Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host, Joshua Sheets, and today I'm excited to have Paula from Afford Anything on the line. Paula, welcome. Hi. Thanks for having me on. I'm really glad to have you on. I'm really glad to have you on. I first heard about you over on the Mad Scientist Podcast, and then I went over to your site.

I heard you featured there on that interview. Then I went over to your site, and I was so intrigued by the name of your site, which is AffordAnything.com. It's always an attention grabber. People tend to remember it. It really is. I think it's one of the better names. Obviously, there are tens of thousands of financial blogs and things out there that people can find, but I love the name of that site.

How did you come up with that? What was the philosophy behind it? The philosophy behind the site speaks really well to the name. When I was about 24, I quit my job and went off traveling for a while. Everybody kept saying to me at that time, "Oh, I would love to do something like that, but I can't afford it." Those are the key words that they kept repeating, "I can't afford it.

I can't afford it. I can't afford it." I wanted to smack my head against a wall every time I heard that, because I'm like, "Dude, you can. You can afford anything." That was where the name of the site came from. I share that same frustration. I know from reading your blog that I think you went and traveled for how long?

Two years at least? Two years, a little over two years, yeah, nonstop, and without working during that time. Good for you. We're going to get to some of the strategies. I've never traveled for two years straight, but I have been blessed to visit ... I don't know. Let's see.

I think I figured it out one time. I had the opportunity to visit about 25 countries by the time I was about 25 years old. Oh, that's excellent. That's really cool. My friends would always say, "Well, how on earth do you do that?" I would just say, "Do you see the car I'm driving?" Yeah, exactly.

Most people spend their money on their cars. I always just figured, "Well, I don't mind so much a cheap car. I'd rather have more stamps than my passport." Right, exactly. That's the part that people don't get. They'll be talking to me with full manicure and pedicure and highlighted hair and a Venti Starbucks, no whip, grande, whatever, whatever in their hand.

They're like, "Oh, I could never afford to do that. You must be rich." I'm like, "Really? Do you see yourself right now?" It's a matter of priorities. Exactly. I think there's a lot of alignment between what you write about and the focus of my show. My main thing is not to tell people what they should or shouldn't do, but to help people, to encourage people to understand what they actually want versus just simply accepting them what society and life throws at them and then figure out some smart ways to get what they want.

I think you've encapsulated it perfectly in two words, far more succinctly than I could. I love that philosophy because I feel like there's a lot of personal financial advice out there that dictates the path. It's meant to be one size fits all. When you go online and you read financial articles or when you read books, it's meant for the average consumer.

They write about buying cars and buying houses and buying this and buying that and replacing 80% of your pre-retirement income in retirement. They make all of these unstated assumptions about what you want and what kind of lifestyle you want and how much money you're spending, how much of your income you're spending.

None of those assumptions need to be true. You don't need to follow this prescription that's out there for the masses. If you want to, if you've thought about it and that's the life that you genuinely want to lead, then that's great. I'm just sick of the one size fits all financial advice out there.

I think it's just insane. I agree with you. Do you get frustrated like I do when people say, "Oh, you can't buy this car. You can't do that." I get frustrated because it's your money. Spend it on whatever you want to. Just make sure that you've decided it and that it's really something that is fulfilling to you.

Exactly. There's a huge difference between somebody like me who, "I don't really know anything about cars. I don't really care that much about cars. They just don't interest me." There's a big difference between a person like me and a person who reads car magazines, hangs out on car blogs, hangs a poster of a car in his childhood bedroom.

There's a big difference between the two of us. If you were to give the two of us the same kind of financial advice when it comes to buying a car, it just wouldn't apply. It would be like telling a person, and that goes with everything. It would be like telling people how much money that they should spend on travel or on watching sports games or anything else.

Your passions are your passions. No one can tell you how much of your budget you should allocate towards that. I'm 100% with you. You write a personal finance blog. Have you always been a money person? Tell us a little bit about your path, so to speak. Were you always super frugal and saving and investing from six years old, or was it something that developed as an adult?

Tell us a little bit about your path. I was always very frugal. I'm a child of immigrants. Technically, I myself am also an immigrant, but I came to the United States when I was a baby. My parents came here with me in tow when I was still wearing diapers.

We started with nothing. Family started with nothing and built everything from scratch. They didn't have any money. They didn't have any connections. They didn't have any family that they could lean on. Throughout my childhood, we were middle class, but we were very, very frugal. My parents worked very hard to just get us established in the United States.

I learned from seeing that example. Throughout my life, I'd always been very frugal as well. One thing that I'm just coming to grips with now as an adult is learning the difference between being frugal within your personal life versus investing in growing your business. If you try to be too – and I don't want to go off on a tangent about this necessarily, but there's a time to be frugal and there's a time to not be.

That's one of the really hard things for me to learn as an adult is reinvesting in your business and taking the money that you've made instead of just hoarding it, spending it in the hopes of earning more. I guess that's a different topic for a different day. Actually, I'm interested in that because it's something that a lot of times isn't discussed.

