05.800 | And what I think is beautiful about passive income is that it destroys that

00:31:09.160 | link and allows money to flow in independent of our input of time.

00:31:15.880 | Yeah, and I think if you're able to set those streams of income up, then it

00:31:22.480 | makes it easier to have the flexibility to maybe pursue a new business down the

00:31:26.120 | road.

00:31:26.480 | Obviously, if the business is the passive income, then that's a little

00:31:29.600 | different.

00:31:30.000 | But one of the forms of passive income I know you're passionate about, or at

00:31:34.680 | least you've spent a lot of time on is rental properties.

00:31:37.280 | And I think one of the interesting characteristics of it is that unlike

00:31:42.600 | maybe writing a piece of software or creating a piece of music, it's a bit

00:31:46.360 | more accessible in that if you don't know an instrument or you aren't able to

00:31:51.280 | write software, those other ones are pretty difficult.

00:31:53.600 | Not that you can't learn and train up, but I think they feel less approachable.

00:31:57.640 | But buying rental properties is something that I think many people see as much

00:32:02.440 | more approachable.

00:32:03.400 | Do you think that it could be something as a first step in passive income for

00:32:08.360 | almost anyone?

00:32:09.320 | Or do you recommend it for certain types of people?

00:32:11.560 | I would say that the first thing is that you have to actually want to do it.

00:32:16.920 | Right now, rental properties have enough buzz that there are people who are

00:32:21.600 | FOMOing into it, doing it because everyone else on the internet is.

00:32:25.480 | And if that's your motivation, then that's the wrong reason to do it.

00:32:29.200 | And in any endeavor that you pursue, whether it's your career, your

00:32:33.960 | investments, your relationships, like there will be tough times.

00:32:37.320 | And if you don't actually want it in the first place, you're not going to be able

00:32:41.280 | to hang on through the tough times.

00:32:42.800 | So don't invest in rental properties unless your desire to do so is genuine.

00:32:48.240 | That's the first thing I'd say to anyone.

00:32:50.480 | That being said, I do believe that if the desire is genuine, any middle class

00:32:55.640 | person in the United States would be able to do it.

00:32:58.680 | You don't need to be handy.

00:33:00.120 | You don't need to live in a low cost of living area.

00:33:03.280 | I'm a firm believer in investing out of state for people who live in high cost

00:33:08.040 | areas.

00:33:08.520 | In fact, I prefer out of state investing over local investing for a variety of

00:33:12.600 | reasons.

00:33:13.040 | The big one being that it forces you to treat it like a business, forces you to

00:33:17.560 | develop systems, it forces you to build a team.

00:33:19.600 | You can't just swing by and replace the batteries and the smoke alarm.

00:33:23.880 | And so the forcing function of living far away from your properties, I think,

00:33:28.680 | it absolves you from the need to be handy, forces you to treat it like a

00:33:32.480 | business, and gives a lot of geographic arbitrage power to people who are high

00:33:38.200 | income earners living in high cost cities.

00:33:40.680 | I know you have a course that talks a lot about getting into this, and we'll

00:33:45.240 | definitely link to that course in the show notes for people who are interested.

00:33:48.440 | But at a high level, is there anything you would recommend someone do to start

00:33:53.040 | to say, "Am I passionate about this?

00:33:54.880 | Can I make this work?

00:33:56.000 | Do I have enough money saved?"

00:33:57.240 | Are there a few criteria you'd check off that would make someone a good fit for

00:34:01.240 | buying a rental property?

00:34:02.360 | Well, if you have credit card debt, pay off the credit card debt first.

00:34:06.600 | Don't do anything until you've done that first.

00:34:09.360 | Now, that doesn't apply to student loans.

00:34:11.280 | It doesn't apply to, of course, if you have a primary residence mortgage.

00:34:14.120 | If you've got that lower interest, single digit interest rate debt, I'm less

00:34:18.200 | concerned about that.

00:34:19.040 | But certainly pay off your credit cards, make sure that you have an adequate

00:34:22.120 | emergency fund, take care of those financial basics first.

00:34:25.320 | And if you are offered a 401k match or a 403b match at work, make sure that you're

00:34:31.600 | contributing enough to your retirement accounts that you're at least getting

00:34:34.360 | that match.

00:34:35.000 | So those are the first steps.

00:34:36.960 | That's what I refer to as financial basics.

00:34:38.880 | After those financial basics are taken care of, then the world is your oyster in

00:34:44.480 | terms of what types of investments you want to go into.

00:34:48.040 | And if your interest is going into rental properties, then it is time to dive in and

00:34:53.400 | learn about it.

00:34:54.120 | I think the mistake that a lot of people make is they go in unknowingly.

00:34:58.760 | They make assumptions like they assume that as long as the rent covers the

00:35:03.840 | mortgage, they'll be okay.

00:35:05.000 | That's one of the worst beginner assumptions that you can make.

00:35:07.640 | And so a lot of people, because they, I call this the error of the apparent

00:35:14.720 | similar, where because they have experience doing something at the amateur

00:35:18.960 | level, they believe that they can do it at the professional level.

00:35:21.520 | You know, just because you can hit a ball around a tennis court does not mean that

00:35:25.480 | you have the skill set of a Wimbledon player.

00:35:28.120 | Just because you can make dinner for yourself at home, it does not mean that you

00:35:33.640 | have the skill set of Gordon Ramsay, right?

00:35:35.840 | And so just because you've been able to purchase a personal residence for

00:35:40.920 | yourself does not mean, you know, how to look for properties, how to analyze

00:35:46.000 | properties, how to think about renovating properties.

00:35:50.640 | It doesn't mean that you know how to think like an investor.

00:35:53.720 | And the mistake that a lot of people make is that because they've done this at a

00:35:58.200 | personal level, they believe that they know how to do it at a professional level.

00:36:02.600 | And that's the reason why I think it's, it's so important to learn how to

00:36:06.520 | properly analyze, find finance and make renovation decisions.

