Afford Anything® https://affordanything.com/ Get Smarter With Money So You Can Build Wealth Fri, 18 Sep 2026 20:36:39 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.5 #751: Why Self-Worth Predicts Your Income More Than Your SAT Score Does, with Marisa Franco https://affordanything.com/self-worth-and-net-worth/ Fri, 18 Sep 2026 20:18:34 +0000 https://affordanything.com/?p=16372

Marisa Franco built her career studying friendship and belonging. Her latest research pulled her somewhere unexpected: the connection between self-worth and net worth.

In her data, people with high self-worth and high SAT scores earned close to double the income of people with low SAT scores. People with low self-worth showed no such pattern — their test scores didn’t predict future earnings at all.

The gap, Franco found, has little to do with intelligence or family privilege and everything to do with a person’s relationship to their own emotions. Self-esteem is what someone says about themselves; self-worth is whether they still believe it when things get hard.

Personal finance has a common refrain: your net worth is not your self-worth. Franco’s research complicates that a little — self-worth and net worth turn out to be linked, just not in the direction people usually assume.

Marisa Franco joined the show to unpack that connection. She explains how self-worth and net worth actually relate, why chasing net worth alone won’t fix low self-worth, and what it actually takes to build the kind of self-worth that doesn’t depend on either one.

Key Takeaways

The biggest ideas from the conversation

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  • High self-worth outperforms high SAT scores: Marisa Franco’s research found that people with high self-worth and high SAT scores earned nearly double the income of people with low SAT scores. For people with low self-worth, SAT scores made almost no difference to future income at all.
  • Self-esteem has a good twin and a bad twin: People with high self-esteem split into two profiles: one treats others with compassion and builds strong relationships, while the other is hostile and antagonistic, reporting worse relationships than people with low self-esteem altogether.
  • Low self-worth can sabotage financial goals: As a portfolio nears a target like financial independence, people with low self-worth may pull money into safer assets prematurely — not from bad math, but from an ingrained belief that good outcomes are set to be taken away.
  • High self-worth makes stagnant wages easier to leave: Research shows people with low self-worth are more likely to stay in jobs with stagnating pay, while people with high self-worth are more likely to leave — a pattern researchers link to needing the outside world to reflect an internal sense of worth.
  • Feeling and doing are two separate skills: Franco defines self-worth as sensitivity (noticing even small emotions) plus responsiveness (using those emotions as information). The practice of treating every feeling as if it matters, she argues, is what builds a durable sense of self-worth over time.
  • Self-worth and net worth are linked, not equal: Franco pushes back gently on the common refrain that net worth isn’t self-worth. She argues self-worth and net worth are connected — high self-worth helps people capitalize on opportunities — without self-worth needing to depend on a bank balance.

Resources

Links, tools and references mentioned

+

Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Secure Attachment
Marisa Franco’s book, which explores the research behind self-worth and net worth featured in this episode.
Get the book

Marisa Franco’s website
Speaking engagements, articles, and more from Marisa.
Visit drmarisagfranco.com

Marisa on Instagram
Follow for updates, or reach out for signed copies via Lost City Books.
Follow @drmarisagfranco

Chapters

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Note: Timestamps are approximate and may vary across listening platforms due to dynamically inserted ads.

2:05 The two very different types of high self-esteem
4:36 Self-esteem vs. self-worth: the real difference
5:37 Why self-worth predicts income more than SAT scores
12:21 Sabotaging your own portfolio right before you hit FI
14:15 The self-fulfilling prophecy behind financial fear
19:36 Why too much love can make you pull away
21:05 How low self-worth blocks promotions and job offers
32:13 The memory trick that can change your brain
38:19 Why self-worth matters most in a bad market
58:10 Does self-worth actually drive your net worth?

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]]> #750: Your “Diversified” Portfolio Might Secretly Be One Big Bet on AI, with Alec Litowitz https://affordanything.com/adaptability-quotient-alec-litowitz/ Tue, 15 Sep 2026 19:05:49 +0000 https://affordanything.com/?p=14993

Your S&P 500 index fund looks diversified — but Alec Litowitz says its concentration in AI stocks makes it one giant bet in disguise.

Alec Litowitz joined a hedge fund with $100 million in assets and six employees. He had never made a trade in his life.

That fund was Citadel, in its earliest days, and Alec became one of its founding partners alongside Ken Griffin — eventually running its global equities business. He later left to start his own firm, Magnetar Capital, now one of the largest alternative asset managers in the world.

Somewhere across those three decades, Alec noticed something uncomfortable: the smartest, most experienced people in the room are often the last ones to realize the world has changed. Not because they’re not smart. Because they’re the most attached to having already been right.

His new book, The Adaptability Quotient, argues that raw intelligence and experience — IQ and EQ — aren’t enough anymore. What matters now is a third thing: how fast you notice your mental model is wrong, and how willing you are to let it go.

We get into why Blockbuster’s downfall wasn’t really about one bad decision, how to tell whether a shift in your industry is temporary or permanent, why AI might make judgment scarcer even as it makes knowledge abundant, and why Alec says a “diversified” portfolio can secretly be one big bet in disguise.