Just to let you know a little bit about me since we haven't spoken before this, I'm interested in the things that nobody talks about. One of those things that people don't talk about is simply the difference between luxury consumption and investment. I just recorded a show about how to cut your cell phone bill by tons of money.

I think it's a really valuable resource for those who would benefit from that information. But exactly parallel with it, if you make millions of dollars on your phone, you better have the absolute best phone that you can get with the best service that you can get and you probably should have a couple of backups.

It's a very challenging transition for people to make and it's challenging to have a decision tree because you may have a decision tree for your own if you're very focused on this is what I'm doing and I'm saving money for this goal. Well, no, I'm not going to spend on that.

But when you get into the world of retirement and investing and financially independent, it's much more challenging. Absolutely. You phrased it really well. I love the way you said luxury consumption versus investment. Your phone example is a great one because we've dealt with that. My boyfriend as an example, he runs a small business and oftentimes he is out in the middle of nowhere like rural Oklahoma, just out very, very far away from civilization in places where there is not very good cell phone reception.

He's in a position where missing a call could literally cost him tens of thousands of dollars. So are we going to cheap out and try and get a $10 a month cell phone plan? No, of course not. And so I guess that's the difference. It's very easy to write a book or to write a blog post or to make a speech that gives this one size fits all financial advice that says cut your expenses as much as possible and do it yourself.

Mow your own lawn and paint your own house and insource as much as possible. But that's fine if you're speaking about it within the context of luxury consumption, financial consumption, but there's a massive difference when you're talking about it within the context of growing and investing. And I think that a lot of times people fail to really make that distinction.

Particularly if like me, you tend to be naturally frugal anyway. It's hard, but it's absolutely pivotal to come to grips with the fact that you're going to have to start paying people to mow your lawn because you know what? That's one less thing, not just one less thing that you have to do, but one less thing that you have to track.

And by freeing up both that time and that mental space, you can spend that additional hour per week on a sales call with a client that could net you an extra $700 a month. You know? Do you think that most people make financial decisions rationally or do they tend to go towards whatever they're accustomed to?

I think habit is very, very powerful. I actually wrote a post not too long ago about, it was based on a book called The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. I'm sure I'm mispronouncing his name. One of the best books that I've read this year, and it talked about how powerful habit is and how most people, even if they're not conscious of it, tend to get looped into habits when they make decisions because the brain wants to do whatever is easiest and so it follows the path that it knows.

The reason I ask that question is because the thing that you're touching on, I think, strikes to the heart of how challenging it is in the financial world, especially the online financial world, is that we all have things that, I'll pick on the mow the lawn example because it's a good one.

It's a great one. I can think of at least four or five different ways to approach that decision. In fact, I'm going to be releasing either right before this show goes out or right after my ultimate guide to a smart person's way of making decisions. That's a pretty pretentious term.

In that lawn example, I can think of at least several ways that that example could be made. Example one would be, let's say, I'm going to make these scenarios up on the fly here, and they're going to be extreme, but I think they'll demonstrate how each one of us needs to consider and make these decisions.

Number one, somebody is not earning a high income, has a steady salary job where they're not going to be paid significantly more for working more and has a goal of saving money. That's a really great situation where somebody can focus on mowing your own lawn. On the other hand, somebody has a very high income, very stressful job, and they absolutely despise mowing their lawn.

It's one of their least favorite things in the world. That would be a good candidate to just simply hire out the lawn. That could be a very simple decision, but the next decision would be, "Why do I have a lawn at all? Could I just simply eliminate the lawn and eliminate the expense and eliminate the time, or could I turn that lawn into something that's productive for me?" Instead of unproductive grass, could I do some sort of productive plants or could I do some sort of xeriscaping strategy where I just eliminate, "I still have the yard, but I don't have the lawn." There are five examples of different ways that you can turn it.

One, you could spend money, and it could be completely right for one person to spend money on paying someone to do it because they earn income and they want to turn that extra time and income. The other person, it could be completely wrong, or both of them could make a completely different choice.

That can't be simplified into one blog post saying, "I mow my lawn, so you should too." Right, right. It's funny because when you bring up the, "Why have a lawn at all?" because that touches on so many other factors. Do you have a lawn because you live in an area where single-family homes look like, based on your market research, single-family homes look like they're going to appreciate much better than condos will?

Therefore, even though a lawn is an expense, the overall decision to have a home with a lawn could end up netting you more in the long run than the decision to have a condo without any underlying land. That would be an example where paying somebody to mow your lawn would be an overhead cost to a long-term investing strategy that you're trying to make.

Another example would be, I own several rental properties. One of them is a multi-unit. With a single-family home, generally the tenant mows their own lawn, but in a multi-unit, it's the landlord's responsibility. There's another example. Even then, when you say, "Why do you have a lawn?" there are hundreds of different reasons that a person might give for that.

