Live Event with Paula Pant
If you haven’t yet listened to ChooseFI Episode 330 with Paula Pant, it is quite likely the most important podcast on real estate you’re going to hear this year! Paula explored why this time it truly is different in the overall housing market, and gave us detailed, actionable steps on how to navigate this market both as a buyer and seller.
I’m also excited to announce that Paula and Jonathan are co-hosting a ‘virtual live event’ next Monday June 28 at 8pm ET to help you “discover how you can make more money without going back to school.”
You can register for the live event at Affordanything.com/career
Turn Everything into a 5-star Experience
The ‘My First Million’ podcast episode entitled “How to Turn Any Bad Experience into a Good One” is only 7 minutes long, but it is absolutely loaded with mindset-altering gold, and presents one of the most important concepts of all:
Your state of mind and how you frame an experience is a huge component of your outcome (or perceived outcome).
The question they posed, was “How do you turn everything into a 5-star experience?”
The person in question was dreading going to the DMV, but made up his mind to go thinking, “I’m going to be a 5-star customer.”
And you know what? He essentially made his own luck by simply smiling, making eye contact, and communicating in a fun and playful way.
As they said in the show: “He’s being the type of customer who would have a 5-star experience” and he got one. And, “the truth is that you get to choose your experience in any given situation.”
You get to choose if sitting in 15 minutes of traffic is a good experience (call a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while, listen to some music you love) or a bad one (fuming about how bad things always happen to you, etc.). You get to choose if that next customer service call you have to make is a good one or a bad one, etc., etc.
Give this a try for the next few days: try to frame things positively, assume that everyone around you is there to help and is a good person, and I think you’ll be shocked at the positivity that comes back to you.
Summer Live Event Series: ChooseFI Foundation
The ChooseFI Foundation is running a series of live events every Tuesday night at 8pm ET this summer through August 10th. They have some incredible guests lined up on really important topics including meal planning, investing basics, college planning, entrepreneurship and legacy planning.
Join them tonight for “Kids and Money Basics” with guests Yanely Espinal, Maya Chorbic and Julia Dennison and be sure to bookmark the following link for tonight and the rest of the series:
https://www.choosefifoundation.org/events
Travel Tip: Rental Cars
Oddly, the hardest part of traveling this summer is finding a rental car. Not just getting a decent price, but finding one at all.
I read a Washington Post article about car rental alternatives and they gave some options including Turo, Getaround and Avail.
We’ve personally used Turo multiple times and found the process smooth and a big money saver. Bonus Tip: A service like this might actually be a money earner if you have a car that sits idle more than you like – it might be worth it to list your car and give it a try!
ChooseFI Community Taking Action This Week
- Alexis said, “My husband and I officially paid off all of our debt! We started 2 1/2 years ago on the journey. We began by paying off our cars first, decreasing our monthly housing payment by $250, decreasing unnecessary spending, and then dedicated extra money, side hustles, etc. to paying down our student debt. In 2 1/2 years, we have both gotten better jobs, had promotions, decreased spending, and are now free of the $53,000 in debt we had! We have even had 1 (almost 2) kids on the way! We feel so blessed for the extra opportunities to make money and the knowledge we have acquired through this community and others. Thanks so much!”
- Brandon said, “Having actively listened to the podcast for almost two years, I have finally taken a lot more ACTION in the last month! I opened and put funds into a brokerage account with M1 Finance, I went from a 5% contribution (100% matched for 5%) to my 401K to maxing it out. I changed the allocation of these funds to low-cost index funds, specifically VIIIX (85%) and VSMAX (15%). We have had tens of thousands of cash in our savings over our 3-6 month emergency fund, so with those funds we should be investing around 25K into our new taxable brokerage account, and 10-12K into ROTH IRAs. We plan of maxing out my wife’s 401K as well and get to coast FI before the age of 40 (we are 29 and 28 right now). We are still deciding on paying off the mortgage quickly or investing more aggressively. Right now, I’m leaning towards having a special fund in M1 for what I would have contributed to my mortgage principal, hoping to beat the 3.25% of my interest rate. Keep up the great work, I look forward to my commutes when I get to listen to a new episode!”
- Kate said, “I love reading the weekly emails and listening to the podcast. I had a major win today that I want to share with you. I received a job offer yesterday that was $5K less than my target. I re-listened to your episode with Tori Dunlap several times and started to prepare the script for my counter. I set up a time to speak with the hiring manager and we discussed my counter. This was completely outside of my comfort level but I knew it was worth a shot. In the end, they came back with the $5K additional that I wanted and a Director job title to match! I love all the knowledge sharing and ideas that come from your podcast. I cannot thank you enough for giving me the courage to ask for what I am worth!”
- Jon said, “Thanks for your great emails and podcasts. They are an inspiring source of information that I listen to whilst working in a large garden on a rural estate in Dorset, England! My 1% win this week has been opening a pension with Vanguard, investing £5000. Its mighty satisfying to see the additional 20% the UK government adds and thus reducing my yearly income tax liability. Keep up the good work!”
- Carolina said, “My 1% feels more like a glorious milestone. This weekend I helped my mother-in-law to do a rollover of a traditional IRA to Vanguard. On top of that, I also opened a Roth IRA for her! This a major change. I feel that it is opening the door to more conversations involving retirement planning. Of course, my husband and I are eager to approach these topics with them but this time they came to us, we must be doing something right!!!
- Prasanth said, “My 1% (or is it 6%?) improvement has been to apply my increase in salary as a percentage this year to my monthly savings and investments. Got a 6% raise that was directly applied to the monthly investment amount.”