Key Takeaways

The biggest ideas from the conversation
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  • Knowledge is now abundant, but judgment is scarce: Litowitz argues that when a resource shifts from scarce to abundant, something else becomes the new bottleneck. With AI making knowledge cheap, the scarce resource left for humans is judgment and agency — your ability to weigh evidence and act on it.
  • Use AI to expand your thinking, not shrink it: Litowitz warns against asking AI for a single compressed answer, since that hands over your judgment. Instead, bring your own reasoning first, then ask AI to poke holes in it, play devil’s advocate, or point out what you missed.
  • Your S&P 500 fund is one AI bet: Seven stocks now drive most of the S&P 500’s gains, and they’re all riding the same AI thesis. A supposedly diversified index fund concentrates risk on a single storyline, not five hundred independent ones.
  • Hold a strong opinion, but hold it loosely: Litowitz calls this a “strong opinion, weakly held” — the best answer you have right now, tested and ready to be replaced the moment better evidence shows up. Confidence comes from how fast you adapt, not from being right the first time.
  • Chase fast feedback loops, not fancy perks: Litowitz left a cushy investment banking job for trading because the feedback was instant — right or wrong, every second. He tells young people to pick jobs and environments that show them results quickly, since that’s how real learning compounds.
  • A shock and a regime change aren’t the same: A shock rattles markets but fades if you can wait it out. A true regime change permanently alters what’s produced, flips what’s scarce, moves the bottleneck, and never reverses — which is how Litowitz frames AI’s arrival now.

Resources

Links, tools and references mentioned
+

The Adaptability Quotient by Alec Litowitz
Alec’s new book, discussed throughout this episode.
Get the book

Grit by Angela Duckworth
Referenced in this episode as a foundational read on perseverance and passion.
Get the book

Chapters

Jump to a specific part of the conversation
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Note: Timestamps are approximate and may vary across listening platforms due to dynamically inserted ads.

01:04 What a doomed Antarctic expedition reveals about real adaptability
07:27 How AQ is different from IQ and EQ
08:59 Why swimming fast in the wrong direction still loses
16:36 Why AI is an environment now, not just a tool
18:10 What becomes scarce once AI makes knowledge free
33:29 Why the best decision-makers want to be wrong
35:26 The real reason Blockbuster lost to Netflix
49:04 Four signs a change is permanent, not temporary
56:00 Why your “diversified” portfolio might not be
01:33:13 The one skill that outlasts any job

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]]> #749: How a Blind Man and his Guide Dog Survived Sept. 11 — and What His Mindset Can Teach Us, with Michael Hingson https://affordanything.com/blind-911-survivor-guide-dog/ Mon, 14 Sep 2026 15:59:07 +0000 https://affordanything.com/?p=14985

On September 11, 2001, Michael Hingson was on the 78th floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower with his guide dog, Roselle, when the first plane hit. Over the next hour, they walked down 78 flights of stairs together, calm the entire way.

Michael later wrote about that day in Thunder Dog, a New York Times bestseller, and now spends his career speaking about fear, trust, and teamwork. In this episode, he breaks down exactly what happened floor by floor, and why staying calm mattered as much as knowing the exits.

Key Takeaways

The biggest ideas from the conversation
+
  • Guide dogs don’t lead, they keep you safe: Michael explains guide dogs aren’t supposed to know your destination — their job is only to walk safely and stop when something’s wrong. The handler decides where to go and reads the dog’s signals to figure out why.
  • Michael varied his route through the World Trade Center on purpose: He deliberately changed the path he and Roselle took each day so she wouldn’t learn a single route and start anticipating it. That habit meant Roselle never assumed only one way out existed.
  • Roselle stayed calm because Michael did: As they walked down 78 floors, Michael kept repeating “good girl, Roselle” the entire way to signal that everything was okay. Other evacuees later said hearing his calm voice is what convinced them to keep moving.
  • A coworker’s shouted updates calmed hundreds of strangers: David walked a floor ahead and called out what he saw — clear, firefighters coming up — mostly to steady his own nerves. But everyone within earshot on the stairs heard someone saying things were under control.
  • They got out with about an hour to spare: Michael and David reached the street around 9:45 a.m., roughly an hour after the plane hit. Minutes later, Tower Two collapsed about 100 yards from where they stood.
  • The real lesson wasn’t survival, it was fear: Michael says the biggest thing he’s learned since is that fear is something you can control, not something that has to control you. He’s spent 25 years since speaking about trust, teamwork, and staying focused instead of “what-ifing everything to death.”

Resources

Links, tools and references mentioned
+

Michael Hingson’s Website
Book him to speak, or read more of his story:
michaelhingson.com

Thunder Dog
The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero:
Buy on Amazon

Chapters

Jump to a specific part of the conversation
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Note: Timestamps are approximate and may vary across listening platforms due to dynamically inserted ads.

10:53 Off to a normal day at the World Trade Center
20:33 The moment a plane hits 18 floors above him
28:46 How he knew a plane hit without seeing it
32:05 The trick that snaps a coworker out of panic
35:49 A firefighter stops to check if he’s okay
43:56 Told to run — a tower is about to fall
44:46 The voice in his head that reset his fear
46:28 Why his guide dog suddenly refuses to move
50:01 The moment his own tower vanishes behind him
1:12:54 What his dog did the second they got home

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]]> #748: Q&A: My Dream Job Won’t Wait If I Take a Family Gap Year. Do I Quit Anyway? https://affordanything.com/family-gap-year/ Wed, 09 Sep 2026 15:34:38 +0000 https://affordanything.com/?p=14972

“So to me, this is not a money management question.” That’s what I told Jamie, a 42-year-old PA with $686,000 saved, right after she described her plan: quit the job she loves and take her husband and kids on a family gap year while they’re still young enough to remember it. She wasn’t asking if she could afford it — her numbers already answered that.