Some of them could actually be the wiser financial choice, depending on your individual situation. It all goes back to one individual's goals. To me, that's where everything has to start. You have a good point with type of property. It seems, obviously, travel is something that's important to you. It may be that in one area of the country, a single-family home is a much better rental market to be in, but there may also be a lot more hassle with maintaining that.

That might not fit one person's travel goals, or the person may have the resources and the ability to make it fit their travel goals. Having five condos might be easier for a landlord who wants to be an absentee landlord to manage than having four plexes. Everything comes down to individual choices and individual goals.

Based on those goals, that's how we all decide what's right for us. Exactly. I don't quite know how we arrived here, but I think we led to this from financial advice that is true, one size fits all. Not my taste. Not my thing. I'm with you. I'm interested in ...

You don't have to disclose anything you don't want to, but as a young person, you're under 30, right? Just barely under 30. I've got a couple more months left. Okay. Congratulations. Are you on track to hit your goal of 30 countries by the age of 30? I am. I need to go to one more country.

I've been to 29 countries, and I'm 29 years old, so I need to go to one more before my 30th birthday, which is ... Let's see. It's July right now still. I guess maybe it's almost August. I'll be turning 30 in October. Good for you. I've got a couple of months.

What's the next country you're going to? I have no idea. Well, maybe after we finish recording, I'll try to give you some ideas of some places that I love. There are a lot of great choices. How would you characterize as far as your main financial goals? Are you pursuing this idea of financial independence?

I go where I want to. I do what I want to. Are you pursuing I want to travel the world? Are you pursuing I want to do work I love? How do you characterize your major financial goals? My goal is that this show would speak to people in their 20s and 30s about some of the things that are available at a young age.

I'd be interested in what you're working towards. One of the things I'm most proud of is that I have not had a 9-to-5 job since 2008. I was 24 the last time that I had a traditional 9-to-5 job. That's a huge step. That's a huge point of pride for me because I have always aspired to not be in a cubicle.

So far, so good. I've never been in one. When I graduated from college, and this was in 2001, I had the same idea that most of my friends had, which is that I was supposed to get a job. In hindsight, that was kind of a ridiculous assumption. Because once I started working, I realized that for me, it was so possible to work for yourself and work from home or work from your laptop anywhere in the world, be completely location independent.

It took me three years before I managed to bite the bullet and quit my job. I understood it in theory, but I was scared to actually pull the trigger. But by the time I quit my job, I had some substantial savings. I went and traveled for two years without working, and then came back and started working for myself.

I've been doing it ever since. When you ask about my goals, I feel like I'm very much already there in the sense that I'm working for myself from anywhere in the world that I want. I'm completely location independent. I own a handful of rental properties. My boyfriend and I together own six rental units.

I feel like we're basically just living the life. I guess maybe more of the same, just keep doing what I'm doing, but more so. I guess that's the only goal, really. Got it. The reason I ask is, and I know maybe it's not something you've been asked, it's very challenging, I think, when most young people's goals are, I guess, more easily reduced to a checklist.

They get boiled down. I want to do this. I want to go here. I want to own this. I want to be in this type of relationship with this type of focus. When it comes to financial goals, many financial goals get pushed off to a later date. I'd like to retire someday.

It seems like it takes a lot of courage to move that date up, because then what you find is that instead of maybe finding fulfillment in the day-to-day work or the day-to-day job, you've got to find fulfillment in other things. I'm interested in young people who are making that transition and some of their experiences as far as how they make that transition and how you fill your time if it's not about, "I'm going to build this specific career," if you've already achieved some level of financial freedom.

It takes the bull off the back of some people. I don't have a specific question there. I'm always interested in gathering people's experiences and learning from others who have been down the road before. You've chosen real estate as the primary vehicle for your income? No. Real estate is one of my favorite ways to invest.

It's not my primary source of income. My primary source of income is I do freelance writing and online marketing and work from my laptop for a handful of clients. It's pretty great. My ambition was always to run my own business and work for myself. I think one of the reasons that retirement doesn't particularly appeal to me, financial freedom appeals to me in the sense that who doesn't want to have the security of knowing that you've got enough money coming in that you'll be okay.

I don't ever want to retire because I actually really enjoy working. I really enjoy what I do. I enjoy problem solving and helping people. I built my business from scratch. I literally built it from nothing. I'm very proud of it and I want to keep it going. In terms of financial freedom, that's what the rental properties are for.

I've got enough passive income coming in that I could, in theory, if there was a big family health crisis or something like that, if some emergency came up, I could entirely stop working and trim back my stop going to restaurants and I'd be all right. I'd be fine. I wouldn't be eating at restaurants and I wouldn't be wearing fancy Abercrombie clothes or anything like that, but I would totally be fine and that's a really good feeling to have.

I've often thought that pursuing financial independence at an early age is a worthy goal because if you are able to achieve it or at least see yourself closer to it, you're able to actually look at your source of income and see if this is something that you're doing because you enjoy it or if it's something that you're doing because you have to do it.