00:36:12.880 | I don't mean pick up the hammer yourself.

00:36:14.640 | I mean, create a scope of work, how to do that from the lens of an investor.

00:36:19.360 | And when you got started, you didn't know any of this.

00:36:23.000 | How did you learn all of it?

00:36:24.480 | It was a combination of trial and error, reading as many books as I could get my

00:36:28.800 | hands on and going to investor meetup after investor meetup after investor

00:36:33.920 | meetup, you know, like repeated exposure to the point where I could eventually

00:36:37.560 | separate the wheat from the chaff, like the signal from the noise.

00:36:40.120 | The unfortunate reality in the world of real estate is that there are a lot of

00:36:45.360 | what I call like the scambergurus, you know, lamborgurus driving scambroginis.

00:36:50.720 | You know, you have a lot of ego in real estate.

00:36:55.760 | You have a lot of people who are flashy and they are promoting high risk, high

00:37:00.840 | leverage strategies, and frankly, I think a lot of what they're saying is

00:37:03.960 | dangerous and they say it because they have a vested interest in selling their

00:37:12.040 | idea to you.

00:37:12.920 | When you think about the world of real estate, most of the people that you deal

00:37:16.320 | with, real estate agents, lenders, these people don't get paid until you make a

00:37:20.960 | purchase.

00:37:21.600 | And so their incentive structure is to get you to buy.

00:37:25.480 | And oftentimes they will not give you the full picture.

00:37:28.920 | They are not fiduciaries in your corner.

00:37:31.520 | And so I think what's unfortunate about the world of real estate is that it's so

00:37:36.880 | easy to be led astray.

00:37:38.560 | And oftentimes the people who are led astray are being led astray with leverage,

00:37:44.040 | meaning the magnitude of your mistake is amplified.

00:37:47.560 | I got lucky in that when I started, I didn't know what I was doing and happened

00:37:53.920 | to make good decisions, but it was a roll of the dice and easily could have gone

00:37:58.520 | the other way.

00:37:59.160 | I guess that's why I'm such an advocate for people taking the time, and I don't

00:38:04.880 | want people to get stuck in analysis paralysis, but I do feel that it's prudent

00:38:08.360 | to take the time to do your due diligence before you jump in because I didn't do

00:38:12.320 | that.

00:38:12.680 | And it is only by the grace of God that I happened to get lucky.

00:38:16.280 | And the fact that I did not do my proper due diligence before getting started

00:38:21.720 | happened to work out for me, not through any skill of my own, but through sheer

00:38:26.160 | luck.

00:38:27.480 | I'm very glad that you were lucky for your sake and for the sake that you can

00:38:30.720 | now share all this with us.

00:38:31.920 | I know a lot of people just kind of grew up with that belief that owning real

00:38:37.480 | estate is really important.

00:38:38.720 | And in today's age, I know a lot of people also love the idea of flexibility

00:38:44.520 | and not necessarily being tied down.

00:38:46.080 | So owning a rental property, I see people often coming at it because they say,

00:38:50.760 | "Well, I'm not ready to buy a house where I live.

00:38:53.360 | Maybe it's too expensive.

00:38:54.440 | Maybe I want the flexibility.

00:38:56.040 | But also, I want to own property, so I should get a rental property."

00:38:59.880 | And if that evolves to a true passion, I think that can be a really interesting

00:39:05.760 | opportunity for them.

00:39:06.880 | But what do you think of some of these alternative ways to kind of own a piece

00:39:12.680 | of real estate, whether it's online platforms to buy parts of homes or even

00:39:17.760 | just investing in a REIT index fund as an alternative to buying rental property?

00:39:23.800 | How do you think of those as options?

00:39:25.800 | I think a REIT index fund is fine.

00:39:28.520 | It's not going to be as low correlation.

00:39:30.680 | So oftentimes when you're diversifying a portfolio, you want low correlation

00:39:34.400 | assets, meaning that as one asset class moves, you want to be in different asset

00:39:38.880 | classes that don't move in tandem with that one given asset class.

00:39:42.600 | So if equities are moving in one direction, you want other asset classes

00:39:47.160 | within your overall portfolio that aren't necessarily moving hand in hand

00:39:52.000 | with the way the equities are.

00:39:54.040 | When you own specific individual pieces of property, you have what is essentially

00:39:58.400 | a hybrid between a business and an investment.

00:40:00.800 | You know, you have direct managerial authority over that piece of property.

00:40:04.520 | You get to make the decisions around it and it has low correlation to other

00:40:09.600 | aspects, other elements of your portfolio.

00:40:11.720 | If you have a REIT, there's greater correlation between that REIT and the

00:40:16.800 | overall equities, greater than if you were to own properties directly yourself.

00:40:21.080 | That said, I'm a much bigger fan of REITs than I am these

00:40:25.040 | crowdsourced investing platforms.

00:40:27.040 | The reason that I don't like crowdsourced investing is that it is fundamentally

00:40:33.720 | the actively managed mutual fund of real estate, right?

00:40:38.840 | If you're picking an actively managed mutual fund, and I don't recommend that

00:40:42.440 | people do that, but if you were to do that, then your job is to pick an excellent

00:40:47.960 | fund manager and having the knowledge and the level of due diligence to be able to

00:40:54.960 | pick an amazing fund manager is itself a skill, right?

00:41:00.240 | There are people in the finance industry whose sole career is picking good

00:41:05.880 | managers, so what makes you think that you can do that better?

00:41:09.800 | And to be more specific or more clear about what I'm talking about, if you

00:41:13.280 | look at some of these crowdfunded real estate investing platforms, they might

00:41:17.120 | say, "Hey, look, check this out.

00:41:18.960 | Here's a 250 unit apartment complex in Gainesville, Florida.

00:41:24.720 | And here is a commercial shopping center in Raleigh, North Carolina, right?