She was asking something harder: is it worth walking away from a job she loves, when she’s not sure it’ll be there when she gets back? Then we help a father of four decide whether to stop maxing his IRA to pay down a future mortgage faster — even when the math argues for investing instead. We close out with a longtime listener’s case for sinking funds: why setting money aside in its own bucket beats trying to cash-flow a big expense like college.

Listener Questions

In their own words
+

Jamie asks: I’d like to know if it would be financially reasonable to take a sabbatical for a family gap year and how close we are to Coast FI, since I would feel better about the sabbatical if our retirement is mostly secured.

I’m 42 and earn $140,000 as a PA. I’ve occasionally worked as a locum provider at $160 an hour as an independent contractor, which brings in extra cash but increases stress for our family due to travel. My husband is a stay-at-home dad to our kids, ages 7 and 8, and has several flexible part-time ways to bring in some extra money.

Here is how our $686,000 in savings is split up:

  • $180,000 in a target retirement fund in my 403(b)
  • $110,000 in Roth accounts
  • $216,000 in traditional IRAs (mostly in Vanguard low-cost index funds, though some is managed in mutual funds with a financial advisor)
  • $33,000 and $28,000 in our children’s 529 accounts
  • $57,000 in a money market fund
  • $62,000 in a high-yield savings account

Our home is valued at $425,000, and we have $95,000 left to pay down over the next 14 years at around 3% interest. We will not sell it as it’s on family land, but we could consider renting it out. Our vehicles are paid off. We currently spend approximately $96,000 a year, which includes generous vacations.

While I used to love the idea of early retirement, I’m starting to think it may be better to work less now in exchange for working longer later. I decreased to 36 hours a week a few years ago and love it. Right now, our kids still want to spend time with us, and my husband and I are healthy enough to pursue adventures. We want to do a family gap year, balancing destinations like Japan and New Zealand with more affordable countries, and I feel confident homeschooling the kids during that time.

My biggest hangup is that I love my job and don’t think it will be available when I return. Are we financially ready to pull the trigger, and what should we focus on over the next year? Should I try to take shorter trips of 3 to 4 weeks a year instead, or quit, take the big trip, and keep an open mind for future job opportunities?

Kevin asks: Should we suspend maxing out our IRAs while we pay down a house? I know mathematically it might make more sense to invest, but I would feel less anxious if I buried the debt. We’re expecting to buy a $400,000 to $500,000 home in the near future and have about $130,000 set aside for a down payment.

Our family has a net worth of $1.1 million. We are a single-income family with a $96,000 salary, plus side hustles that bring in approximately $2,000 to $6,000 per year. We spend about $55,000 to $60,000 annually supporting our family with four children, and I think we are currently Coast FI. I’m aiming for a net worth between $2 million and $3 million to close the gap with our term life insurance policy and fund college expenses. We got here by aggressively investing and cutting costs over the last decade. We live in a large, relatively affordable American city with great walkability and public transit. We saved a lot by staying car-free until our third child was born; now we only have one car that we drive maybe 10 miles a week.

My goal is to maximize the time my wife and I spend with our children. She isn’t interested in full-time work right now, I live a 15-minute walk from work and don’t want to change jobs, and we love our neighborhood. I’m currently getting my 6% employer match and maxing out our HSA contributions, but I’m finding it harder to also max out our IRAs at the same time. I’d like to continue maxing out our IRAs, but I also think the money might be better put toward a house, especially with today’s high interest rates. What would you do?

Joe asks: In podcast episode 736, you answered a caller, Mike, who was looking to retire early in 12 years with a daughter entering college roughly around the same time. I’m surprised you didn’t mention sinking funds, which is what I used for my kids as they were going through college and setting themselves up. I figured I needed a couple hundred thousand dollars to take care of my daughters and niece. If I had tried to cash flow it, I would have needed five to six times more capital, and then I would have had several thousand dollars a month more than I needed for my household once they finished college. Why not suggest sinking funds if the college costs are going to be $100,000 to $120,000? It’s much easier to set aside $120,000 in a sinking fund than to amass the five to six times more capital needed to cash flow that amount over four years.

Key Takeaways

The biggest ideas from the conversation
+
  • Job satisfaction hinges on three predictable factors: Two separate studies point to what makes people love their jobs: autonomy, mastery, and purpose, plus how you feel about your direct boss. Before quitting a job you love, get specific about which of these it’s actually giving you.
  • A precious window closes when your kids grow up: Value comes from scarcity, and a family gap year with kids who are seven and eight only happens once. Waiting for a more convenient time means missing a window that will never come back.
  • Financial readiness and life readiness are different questions: Jamie’s $686,000 in savings already answered whether she could afford a family gap year. The harder question wasn’t about money at all — it was about what she wants the next year of her life to look like.
  • Peace of mind is worth pausing IRA contributions: Kevin already had his employer match and HSA maxed out, so pausing IRA contributions to pay down a future mortgage isn’t abandoning retirement — it’s redirecting one bucket toward the debt causing him the most anxiety.
  • Preserve cash flow over chasing low rates: With four kids and one income, Kevin can’t afford a mortgage payment that eats his flexibility. Taking a 30-year loan but paying it off on his own accelerated schedule keeps the lower required payment while still killing the debt faster.
  • Sinking funds beat cash-flowing big future expenses: Setting aside money in its own labeled bucket, like a 529 for college, takes far less capital than trying to cash-flow that same expense later. It’s also behaviorally easier: money bucketed for one purpose is money you’re less tempted to touch for anything else.

