#391: Dr. Reza Abraham, an international leadership consultant, walks us through a framework of staying in control of your career and your life. This framework utilizes a singular core, three cornerstones and twelve principles. He explains how to apply and execute these principles to reinforce personal fulfillment, growth and progression. 0:00:47: Introducing Dr. Reza Abraham + the framework for staying in control of your life through a core, three cornerstones and 12 pillars 0:02:48: The core o...
Jul 13, 2022•1 hr 14 min•Ep 391•Transcript available on Metacast #390: We start this episode with two anonymous callers who have opposite problems: one says her bills are too high, while the other is worried that she’s saving too much. Anonymous (“Izzy”) saves A LOT. She wants to relax about her spending more, and start including more joy into her life. How should she approach the next 10 or 20 years, so that she can enjoy her financial security? A different anonymous caller (“Starlight”) has the opposite problem: her expenses are mounting. Her bills make her...
Jul 06, 2022•1 hr 25 min•Ep 390•Transcript available on Metacast #389: Should you bother investing in real estate … especially from a distance? Is the hassle worth it? What’s the upside? Do you really want this? Or should you just stick with index funds? Isn’t it scary to invest out-of-state? How do you know if you’re ready? In today’s episode of Afford Anything Presents: Invest Anywhere, my co-host Suni Rao and I tackle these common questions. For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode389 Learn more about your ad choices...
Jul 01, 2022•52 min•Ep 389•Transcript available on Metacast #388: Recessions are terrifying. Market crashes often bring out the worst in people’s anxieties and fears. This fear triggers us to act even more irrationally than usual – which can lead to making expensive mistakes in our investment portfolios. In today’s episode, Scott Nations, who spent his career studying market volatility, describes some of the most common cognitive biases and irrational behaviors that investors make. He shares tips on how to master the mental game of investing, especially ...
Jun 29, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Ep 388•Transcript available on Metacast #387: Lila is concerned about inflation and the risk of a recession. Should she invest in the stock market, despite the scary headlines? Or should she pay off her primary residence or her investment properties? Linda invested in a 529 for her son’s college, and he’ll be starting in the fall. But, the value of the plan dropped right before she was planning on using it and she is wondering how to keep from losing more money. Jen and her husband want to retire in 8 years. They’re hoping to have pai...
Jun 22, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Ep 387•Transcript available on Metacast #386: We all have our secrets. We keep some secrets from bosses, colleagues and clients, like the fact that we hope to retire early, change careers, or start a business. We keep other secrets from friends and family, like our income, net worth, spending habits and investing mistakes. Research from around the world shows that we tend to keep the same types of secrets – around 38 common varieties, including secrets about finances, ambitions, beliefs, habits, unpopular opinions, mental health, trau...
Jun 15, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep 386•Transcript available on Metacast #385: Anonymous (“Jennifer”) keeps hearing us say that you should “start with the end in mind” – that your investments should match your goals and timeline. But what if you don’t have any specific financial goal? What if your risk tolerance is different than you once thought? Rachel’s new employer won’t let her contribute to retirement for more than a year - what should she do?? Carri’s parents are in poor health and can’t work much - what should they do about their life insurance policy and the...
Jun 08, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Ep 385•Transcript available on Metacast #384: Welcome back to the third episode in our special series, Afford Anything Presents: Invest Anywhere. Invest Anywhere is a new monthly series that runs on the First Friday of each month. It lays out the information you need to invest in real estate at a distance. Many of you want to invest in real estate, but you live in a high-cost-of-living area. (Ahem, California and New York). The homes in your city are prohibitively expensive, and they offer lackluster returns. You could invest in a low...
Jun 03, 2022•1 hr 18 min•Ep 384•Transcript available on Metacast #383: Behavioral researcher Vanessa Van Edwards, who runs the research lab Science of People, breaks down the psychological secrets behind feeling and looking more confident, competent and charismatic. She explains how to apply these techniques to critical conversations around money, whether you’re negotiating your salary, buying a home or car, or arguing with your spouse about your household spending. Subscribe to get the show notes delivered via email, for free, at https://affordanything.com/s...
Jun 01, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Ep 383•Transcript available on Metacast #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...
May 24, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Ep 382•Transcript available on Metacast #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 Feeli...
May 19, 2022•1 hr 23 min•Ep 381•Transcript available on Metacast #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...
May 11, 2022•1 hr 26 min•Ep 380•Transcript available on Metacast #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 th...
May 06, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Ep 379•Transcript available on Metacast #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 ano...
May 05, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Ep 378•Transcript available on Metacast #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 tellin...
Apr 26, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep 377•Transcript available on Metacast #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 retireme...
Apr 20, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep 376•Transcript available on Metacast #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...
Apr 13, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Ep 375•Transcript available on Metacast #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 fun...
Apr 06, 2022•48 min•Ep 374•Transcript available on Metacast #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 ...