Then when you continue to work at it, mainly because you enjoy it, you feel a lot better about it than being there because you have to. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. In fact, I'd say that it increases job satisfaction. The sense of liberation increases job satisfaction because every day that you go to work, you know that it's a choice that you're making and that you don't have to do this.

If you just sort of trim back your lifestyle a little bit, yeah, you don't have to do this at all, but you like it. You like the game. You stay in it because it's interesting. I noticed that many of the wealthiest people in the world don't sit around and watch TV all afternoon.

They tend to still continue working at their businesses and creating things. Right, exactly. Bill Gates, Donald Trump, I mean these guys don't have to work, but presumably they do it because they love it. Absolutely. What attracted you to real estate versus other forms of investing as a strategy for early financial independence?

Good question. I was more interested in monthly cash flow than I was in potential future appreciation. By that I mean, well, I'll use real estate as the example because a lot of people when you tell them that you're in real estate, their first thought jumps to the value of the house going up over time.

When I buy houses, the potential appreciation of the house is secondary. I mean very, very secondary. To me, I'm looking for how much cash that house can produce each month just because that's my philosophy. That's what I'm interested in is monthly cash flows, replacing that monthly income. To me, real estate rental properties specifically were a better way to do that than stocks.

There are people who are really into dividend investing and collecting that monthly dividend. Looking at that, I mean I and maybe I'm sure there are people who are much better than I am who could get better returns, but when I looked into dividend investing, what I saw was 3% to 4% returns with lots of volatility in the underlying asset versus the cash flow asset versus when I looked at houses, I saw 8% to 12% returns with much less volatility.

For me, it was a no-brainer at that point. Of course, the trade-off is that my investment is highly illiquid. My cash is tied up in the houses, so I can't just snap my fingers and sell at a moment's notice. If I'm getting really good monthly cash flow, I don't really want to, so I'm fine with that trade-off.

What role did leverage play in early real estate investing? Leverage was important for getting into, certainly for the first property. My first property was a triplex, which we bought in 2010. That one was a $1,000 property. That was a $1,000 property. That one we put some money down and then leveraged into the rest.

The second one, however, we bought entirely in cash. That one only cost $21,000. The second property we bought entirely in cash. The third property, we got an investor loan. We got a loan from a private party. I guess to answer your question, we've used leverage in some deals and haven't used leverage in others.

It's certainly very helpful in getting in. I love Dave Ramsey, but I do not share his philosophy of never, ever, ever, ever, ever touch debt. I tend to be a bit more on the Robert Kiyosaki side of believing that leverage is okay in situations where it's cash flow positive with a very healthy margin.

That said, I am not like most real estate investors in that -- I shouldn't say most, but there are some real estate investors who get a little out of hand with leverage. I would caution you against that. I think it's something to be used very judiciously in limited circumstances and only if you've got huge, huge margins of error.

The reason I ask is because it has often seemed to me real estate can be very attractive for younger people because of the ability to leverage it and buy cash flow. You really can buy cash flow in real estate investing. If you have the right property and the right deal, how many properties would you say you look at for every deal that you've purchased of the six that you own now?

Oh my goodness. It's like a full-time job. It really is. It's an incredible, incredible time suck looking at properties. Yeah. If somebody does have the time to look at the properties and work through the deals, many real estate investors I've spoken with have often said they'll look at 100 houses for every property they wind up buying.

If you find the right deal where the money works, the nice thing about leverage on real estate is generally it's non-recourse, unlike maybe a margin account to buy dividend paying stocks where you borrow money to buy the stocks. Stock value declines, your loan is callable and you got to come up with the cash whereas real estate with a traditional loan generally the bank can't call the loan.

As long as you can come up with the cash regardless of what happens with the values, if you buy a good cash flow with a good margin of safety, it can really work well. Are there any specific numbers or ratios that you look at when you're evaluating properties? My quick and dirty back of the envelope calculation is called the 1% rule.

That is that the monthly rental income, gross rental income, must be at least 1% of the purchase price. If you're buying a $100,000 house, the monthly rental income should be at least $1,000. That's just a quick and dirty back of the envelope calculation. It's the first step, not the last.

If a property does not meet the 1% rule, it's out. It's gone from the game. I don't consider it. Running those numbers, that's at least a starting point for you to feel comfortable with working out the further numbers of vacancy rates and financing costs and all that and just backing into it.

I'll explain why I feel that that rule is so important. If your monthly gross rental is 1% of the purchase price, then annually, your annual revenue is 12% of the purchase price. That's $12,000 on a $100,000 house. Let's say that 50% of that goes into expenses, such as non-mortgage expenses, such as management, maintenance, repairs, vacancies, all of that.

50% of that goes into expenses. You're left with a 6% return on that $100,000 house. That's pretty good. That's just the cash flow. If you assume that the house appreciates at the rate of inflation, and inflation is 2.5% to 3%, then that means that over the long term, you're getting about an 8.5% to 9% return on that house.

That's a pretty good return on investment, or at least it's not bad. It's not terrible. 8.5% to 9% is certainly a rate of return that I'd be happy with. That is why I'm such a firm believer in the 1% rule. It makes sense. It gives you a convenient ...

Those round numbers and those simple rules like that really help to make quick judgments. I think it's valuable for people who haven't invested in real estate to think about numbers like that, just so that when deals fall across your lap ... Because if I remember, your first deal just fell into your lap.

It did. We were literally renting the house across the street, and we saw the for sale sign in the yard. We just did a very, very rough and dirty calculation in our head, and realized that this would just be a golden opportunity. We just jumped on it. It was sort of an impulse buy.

Are you not somebody that's affected by fear? Yeah. I was definitely scared before we did it, but my solution to fear is to just recheck the spreadsheet and run the spreadsheet 100 different times using a bunch of different scenarios, like best case, worst case, every iteration of medium case.

If the spreadsheet works out, if the math works out, I think that's the best antidote to fear. Also, understanding the worst case scenarios, right? Yeah. Understanding the worst case scenario from a mathematical point of view. You hear a lot of naysayers who love to give anecdotal information about, "Oh, rental properties are terrible.

Your tenants are going to drive a motorcycle through your house, and start a meth lab, and raise a pig farm in the middle of your attic," or whatever they say. You can't let those anecdotes scare you. I find it best to just sort of ignore the naysayers. If you're getting advice from people who aren't in the industry, then you're not listening to the right people.

Go to the people who actually do it day in and day out, and listen to what they have to say. Don't listen to Cousin Eddie. Good old broke Cousin Eddie. I'm going to pick on some of my favorite articles, because I'm interested in just hearing you talk about a couple of concepts that I read on your site.

Pretend that you're speaking to either a young person or a young couple in their 20s or 30s that has a significant amount of debt, regardless of why it's there and what it is. You wrote an article called, "Forget Your Debt. Just Forget About It, Really." It doesn't sound like very good financial advice.

Walk us through what your thoughts are and your philosophies. I really enjoyed the way that you thought about that. When I first started writing about personal finance, one of the things that shocked me was reading people who were in debt. Many of them had this ... They were so consumed by the idea that they were in debt.

All they could think about was getting out of debt, getting their personal balance sheet up to zero. They almost spoke as though once they were debt-free, they would be free. I've never had consumer debt. I've never had a debt-free debt. I've never had a credit card balance. I've never had a car loan.

I've never had any of that. But I never felt free because I always have to buy groceries and keep the electricity on. Those are still very real bills that need to be paid. It baffled me for a moment how people would talk about being debt-free as the goal when really that's just one piece of the puzzle.

I wrote this blog post called "Forget Your Debt" in which I said, "Listen, it's not about whether you have debt or whether you don't. It's about at all points in your life making the most financially sound choice. If you have a dollar, what's the most financially savvy way that you can spend that dollar?" Now, if you've got a credit card with an 18% interest rate and you have a potential investment that's going to pay you 8%, which one of those two options would you choose?

You would choose the guaranteed payoff of something that's costing you 18% versus an investment that may give you 8%, not because you want to get out of debt but just because the numbers make sense. It's a subtle difference, subtle mental shift. But you stop identifying as a person who has debt and just start identifying as a person who makes financially savvy choices.

So what if my choice is, how would you talk me through if I said, "Oh, you know what, Paula? That makes all the sense in the world. I'm going to think from abundance and financial independence, and tickets to Europe right now are only a thousand bucks. How would you talk me through it?

I have a lot of consumer debt. How would you talk me through that then?" Paula Bruggerman Well, so, all right. Yeah. Okay. A ticket to Europe. David Altman I know it's hypothetical, but it's an interesting – I hear it a lot. Paula Bruggerman So a ticket to Europe right now is $1,000, and you've got a credit card with a, what, let's say an 18% or a 20% interest rate on it.

And that interest compounds upon itself. So if you took that trip to Europe and didn't put that thousand towards paying off your credit card, how much longer would it take you to pay off that credit card? Crunch the numbers on that. What additional amount of interest would you pay?

Let's say – I'm just pulling numbers out of thin air. Let's say that you would end up paying an additional $800 in interest over the added amount of time that it would take you to pay off that credit card. Okay. Well, so, how much is the current discount for tickets to Europe?

Is it normally a $1,500 ticket, and now it's $1,000? Because if that's the case, you still end up $300 in the hole. You're better off paying the higher-priced ticket to Europe later in this particular scenario using these hypothetical numbers. Jay C. Harness Yeah. You're exactly right. And the interesting thing – ultimately it always comes back to what someone wants, right?

So it does come back to kind of what someone's goals are. And the thing I did like about – I loved about your article is that at the end of the day, the only way to get out of debt is just to pay payments on the debt. That's really it.

And you could talk about what order to do it in, and that's where most people get bogged down. But to me, what I find more powerful than the order is the reason, which is what you touch on with freedom. Thinking like a financial – coming from a term of place of financial abundance, and most goals are – most financial goals are more challenging to achieve if you have a heavy ongoing monthly expenses or if you have an extra heavy cost of a ticket added on by just simply the financing cost.

But it doesn't have to be this terrible thing where, "Woe is me, I'm in debt," because I've seen lots of people get totally focused on paying off their debt, and they achieve this magical milestone of zero debt, and six months later, they're right back in it. It's not for something.

If it's not for a reason, at least my observation is it tends not to last. But if that reason is clear, you can enjoy the process all the way out even though you may be working very hard at it. But it's challenging because I think people have to find little tricks that work for them.

They have to find the little reasons why, whether it's the trip to Europe or whatever their specific focus is. But it's the favorite topic of the financial world. >> Yes, debt is certainly a very popular topic. >> My other article, favorite article from you, "Stop crying that there are no jobs.

Create one." >> That one, I was surprised to see how popular that one became. There are two on that site that surprised me with their popularity. One was that one, and then the other was "Quit your job and travel." "Quit your job, travel, and live remarkably," I think was the full title.

But yes, those two were really runaway hits. And the one that you referenced, "Stop crying that there aren't any jobs. Create one," that one, so that one I wrote, it was a really interesting time because I was a journalist. That's my work background. So the one office job that I did have, if you could call it really an office job, was as a newspaper reporter, which sounds fun and exciting and glamorous.

And it was. There were definitely moments of it that were fun and exciting and glamorous. But the newspaper industry was declining when I entered. I started full-time in 2005, and the industry was already in decline. Craigslist had already decimated most classified ad revenue. All the major papers had hiring freezes.

Big papers like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News were in the process of shutting down. So yeah, it was sort of the equivalent of entering the typewriter industry right at its end. I went to a journalism conference, and everybody was gloom and doom, and everybody was so upset about the Internet and how the Internet had just destroyed the industry and destroyed newspapers and destroyed opportunity and this and that and the other.

And then, coincidentally, I happened to fly directly from the journalism conference to a blogging conference. And at the blogging conference, everybody's in super high spirits. And everyone's like, "Isn't it great how the Internet has created so much opportunity and there are all these new ways to make money, and there's all this opportunity that wasn't there before." And it was funny because at both conferences, the conversation was sort of fundamentally around how the Internet has changed the way we work and the way that media works, but the tone of the two conferences were so, so different.

And so that was what inspired that blog post. And I wrote about how at the journalism conference, when I told people that I was a freelancer, everyone was like, "Oh, I'm so sorry. Oh, that's so awful. And you don't even get benefits. You don't get paid time off." And whereas at the blogging conference, everyone's like, "Man, that's awesome.

You don't have to show up and report to a boss. You can work in your underwear. That's sweet." So yeah, it very much highlighted how just a shift in mentality and a shift in thinking can literally change your fortunes. >> Joe: Yeah, I love that. I think there's such a massive shift going on.

You know, I am not a journalist, but I see it in journalism very clearly. There's such a massive... Do you read any of James Altuquer's work? >> Ashley: Yes. Yeah, yes, yes. >> Joe: Okay, so he wrote a book called, which I just finished, called Choose Yourself. I think it's called The Choose Yourself Economy.

It's his latest book. And he launches into it in a very strong way, but his whole point is that job security is a thing of the past. The only people, all of us work for ourselves and are going to work for ourselves. And he's pretty strong about it. I'm not quite as strong as he is, but I see that shift happening all throughout the...

everywhere. You know, as a journalist, let's say you are a newspaper reporter. If you're not building up your own personal following that will go with you from whichever... I don't know what they're called in your business. The masthead, is that what they're called? Whichever name is at the top of your...

above the fold? >> Ashley: Yeah. >> Joe: If you're not building up your own following, you're going to have trouble. I mean, because all of us ultimately have to take responsibility and ultimately we all work for ourselves. It's just that some of us admit it by having our paychecks come from multiple employers and some of us don't realize it until we're forced to realize it by our employer and we realize, "Yup, I actually still do work for myself because now this employer is not paying me anymore." >> Ashley: Right, right, right.

>> Joe: But I love the kick in the seat of the pants. I've seen so many ways that people can make money on their own and they can, instead of having to wait, you know, you don't have to wait until you're a millionaire to be financially independent or to live independently.

All you got to do is... there are tons of ways of doing it. One way is to be really wealthy and live off of dividend income. Another way is simply to create a job for yourself, create a business for yourself. One of my new favorite websites, I'm hoping to interview the author soon.

Have you ever heard of the website, reedcraigslist.com? >> Ashley: No. >> Joe: Fascinating. If you ever want content for your article saying, "Hey, stop crying and create a job," the author of that site, he was a contractor. I think he had three or four kids and he had a bunch of debt, was really struggling financially, but decided the contracting business wasn't going to work for him.

So he decided he was going to make his living on Craigslist. For the last number of years, has made his entire living buying and selling things on Craigslist. >> Ashley: I have interacted with plenty of people who have done that. As a landlord, I'm often on Craigslist looking for a used washing machine or a used this or a used that.