Resources

Links, tools and references mentioned
+

The Money Mindset Quiz
The real question behind quitting a job you love or paying off debt anyway? Your money mindset.
Take our free quiz to find yours

Camp Fi
The financial independence retreats Paula and Joe swap stories about this episode.
campfi.org

Heavy Metal Money
Chris Luger’s personal-finance podcast.
heavymetal.money

Submit Your Own Question
Got a money question you’d like answered on a future episode?
Submit it here

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Join Our Community
Connect with other listeners working toward financial independence.
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Chapters

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Note: Timestamps are approximate and may vary across listening platforms due to dynamically inserted ads.

7:12 Can you afford to quit a job you love?
11:09 Three things that actually predict job satisfaction
17:05 Why this window with your kids won’t come twice
22:20 Why retiring often beats retiring early
30:14 Why bad trip experiences count as good data
34:18 Why paying off debt can beat the math
36:49 Why coasting on your current savings pace is risky
44:26 How to think like a CFO about your mortgage
51:09 Why one bucket per goal makes saving easier
53:46 Why your 401k isn’t really about retirement

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Got a money question on your mind? Submit it here and it could be featured on an upcoming Q&A episode.

]]> #747: First Friday: Hope in Nepal; Trouble in the Bond Market https://affordanything.com/bond-market-explained/ Tue, 08 Sep 2026 15:15:39 +0000 https://affordanything.com/?p=14968

Nine days after catastrophic floods, two men trapped 557 feet underground in a hydropower tunnel were found alive — one of the rescuers wasn’t even wearing shoes.

That’s the story we open with today, but it’s not the only headline. The August jobs report tripled expectations, and the stock market dropped anyway. Meanwhile, in the bond market, something genuinely strange is happening: long-term treasuries just had their worst rolling 10-year return in about a hundred years, and the Treasury Secretary is now publicly sparring with a legendary investor over whether that’s a liquidity problem or a warning sign.

This is our September 2026 First Friday episode: the monthly deep dive into the economy, the markets, and the numbers that actually matter — even when, especially when, the headlines and the fine print tell different stories.

Listen Here

Apple Podcasts
Spotify

Key Takeaways

  • A Strong Jobs Report Can Spook the Market: August payrolls tripled expectations, and stocks dipped anyway — because stronger job growth raises the odds the Fed holds rates higher for longer.
  • Long-Term Treasuries Just Had Their Worst Decade in a Century: The rolling 10-year return on long-term treasuries is negative 2%, a reminder that “safe from default” and “safe from losing money” aren’t the same thing.
  • The Bond Market Tells You What the Stock Market Can’t: Stocks mostly reflect how a handful of big companies are expected to perform; bonds reflect what investors actually believe about inflation, debt, and the deficit over the next decade.
  • Two Powerful People Disagree on What High Yields Even Mean: The Treasury Secretary calls elevated long-term yields a liquidity problem solvable with buybacks; investor Stanley Druckenmiller calls it a genuine warning sign that shouldn’t be papered over.
  • Persistence, Not Luck, Found Two Missing Workers: Nine days after Nepal’s floods, rescuers located two survivors trapped underground by listening for the sound of them praying — a reminder of what search-and-rescue work actually looks like on the ground.

Resources

Grab a free financial workbook here — it covers financial psychology, income, investing, real estate, and entrepreneurship: https://affordanything.com/fiire

The August 2026 report behind this episode’s jobs numbers: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.htm

Stanley Druckenmiller: “Let the Bond Market Speak,” his Wall Street Journal op-ed at the center of the Treasury buybacks controversy: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/let-the-bond-market-speak-81529d74

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Join our community – https://affordanything.com/community

Chapters

Note: Timestamps are approximate and may vary across listening platforms due to dynamically inserted ads.

(00:00) Why the jobs report shocked economists this month
(03:24) How jobs can drop while unemployment drops too
(08:03) Why Paula just bought her first bond ever
(09:35) A crash course on why bond yields are spiking
(25:34) Why unemployment claims just hit a 55-year low
(27:57) Why young job seekers have it harder than everyone else
(35:23) Why mortgage rates just hit a one-year high
(51:28) Why gold is rebounding, and who’s buying it
(57:47) What the new 530A investment accounts mean for your kids

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]]> #746: Q&A: What Nepal Reveals About Wealth and Safety https://affordanything.com/should-you-buy-an-annuity/ Tue, 01 Sep 2026 04:15:31 +0000 https://affordanything.com/?p=14939

“Joe, I want to first talk about the elephant in the room.”

Before we get into any retirement math today, I need to talk about something personal: the disaster that just hit Nepal, my home country. My family is safe, but I’ve spent the last several days thinking, oddly enough, about why a country with the highest mountains on Earth still doesn’t have a ski industry — and what that has to do with why the rescue effort is so hard.

Listeners can donate to help the victims here:

The Prime Minister Relief Fund: https://pmdrf.nchl.com.np/
Caritas Nepal: https://www.caritasnepal.org/donate-now/
Learn more about the ongoing rescue efforts at https://help.ekantipur.com/

Then Joe and I get into it. We answer two retirement questions: one from a couple who’s already doing almost everything right and wants to know if they’re saving in the wrong place, and another from a daughter trying to decide whether her mom should put part of a home-sale windfall into an annuity — the one product personal finance loves to hate.