00:41:31.520 | How do you, as an individual investor, know anything about the location of that

00:41:43.280 | apartment complex in Gainesville or that commercial shopping center in Raleigh?

00:41:46.960 | Like, how do you understand the location?

00:41:49.120 | How do you understand whether or not it's a good idea?

00:41:52.680 | How well do you understand the people who are managing that project?

00:41:56.640 | How good of a job do they do at managing said project?

00:42:00.480 | You know, there's a ton of due diligence that you yourself would need to do in

00:42:04.680 | order to know that that is a viable investment, and yet so many people believe

00:42:10.040 | that a crowdsourced platform absolves them of due diligence.

00:42:13.720 | It's like a get out of due diligence free card.

00:42:16.160 | So I know a lot of times when people think about getting into this, and

00:42:19.560 | whether it's passive income like real estate or starting a company, the most

00:42:24.120 | often heard complaint or kind of objection is that people don't have enough time.

00:42:28.280 | And I've thought about this a lot because I kind of have

00:42:32.240 | struggled with valuing my own time.

00:42:34.600 | And I know it's something that you have spent time thinking about and

00:42:38.960 | trying to kind of get over as well.

00:42:41.760 | So how do you think people can start to value their time more so that they can

00:42:47.320 | spend it on the things that they care about, the things that are going to drive

00:42:51.480 | that long-term kind of impact on their life?

00:42:54.360 | So the best advice that I heard about this came from a writer named Laura

00:42:58.280 | Vanderkam, who I know has been a guest on both of our podcasts.

00:43:01.360 | And Laura's advice was to first fill your schedule with all of the

00:43:07.440 | things that cannot be outsourced.

00:43:10.200 | And only after you've done that, can you then start to fill your schedule

00:43:15.000 | with the things that could be outsourced.

00:43:17.880 | So for example, exercise is something that you can't outsource.

00:43:22.160 | As much as I would love to pay somebody to run on the treadmill for an hour on

00:43:25.400 | my behalf, I just can't.

00:43:27.560 | Like, "Hey, can you weightlift on my behalf?"

00:43:30.640 | That would be great, by the way.

00:43:32.360 | I would love to be able to do that.

00:43:33.720 | Exactly.

00:43:35.000 | But, you know, exercise can't be outsourced.

00:43:37.160 | Sleep cannot be outsourced.

00:43:39.040 | Calling your mom cannot be outsourced, right?

00:43:42.200 | So you first fill your schedule with all of those activities.

00:43:45.560 | And only after you've filled your schedule with that, do you then take a

00:43:51.440 | look at everything else that you could potentially delegate and ask the

00:43:56.680 | question, "What of this should I delegate?

00:43:59.600 | What of this should I just straight up eliminate?

00:44:02.880 | And what of this should I actually do?"

00:44:05.960 | Is there a way you've found to get more comfortable with spending

00:44:11.320 | money on things that save you time?

00:44:14.480 | I know for me, I go back to all these examples like, "Wow, I'd rather drive

00:44:19.720 | an extra 30 minutes to get this thing that's $5 cheaper and that's a terrible

00:44:24.120 | use of my time," but I've just always struggled.

00:44:26.920 | And no matter how much I divide my salary into hours, it still makes it very

00:44:33.080 | difficult to pay someone to do something that you could otherwise do yourself.

00:44:38.000 | And it almost seems at odds with the idea of saving.

00:44:42.200 | Right, right, exactly.

00:44:44.560 | So I've struggled with this a lot because it used to be many years ago when I first

00:44:51.000 | started hiring and delegating, I kept telling myself, "If only I were more

00:44:58.800 | productive, if only I put in more hours, if only I was more productive during the

00:45:03.600 | hours that I worked, right, couldn't I save this money?"

00:45:06.600 | There's so many people online who will say, "Yeah, but your hourly rate is X.

00:45:12.560 | Like, let's say your hourly rate is, I don't know, $100 an hour.

00:45:15.960 | And so if you can pay somebody $30 an hour to do this thing, your time is

00:45:20.640 | valued at $100 an hour, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

00:45:22.840 | Except that I'm aware of all of the hours that I am unloading the dishwasher.

00:45:28.800 | I'm aware of all of the hours that I'm clipping my toenails, right?

00:45:32.200 | Like, I'm aware of all of the hours that I'm not actively making that money.

00:45:38.400 | And so when you take that to its logical conclusion, right, then it feels as

00:45:45.760 | though, like, "Well, geez, if I just cut back on, like, the clipping my toenails

00:45:50.240 | hours, I could do it all."

00:45:53.040 | And so I've, I've learned not to try to take that line to its logical conclusion,

00:45:58.640 | because then you end up in these, like, in a logical extreme, a logically extreme

00:46:04.520 | situation.

00:46:05.240 | I've learned instead to put boundaries around the number of hours that I am

00:46:10.920 | willing to theoretically work.

00:46:13.680 | So I might say, "Hey, I'm willing to work a maximum of 45 or 50 hours a week.

00:46:21.120 | What can I do within that container?"

00:46:23.320 | And everything has to fit inside of that container.

00:46:25.960 | And if it doesn't fit in that container, then it, it has to be either delegated or

00:46:32.600 | eliminated.

00:46:33.200 | Yeah.

00:46:34.280 | Yeah.

00:46:35.360 | One thing I've realized thinking through delegation, and this is a recent

00:46:39.000 | discovery, is there are things that you might think are wildly expensive to

00:46:43.920 | delegate that maybe aren't.

00:46:46.840 | And so my wife and I were talking about what's something in our week that is

00:46:52.000 | taking up a lot of time and preventing us from spending it on other things.

00:46:56.000 | And we realized that now that we started eating with our daughter, who's only 12

00:47:00.400 | months old, we're spending a lot of time trying to get dinner ready for her meal

00:47:04.360 | time, which was 5.30.

00:47:05.600 | And we were like, "Gosh, I'm sure it would be so expensive to hire a chef to come

00:47:11.040 | into our house and cook for us every night."

