Afford Anything

#382: Joe is buying his first house hack and would like to understand if the FHA loan or the doctor loan would be better for him.Sara wants to leave her job to spend time with her children, and she needs help in calculating her FIRE number.Kat received a windfall and is wondering if she should invest it in stocks, real estate, or a combination of both.Aisha is moving to the US and wants to start investing ASAP - how should she approach her goal to reach FIRE?Former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I tackle these questions in today’s episode.Enjoy!P.S. Got a question? Leave it here.For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode382 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

#381: Maybe you’re envious of your friend who bought Bitcoin in 2015 and held until it hit 7-figures.Maybe you’re anxious about rapidly rising home prices.Maybe you regret that you didn’t buy a rental property five years ago, because – at the time – you felt like prices had already risen so much (from 2012 to 2017) that you just couldn’t justify paying 2017’s pricetag.Our lives, finances and careers invoke many strong feelings. In today’s episode, Mollie West Duffy, the co-author of Big Feelings, shares strategies for not letting our feelings hijack our choices.Mollie and her co-author, Liz Fosslien, run an Instagram channel about emotional management with half a million followers. Fosslien is an economist and behavioral scientist whose work has been featured by The Economist, Freakonomics and NPR. Duffy is an organizational and leadership development expert who’s written for Harvard Business Review.They tackle relatable workplace issues like perfectionism, productivity guilt and Zoom fatigue, among much more.Enjoy!For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode381 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

#380: Matt wants to optimize his portfolio and wants to know if he should invest along the Efficient Frontier – despite the fact that the asset allocation it recommends is absolutely bonkers; it’s wild and risky and tilted like nothing he’s ever seen before.Ionnie just rolled over her Roth IRA and would like to understand how to withdraw her contributions without getting penalized.Anonymous and her spouse are both in the military and about to reach retirement. They have an expensive whole life insurance policy, costing $550 per month, and wonder if they should switch to term life insurance.Former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I tackle these three questions in today’s episode. Enjoy!P.S. Also – we’re launching a book club!! Each month, we’ll read and discuss a book written by an Afford Anything podcast guest, starting with Morgan Housel, James Clear, Ken Honda, and Dr. Susan David. Sign up here.P.P.S. Got a question? Leave it here.For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode380 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

#379: Welcome to our First Friday bonus episode.Once a month, Afford Anything presents a special feature called Invest Anywhere, in which we teach our audience how to invest in real estate from thousands of miles away.We kickoff today’s episode by discussing current market conditions. Yesterday the Fed raised interest rates by another 50 basis points, which means mortgages are more expensive than they’ve been in years. Additionally, jittery investors worried about an impending recession led the stock market to its worst day of the calendar year so far.How should we interpret the current market conditions? Is this a good time to buy an investment property? We cover this in the first 20 minutes of today’s episode.Next, we discuss 5 challenges associated with investing in long-distance real estate investing: (1) fear, (2) accountability, (3) traction, (4) stress, and (5) relationships.We elaborate on each challenge and offer solutions.Finally, we discuss 4 benefits to investing out-of-state: (1) competitive ability, (2) diversification, (3) returns, and (4) repeatability. We elaborate on four types of diversification: economic, strategy, business cycle, and asset based.Enjoy!For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode379 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

#378: Anonymous is 25. She has a job offer that comes with a substantial raise. Hooray!Buuut … there’s a problem. If she accepts this job offer, her new employer won’t allow her to contribute as much money to her company retirement accounts. How should she think about the trade-off between increasing income and funding her retirement?Meanwhile, Dan from California is retiring soon and wants to know what he and his wife should do with the loan they took out against their 401(k).Finally, an anonymous caller who goes by “Daughter” has a whole life policy that only costs her less than $50 per month. Since her policy is so cheap, should she keep it?In today's episode, former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I tackle these tough situations.Enjoy!Do you have a question on business, money, trade-offs, financial independence strategies, travel, or investing? Leave it here and we’ll answer them in a future episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