Listen Here

Apple Podcasts
Spotify
YouTube

Listener Questions

Anonymous asks: My husband and I are 36 and 40. Between the two of us, we have about $1.275 million saved across our 401ks, Roth IRAs, brokerage accounts, and an HSA, plus another $158,000 in cash and a joint brokerage account. We’ve always maxed out every tax-advantaged account first, then put $2,500 a month into a joint brokerage account. I recently started a job with RSUs worth roughly 25% of my $210,000 salary, and my plan is to sell them as they vest and route the money into that same brokerage account. Our advisor recently suggested we consider contributing less to our 401ks and more to our brokerage account instead, to help bridge the gap between an early retirement in 10 to 15 years and traditional retirement age. I’ve never questioned maxing out retirement accounts before — is there a point in an early-retirement timeline where it actually makes sense to intentionally scale back your 401k?

Marie asks: My mom retired last year and lives mostly off about $1,800 a month in Social Security, plus a $54,000 rollover IRA she hasn’t touched and a $14,000 high-yield savings account she dips into when she needs extra money. She’s in the process of selling her mobile home and should net around $80,000, and she’s about to move into a house my sister is building, with rent capped at $1,000 a month. My mom turns 73 in January, so I’ll be helping her set up required minimum distributions soon. My real question is about the $80,000: I’m considering putting $25,000 of it into a single premium immediate annuity with a 10-year certain payout, since my mom historically hasn’t been great at managing money and I want her to have some guaranteed income she can’t spend through. Is that a bad idea? And what should we do with the rest of the $80,000 — invest it, or keep it somewhere safe?

Key Takeaways

  • A Good Advisor’s Advice Isn’t About Beating the Market: Anonymous’s advisor recommended shifting savings toward a brokerage account — not to chase better returns, but to build flexibility for an early-retirement bridge. The best financial advice often has nothing to do with picking better investments and everything to do with matching your accounts to your actual goal.
  • A 401k’s Tax Break Is a Deal, Not a Free Lunch: Every dollar you put into a 401k or traditional IRA comes with an implicit promise: you get a tax advantage today in exchange for not touching that money until a certain age. If you want money you can access on your own terms, sometimes the answer isn’t a workaround like a 72(t) — it’s simply not making that promise in the first place, by saving in a taxable brokerage account instead.
  • An Annuity Isn’t Bad — It’s Built for a Specific Person: A single premium immediate annuity (SPIA) turns a lump sum into income you can’t outlive, but if you die early without a “period certain” payout, your family gets nothing. That tradeoff is exactly why some people hate annuities — and exactly why they’re the right fit for someone who needs a hard guardrail against spending down a windfall too fast.
  • “Guardrails” Exist on a Spectrum — Match the Strength to the Person: An annuity and a fee-based financial advisor are both ways to put guardrails around someone’s money. The real question isn’t “annuity or no annuity” — it’s how strong a guardrail a specific person actually needs, and choosing the lightest option that still gets the job done.
  • Weak Infrastructure Turns a Disaster Into a Tragedy: Nepal’s lack of a ski industry might sound unrelated to its earthquakes and floods, but it points to the same root cause: without economic development, a country doesn’t have the roads, communication systems, and equipment that turn a natural disaster into a survivable one instead of a catastrophic one.

Resources

Not sure which investments belong in your 401k, Roth, or brokerage account? Grab our free one-page guide to where each type of investment should sit: https://affordanything.com/assetlocation

Morgan Housel on the split-second decision that saved his life: https://affordanything.com/488-gut-instincts-and-big-decisions-with-morgan-housel/

Our interview with retirement researcher Dr. Wade Pfau on annuities and retirement income: https://affordanything.com/271-retirement-planning-in-2020-with-dr-wade-pfau/

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Chapters

Note: Timestamps are approximate and may vary across listening platforms due to dynamically inserted ads.

(6:47) Discussing the disaster in Nepal
(22:46) A split-second choice that changed one man’s life
(27:39) Why doing everything right doesn’t guarantee good outcomes
(38:34) When maxing out your 401k stops making sense
(44:17) A simple trick top performers use to build habits
(49:09) What you’re really trading away for a tax break
(57:28) The retirement product a financial planner didn’t see coming
(1:00:31) What happens to your money if you die too soon
(1:06:34) Why a famous economist recommended this for his own parents
(1:07:33) The one factor that decides if this is right for you

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]]> #745: The Four Kinds of Rich Nobody Counts [GREATEST HITS] https://affordanything.com/5-types-of-wealth-sahil-bloom/ Sat, 29 Aug 2026 03:24:58 +0000 https://affordanything.com/?p=14941

Today we’re revisiting an episode from February 2025, examining an understanding of wealth that goes beyond the financial.

A friend once asked Sahil Bloom how often he saw his parents. About once a year, Sahil said.

How old are they? Mid-60s.

His friend did the math out loud. If they live to 80, you’ll see them 15 more times.

Sahil was 30, living in California and making great money at a venture fund. Within 45 days of that conversation, he quit his job, sold his house and moved across the country to be near family.

He’s now managing partner of SRB Ventures, an early-stage fund backing more than 60 startups, and he writes The Curiosity Chronicle, a newsletter read by millions. His book, “The 5 Types of Wealth,” is a New York Times bestseller.

His framework starts with a scoring problem. Financial wealth gets measured every day. Time, social, mental and physical wealth run in the background, unmeasured, until something forces you to look.