00:47:13.840 | And the short answer is, "Yeah, it's really expensive to hire a chef to come

00:47:16.840 | in for a couple hours every night and cook for you."

00:47:18.520 | What it turns out it's not as expensive to do is hire someone who's not a

00:47:22.680 | professional chef, but who cooks just like I cook.

00:47:26.200 | And they'll prepare your entire week of meals in advance and bring them over one

00:47:31.240 | day of the week, put them in your fridge, and then you just have to either reheat

00:47:35.720 | or throw something in the oven.

00:47:36.840 | And the difference in that ends up being far less expensive than ordering out, much

00:47:42.800 | more control over health.

00:47:44.440 | In fact, I think in advance, I make much healthier decisions.

00:47:48.520 | So I'm actually eating healthier than I normally would be and not spending that

00:47:52.360 | time.

00:47:52.880 | But at first glance, I thought it was impossible because it would cost, you

00:47:56.840 | know, thousands of dollars to have someone cook every meal.

00:47:59.560 | And I love to cook, but it became a chore to have to cook by 5.30 every night, and

00:48:04.760 | it wasn't as enjoyable.

00:48:05.880 | So I just challenge you, if you think there are things that you want to delegate

00:48:10.360 | and you don't think it's possible, for us, it was the difference between searching

00:48:13.800 | online for private chef and meal prep.

00:48:15.880 | And it turns out that when you search for meal prep, you find something far less

00:48:19.360 | expensive than private chef.

00:48:20.800 | So I think there are ways to delegate your time that you might not have expected.

00:48:25.280 | Right, right, exactly.

00:48:28.120 | So I'm curious, and this is a total non sequitur, but in the email that you sent

00:48:34.720 | me when we set up this interview, you mentioned that you flew to Egypt on a one

00:48:39.880 | way ticket.

00:48:40.400 | I did the same, and you're the first person I know, other than my travel

00:48:46.000 | companions, to also fly to Egypt on a one way ticket.

00:48:49.320 | Tell me about that.

00:48:51.360 | Yeah.

00:48:52.360 | So one of the most exciting things about talking to you is that I feel like there

00:48:57.240 | are these weird things that the more I researched your background, we're very

00:49:00.760 | similar.

00:49:01.160 | So just to give everyone a full, long story, we've both spent time in our lives

00:49:06.360 | worried about being able to make money in the future.

00:49:09.200 | We both went to a state school in Colorado.

00:49:12.280 | We both traveled the world from 2009 to 2010, mostly staying in really, really

00:49:17.120 | inexpensive countries.

00:49:18.280 | And as you mentioned, we both started with a one way ticket to Egypt.

00:49:21.640 | Now, I think I'm going to disappoint you with this answer, but my wife and I

00:49:26.280 | decided we're going to take a trip around the world.

00:49:28.200 | Where do we start?

00:49:28.920 | What do we do?

00:49:29.560 | And we're like, wow, it is really cheap to go to Cairo.

00:49:32.560 | Let's go to Cairo.

00:49:33.680 | And so we bought this one way ticket to Cairo.

00:49:36.520 | And about a week before, I was talking to someone and they said, "You know what

00:49:40.320 | would be really cool?

00:49:40.960 | I read this book about traveling overland from South Africa all the way through

00:49:46.480 | Africa up to Egypt."

00:49:47.520 | And I thought, "Wow, that's what I want to do."

00:49:50.320 | And then they asked, "Well, okay, what are you going to do after that?"

00:49:53.480 | And I said, "Well, I also want to go through the Middle East and we want to go

00:49:55.880 | to India."

00:49:56.440 | And they said, "Well, you're going the wrong way."

00:49:57.840 | So about a week before we took off on our one way ticket to Cairo, we were like,

00:50:03.560 | "We need to start at the other end."

00:50:05.760 | So we bought another ticket, but it turns out that the market for flying

00:50:11.720 | internationally within Africa is almost exclusively business travelers.

00:50:16.840 | And so it is incredibly expensive.

00:50:19.320 | So we found a cheap flight going from Cairo through Kenya down to South Africa

00:50:25.680 | and we bought that, but it left the next day.

00:50:28.840 | So we started the trip in Cairo.

00:50:30.440 | I visited a friend who I'd worked with who happened to live in Cairo for a day,

00:50:34.800 | maybe it was two days.

00:50:35.840 | We quickly went down to South Africa.

00:50:39.280 | We actually started in Cape Town and we worked our way overland all the way back

00:50:43.760 | up to Cairo, with the exception that we tried so hard to get a visa to go to

00:50:48.640 | Sudan and couldn't.

00:50:49.840 | And so we ended up having to buy a ticket from Uganda back up to Egypt.

00:50:54.640 | Wow.

00:50:56.080 | How long did that trip take and what were you driving?

00:50:58.720 | So we were actually taking mostly trains.

00:51:02.960 | So we started in South Africa.

00:51:05.760 | We went on a forum on the Internet and met two Swedish grad students who were

00:51:11.240 | about to start medical, like a medical externship at a hospital in South Africa.

00:51:16.520 | And the four of us rented a car and made it all the way up to Zambia.

00:51:22.000 | They came back and we took a 52 hour train ride through Tanzania, which if

00:51:27.960 | anyone ever has time on their hands in Africa, the Tazara train was like the

00:51:33.400 | coolest experience because it basically goes through the middle of Tanzania,

00:51:38.000 | places you never would go on a car.

00:51:40.640 | And the train stops randomly.

00:51:42.720 | Sometimes it breaks down and you've got to wait for them to fix something.

00:51:45.640 | But you get to see a side of Africa that it would take hours and hours to drive

00:51:50.360 | to and mostly trained around buses and everything and then finally had to fly.

00:51:56.720 | The whole trip was about eight months.

00:51:59.000 | And I think we did it on about $30 a day.

00:52:03.360 | It's about a thousand bucks a month.