There are plenty of normal, regular everyday people who are selling their appliances on Craigslist, but every now and again I'll stumble upon an ad. From the way it's written, the way that they give you the model numbers and the dimensions, and just from the way that the ad is written, you can tell right away, "Oh, this is somebody who does this for a living." I'll actually call the person who's offering that appliance, even if I don't want the particular appliance that they're offering, because I can tell that they're a professional, I can tell that they do this for a living, and therefore they could become an ongoing contact and an ongoing supplier.

As someone who's managing six property units, I'd much rather have a Rolodex of ongoing suppliers. I know plenty of people who make their entire living off Craigslist. It's a very, very simple way to do it. I love watching them. I love their example. They've literally done it. They've created a job for themselves.

Using a resource that is completely available to all of us, and yet so many of us don't have a job. I can't create one. You would enjoy that guy's site. Go check it out. He actually just wrote a post that I enjoyed very much called basically "How to Start from Zero." If I had zero dollars and didn't have anything to my name, how I would start on Craigslist.

He walked through, literally from zero dollars, how he would get a bike off of Craigslist by working for one, trading some odd half-day's work or a day's work for a bike, and use Craigslist at the library, and kind of walk through this formula. To me, that's such a valuable resource.

I don't plan to go and make my living on Craigslist. Once you change your mentality and you start thinking like an entrepreneur, that I don't have to necessarily go and work in a cubicle. There are millions of things that I can do. I start seeing the options and the opportunities everywhere, absolutely everywhere.

You've got to change the mindset. You've got to think like an entrepreneur and not like someone who's looking for a paycheck. Exactly. One thing that was very powerful for me was just sort of learning where jobs came from. I think a lot of people aren't taught to think that way.

People sort of grow up believing that jobs are just there. Then when you hit that point where you realize, "No, wait a minute. Somebody made this. Someone created this, literally out of thin air. Here's how they did it." Then it's not a big step to go from that to, "Wait a minute.

Now, here's how I could do this for myself. Oh, and wait. Now that I've done it for myself, here's how I can expand that into doing it for myself and other people as well." Exactly. I'm with you. It's been fun, Paula. I enjoy your writing. I hope you'll keep it up.

Thank you. Is the blog a creative outlet for you? Is it something that you make money on? Why do you blog? Geez, for a number of reasons. I guess it's everything. It's a creative outlet. I do make money on it. I hope that I help people with it. I meet some amazing people through it, amazing readers who will come to me with questions or with stories.

I love interacting with readers. For me, I guess my primary benefit from the blog is creating a community that's based around these shared principles and values and ideals and hopefully creating just a supportive community of people who believe in ruthlessly prioritizing and living a life that is simultaneously ambitious and yet unconventional and just writing the script, writing the story of their own lives rather than just going with the flow and doing what's expected of them.

It's exciting to be around a community of people who think like that. To me, that's been a huge value of the Internet is no matter how you think, you can find some other people that think like you do. Exactly. Sometimes that's challenging to find in your own local area, but online you can meet those people.

It's exciting to be around those people, especially if you can build it around your ideas. It really is. I remember one other thing I wanted to ask you about because I had first heard, for whatever reason, I wasn't aware of this one, but I thought it was a really useful tip.

Save an instant 8% on everything. How do I do this? There are these websites. There's this industry that's called the secondary gift card market. What that is, basically when a person, when Uncle Joe gets a gift card for Christmas that he doesn't like or that he doesn't want, typically what used to happen is that gift card would fit in a drawer collecting dust.

These websites popped up, but they're called secondary gift card markets. People who have gotten gift cards for stores that just don't interest them go online and they'll sell those gift cards at a discount off the face value. They might sell a $100 gift card for $90. If that's to a retailer that the buyer is interested in buying from, then it's sort of a win-win because the buyer gets a $100 gift card for $90 and the seller gets $90, which he would way rather have than this card to a store that he doesn't care about.

I actually buy gift cards for a lot of the stores I shop from, Home Depot, Lowe's, Target, Trader Joe's when they're available. The places where I just normally do everyday regular shopping, I'll just go online and grab a gift card for it. It's just a really great way of saving anywhere from 5% to 15% depending on the retailer.

Typically, more popular retailers like Target, they're more in demand, they're more popular. So on a Target gift card, you might only get 3% to 5% off, which is still worth doing. Whereas a more specialized retailer like Sephora, like a store that sells makeup, you could get 15% off. The thing I like about this strategy is I hadn't previously thought about it, but once I went and looked in Plastic Jungle and things like that, if they have the cards available, the thing that's beautiful is this strategy can be stacked with some other stuff, other strategies.

So if you say, someone like you, you probably do a good bit of business at Home Depot and Lowe's. If you can buy these gift cards, you can buy them online and you can pay for them using a rewards credit card of some kind with additional cash back for the cost of that.

You take that, you buy the gift cards, which gives you a discount there. Then I find it pretty simple and easy to find 10% off coupons with Lowe's near me. So you get an additional 10% off with a quick web search a lot of times. And then, even better, you're doing all of that for your real estate business.

