45 million downloads. One question: what does it actually take to build wealth? Each week, Paula Pant brings in economists, investors, business leaders, authors, and researchers to dig into the five pillars of financial freedom — financial psychology, increasing income, investing, real estate, and entrepreneurship. Deep insights rooted in economics and behavioral finance. First-principles thinking. No surface-level tips. Follow or Subscribe to hear new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Get…
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#743: Everyone talks about a loneliness epidemic — but Luke Burgis argues the opposite problem is just as real: we now have so much easy, frictionless community that we never have to develop a solid sense of who we actually are. Luke Burgis is a professor of business at The Catholic University of America and the founder of the Cluny Institute, and the bestselling author of Wanting: The Power of…
#742: A listener hit her $1.4 million early-retirement goal three years ahead of schedule — and now she's stuck deciding whether paying off a low-interest mortgage is smart, or just fear in disguise. Later, a former financial planner explains why he still won't recommend one of the most talked-about "safer" investing strategies in the FIRE community. This week's Q&A tackles three listener…
#740: Jack Raines turned $6,000 into $400,000 trading blank-check stocks during the 2020–2021 bubble — and he says it was some of the least fun money he's ever made. Jack Raines is a writer and investor at Slow Ventures, and the author of the new book Young Money: A Field Guide to Wealth and Purpose in Your Twenties. In this episode, we discuss: Why "golden handcuffs" are almost always a choice,…
#740: Paula and Joe rarely butt heads — but a caller's side hustle, which pulled in $5,500 in a single day, sparked their most heated disagreement in months. This week's mailbag: a couple weighing an early retirement built on $1.2 million, a wedding-dress side hustle deciding whether to go all in, and a listener whose small stock investment turned into a $25,000 tax puzzle. In this episode, we…
#739: The U.S. just lost 23,000 jobs — and unemployment fell anyway. The numbers were strange enough that Paula broke a years-long, all-stocks habit and bought her first bond, ever. In this month's First Friday economic roundup, Paula breaks down the jobs report, the bond market, mortgage rates, gold, and a new kind of account for kids. Topics include: How to make sense of a jobs report that seems…
#738: Hackers broke into a real estate closing company's servers and waited three months for the right deal — then intercepted a wire and stole $1.2 million from a couple who did everything right, right down to the closing table. Dr. Eric Cole was a former CIA hacker, Cybersecurity Commissioner under President Obama, and longtime security advisor to Bill Gates. We're resharing this conversation,…
#737: Beth Kobliner has covered personal finance for people in their 20s and 30s for over three decades — and she says this is the hardest she's ever seen it. One in four young people now believe that betting on gambling sites and prediction markets counts as investing. Beth Kobliner is a personal finance journalist and New York Times bestselling author of Get a Financial Life, who served on…
#736: A bride wants to spend $60,000 on her wedding — money that could grow to $800,000 in 40 years if she invested it instead. This week, three very different listener questions all boil down to the same fight: what the math says versus what actually makes you happy. 👉 Figure out your own money mindset — free FiiRE Playbook: https://affordanything.com/fiire This week, Paula and Joe tackle three…
#735: Cody Berman failed at more than 30 side hustles — from a disc golf manufacturing company to sweaty bike deliveries in the Australian heat — before three of them got him to financial independence at 25. Cody is the bestselling author of Retire by 30, who reached financial independence at 25 by stacking income from real estate, digital products, and the stock market. In this episode, we…
#734: Depending on which source you ask, the U.S. is short somewhere between 1.2 million and 10 million homes — and the reason for that wild range says as much about who's counting as it does about the shortage itself. 👉 Free cheat sheet: which investments belong in which account: https://affordanything.com/assetlocation This week, Paula and Joe tackle three listener questions: whether the…
#733: Venture fund managers can collect years of fees before a single dollar comes back to investors — and the bar to hand over your money is lower than you'd think. David Bell spent 20 years as a chaired professor at Wharton before co-founding the venture firm Idea Farm Ventures, where he's backed early-stage brands like Bonobos, Warby Parker, and Jet.com. In this episode, we discuss: How venture…