00:52:05.000 | And it was, you know, one of those amazing things that you never get the

00:52:09.400 | opportunity to do until you force yourself to do it.

00:52:11.880 | And I'm so glad we did back then.

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00:53:26.760 | Do you all remember episode 122 when I spoke to chef David Chang about

00:53:33.240 | leveling up your cooking at home?

00:53:34.800 | If not, definitely go back and give it a listen.

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00:54:41.760 | I just want to thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show.

00:54:45.120 | Your support is what keeps this show going.

00:54:47.960 | To get all of the URLs, codes, deals, and discounts from our partners, you

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00:54:59.360 | Well, so for context and for people listening.

00:55:02.360 | So as you mentioned, this is something that we have in common.

00:55:05.520 | I also traveled.

00:55:06.840 | I traveled for 27 months from 2008 to 2010, visited 17 countries over the span

00:55:12.920 | of 27 months, starting with a one-way ticket to Cairo, just as you did.

00:55:17.280 | And what did you learn?

00:55:18.280 | What was your kind of macro takeaway from doing that?

00:55:21.240 | Ooh, geez.

00:55:23.200 | You know, the idea of afford anything actually came to me when I was in

00:55:26.360 | Indonesia.

00:55:27.080 | I don't think I've ever told anyone that before.

00:55:29.120 | You heard it here first on this podcast.

00:55:31.080 | But the actual phrase "afford anything" came in Bali.

00:55:35.240 | I was thinking through what I wanted to do next because I had just, in 2008, I

00:55:39.720 | quit the newspaper and that was a really ballsy move.

00:55:44.480 | Like who voluntarily quits a declining industry during a recession?

00:55:48.400 | Absolutely no one.

00:55:49.560 | And so everyone told me that I was committing career suicide, that I would

00:55:54.440 | never get a job again.

00:55:55.560 | And in hindsight, they were right.

00:55:56.960 | I never did get a job again.

00:55:58.240 | And it was during that trip that I spent a lot of time thinking about what I wanted

00:56:02.240 | to do next.

00:56:02.920 | You know, I had a sense I was going to be a freelance writer, but I also knew that

00:56:08.000 | I wanted to build an asset.

00:56:10.040 | There's a difference between writing for other people's publications versus

00:56:13.720 | starting your own publication or starting your own platform.

00:56:16.480 | And so I had a sense that there was an asset.

00:56:19.440 | There was a platform, a publication that I wanted to create.

00:56:22.480 | And the name "afford anything" came to me during that trip.

00:56:26.840 | That's amazing.

00:56:28.640 | I think travel is something that kind of opens your eyes, changes your perspective

00:56:34.400 | in so many ways that if you're lacking creativity in your life, I think there's

00:56:40.120 | nothing more inspiring than visiting a place you've never been, meeting people

00:56:43.840 | you don't know that speak a different language and seeing where that takes you

00:56:48.000 | and changes your state of being and state of mind.

00:56:50.080 | Yeah, absolutely.

00:56:52.120 | I think that so many people feel like they can't take a trip like that.

00:56:56.360 | And to be clear, 27 months is a very long time.

00:56:59.280 | Even my eight-month trip, everyone I know thought was an incredibly long time.

00:57:03.720 | But people think that you can't do that.

00:57:05.840 | You have to quit your job and go on career suicide.

00:57:09.240 | And it's just not possible until you retire.

00:57:12.440 | But I've heard you say something that I don't think anyone else has said.

00:57:15.960 | Mini-retirements, semi-retirements.

00:57:17.600 | What is that?

00:57:18.440 | And how could someone do this in their 30s, in their 40s or 50s?

00:57:22.320 | Yeah, yeah, it's funny.

00:57:24.000 | There is this assumption.

00:57:25.960 | It's a very binary, all-or-nothing thinking type of mentality

00:57:29.640 | where you're either working or you're not, right?

00:57:32.400 | You're either in your career or you are fully retired.

00:57:36.080 | I think that's an old and outdated model.

00:57:39.080 | And so, let's first start by defining the difference

00:57:42.040 | between a mini-retirement versus a semi-retirement.

00:57:44.160 | A mini-retirement is essentially a sabbatical.

00:57:47.760 | You take a designated period of time off of work.

00:57:51.040 | It could be three months, six months, eight months, as you did.

00:57:54.400 | So, you take a limited period of time away from work.

00:57:57.800 | And you either do that by taking a leave of absence from your employer

00:58:01.720 | or you do it when you are between jobs, between employment.

00:58:05.760 | Or if you run your own business, you set up the systems,

00:58:09.120 | put the team in place, get everything running

00:58:11.560 | to such an extent that your business can operate

00:58:15.440 | independently of you for a temporary period of time.

00:58:18.400 | So, that is what a mini-retirement is.

00:58:21.680 | Semi-retirement is different.

00:58:23.960 | Semi-retirement is where you go on maintenance mode.

00:58:28.600 | So, you're technically still checking in,

00:58:31.960 | but you're not working full days.

00:58:35.920 | You're doing just enough to keep your current projects alive,

00:58:40.160 | but not enough to have them grow.

00:58:42.600 | I've spent a lot of time, especially in the last 10 years,

00:58:45.640 | oscillating between periods of intense growth

00:58:50.280 | where I'm parked at home and focused on growing my business.

00:58:53.720 | And periods of what I call maintenance mode

00:58:56.560 | where I'm intentionally not growing

00:59:00.040 | and I'm in that semi-retired state.

00:59:02.360 | And during that time, I'm off

00:59:04.440 | gallivanting in Slovenia or Croatia or, you know,

00:59:08.280 | I've been to Ecuador five times in the last couple of years.

00:59:11.200 | You know, I'm off elsewhere doing something fun.

00:59:14.240 | Not to say work isn't fun, but, you know, something different.

00:59:16.720 | And so that's the distinction between a mini-retirement versus semi-retirement.

00:59:20.920 | And depending on your situation, there will be phases of your life

00:59:24.480 | where one or the other is better or more applicable.