#377: Today’s episode is sheer retirement nerd bliss.We talk to the creator of the 4 percent retirement safe withdrawal rule, Bill Bengen.If you’re new to retirement planning, you might not yet grasp the gravity of this. Let’s cut to the chase: the 4 percent rule is one of the most revolutionary, groundbreaking insights in the field of retirement research in the past 30 years.To understand why, let’s climb in our time machines and return to 1994.Back then, many financial advisors were telling their clients that they could safely withdraw 7 percent of their retirement portfolio each year.After all, the simplistic logic went, the stock market has historically yielded between 7 to 9 percent returns, so that type of withdrawal rate shouldn’t dwindle the principle … right? ⠀Bill Bengen, an MIT graduate and former rocket scientist, decided to build a better model. He looked at the performance of investment portfolios across 30-year time horizons, beginning in 1926.Under the assumption that the portfolio is invested 50 percent in an S&P 500 Index and 50 percent in intermediate-term bonds, in a tax deferred account, he found that retirees could only withdraw 4.2 percent of their portfolio in the first year of retirement, and that amount adjusted for inflation each subsequent year.He called this the “safe withdrawal rate” that gave people a reasonable chance of not outliving their money, based on historic performance.He published the results in the Journal of Financial Planning and caused a stir. This was revolutionary. It upended the assumptions that dominated the field at the time.And it remains a cornerstone of retirement planning to this day.We talk to Bill Bengen about his discovery – and his latest research – in today’s episode.For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode377 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

#376: Meghan’s mom is 64 years old and suffering under a toxic boss. It’s tough to switch jobs at her age. How should she think through the next steps?Ellen has a 20-year-old son with physical and developmental disabilities. Her other child, age 21, will need to look after him for the rest of their lives. How should she handle their inheritance?Joe wants to start working part-time in four years, and fully retire four years after that. He worries he’s investing too aggressively for his retirement date.In today's episode, former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I tackle these tough situations.Enjoy!Do you have a question on business, money, trade-offs, financial independence strategies, travel, or investing? Leave it at https://affordanything.com/voicemail and we’ll answer them in a future episode._______For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode376 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

#375: Here’s the deal:The majority of people who write about personal finance repeat the same tired aphorisms and cliches.“Millennials aren’t investing enough,” they’ll lament. “Millennials are amassing wealth at a slower pace than previous generations!”But when you ask for their source, they turn up blank. Each writer points to a headline, which sources another headline, in a neverending circular secondary-source-citation that fails to point to any primary data source.Nick Maggiulli doesn’t play that game.If you haven’t heard the name Nick Maggiulli yet, prepare to meet one of the most original, insightful voices in the media landscape of personal finance and investing. (His last name is pronounced “ma - julie,” and his godfather refers to him as “paper hands,” but that latter point is a different story for another day.)Nick is a data scientist with a knack for clear written communication, a rare Venn Diagram intersection of skill sets. He holds a laser-focused interest in the arenas of personal finance and investing, and he’s eager to share fresh, nuanced, evidence-backed takes about savings, spending and investing with anyone who will listen.He recently released his first book, Just Keep Buying; the title reflects a user-friendly reminder to continue dollar-cost averaging. It also speaks to the main idea behind wealth creation: accumulate income-producing assets, consistently, for as long as you possibly can.It’s an honor to welcome Nick Maggiulli onto the Afford Anything podcast for what I hope is the first of many appearances. In today’s episode, we discuss actionable strategies for managing your money, including assessing your spot along the save-invest continuum, implementing the 2X rule into your spending decisions, and saving half of your inflation-adjusted future raises.Enjoy!For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode375 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

#374: Andy in Palm Springs wants to create an income stream through a taxable brokerage account. What strategy should he use to minimize the tax impact of withdrawing his gains?Jake wants investment cash flow until he’s eligible for his military pension in 10 years. Should he buy small multifamily properties right now, wait a few years and invest in syndications or should he invest in index funds through taxable accounts?Anonymous is a US Citizen, lives in London, and can’t invest in index funds. How can he invest while reducing his risk?Former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I tackle these questions in today’s episode.Enjoy!P.S. Got a question? Leave it at https://affordanything.com/voicemail Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

#373: How do people make money in real estate?Many focus on rental income, but this is only one of five ways that properties create wealth.We explain five surprising ways that real estate builds your balance sheet: cash flow, appreciation (market-based and forced), tax benefits, principal paydown, and instant equity at closing.Why does this matter for long-distance investors?If you’re investing out-of-state, you’ll need to choose a city or town. How do you decide? First, think about how you want to bias your returns. Do you want to optimize for cash flow? More appreciation potential? Identifying this will help you align your city/town selection with your financial goals.If you’ve been thinking about investing in real estate – especially if you might invest long-distance – you’ll love this episode.Enjoy!For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode373 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices