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September 28#753: Why 60,000 New York Apartments Sit Empty in a Housing Crisis, with Kenny Burgos
In New York City, a 24-unit apartment building is listed for sale at $1.3 million, which works out to about $54,000 per apartment. Kenny Burgos represents the owners of buildings like that one, and his advice is simple: don’t buy it. The reason comes down to rent stabilization.

Kenny grew up in the Bronx, raised by a single mom alongside three sisters. He represented the Southeastern Bronx in the New York State Assembly from 2020 to 2024. Today he’s CEO of the New York Apartment Association, which means he walks through empty apartments every week.

At least 60,000 of those apartments are sitting empty, in a city that’s short roughly half a million homes. Under the 2019 rent laws, bringing a vacant unit under rent stabilization up to code can cost six figures, and an owner will likely never earn that money back.

Kenny explains how rent stabilization actually works and who it protects, and why the average three-bedroom rents for less than the average one-bedroom. He also explains why those bargain-basement building prices, in his words, “are not an advertisement. They are a warning.”

The lessons reach well beyond New York. Averages can hide the real story, and a cheap price is often a red flag. When the math doesn’t work, changing the people involved won’t fix it.

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Key Takeaways
The biggest ideas from the conversation
+
The 2019 rent laws made empty apartments rational: The 2019 HSTPA ended the rent reset after a tenant moves out. Owners must still renovate vacant units to current code, often a six-figure job, with no way to recoup it. So at least 60,000 apartments under rent stabilization sit empty.
Frozen rents push costs onto someone else: When rents can’t rise to cover taxes, insurance, and water bills, costs don’t disappear. In mixed buildings, market-rate tenants absorb them. In fully regulated ones, owners defer maintenance, patching boilers and delaying elevator repairs, until the building starts to fail.
A bargain price often comes with a warning label: Under rent stabilization, some buildings sell for $50,000 per apartment, and a few for as little as $10,000. The price is low because regulation caps future cash flow. Whether it’s a rental property or a laundromat, a cheap asset usually signals trouble with the income it can produce.
Averages can hide the real story: Manhattan’s $5,500 median asking rent grabs headlines, but the median rent New Yorkers actually pay is closer to $1,600. Before trusting any average, whether it’s a rent report or a salary survey, ask who’s in the sample and check the median too.
Changing the tenant doesn’t change the math: Rent stabilization has no income limit, but Kenny argues means testing wouldn’t fix it. If an apartment brings in $700 a month and costs more to run, the building loses money no matter who lives there.
Resources
Links, tools and references mentioned
+
Your First Rental Property Waitlist
Ready to buy your first rental property, or get more out of the one you already own? Join the waitlist for Your First Rental Property, the course that’s helped 5,000+ students invest in real estate. You’ll be the first to know when enrollment opens:
courses.affordanything.com

Kenny Burgos on X
Kenny’s posts on rent stabilization, vacant apartments, and New York City housing policy.
@KennyBurgosNY

New York Apartment Association (Housing NY)
Kenny leads this organization, which represents owners and managers of rent-stabilized housing in New York City. It posts weekly content, and he mentioned it on the show, noting its handle is @housingny on social media.
housingny.org

Free Guide: 7 Costly Mistakes Beginner Rental Property Investors Make
Paula’s free guide to the most common, and most expensive, mistakes new landlords make, including forgetting to count your own time as a real cost.
affordanything.com/rent

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

3:44
Why New York’s 1969 emergency rent rules never ended
4:58
The surprisingly low rent most New Yorkers actually pay
23:33
Why buildings now sell for $50,000 an apartment
25:12
Costs rose 4.5%. Rents were frozen at 0%.
31:39
The rent-freeze program that actually works
39:38
Who really pays when rents are frozen
47:13
Why 60,000 apartments sit empty during a shortage
1:01:53
Buyout or pressure? The $150,000 question
1:06:52
What Vienna gets right that New York doesn’t
1:16:18
Should you buy a rental in New York?
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Policygenius
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1 hr 24 min
September 22#752: Q&A: I’m Tired of Managing My Rental Property. Should I Sell It?
“Sometimes you might make the ‘right’ decision for the wrong reason.” That’s what I told Nieves, a listener who’s deciding whether to sell rental property she bought back in 2021, a St. Louis duplex that’s gotten a lot harder to manage since she moved to Madrid for her MBA.

Her tenants have started paying late. The roof needs replacing, and she doesn’t have the cash to cover it. On paper, the duplex is still a solid long-term asset. She just isn’t sure she wants it anymore.

Joe and I dig into the harder question underneath: how do you know when it’s okay to sell rental property that’s objectively a good investment? We talk through property managers, HELOCs, and what you’d actually do with the money if you sell rental property and walk away.

Once we’ve worked through whether to sell rental property, we take Mandy’s question about a startling stat: women accounted for 100% of July’s labor force decline. Then we zoom out to the bigger trend line, and close with a voice note about our episode with historian Joseph Moore.

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Listener Questions
The questions we answered this episode
+
Nieves asks: I recently quit my job and moved to Madrid, Spain for a year to pursue an MBA. I received a scholarship for the program, but I had to use most of my savings for a €20,000 deposit that will be returned after I complete a six-month internship following the MBA. I also took out a €30,000 loan for living expenses for the next 12 months at an interest rate under 4%.

I’m 30 years old and have around $150,000 in my old 401(k), $50,000 in my Roth IRA, and a duplex in St. Louis, Missouri that I bought in 2021 for $240,000. The mortgage, including taxes and insurance, is about $1,500 a month, and it brings in around $3,100 a month in rent. One of the units is a midterm rental, so I have additional expenses associated with that unit.

I’ve been thinking about selling the property because my tenants have started paying late and the property needs a new roof and a few other repairs. I don’t have enough cash to replace the roof out of pocket, and managing the property from abroad has become stressful. I could likely sell the duplex for around $250,000 to $275,000, and I currently owe $180,000 on the mortgage.

How do you know when it’s okay to let go of an investment that is objectively a good long-term asset? I’m struggling with whether selling would be a smart simplification for peace of mind or if I’d be giving up a valuable long-term asset.

Mandy asks: I really loved your most recent podcast on the July jobs report that came out. I saw something recently in the news stating that 100% of the labor workforce decline was actually female, and that 100% of it was females leaving the workforce. I wasn’t sure how accurate or correct that information was, and I was curious if it is accurate, what is the reason behind it and what factors are impacting that?

James says: Hi Paula, my name is James. I’m calling regarding episode 744 with Joseph Moore, the historian that you had on, and that was one of the most interesting podcasts about finance that I’ve ever listened to. I just wanted to call and give you that accolade and to say that I will keep listening to your show on a regular basis. I’m a full-time stacker and a part-time afforder. So keep up the good work, and I look forward to listening to your episodes in the future. And also make it easier to leave a review on your website because I couldn’t figure out how to do that. So that’s why I’m leaving this message. Talk to you later. Bye.

Key Takeaways
The biggest ideas from the conversation
+
Don’t let temporary problems drive permanent decisions: One set of late-paying tenants is a short-term, solvable problem; if you own rentals for decades, you’ll see every kind of tenant. Before you sell rental property, I want to make sure you’re not making the right decision for the wrong reason.
A new roof is a front-loaded investment: Every major capital expenditure buys years of not having to think about that component again. A roof can last 25 to 30 years, so before you sell rental property over one big repair, remember that your future self benefits from the payment.
A property manager can solve what selling solves: Deciding to sell rental property gets you away from tenant headaches, but so does hiring a professional. Beyond the time savings, a good manager brings local legal expertise, handles contractors, and gives you real peace of mind, especially if you’re managing from another country.
Compare unleveraged returns before you sell rental property: Add the property’s cap rate to its expected appreciation, then compare that to what your after-tax, after-fee proceeds could earn elsewhere, like an S&P 500 index fund. Just remember it’s not a risk-adjusted comparison, since every property has its own risk profile.
A labor force decline isn’t the same as job losses: Labor force participation counts people who have jobs or want them. In many cases, July’s drop reflects women moving from wanting work to not wanting it, driven partly by childcare costs and return-to-office mandates, a multi-year trend among mothers of young children.
Zoom out before you trust a single month: Women made up 100% of July’s labor force decline, but they also captured 98% of August’s net job growth and about 85% of 2026’s job gains so far. One month makes a headline; the long-term trend line tells the real story.

Resources
Links, tools and references mentioned
+
Episode 744 with Historian Joseph Moore
The episode James called in about, on the long historical view of money and why grounded, data-driven optimism is so hard to find.
Listen to the episode

Afford Anything Newsletter
Sign up to get a link to our new website the moment it goes live.
Subscribe here

Joe’s Interview with Joseph Moore on Stacking Benjamins
Joe asks Joseph Moore a completely different set of questions, and there’s a downloadable cheat sheet with the interview’s top takeaways.
Watch on YouTube

Bureau of Labor Statistics: Employment Situation Report
The BLS jobs data behind our discussion of labor force participation and 2026 job growth.
Read the report

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

1:45
Why she wants to sell a rental that’s “objectively good”
3:25
When it’s actually okay to sell a good investment
10:03
One hire that stops panic-selling a rental property
14:44
The simple math to compare rental returns vs. stocks
17:31
Paula’s own confession about hating her first rental property
22:22
Why doing what you’re best at beats doing everything yourself
30:11
100% of last month’s labor force drop was women
31:54
The real reasons women are leaving the workforce right now
32:18
Why women got 85% of new jobs created this year
47:00
The industry that could fix jobs and housing at once

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Policygenius
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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.
59 min
September 18#751: Why Self-Worth Predicts Your Income More Than Your SAT Score Does, with Marisa Franco
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.

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Key Takeaways
The biggest ideas from the conversation
+
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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1 hr 14 min
September 15#750: Your “Diversified” Portfolio Might Secretly Be One Big Bet on AI, with Alec Litowitz
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.

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Key Takeaways
The biggest ideas from the conversation
+
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
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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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1 hr 39 min
September 14#749: How a Blind Man and his Guide Dog Survived Sept. 11 — and What His Mindset Can Teach Us, with Michael Hingson
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.

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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
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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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1 hr 39 min
September 09#748: Q&A: My Dream Job Won’t Wait If I Take a Family Gap Year. Do I Quit Anyway?
“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.

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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

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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.

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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1 hr 5 min
September 08#747: First Friday: Hope in Nepal; Trouble in the Bond Market
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.
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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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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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September 01#746: Q&A: What Nepal Reveals About Wealth and Safety
“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.
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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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0 min
August 29#745: The Four Kinds of Rich Nobody Counts [GREATEST HITS]
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.
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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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0 min
August 23#744: This Historian Says We’re Living in the Best Era Ever, with Joseph Moore
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.
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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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