So then we're using deductible dollars. Right, exactly. You've just told the story of my life for the past couple of years. You're going to like my new show that's coming out on smart ways to spend money because there's little things like that that I think make the difference. Most people that are starting out and kind of building it themselves, all of these little tips and tricks, when you start stacking them together, are so beneficial.

You can just wander into the local big box store and pay retail or you can think about your purchases. You may still buy from the big box store, but if you do it in some intelligent ways, you can get the same value for a much lower price. You might have just inspired a new blog post.

I should explain exactly my method for buying things at Lowe's because it's very similar to what you described, actually. I think you could do it in everything. And that's where, kind of going back to the rational consumer, it's stupid to say, "Oh, always buy things." Stupid is a strong word.

I don't think it's the best idea to say, "Always do this, always do that." I think it's a better idea to teach people, "Here are some of the strategies that you can use," and then allow people to pick and choose. Because one time you may buy a washer and dryer off the guy off Craigslist, but the next time you may go ahead and just buy it at Lowe's because of the value that you find there and the strategy you're able to put together.

And you'll do it differently in each situation. Right, right. Exactly. It's all about crunching the numbers. Going back to that mowing the lawn thing, there are any number of different ways that you could crunch the numbers on that, any step of the process, whether it's whether or not to have a yard, where that yard is going to be located, how big it's going to be, what you're going to do with it.

Yeah, there are so many different options and variables and iterations that it's just – you just can't make any blanket statements one way or the other. There are just way too many variables that all need to be weighed. If you can just think clearly about your situation and find the best – find the thing that really works for the situation that's in front of you, that's the way to win the game.

Absolutely. Were there any additional steps to your Lowe's strategy I missed? Yeah. Go on upromise.com. If you go on upromise, set up an account there and then go through them to make a purchase at Lowe's, you'll get an additional 5% off. And so what I'll do is I will buy a discounted gift card for Lowe's, then I'll log on to YouPromise.

Through YouPromise, I'll connect to Lowe's. So then when I make the purchase, I get 5% off, but then I'm paying with a gift card as well. So that gift card gives me another 10% off. And then I'm paying with a credit card that gives me frequent flyer miles, which by the way, allowed me to fly to Paris for free the last trip that I took, country number 29.

I like it. And don't forget, obviously for most of this, this will be a business, you're paying it through. Yeah. And it's all a business expense. And then hopefully I won't – hopefully then you also do a good job of keeping separate receipts marking your improvements versus your repairs so that you can fully deduct most of them as if possible, the repairs as repairs, and then you have to amortize the improvements on a rental property.

But that's another little thing that I've observed that a lot of real estate investors aren't aware of. Yeah. We have a CPA who gets burdened with all of our receipts once a year. Good. So just a little trick that I've talked to people about is always make sure if you're buying $100 worth of things at Lowe's and let's say 50 of them are to make an improvement on your property and $50 is for something that is classified as – let's say it's $10,000 worth at Lowe's.

$5,000 of it is something that's classified as an improvement and $5,000 of it is for a simple roof repair. You want to make sure you get separate receipts for all the things that you're buying for repairs versus improvements and you want to keep that separate accounting. Most people don't do it.

They just check out everything and it's kind of all mixed up. But just for those who don't know, it's real estate. You can fully deduct all repairs to a property on rental real estate. You can fully deduct all your repairs to a property in the year that you make them against your earned income whereas your improvements have to be amortized out over the IRS tables.

So that's the exact opposite of what you want to do for your personal house. So on your personal house, if you're spending money at Lowe's, if things are for repairs, you can't do it. That's not deductible because it's for your personal house. But if things are for an improvement on your house, that will increase your tax basis for when the time comes that you can sell it.

So I got a little technical there, but it's all these little things, they add up when you start adding them up. They do. They definitely do. I like it. I like the "you promised" angle. And it could probably be even stacked on that you could find a, I don't know, can you do some kind of price match strategy?

"Hey, Home Depot's selling this for this much. I wonder if Lowe's does that." I've never looked into that, but I bet they probably would. Yeah. Very cool. Anything that I missed? Anything you'd like to add? No, I think we're good. Cool. Yeah. I appreciate you taking the time out of your schedule to do this.

And let's see, where can people find you on the web? Affordanything.com? Where else? Affordanything.com. I'm on the web in a bunch of different places, but that's my primary site, so come visit me there. And if you do want to hear me on another podcast, I do make an appearance every week on the Stacking Benjamins podcast.

It's a very long podcast. It goes on for more than an hour, but there's a brief moment at the end of each show where they do a roundtable discussion with four bloggers, one of whom is me. So I'm the token girl on the show. So you can tune in and hear me there if you're more into listening to podcasts than you are into reading.

I'll find a link to that. I haven't listened to their show, but I'll find a link and put it in the show notes. Cool. Thank you, Paula. All right. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me on. This has been fun. All right. And with that, this has been the Radical Personal Finance Podcast with Joshua Sheets and Paula from Affordanything.