Apr 01, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Ep 373•Transcript available on Metacast #372: Eve has been investing in her brokerage account and the tax liabilities are starting to add up. She wants to retire in 12 years and is wondering if she should invest in after-tax contributions and plan on a Roth conversion. Anonymous has rental properties and wants to start building his kids credit histories. Is it a good idea to add them as co-borrowers on the mortgage? Lily is really excited about investing in real estate, but househacking wasn’t the right fit. She’s looking for advice o...
Mar 29, 2022•56 min•Ep 372•Transcript available on Metacast #371: Psychology professor Bill von Hippel explains the evolutionary science behind how we’re hardwired as humans. We’re wired to be social, to connect, to communicate and cooperate. We’re wired to want to learn and teach, to build a collective body of knowledge that stretches beyond what any single individual could ever learn in their lifetime. We’re wired to feel surges of happiness that fade, so that we’re intrinsically motivated to keep repeating behaviors that lead to additional surges of h...
Mar 23, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep 371•Transcript available on Metacast #370: Kristen is 32, and she and her husband want to retire in less than 20 years. They make too much to contribute to a Roth IRA. Should they use back door Roth conversions to speed along their path to early retirement? Michelle makes $190,000 and is going to switch to a career that pays $40,000 on average. To prepare for this lower salary, she's selling her current home and buying a different one. Should she pay off her new home with the proceeds from the old one? Or should she invest her prof...
Mar 16, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Ep 370•Transcript available on Metacast #369: To answer these questions, we need a deep, tree-trunk understanding – a core, fundamental understanding – of how the stock market operates. What, exactly, IS a stock – and how are stocks valued? What’s the difference between the Dow Jones, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq? Why is the market a voting machine in the short-term, but a weighing machine in the long-term? Brian Feroldi, the author of “Why Does the Stock Market Go Up?,” joins us for a Stocks 101 explainer episode. If you’d like a deep...
Mar 09, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep 369•Transcript available on Metacast #368: Grace wants to buy a manufactured home for rental income. Should she calculate her returns differently for a manufactured home? Alex is curious about cryptocurrency. How should she analyze the returns promised by different platforms and where can she go to learn more about crypto in general? Thomas and his wife have parallel goals of saving for a down payment and contributing to retirement accounts. How should they balance both of these goals? In today's episode, former financial planner J...
Mar 04, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep 368•Transcript available on Metacast #367: Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, many commentators have remarked that we’re living in an “epidemic of anxiety.” More than 40 million Americans suffer from anxiety, and countless millions more notice themselves “acting out” against their responsibilities in smaller, self-sabotaging ways: procrastinating, lacking motivation, grappling with an inability to concentrate. In today’s episode, Dr. Ellen Vora, M.D., discusses both the internal and environmental factors that can exacerbate ...
Mar 02, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep 367•Transcript available on Metacast #366: Micheal’s parents just sold their home to pay off debt and fund their retirement. How should he invest the profits? Ryker would like to understand what it would take for cryptocurrency to be considered as a good investment option for a diversified portfolio. Megan has qualified for her employer's 401k and needs help deciding between investing in a Roth 401K and a Roth IRA. In today's episode, former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I tackle these tough questions. Do you have a question ...
Feb 24, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Ep 366•Transcript available on Metacast #365: Nearly every financial news story for the past several months has centered around inflation – but what, exactly, is inflation? What are its causes? What are its effects? How is it measured? What notable inflationary events have unfolded throughout history, and what can we learn from these? In this episode, we peel back the layers of the onion in order to deepen our understanding of the concept of inflation. We discuss hyperinflation, biflation, stagflation; we discuss the CPI, the PPI, and...
Feb 18, 2022•59 min•Ep 365•Transcript available on Metacast #364: Our first caller is curious about whether he should keep his 30 year term life insurance policy or let it lapse with 12 years left on the policy? Anonymous is wondering which financial products would work best for to cover her older age care and expenses? Max is thinking through real estate and stock market returns as they relate to future population trends. Ramon asks us about the details behind infinite banking. Do you have a question on business, money, trade-offs, financial independenc...
Feb 09, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Ep 364•Transcript available on Metacast #363: In our 20’s and 30’s, we have high levels of fluid intelligence, or raw intellectual horsepower. We can ace tests, impress people with our memory and recall, and analyze facts, documents and data. But in our 40’s and 50’s, we have higher levels of crystallized intelligence, which allows us to draw together novel insights from across domains. Fluid intelligence allows us to analyze, or break apart. Crystallized intelligence allows us to synthesize, or put together. Each type of intelligence...
Feb 04, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Ep 363•Transcript available on Metacast #362: David is questioning how to better manage his spending. He’d like a stronger framework to think through budgeting challenges. Elisa and her husband bought a home, and now they’re saving extra income every month. She has a pension and her husband is an entrepreneur. How much should they be saving for retirement and how should they invest their extra money? Geoff invested primarily in taxable brokerage accounts for the last twenty years. He’s built a $6 million portfolio and reached financia...
Feb 01, 2022•1 hr 27 min•Ep 362•Transcript available on Metacast 