00:59:28.280 | When I took that 27-month trip, I had just quit working at a newspaper.

00:59:33.240 | And so given that I was between jobs, that was an ideal time

00:59:36.600 | to just take that mini-retirement, take a 27-month break

00:59:39.600 | and say, I'm going to travel the world full time for over two years.

00:59:45.240 | And I mostly lived off of savings that entire time.

00:59:47.720 | I did a little bit of freelancing, but I worked fewer than five hours a week.

00:59:51.640 | If that's not in the cards, and particularly if you run your own business,

00:59:55.320 | the semi-retire model is is a fantastic one.

00:59:58.760 | You know, you might check in on Slack an hour a day.

01:00:02.080 | You do just enough to make sure that you're not the bottleneck and no more.

01:00:06.400 | And that allows everything to continue running stateside

01:00:10.520 | while you're often in Iceland or, you know, Argentina

01:00:16.400 | or wherever you choose to be.

01:00:18.560 | Yeah, I think for people who've only ever taken a trip

01:00:22.680 | for a week or two weeks, it feels like, man,

01:00:26.200 | if you were working a few hours a day or even a few hours a week,

01:00:30.920 | it would really detract from the entire experience.

01:00:33.320 | But if you've never taken a trip for a month or spent the whole two weeks

01:00:37.600 | in one place, what happens is there's actually more downtime.

01:00:40.760 | And so I think whether you run your own business

01:00:43.960 | or even if you work for a company, if you could find a period of time

01:00:48.640 | where it would be OK for you to not put in everything,

01:00:52.240 | you know, if you work in sales, it's not at the end of the quarter,

01:00:54.640 | but it's a time where you could kind of go on work

01:00:58.280 | maintenance mode, as you said, and take a longer trip.

01:01:01.560 | You can get the same number of things done and you can,

01:01:05.480 | you know, see all the sites, meet all the people, eat all the foods,

01:01:08.920 | but still be able to get some work done and not necessarily have to take it all off.

01:01:13.120 | And people often think they could never do that because it's so expensive.

01:01:16.360 | But if you look at the cost to travel, the flights are often the biggest piece.

01:01:21.560 | And so if you're going somewhere for twice as long, it doesn't cost twice as much.

01:01:26.040 | And in many cases, renting an Airbnb for a month might be the same

01:01:30.560 | as renting a hotel for a week or a week and a half.

01:01:33.360 | So with all the flexibility that COVID has given many people with remote work,

01:01:38.480 | I would encourage people who haven't ever taken a longer trip

01:01:42.320 | to maybe consider it and not feel like it's something

01:01:45.000 | you have to take an entire month off to do.

01:01:47.480 | Right. Well, and the thing is, longer trips are so economically efficient

01:01:52.680 | because particularly if you're taking a trip that's long enough

01:01:56.200 | that you can either rent out your home

01:01:58.680 | or if you are a renter yourself, do it at the end of your lease.

01:02:03.800 | Just don't renew your lease.

01:02:05.040 | Put all your stuff in storage and then go,

01:02:07.040 | you know, be a full time traveler for a little while.

01:02:10.960 | If you style it that way, then fundamentally,

01:02:14.720 | you're simply paying the cost of living in a different location.

01:02:19.480 | You know, if you're just taking a vacation, you're paying for two different lives.

01:02:24.040 | You're paying for your normal life.

01:02:26.680 | And then you're also paying for your hotel in some other location.

01:02:31.280 | Right. So you're essentially paying two rents during that time.

01:02:34.960 | If you take a longer trip, you're only paying for one life.

01:02:40.040 | And it's that one life that you have while you are riding

01:02:44.160 | the Trans-Siberian Railroad from Russia into Mongolia.

01:02:47.720 | And and when you do that, then you compress your cost of living

01:02:52.760 | to only the costs incurred when you travel.

01:02:55.840 | And oftentimes it's about the same or in some cases

01:03:00.160 | even cheaper than your cost of living in the US.

01:03:03.440 | Yeah, when we left for eight months, we rented our apartment out

01:03:07.160 | and we rented it out furnished because we had all this furniture

01:03:10.040 | and we actually got more than our monthly rent.

01:03:13.160 | And because we were in all these kind of much less expensive countries,

01:03:17.560 | I won't say it paid for the whole trip, but it certainly paid for a good

01:03:21.680 | part of the trip because we were actually making money at home.

01:03:24.200 | So, yeah, if you aren't paying two rents, as you said, the trip can be a lot cheaper.

01:03:28.320 | Exactly. So.

01:03:30.760 | Sticking within the theme of the show, all the hacks,

01:03:35.360 | you know, whether it's travel or life or anything you've learned,

01:03:38.720 | are there things that are your favorite tips, mindset shifts,

01:03:43.400 | tricks to either save money or just be happier

01:03:46.840 | in your life and traveling that you want to share?

01:03:49.280 | Mindset. Ooh.

01:03:52.640 | I left it open because because it's it's all the hacks,

01:03:56.840 | it's it's really take it anywhere you want.

01:03:58.840 | It's that's a very broad question.

01:04:01.200 | OK, mindset when it comes to happiness.

01:04:03.840 | I think the single biggest shift for me has been understanding

01:04:07.600 | that basically nothing matters and everything will be fine.

01:04:11.080 | Like when you get to the point where just nothing really phases you

01:04:15.360 | and you're not caught up in a lot of.

01:04:17.880 | The small stuff that you used to think was important,

01:04:20.920 | I worried that that kind of cavalier attitude would make me less ambitious,

01:04:24.880 | make me less of a go getter at work.

01:04:27.120 | I find it actually makes me more productive

01:04:29.520 | because I realize that there are only a few decisions that I make.

01:04:34.560 | When I say a few, like a couple a year

01:04:38.080 | that are big with a capital B decisions

01:04:42.040 | and everything else is like details.

01:04:45.400 | And I think mindset wise, once I really stopped

01:04:50.040 | worrying about the details and just, yeah, do what you can,

01:04:54.400 | but don't really sweat it, it.

01:04:57.040 | Decreases my stress, increases my happiness.

01:05:00.320 | And I don't think it, you know, negatively affects my performance.

01:05:03.440 | It's either neutral or positive in terms of performance.

01:05:07.080 | I like it.

01:05:08.400 | One of my favorite savings hacks is being grateful.

01:05:13.040 | So much of the time, people frame savings as deprivation.

01:05:18.880 | Yeah. Oh, I couldn't have this amazing pair of shoes

01:05:22.840 | or I chose not to have this fantastic restaurant meal.

01:05:26.320 | So I'm depriving myself. Right.

01:05:28.480 | But if we reframe that thought.

01:05:31.880 | And recognize how much we already have.

01:05:35.440 | I mean, everyone listening to this podcast

01:05:38.080 | has the ability to listen to a podcast, right?

01:05:41.560 | We've got a smartphone and access to the Internet on a global scale.

01:05:47.120 | Everyone listening to this podcast is among the globally

01:05:51.200 | richest people in the world.

01:05:53.720 | And to go back to our conversation about traveling, travel

01:05:57.200 | certainly brings home just how wealthy,

01:06:01.240 | how relatively wealthy we are compared to the bottom billion.

01:06:04.840 | When we deeply internalize that, it makes it very easy

01:06:10.160 | to not want a heck of a lot more because we already have so much.

01:06:14.840 | And then that means that saving money or reducing

01:06:19.240 | spending is no longer an act of deprivation.

01:06:22.760 | It's an act of acknowledging, hey, I'm good.

01:06:26.600 | I don't need any more.

01:06:28.080 | I've got more than enough already.

01:06:30.600 | And are there habits to kind of embrace that grateful attitude that you like?

01:06:35.760 | I don't know if traveling would be considered a habit,

01:06:38.080 | but I certainly think that traveling, particularly to lesser developed areas,

01:06:43.600 | you know, I'm not just talking about traveling to Europe,

01:06:46.120 | traveling to to Bangladesh, traveling to Sri Lanka,

01:06:50.560 | traveling to Nepal, which is where I was born.

01:06:52.600 | I think that's really important to serve as a continual reminder.

01:06:57.320 | I think I think having some involvement in philanthropy,

01:07:03.000 | in charity work, in volunteering, I think that also is a grounding

01:07:07.880 | and is a reminder of the fact that we don't need to be

01:07:11.520 | endlessly searching for more.

01:07:13.840 | People have talked about a gratitude practice.

01:07:16.040 | I go in and out of that habit.

01:07:18.080 | I won't claim that that's a habit that I have been able to consistently stick to.

01:07:22.560 | But from what I have heard, there is research that backs

01:07:26.880 | that a gratitude practice, a daily practice of writing down

01:07:31.360 | one to three things that you're grateful for can be effective

01:07:35.200 | at retraining your brain to see such details and to bring those details

01:07:39.440 | to the forefront of your cognition.

01:07:41.920 | Yeah, I think I'm in a similar boat where, you know, one Thanksgiving,

01:07:46.600 | someone started going around the table talking about what they were grateful for.

01:07:50.400 | And it felt like such a great practice.

01:07:52.320 | It was like, let's keep that up a little bit.

01:07:53.920 | And and it fades away and comes back.

01:07:56.600 | And I think it's helpful.

01:07:57.920 | But I've also found it hard to make it a daily habit.

01:08:01.120 | Was it you that has a hack for how to make it easier to build a new habit?

01:08:04.960 | Yeah, so there's a few.

01:08:06.920 | One is habit stacking.

01:08:08.960 | So take an existing habit that you currently have

01:08:11.320 | and stack it onto that habit.

01:08:14.040 | So, for example, do it right after you brush your teeth in the morning.

01:08:16.880 | Or for me, coffee is like a daily non-negotiable.

01:08:20.280 | So if I'm trying to form a morning habit, linking it to my coffee habit,

01:08:24.680 | because I know I'm never going to forget to brew a cup of coffee.

01:08:27.840 | So anything that's linked or chained to that

01:08:30.320 | has a much higher probability of sticking.

01:08:34.640 | So that's one way that sort of one one hack around habit

01:08:39.400 | building, building habits that have some element of immediate gratification.

01:08:44.520 | So there's a famous study in which the people who started who invented Febreze,

01:08:49.800 | they were trying to figure out why nobody would use that product.

01:08:53.200 | And it was because Febreze eliminated odors,

01:08:56.880 | but there was no immediate gratification to spraying the bottle.

01:09:00.560 | There was no immediate scent that people perceived.

01:09:02.920 | And because people didn't perceive that immediate gratification,

01:09:06.360 | the habit didn't stick.

01:09:07.600 | And so they artificially went back and added odors

01:09:10.960 | that are unnecessary for the efficacy of the product

01:09:13.480 | so that people would then get an immediate result

01:09:18.520 | from spraying the bottle, which helped in habit formation.

01:09:22.840 | And so once I learned that, I started thinking through

01:09:26.120 | how I can incorporate some element of immediate gratification

01:09:30.240 | into any habit that I'm trying to build, particularly if it's a habit

01:09:34.600 | that has a good long term effect, but doesn't have an immediate

01:09:39.520 | short term effect.

01:09:41.360 | So lighting a candle at a time

01:09:44.600 | when I do a monthly financial review, right?

01:09:47.640 | Lighting a candle or eating some chocolate at the time that I'm doing that.

01:09:51.880 | Now I'm I'm tethering these things that have like immediate sensory benefit

01:09:57.160 | with reviewing the spreadsheet for the month.

01:10:01.240 | And so I'm creating immediate gratification in that very act.

01:10:05.640 | I used to ask my wife to help contribute towards our annual analysis.