You’ll get exercises for each. Build an energy calendar that tracks which activities charge you up and which drain you. Map your relationships by how healthy and how frequent they are. Ask what your family and your community need from you. Define what “enough” means in dollars, then write the number down.

Sahil also walks through anti-goals — the things you refuse to sacrifice on the way to a goal — and Memento Mori, the Roman habit of keeping your own death in view.

Two questions run underneath all of it. Think about how you spent yesterday. Would your 10-year-old self be impressed? Would your 90-year-old self?

You don’t experience all four seasons in a single day. Sahil argues your life runs on seasons too. Some stretches call for financial growth. Others call for family.

Listen Here

Apple Podcasts
Spotify

Key Takeaways

  • Wealth Is a Portfolio, Not a Single Number: Most people optimize only for financial wealth because it’s easiest to measure. Sahil argues true wealth spans five domains, and neglecting four while chasing the fifth isn’t actually winning.
  • The Math That Changes Everything: A friend’s calculation — that Sahil would only see his parents about 15 more times before they likely died — wasn’t a new fact, just an old one reframed sharply enough to finally change his behavior.
  • Energy, Not Just Time, Is the Resource to Track: Building time wealth isn’t about finding more hours in the day. It’s mapping which activities energize you versus drain you, then shifting toward more of the former.
  • Relationships Need the Same Rigor as a Portfolio: Sahil suggests mapping relationships by health and frequency, treating social wealth as something you actively manage rather than something that just happens to you.
  • Life Runs in Seasons, Not Daily Balance: You don’t expect all four seasons in one day, so don’t expect perfect balance across all five wealth types every day either — some periods lean financial, others lean family, by design.

Resources

For more from Sahil Bloom, find him on major social platforms or visit fivetypesofwealth.com.

Chapters

Note: Timestamps are approximate and may vary across listening platforms due to dynamically inserted ads.

(0:00) Would your 10-year-old self be impressed with your life?
(1:46) Sahil’s wake-up call: seeing parents only 15 more times before they die
(4:19) The Tail End: visualizing how few books and moments remain in life
(6:56) Small changes that dramatically increase time with loved ones
(13:26) The tension between ambition and presence; why “later” becomes “never”
(17:42) Why we measure financial wealth but not other forms of wealth
(19:47) The five types of wealth: financial, time, social, mental, physical
(30:09) Creating an “energy calendar” to track what energizes vs drains you
(38:09) Relationship mapping: evaluating connections by health and frequency
(42:33) Goals vs anti-goals: what you’re unwilling to sacrifice for success
(51:17) Why your purpose doesn’t need to be your work
(54:46) The 30-day health challenge: movement, nutrition, recovery
(57:05) Vonnegut and Heller on having “enough” vs wanting more
(1:02:21) Memento Mori: using a life calendar to visualize finite time

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]]> #744: This Historian Says We’re Living in the Best Era Ever, with Joseph Moore https://affordanything.com/money-mindset-financial-history/ Sun, 23 Aug 2026 03:18:43 +0000 https://affordanything.com/?p=14929

Joseph Moore is a crypto billionaire.

That’s technically true, and it means almost nothing. He printed over a billion tokens of his own currency, bought a sliver of the supply for a few hundred dollars, watched the exchange multiply that price by every token in existence, and became a “billionaire” on paper.

He hollered up the stairs to tell his wife. She reminded him the kids needed a ride to track practice.

Joseph is a historian who spent over a decade testing 300 years of American financial advice on himself — the good, the bad, and the outright illegal — to figure out what actually worked, what didn’t, and why “everyone knows” changes every generation.

We get into why your great-great-grandparents were told to never save money, why “stocks always beat bonds in the long run” is barely older than the two of us, and why — despite what every headline says — Joseph thinks this is one of the best times in American history to get ahead.

Listen Here

Apple Podcasts
Spotify
YouTube

Key Takeaways

  • Money Used to Be Whatever You Could Get Someone to Accept: Before the federal government issued a standard currency, over 10,000 private currencies circulated in America — including one printed by a runaway slave, William Wells Brown, who paid his rent with IOUs for haircuts he didn’t yet know how to give.
  • “Never Save Your Money” Was Once Completely Sound Advice: With no stable national currency and rampant counterfeiting, saving cash was a good way to watch it evaporate. The advice was to spend it immediately on something tangible — real estate, tools, even food — before it lost its value.
  • “Stocks Beat Bonds in the Long Run” Is Barely 80 Years Old: A full accounting of 1800s market data shows bonds actually beat or tied stocks for most of that century. The “stocks always win” era really only starts around World War II — which means the rule an entire industry is built on is younger than Social Security.
  • Inflation Is the Single Biggest Force Shaping “Timeless” Money Advice: Nearly every modern financial strategy — real estate gurus, index investing, the FIRE movement — traces back to the same five-year stretch (1912–1917) when U.S. prices doubled for the first time anyone alive had ever seen.
  • You Don’t Get Rich Solving Your Own Problems — You Get Rich Solving Somebody Else’s: Joseph started his research convinced the American Dream was a scam built to keep the working class distracted. A decade of evidence changed his mind: the people who get ahead are almost always the ones who found a real problem and solved it well.
  • Every Generation in American History Has Declared the Dream Dead: Joseph can trace “you showed up too late, the system is rigged” rhetoric back to the 1670s — three centuries before the phrase “American Dream” was even coined in the 1930s. The one thing that reliably makes life better for people at the bottom isn’t a slogan; it’s a growing economy.

Resources

Joseph Moore’s site — his book, essays, and more: https://www.josephmoorebooks.com
Joseph’s new book — How to Get Rich in American History: 300 Years of Financial Advice That Worked (& Didn’t): https://amzn.to/4cKjQui
Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin & Joe Dominguez: https://amzn.to/4ha7Yo1
The Latte Factor by David Bach: https://amzn.to/4cxdz5j

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Chapters

Note: Timestamps are approximate and may vary across listening platforms due to dynamically inserted ads.

(5:18) How a runaway slave built his own legal currency
(6:52) How he legally declared himself a crypto billionaire
(13:22) Why a fifth of the Smithsonian’s money collection is fake
(15:52) The bestselling book that told readers to commit fraud
(20:10) The decades when bonds quietly beat stocks
(26:04) How his grandfather secretly became a bond millionaire
(31:09) Why that “$10K in 1929” chart is misleading
(48:02) Why wages are up 50% and nobody believes it
(1:06:39) Why most Americans once owned one shirt
(1:23:48) The rent control law that backfired for renters

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]]> #743: Everyone Wants a Piece of You. Here’s How to Stay Whole — with Luke Burgis https://affordanything.com/stop-being-a-people-pleaser/ Sun, 23 Aug 2026 01:28:29 +0000 https://affordanything.com/?p=14904

 

Luke Burgis built his first company by stocking vending machines.

He was 23. He and his business partner put pita chips and granola bars in machines that had only ever held Snickers, and called it “food distribution” because it sounded better than what it was.

Years later, after selling that company and a few others, he had an existential crisis at 29, quit everything, and entered a seminary to figure out if he was meant to become a priest.

On his first week there, a slip of paper showed up in his mailbox. His assigned “house job” — unpaid work every seminarian does — was restocking the campus vending machines. Nobody there knew his history. Nobody was in on the joke.

Luke came back on the show to talk about what that moment taught him about belonging: how communities — families, workplaces, group chats, entire cities — quietly train you to want certain things and be a certain way, and what it actually takes to stay yourself inside of them without either disappearing into the group or cutting yourself off from it entirely.

Listen Here

Apple Podcasts
Spotify
YouTube

Key Takeaways

  • Belonging and Individuality Are Both Non-Negotiable, Not a Trade-Off: Every community — family, work, friend groups, online spaces — pulls you toward fitting in. Luke argues the goal isn’t choosing between belonging and staying yourself; it’s building a self solid enough to do both at once.
  • Passive Aggression Is a Symptom of Conflict Avoidance, Not a Personality Trait: At Luke’s own company, there’s zero tolerance for passive-aggressive communication — anyone can ask “hey, what’s up with that?” without fear. He says most people never learned this is even allowed.
  • The Courage to Disappoint People Is a Skill, Not a Personality Type: Luke traces a lot of his own people-pleasing back to never separating his own beliefs from his family’s emotional reactions to them. Learning to disappoint someone you love, on purpose, for a reason you believe in, is something you build — not something you’re born with or without.
  • “Dunbar’s Number” Isn’t 150 — It’s 5 to 9: Everyone quotes 150 as the max number of relationships a person can maintain. What Robin Dunbar actually said is that the number of people in your innermost, intentionally-built circle is closer to 5 to 9 — and almost nobody picks that circle on purpose.
  • The City You Live In Is Training You to Want Something: Luke points to Paul Graham’s essay “Cities and Ambition” — Cambridge quietly tells you to be smarter, New York tells you to be richer, Vegas told Luke to want status and dopamine. Knowing what your city (or your industry, or your feed) is selling you is the first step to deciding if you actually want it.

Resources

Take the free 10-day FiiRE guide to find out how financially flexible you actually are: https://affordanything.com/fiire
Luke’s website (books, newsletter, and more)
Luke’s new book, The One and the Ninety-Nine: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion

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Join our community – https://affordanything.com/community

Chapters

Note: Timestamps are approximate and may vary across listening platforms due to dynamically inserted ads.

(6:40) Two competing drives wired into every human being
(9:09) Why group pressure breaks some people and not others
(16:37) Why cutting people off replaced working through conflict
(18:37) The real number of close friends you actually need
(25:49) Where your beliefs actually came from
(30:58) You’re not responsible for how someone else feels
(35:07) The zero-tolerance workplace rule against passive-aggressiveness
(40:20) How to actually tell who you can trust
(52:31) The existential crisis that sent an entrepreneur toward the seminary
(54:37) The humbling lesson hidden in a vending machine

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]]> #742: Q&A: I Reached Financial Independence Three Years Early … Now What? https://affordanything.com/mortgage-payoff-or-retire-early/ Tue, 18 Aug 2026 23:51:47 +0000 https://affordanything.com/?p=14881
“Joe, if you had to choose between retiring as soon as possible or paying off a mortgage, what would you go for?”

I ask Joe that right at the top of this episode, and his answer ends up being more prophetic than either of us realized.

Joe and I help Carol figure out whether paying off a low-rate mortgage early actually makes sense once she’s already hit her retirement number — three years ahead of schedule.

We also walk a listener through how to hire her first accountant now that her tax situation has suddenly gotten complicated, and Joe finally explains, at length, why he’s not a fan of risk parity investing, even though he agrees with its biggest advocate on almost everything else.

Listen Here

Apple Podcasts
Spotify
YouTube

Listener Questions

Susanna asks: I’ve been a DIY tax filer for years, but my situation just got a lot more complicated. My husband quit his W-2 job to start his own business, we moved to a new state with income tax, and we became landlords on a rental property that isn’t quite cash-flowing yet. I don’t know if I need a CPA, an EA, or something else, or how to even find and interview one. Where do I start?

Carol asks: Since I called in a few years ago with $750,000 saved, I’ve grown that to $1.4 million and I’m now on track to hit my retirement goal three years early, at age 57. Most of my retirement money is in pre-tax accounts, and my plan has been to bridge the gap to age 59 and a half using my brokerage account, plus a rental condo I still owe about $124,000 on at a 4.125% rate. Now I’m wondering if I should redirect my extra savings toward paying off that mortgage instead of building a bigger cash bridge. Does that make sense, or should I just focus on retiring as soon as possible?

Mark asks: You’ve talked before about building a portfolio along the efficient frontier, and I know Joe isn’t a fan of risk parity investing. But if you take the efficient frontier concept to its logical extreme, doesn’t it lead you toward a risk parity portfolio anyway? I’ve learned a lot from Frank Vasquez’s Risk Parity Radio podcast, especially about how these portfolios can perform well in different economic environments. So why is Joe against risk parity, even though he’s for the efficient frontier?

Key Takeaways

  • Specialize Around Complexity, Not Account Count: One rental property doesn’t require a specialist CPA. Running your own business does. Match the level of expertise you look for to the most complex part of your financial life, not the part that feels the scariest.
  • Once You’ve Hit Your Number, the Math Becomes Secondary: If your retirement date and finances already work, a decision like paying off a low-interest mortgage early comes down to how you want to manage cash flow and taxes, not whether it mathematically “beats” a savings account.
  • “One More Year” Isn’t Automatically a Red Flag: Staying in a job past the point where you could retire isn’t a problem if you genuinely like the work. Pay attention to how you feel about the job, not just how long you’ve been putting off leaving it.
  • Liking Your Job Changes Every Other Financial Decision: Whether to retire early, pay off debt, or take on more investment risk all hinge on the same question: does work feel like a choice, or an obligation?
  • Agreeing on the Math Doesn’t Mean Agreeing on the Portfolio: Two people can agree on the theory behind a strategy and still land on completely different real-world portfolios, depending on how each of them defines “optimal.”

Resources

Not sure which investments belong in your Roth vs. your taxable account? Grab our free one-page guide to where each type of investment should sit: https://affordanything.com/assetlocation

Karsten Jeske (“Big ERN”):
“How to Lie with Personal Finance – Part 4: Risk Parity”: https://earlyretirementnow.com/2026/07/29/risk-parity-lies/
“Can We Increase the Safe Withdrawal Rate with Risk Parity? – SWR Series Part 64”: https://earlyretirementnow.com/2026/07/27/risk-parity-swr-series-part-64/
#548: Is Your Retirement Safe in Today’s Economy?: https://affordanything.com/548-is-your-retirement-safe-in-todays-economy-with-dr-karsten-jeske-big-ern/
#643: LIVESTREAM: A Former Fed Economist Reveals What’s Really Happening: https://affordanything.com/643-livestream-a-former-fed-economist-reveals-whats-really-happening-with-karsten-jeske-big-ern/

Nick Maggiulli:
#375: The 2X Rule (and Other Wealth-Accelerating Advice): https://affordanything.com/375-the-2x-rule-and-other-wealth-accelerating-advice-with-nick-maggiulli/
#629: The Wealth Ladder Has Six Rungs (and Most People Never Climb Past Four): https://affordanything.com/629-nick-maggiulli-the-wealth-ladder-has-six-rungs-and-most-people-never-climb-past-four/

Frank Vasquez:
#618: How to Retire at 50 While Supporting Aging Parents: https://affordanything.com/618-how-to-retire-at-50-while-supporting-aging-parents-with-frank-vasquez/
His podcast, Risk Parity Radio: https://www.riskparityradio.com

JL Collins:
#624: JL Collins Part 1 – The Simple Path vs. The “Optimal” Path: https://affordanything.com/624-jl-collins-part-1-the-simple-path-vs-the-optimal-path/
#625: JL Collins Part 2 – What Happens When You Don’t Need to Work Anymore?: https://affordanything.com/625-jl-collins-part-2-what-happens-when-you-dont-need-to-work-anymore/

Paul Merriman:
#550: Paul Merriman – The 4-Fund Strategy That Beats the S&P 500: https://affordanything.com/550-paul-merriman-the-4-fund-strategy-that-beats-the-sp-500/
#590: Small Cap Showdown! Paul Merriman vs. Dr. Karsten Jeske: https://affordanything.com/affordanything-com-small-cap-value-debate/
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Chapters

Note: Timestamps are approximate and may vary across listening platforms due to dynamically inserted ads.

(4:02) Why software can’t handle a messy tax situation
(8:02) The three types of tax pros — and who you actually need
(12:46) How to interview and choose the right accountant
(24:42) She hit her $1.4M goal three years early
(32:22) The hidden fear behind “one more year” at work
(38:29) Why loving your job changes the retirement math
(49:39) Why a former advisor won’t touch risk parity
(53:46) Four investing legends who all disagree with each other
(59:35) The historian’s warning: history doesn’t repeat itself
(1:07:57) The cooking analogy that explains your portfolio

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]]>