01:10:11.360 | And it was like, can we go into mint and recategorize

01:10:13.760 | all of our transactions to figure out where we spend money?

01:10:16.160 | And fortunately, we've stopped doing that both because it was too much time

01:10:20.680 | and it just wasn't wasn't as useful.

01:10:23.040 | But I think if I had gone back in time and and maybe lit an ice candle

01:10:26.600 | and brought in a bar of chocolate, I feel like that wouldn't have had

01:10:29.480 | such a horrible memory in my wife's mind, thinking about having to go through

01:10:33.680 | and do that.

01:10:34.200 | So I wish I could go back and do that.

01:10:36.600 | But I will definitely use that tip in the future.

01:10:38.760 | I have a friend who he and his wife have a weekly money meeting

01:10:43.520 | and they always do it over wine.

01:10:45.880 | Nice. Yeah, I think anything over wine can make make things good

01:10:49.560 | unless you go overboard and have to wake up early.

01:10:51.560 | Exactly.

01:10:52.960 | Great. This was incredible.

01:10:55.360 | I really appreciate you being here.

01:10:57.480 | Any last things you want to share with with anyone listening?

01:11:00.520 | I guess the final thing that I would share with anyone listening

01:11:05.280 | is given the wide range of topics that we've covered.

01:11:08.960 | What one thing resonated with you

01:11:12.200 | and how do you translate that into something actionable?

01:11:15.160 | You know, whether it's in the arena of saving money,

01:11:18.280 | earning more, starting a side hustle, negotiating for a new position at work

01:11:23.640 | or negotiating for a raise,

01:11:27.720 | planning a mini retirement.

01:11:29.160 | Like we've talked about such a wide array of things.

01:11:31.560 | What one thing stood out to you and what one action will you take

01:11:35.760 | as a result of having listened to this?

01:11:37.160 | That's the question that I would leave to the listener.

01:11:39.840 | Yeah. And if you if you have that, please share it with me.

01:11:43.680 | Email, Twitter or share it with Paula.

01:11:45.880 | Paula, where can people find you online and share things with you?

01:11:49.000 | So I would encourage everyone listening to open your favorite podcast player,

01:11:53.480 | which you're already using to listen to this show

01:11:55.480 | and go follow the Afford Anything podcast.

01:11:59.000 | So that's my podcast.

01:12:00.920 | It's what I spend a lot of my time honing.

01:12:04.440 | And the Afford Anything podcast is the number one way

01:12:08.080 | that you can hear more about my ideas.

01:12:11.000 | The you know, everything ranging from.

01:12:13.120 | Managing your money to living a better life.

01:12:16.440 | So Afford Anything podcast is where you find me.

01:12:19.560 | I've got a free ebook called Escape that you can download

01:12:22.280 | at affordanything.com/escape.

01:12:24.680 | And that's all about escaping the nine to five,

01:12:27.440 | which we've talked about as a metaphor and living a better life.

01:12:30.080 | Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here.

01:12:33.760 | Thank you so much for having me on the show.

01:12:36.480 | That's a wrap for this week's episode of All the Hacks.

01:12:39.120 | Thank you so much for listening.

01:12:41.240 | As I mentioned last week, we'll be doing a listener mailbag episode soon.

01:12:44.720 | So if you have any questions you'd like me to tackle or hacks

01:12:48.160 | to share with our audience, please send them to Chris at allthehacks.com

01:12:52.600 | or I'm @hutchins on Twitter.

01:12:55.520 | Also, if you tuned in to episode nine with Ramit,

01:12:58.440 | do you remember him challenging me to take a vacation with an unlimited budget?

01:13:02.360 | Well, it was too last minute for him to plan that vacation.

01:13:05.800 | But I ended up trying to follow his advice on a trip to Greece

01:13:08.840 | where I am right now.

01:13:10.120 | So how'd I do?

01:13:11.520 | Well, from the outside, pretty good.

01:13:13.360 | We flew in business class and we're staying at some incredible five star resorts.

01:13:18.080 | That said, I paid for coach flights and upgraded

01:13:21.480 | and we booked some of the hotels on points.

01:13:23.800 | So from that regard, maybe I failed to not optimize.

01:13:27.600 | However, my loss might be your gain.

01:13:30.520 | So if you have any questions about how to use your points and miles

01:13:34.040 | for an incredible vacation, just send me an email or find me on Twitter

01:13:38.080 | and I'll do my best to help out.

01:13:40.120 | Thanks again for listening.

01:13:41.480 | I'll see you next week.

01:13:43.160 | I want to tell you about another podcast I love that goes deep on all things money.

01:13:47.600 | That means everything from money hacks to wealth building to early retirement.

01:13:51.440 | It's called the personal finance podcast, and it's much more about building

01:13:55.520 | generational wealth and spending your money on the things you value

01:13:58.840 | than it is about clipping coupons to save a dollar.

01:14:01.400 | It's hosted by my good friend, Andrew, who truly believes that everyone

01:14:05.400 | in this world can build wealth, and his passion and dedication

01:14:08.520 | are what make this show so entertaining.

01:14:10.520 | I know because I was a guest on the show in December, 2022.

01:14:14.400 | But recently I listened to an episode where Andrew shared 16 money

01:14:18.480 | stats that will blow your mind.

01:14:20.080 | And it was so crazy to learn things like 35% of millennials are not participating

01:14:25.120 | in their employer's retirement plan.

01:14:26.720 | And that's just one of the many fascinating stats he shared.

01:14:30.320 | The personal finance podcast has something for everyone.

01:14:33.240 | It's filled with tips and tricks on how to spend your money.

01:14:36.360 | It's filled with tips and tactics and hacks to help you get better

01:14:39.040 | with your money and grow your wealth.

01:14:40.640 | So I highly recommend you check it out.

01:14:42.720 | Just search for the personal finance podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or

01:14:47.200 | wherever you listen to podcasts and enjoy.

01:14:49.600 | or wherever you listen to podcasts, and enjoy.